Who is the Disruptor? – Mr. Abdu Murray, J.D.
April 20, 2023
An excerpt from “Dancing with the Disruptor: Is the World Ready for Artificial Intelligence?”
Mr. Abdu Murray, J. D.
Transcript: Who is the Disruptor?
So here is the irony I want to leave with you–this is important–is that in creating our own god, we’re trying to do better than Adam and Eve did. You did see Adam and Eve were created in God’s image, but they were less than God. We’re saying, “God, we’re better than you. We’re gonna create something that’s better than us. You can’t create a being better than You, but we can create one better than us. And so we are the god of God.”
Here’s the irony of it, is that when we let this god do everything for us and make all of our decisions, we become autonomo. We start to do things automatically: press like, order this, get the sushi this way, make sure you pick up the car from Carvana, make sure you do it this way. And we just stop deciding things. So we create a machine into a god and make ourselves into machines. And that’s the danger. We don’t recognize who and what we are.
Friends, what I want to suggest to you, is that that impetus–that impulse–to replace, or to become God ourselves, never goes well. It never goes well. But it hasn’t gone well in history.
The Christian message is that, despite our effort to replace God, God has not abandoned us. He cares deeply for us and wants our redemption. And so He does that. He interacts within human history, taking on the form of a man, to represent us as one. And paying every penalty that we owe, every debt that we owe, because of our rebellion against Him, is now paid by the infinite One who has no debts of His own to pay. So that we can be redeemed.
Friends, AI, if we make it our own little demigod in this world, it won’t care about us. It won’t seek our redemption. So we can’t rely on it for that.
What we can rely on is the One who created our minds to be able to create the kind of AI that can serve good and wonderful purposes. Until we remember that, we remain in a situation where we don’t know what this is going to do.
The original disruptors were Adam and Eve. And we are disruptors 2.0. AI is not the disruptor. My friend on the plane was wrong. It’s the human heart; that’s the disruptor.
Mr. Abdu Murray, J. D.
Abdu Murray is a speaker, author and attorney who specializes in addressing issues where religious faith and emerging cultural trends intersect and collide. Having spent decades analyzing how the major religious and non-religious thought traditions have attempted to address emerging cultural issues, he has authored several books including Saving Truth, Grand Central Question, Apocalypse Later and his latest, More than a White Man’s Religion: Why the Gospel is Not Merely White, Male-Centered, nor Just a Religion.
For most of his life, Mr. Murray was a Muslim until a nine-year historical, philosophical, theological and scientific investigation pointed him to the Christian faith. He has engaged with diverse international audiences in debates and dialogues across the globe and hosts the podcast and YouTube show, All Rise.
Mr. Murray holds a B.A. in Psychology from the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor and earned his Juris Doctor from the University of Michigan Law School and was named to Best Lawyers in America and to Michigan Super Lawyers three times.
He lives in the Detroit, Michigan area with his wife and their three children. Read his full bio here.
The opinions expressed by the speakers and commentators at our events and posted on our website are their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Christian Embassy.