Computers Are Not Spirit-Filled

We are surrounded by artificial intelligence.

Though I often question Siri's IQ, I'm quick to acknowledge that something powerful happens when I ask her a question.

Bits and bytes fly from my phone like a carrier pigeon that returns in seconds with an array of answers sans feathers.

There's plenty of discussions these days about the development of computer reasoning. We've learned to program the IQ of computers, and reasoning has advanced quickly as demonstrated by computer chess victories over grandmasters.

Many people worry that computer reasoning has advanced so quickly that sci-fi visions of computer dominance aren't really a stretch of fiction.

Charles Babbage is considered to be the father of the computer. He developed the first programmable computer in the early 1800s. There's no evidence he did this in anyone's garage.

He wrote about intelligent behavior and suggested that artificial behavior was, in fact, programmable. He understood that computer reasoning could occur. He suggested these essential abilities for intelligence are certain:

• To respond to situations very flexibly

• To take advantage of fortuitous circumstances

• To make sense of ambiguous or contradictory messages

• To recognize the relative importance of different elements of a situation.

• To find similarities between situations despite differences that may separate them.

• To draw distinctions between situations despite similarities which may link them.

• To synthesize new concepts by taking old concepts and putting them together in new ways.

• To develop new and novel ideas.

This seems to be a competent list of requisite office intelligence. But what's missing from all forms of man's intelligence and a computer's quest to reason is the necessary impartation of spiritual direction.

High Spiritual-Q seems rare because so few effort to press in to the heart of the Father. A rhema word can add deep meaning to any need to know.

While Silicon Valley works to teach computers to reason, we are reminded of the folly of temporal learning. Without the breath of Holy Spirit upon us, our intake is finite.

The still, small voice will always be the apex of wisdom and eternal intelligence. Anything else is artificial.

"I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent" (1 Cor. 1:19)