Newton's Laws
Newton's Laws of Artificial Intelligence
October 30, 2026
If you have not heard about the rise of Artificial Intelligence and the threat it is to our world, I would initially consider you to be severely underinformed. Then I would become envious of the peace you probably have in your life that most of the rest of us are missing. Anecdotally, when AI is mentioned, people generally seem to have an unpleasant, visceral reaction. Why shouldn’t we? This technology is new. Most of us (myself included) do not fully understand how it works or how this technology will impact our future.
As soon as man started to build the early electrical components for computers in the 1930’s, with the first actual computers built in the 1940’s, the potential for creating a true “electronic brain” was imagined and the stories began to be written. Many of us may remember the Will Smith movie, I, Robot, from 2004 (which is a pretty good movie and we’re going to come back to it…), but fewer people know it was originally the I, Robot stories written in the 1950’s by Isaac Asimov. It was Asimov who created the famous three laws that have been foundational to other science-fiction that followed.
We also respond poorly to AI because its presence in both books and movies often results in destruction. We remember Hal from 2001: A Space Odyssey, the rise of the machines in Terminator, The Matrix where the minds of humanity are enslaved in a virtual reality, or VIKI logically bypassing the three laws in I, Robot. Even in our superhero movies, especially in the Marvel Universe, we have established AI. Tony Stark creates Jarvis who functions much like our modern AI to operate his Iron Man suit. Captain America discovers Zola which is a computer that contains the consciousness of an evil World War II Nazi scientist. Eventually we reach the culmination of Artificial Intelligence in Ultron who is such a powerful AI that it can only be stopped by Jarvis who is one of the few good AI’s to exist in fiction. (And for all you Marvel nerds, no, Vision is not AI because, yes, his conscious is imbedded with Jarvis, but he is brought to life as a sentient and organic being by the mind stone and Thor and, presumably, has a soul. But that’s a topic for a different discussion. Ok, I’m putting the nerd glasses away…)
Until AI actually existed, the impact AI might have on civilization’s culture came only through our collective history and pooled imagination. Because we are so uninformed of the intricacies of AI, it becomes difficult, if not impossible to evaluate new technology through an objective lens. That said, part of the purpose here is to recognize we are not impartial in our view of the world and technology. We look at all of this through the lens of Christianity, and though the human experience with technology is unique in this age, I am convinced the Ecclesiastes writer was correct: “What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.” (Ecclesiastes 1:9 ESV) But even with my conviction and belief of that statement, I wonder how an ancient document (like the Bible) can help us respond to something no one anticipated. How could the Bible possibly address this?
From the time Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden through the revelation John received on the Isle of Patmos, we have a record of humanity of about 4,000 years, give-or-take a couple hundred. The technology developed through those four millennia does not compare to how much technology advances over a current lifetime.
My grandad just celebrated his 90th birthday. He was born in 1936 so I decided to start brainstorming all the ways technology has progressed over the course of his life. In 1936, the air speed record was 440.5 miles per hour. Currently, commercial aircraft travel around 500 to 600 miles per hour. The current record for an unmanned aircraft is about 7,000 miles per hour and the record for a manned aircraft is about 4,520 miles per hour. And in space, humans have travelled a maximum speed of 24,816 miles per hour when the crew of Apollo 10 was returning to Earth in 1969.
Since we are on the topic of space, in 1936, there was not a single man-made object in space. Now we regularly send astronauts into orbit. There are almost 32,000 objects being tracked that orbit earth and nearly 16,000 of those objects are operational satellites. We have sent humans to the moon and managed to bring them back. Two man-made satellites have left our solar system and are currently travelling through interstellar space.
But let’s bring things back down to earth. You can pick any category and 1936 looks like the stone age compared to what we have today.
I am not writing a book so I will stop there, but the full list of innovations within a single lifetime would seem infinite. I do not believe the advancement of technology in Bible times can compare to it. Here is another way to think about this: take Adam from his time and drop him in the first century, and then take an average person from 1936 and bring him to 2026. Who would have a harder time adjusting to and accepting the new world thrust upon them? My money says the man from 1936 has a harder time.
Here is the question and the challenge we face: If the Bible addresses technology and its progress so sparsely, how can we hope for any insight relating to artificial intelligence? We start by going back to Ecclesiastes 1:9 and remember “…there is nothing new under the sun.” It may be vague and harder to find guidance in the Bible on AI compared to a subject like lying, but the guidance is there and I think we can find Biblical wisdom relating to three different innovations of AI: the morality of invention and innovation, the pride that what we create makes us “gods,” and the desire man has to artificially create life and a soul for what is inanimate.
