Humanity has an innate desire for an answer to the question “What is truth?” We intuitively understand that knowing the truth releases us from worry and can give us dominion over life’s challenges. Many believe that artificial intelligence promises to help in our search for truth.
As a technology journalist, I’ve had many opportunities to write about the impressive engineering behind AI. Its operation can seem mysterious, but it simply gives us its best guess when answering questions. Guessing is not knowing. And sometimes, these guesses are incorrect. Engineers call them “hallucinations” – that’s a fancy word for errors. Some of AI’s hallucinations are obvious, but how can we avoid its more subtle errors that are difficult even for experts to recognize?
We can turn wholeheartedly to God and listen. Christian Science explains that God is the only Mind, completely separate from the material element in human thinking of which artificial intelligence is an extension. The divine Mind expresses absolute truth, which is entirely spiritual. The material and limited sense of life, called mortal mind, on the other hand, must yield to spiritual Truth, God. Like a hallucination, mortal mind is an illusion providing only false, erroneous thoughts.
Divine Truth was the basis for Christ Jesus’ teachings and healing works. These healings were demonstrations of dominion over erroneous conceptions of God and man. As we ourselves improve our understanding of God, we increase our confidence that God, who is fully good, is All – the only source of man’s being, and the only source of truth.
By studying the truth of our being, as revealed by Christ, the purely spiritual idea of God, we can rise above challenges and limitations, including those we encounter while using AI, and in all other aspects or our lives. That’s not a guess; it’s demonstrable truth that was reinforced for me through a physical healing.
One evening, as I was walking to bed, I tripped on a rug in front of the fireplace and fell. The commotion brought my wife out of the bedroom to find me on the floor, unable to get up, and ranting about several perceived slights I had experienced earlier.
While she was comforting me, we both reached out to God in prayer to better understand the infinite nature of God and to know that it was impossible for me ever to be outside the safety and care of divine Love. However, the pain made it difficult for me to get a clear sense of that truth. My wife later told me that I had had a very bad bruise on my back and that it seemed to her that I had cracked some ribs.
Because the situation wasn’t improving, my wife called a Christian Science practitioner for prayer. As I spoke with the practitioner, my anger surfaced. She commented, “God’s love is closer to you than your anger.” That began moving my thoughts away from the pain and anger to the consideration of what was spiritually true.
I remembered a passage from the Christian Science textbook, “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures” by Mary Baker Eddy: “A spiritual idea has not a single element of error, and this truth removes properly whatever is offensive” (p. 463).
The healing power of that statement lies in the fact that, like all Christian Science, it is based on the truth found in the Bible. In this case, Genesis teaches that God’s creation, man, is created in God’s image (see 1:26). God being purely spiritual and only good, that means that man in God’s image is the pure spiritual idea of good (Genesis 1:31). That is the eternal truth about man, so despite appearances, that was the truth about me.
Soon, I was able to stand. In a couple of days, I could do my chores around the house, and I could also lie down again. By mentally and wholeheartedly reaching out to God and praying to know what was divinely true, I was released from the anger, had a complete healing of my ribs, and was back to my normal activities in a short time.
Christian Science unlocks the spiritual meaning of the Bible’s teachings, especially Christ Jesus’ inspired words and demonstrations of truth, which show us the way to dominion and healing. As we’re using new technologies such as AI, Christ shows us how to eliminate fear about technological errors and guides us to the always-right, ever-available answers from God that provide a positive way forward. No guesswork involved.
