Posted October 22, 2026
With all the bad news about artificial intelligence these days, it’s good to have some good news. For example, security researchers recently used AI to find a bug that puts up to 70 percent of the world’s websites at risk. A security update was released yesterday to fix the problem.
And there’s this: AI researcher Nick Cammarata published a twenty-six-thousand-word blog post that, according to MIT Technology Review, has “knocked the AI world on its head, sparking wild speculation as well as cautious (and not-so-cautious) celebration.” Cammarata claims that AI models might be far easier to understand, and thus to monitor and control, than previously thought. If this is true, as the Review notes, “it’s a huge deal.”
An AI researcher agreed, posting to X: “I think this may be remembered as a major moment in scientific history.”
There are still skeptics who remain convinced that humans will not be capable of understanding or predicting how AI models work. Cammarata was once among them, but no longer. He now believes that the neural networks powering AI models are “in some sense designed to be read.”
His article is gaining such attention because it speaks to such an existential threat. Humans have long possessed the ability to make things that can destroy them, from Stone Age clubs and spears to nuclear bombs to artificial intelligence. We clearly need a Power greater than ourselves to direct the powers we wield.
This fact is relevant not just to our science but to our souls.
In 1919, the French poet and essayist Paul Valéry wrote Crisis of the Mind, his attempt to understand the horrors of World War I just concluded. He observed:
We had long heard tell of whole worlds that had vanished, of empires sunk without a trace, gone down with all their men and all their machines into the unexplorable depths of the centuries, with their gods and their laws, their academies and their sciences pure and applied, their grammars and their dictionaries, their Classics, their Romantics, and their Symbolists, their critics and the critics of their critics. . . . But the disasters that had sent them down were, after all, none of our affair.
Elam, Nineveh, Babylon were but beautiful vague names, and the total ruin of those worlds had as little significance for us as their very existence. But France, England Russia . . . these too would be beautiful names. . . . And we see now that the abyss of history is deep enough to hold us all. We are aware that a civilization has the same fragility as a life.
In response to the horrific carnage of the Great War, he then noted:
So many horrors could not have been possible without so many virtues. Doubtless, much science was needed to kill so many, to waste so much property, annihilate so many cities in so short a time; but moral qualities in like number were also needed. Are Knowledge and Duty, then, suspect? (his emphasis).
They are, indeed. When knowledge and duty are employed as means to nefarious ends, they become themselves nefarious.
A pickup truck that transported a woman and two of her children to a Wichita, Kansas, soccer field then drove onto the field, killing two people and injuring ten more. Satellites that are vital to global communications can be weaponized to destroy such communications. Surgical tools can be used to enhance and even save our lives, but they can also be used erroneously in “never events” that devastate patients.
In Democracy in America, the French historian Alexis de Tocqueville observed, “Tyranny may be able to do without faith, but freedom cannot.” The good news is that the living Lord Jesus is ready to guide, empower, and use any life surrendered to his sovereignty.
Pastor Duane Brooks recently quoted Andrew Murray, “God is ready to assume full responsibility for the life wholly yielded to him,” and commented: “Do we believe that? The day may come when we will have the chance to prove the concept. But if we do not yield wholly to Christ, we may never discover his power to save us.”
You cannot know whether an airplane will transport you into the sky until you board it. The same goes for a ship on the ocean and a car on the land. You may believe that a surgeon has the skill to repair your back, but until you let him operate, you cannot know for certain. (I speak from experience.)
Here’s the problem: I find myself disbelieving in God’s power in those areas where I don’t really want what his power intends to do. If I’m not sure he can sanctify me fully, this is because I’m not sure I want to be sanctified fully. If I’m not sure he will protect me as I share the gospel with a skeptic, this is because I don’t care enough for the skeptic’s soul to take the chance.
As St. Augustine prayed, “Lord, give me chastity and continence, but not yet.”
So it seems that, like AI, I need an Intelligence that understands me and can direct me to my best purpose and use. But I need not just information but transformation. I need to know what the Lord wants for my life, but I also need him to help me want what he wants.
Jim Elliot famously testified, “God always gives his best to those who leave the choice with him.” But he was martyred by the people God called him to evangelize. What if God’s definition of what is “best” for my life doesn’t agree with mine?
I know in my mind that because “God is love” (1 John 4:8), he can only want my best. But my head and my heart are not always (or even often) connected. And my will to power, my quest to be my own god, is ever with me (Genesis 3:5).
If my dilemma resonates with you, I invite you to join me in asking God for the faith to have faith (cf. Mark 9:24) and the will to choose his perfect will (Romans 12:2). God will not violate the free will with which he created us in his image (cf. Revelation 3:20), but he will mold that will to its highest purposes when it is yielded fully to him.
Eugene Peterson believed that “joy is what comes to us when we are walking in the way of faith and obedience.” Let’s choose such joy today, to the glory of God.
“Submission to God is eternal rest.” —Irenaeus
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