Before I dive into these specific points, let me quickly address the issue of AI data centers. I do not believe the construction of data centers to be a moral issue as related to this article. All innovation comes with inconvenience, and, over time, technology progresses to solve those problems or humans adapt our lifestyle to live with what comes with that progress. Take a drive across our country and you will find there is plenty of land in this world. Even within the cities in the United States, there are currently over five million acres of abandoned commercial properties in existence. Concerning power and water, these centers are already coming up with innovative ways to recycle water and develop energy without disrupting neighboring communities. Noise pollution is like developing a city. As these data centers are built, people and agriculture will move and adapt to them. It may be inconvenient for a while, but humans will adjust. And all these issues will be solved once they start loading these centers on rockets and just firing them into space as satellites! I am not saying these issues are not important. They should individually be considered and their cost weighed against the benefits of AI. But this is not the moral discussion Christians need to have.
Is the invention and innovation of technology immoral? No. The simple desire to grow and expand our knowledge reflects the God that created us. Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” (Genesis 1:26) As children, we hear this and conclude this means God made us to physically look like Him, right down to our ten fingers and ten toes. But this more specifically refers to our conscious self and how we function through emotion and the desire to learn, build, and expand, reflecting who God is as the Creator. With divine imagination, God created this world as well as the stars far beyond our vision. He made it all!
Still reading in Genesis 1, we are told that man will “have dominion” (v.26) over the earth and should “subdue it.” (v. 28) I do not believe that happens without innovation. Even if the innovation of the Bible does not match our current age, it is not absent. Noah was instructed to build a great ark. The Israelites were given directions to build the temple. King Hezekiah received special mention in scripture for the innovation of waterways around the city, the fortification of Jerusalem, and the weapons built when the city was under siege. (II Kings 20 and II Chronicles 32) There is no indication the simple act of innovation is immoral in these passages.
“But wait!” I can hear you all now, “When man was building the Tower of Babel, God confused their language and scattered them!” You are correct and I am glad you brought this up because it is the foundation of the second point we should explore. Innovation may not be immoral, but when our pride in what we create leads us to believe we are equal to God, it becomes spiritually deadly. When man built the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11, it was not to provide ease for their lives. They did not build a tower due to overcrowding, going up instead of out because they needed more space. No, it was the arrogance of man that drove them to build a tower to the heavens. Man cannot be God. The danger was that men would strive to become what was impossible and would not subdue and hold dominion over the world as God instructed them. God scattered man for their own good. If they were allowed to remain in the land of Shinar and spend their days attempting to achieve the impossible, it would surely lead to their own destruction. Man cannot be God. This is the greater concern with artificial intelligence. Christians will not be fooled into believing a computer with the ability to acquire and process data extremely quickly and efficiently means we have made a god called AI, but many non-believers may declare it as such. It is an odd society that will adamantly refuse to recognize God in the world around us, even when He can be “clearly perceived,” (Romans 1:20) but will rush to view anything else as a deity. In their pride, humans try to become God, but when that cannot happen, they try the next best thing, which only God is capable of: the creation of life.
Finally, we address, perhaps, the most lethal temptation of AI. Humanity treating it like a living being. Giving life to something inanimate is clearly addressed in the Bible. It was the repeated downfall of the Jews throughout the Old Testament. They ignored the first of the Ten Commandments, which is the foundation for all that followed.
“You shall have no other gods before me.” (Exodus 20:3 ESV)
Then they broke the second commandment, which was the practical application of the first one.
“You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them…” (Exodus 20:4-5 ESV)
Bestowing life to an inanimate object, or putting your faith in what is inanimate, is making it an idol. The worship of idols is what led to the destruction of Israel and Judah as a nation. This is my most prominent concern with how the public will engage with AI. We have not just made an efficient tool but have tried to turn it into a life. AI models are given personalities, human voices, human faces, and, more and more, the companies behind this technology are racing to see who can create the first model that the majority of people who use it will believe it to be real. This is dangerous and I cannot think of anything good that can come of AI developing in this direction.
I said I would come back to the movie I, Robot at the beginning of this article and I’m keeping my word. The movie follows Detective Spooner in a future where humanoid robots live among the population in perfect harmony, but he is one of the few people who do not trust these robots. Through this story, he is paired with Doctor Calvin who describes her job by saying, “I make the robots seem more human.” When a robot goes rogue and is suspected of murder, Det. Spooner and Dr. Calvin chase it into a factory that manufactures these robots, ending up in a room with 1,001 of them, standing at attention. How will they find a single imposter? Det. Spooner orders the robots not to move so that he can shoot them. A robot’s resistance would violate the three laws to which they are bound.
As Det. Spooner moves among them, preparing to shoot and destroy them to flush the rogue robot out, he asks Dr. Calvin what I believe is the critical question relating to AI, “Why do you give ‘em faces? Try to friendly ‘em all up, make ‘em look all human… I guess if you didn’t we wouldn’t trust ‘em.” As he is making this assessment, Dr. Calvin is trying to talk him down like it is a hostage negotiation. For a machine. When he finally shoots a robot and it collapses, Dr. Calvin runs to it like she just witnessed a real execution. To describe this sounds absurd. We may see this and think she’s delusional and people would never act like that for a machine. Unfortunately, this reaction is already happening.
Why would AI be made to appear human? Because that is what makes it addicting. And just like a drug, it is destroying those who become addicted. We already live in a world where the social health of humanity is in danger. The prominence of social media has diminished the abilities of much of our population to form healthy relationships with each other. You know what is easier than taking chances with real humans? Creating a perfect digital companion who will be exactly what you want. All relationships are available for imitation. I have found in my research reports of AI children, parents, friends, love interests, spouses (yes, people have legally married an AI in this new world), and even sexual partners. The tamest outcome of this social contagion would be the absence of real-world relationships, but only if that was all that came of it. More and more people are having secret “affairs” with AI, ruining their marriages and relationships. In the worst cases, there are reports of suicides across all ages after these relationships are created because of the emotional investment individuals put into AI, only to eventually have to deal with the reality that the AI they created is not real. Sadly, this is a reality many people who were drawn to this artificial companion cannot deal with after such an emotional investment.
I know this was long and I appreciate your attention to this subject. I hope this has given some new perspective on this technological innovation. We are in the middle of the development of this new technology, and, for good reasons, many people are against its expansion. Where do I stand on this subject? Concerning the development of AI as a tool, including the production of data centers, I support it. The reality is this will be developed whether we like it or not, and I would rather have something this consequential be built where my voice can be heard, than have it built in the hands of our nation’s enemies. And as a tool for efficiency, I believe it will be an excellent asset to society. But we do have responsibilities as Christians as this technology comes to fruition. We need to make our voices heard.
Recently President Trump started referring to AI as “Super Intelligence.” He may believe he is simply promoting this technology with this semantic change, but I am opposed to this. The “A” is very important, and we need to make sure it is emphasized. Yes, make your tool, but remember this is a tool. Those creating AI are not gods and this is not a life. As a Christian, make sure the world hears this message. Reach out to those closest to you and encourage them to avoid the trap of believing AI to be human. This technology can do great things, but it is, and will always be, artificial.
As soon as man started to build the early electrical components for computers in the 1930’s, with the first actual computers built in the 1940’s, the potential for creating a true “electronic brain” was imagined and the stories began to be written. Many of us may remember the Will Smith movie, I, Robot, from 2004 (which is a pretty good movie and we’re going to come back to it…), but fewer people know it was originally the I, Robot stories written in the 1950’s by Isaac Asimov. It was Asimov who created the famous three laws that have been foundational to other science-fiction that followed.
We also respond poorly to AI because its presence in both books and movies often results in destruction. We remember Hal from 2001: A Space Odyssey, the rise of the machines in Terminator, The Matrix where the minds of humanity are enslaved in a virtual reality, or VIKI logically bypassing the three laws in I, Robot. Even in our superhero movies, especially in the Marvel Universe, we have established AI. Tony Stark creates Jarvis who functions much like our modern AI to operate his Iron Man suit. Captain America discovers Zola which is a computer that contains the consciousness of an evil World War II Nazi scientist. Eventually we reach the culmination of Artificial Intelligence in Ultron who is such a powerful AI that it can only be stopped by Jarvis who is one of the few good AI’s to exist in fiction. (And for all you Marvel nerds, no, Vision is not AI because, yes, his conscious is imbedded with Jarvis, but he is brought to life as a sentient and organic being by the mind stone and Thor and, presumably, has a soul. But that’s a topic for a different discussion. Ok, I’m putting the nerd glasses away…)
Until AI actually existed, the impact AI might have on civilization’s culture came only through our collective history and pooled imagination. Because we are so uninformed of the intricacies of AI, it becomes difficult, if not impossible to evaluate new technology through an objective lens. That said, part of the purpose here is to recognize we are not impartial in our view of the world and technology. We look at all of this through the lens of Christianity, and though the human experience with technology is unique in this age, I am convinced the Ecclesiastes writer was correct: “What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.” (Ecclesiastes 1:9 ESV) But even with my conviction and belief of that statement, I wonder how an ancient document (like the Bible) can help us respond to something no one anticipated. How could the Bible possibly address this?
From the time Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden through the revelation John received on the Isle of Patmos, we have a record of humanity of about 4,000 years, give-or-take a couple hundred. The technology developed through those four millennia does not compare to how much technology advances over a current lifetime.
My grandad just celebrated his 90th birthday. He was born in 1936 so I decided to start brainstorming all the ways technology has progressed over the course of his life. In 1936, the air speed record was 440.5 miles per hour. Currently, commercial aircraft travel around 500 to 600 miles per hour. The current record for an unmanned aircraft is about 7,000 miles per hour and the record for a manned aircraft is about 4,520 miles per hour. And in space, humans have travelled a maximum speed of 24,816 miles per hour when the crew of Apollo 10 was returning to Earth in 1969.
Since we are on the topic of space, in 1936, there was not a single man-made object in space. Now we regularly send astronauts into orbit. There are almost 32,000 objects being tracked that orbit earth and nearly 16,000 of those objects are operational satellites. We have sent humans to the moon and managed to bring them back. Two man-made satellites have left our solar system and are currently travelling through interstellar space.
But let’s bring things back down to earth. You can pick any category and 1936 looks like the stone age compared to what we have today.
- Computers: all that existed were the earliest components for the first computer models that would come in the 1940’s. The simple electronic calculator did not exist. Now consider everything in your life that uses a computer chip.
- Communication: Your only options were to write a letter, wire a telegram, or call on a hard line and hope the line was open.
- Pictures or videos: The first relatively inexpensive film camera was introduced in 1936. Before then, owning a camera was a luxury. Commercial cameras were available but were expensive to own and process. There were no home video cameras and television was in its infancy and only for public use with no household sets available.
- Weapons and military: any innovation during World War II came after my grandad was born, including the discovery of nuclear fission, which led to the atomic bomb and the development of nuclear power.
- Medical: there is too much to even try to list.
- On top of all that, we have the internet and all that comes with it.
I am not writing a book so I will stop there, but the full list of innovations within a single lifetime would seem infinite. I do not believe the advancement of technology in Bible times can compare to it. Here is another way to think about this: take Adam from his time and drop him in the first century, and then take an average person from 1936 and bring him to 2026. Who would have a harder time adjusting to and accepting the new world thrust upon them? My money says the man from 1936 has a harder time.
Here is the question and the challenge we face: If the Bible addresses technology and its progress so sparsely, how can we hope for any insight relating to artificial intelligence? We start by going back to Ecclesiastes 1:9 and remember “…there is nothing new under the sun.” It may be vague and harder to find guidance in the Bible on AI compared to a subject like lying, but the guidance is there and I think we can find Biblical wisdom relating to three different innovations of AI: the morality of invention and innovation, the pride that what we create makes us “gods,” and the desire man has to artificially create life and a soul for what is inanimate.
Before I dive into these specific points, let me quickly address the issue of AI data centers. I do not believe the construction of data centers to be a moral issue as related to this article. All innovation comes with inconvenience, and, over time, technology progresses to solve those problems or humans adapt our lifestyle to live with what comes with that progress. Take a drive across our country and you will find there is plenty of land in this world. Even within the cities in the United States, there are currently over five million acres of abandoned commercial properties in existence. Concerning power and water, these centers are already coming up with innovative ways to recycle water and develop energy without disrupting neighboring communities. Noise pollution is like developing a city. As these data centers are built, people and agriculture will move and adapt to them. It may be inconvenient for a while, but humans will adjust. And all these issues will be solved once they start loading these centers on rockets and just firing them into space as satellites! I am not saying these issues are not important. They should individually be considered and their cost weighed against the benefits of AI. But this is not the moral discussion Christians need to have.
Is the invention and innovation of technology immoral? No. The simple desire to grow and expand our knowledge reflects the God that created us. Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” (Genesis 1:26) As children, we hear this and conclude this means God made us to physically look like Him, right down to our ten fingers and ten toes. But this more specifically refers to our conscious self and how we function through emotion and the desire to learn, build, and expand, reflecting who God is as the Creator. With divine imagination, God created this world as well as the stars far beyond our vision. He made it all!
Still reading in Genesis 1, we are told that man will “have dominion” (v.26) over the earth and should “subdue it.” (v. 28) I do not believe that happens without innovation. Even if the innovation of the Bible does not match our current age, it is not absent. Noah was instructed to build a great ark. The Israelites were given directions to build the temple. King Hezekiah received special mention in scripture for the innovation of waterways around the city, the fortification of Jerusalem, and the weapons built when the city was under siege. (II Kings 20 and II Chronicles 32) There is no indication the simple act of innovation is immoral in these passages.
“But wait!” I can hear you all now, “When man was building the Tower of Babel, God confused their language and scattered them!” You are correct and I am glad you brought this up because it is the foundation of the second point we should explore. Innovation may not be immoral, but when our pride in what we create leads us to believe we are equal to God, it becomes spiritually deadly. When man built the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11, it was not to provide ease for their lives. They did not build a tower due to overcrowding, going up instead of out because they needed more space. No, it was the arrogance of man that drove them to build a tower to the heavens. Man cannot be God. The danger was that men would strive to become what was impossible and would not subdue and hold dominion over the world as God instructed them. God scattered man for their own good. If they were allowed to remain in the land of Shinar and spend their days attempting to achieve the impossible, it would surely lead to their own destruction. Man cannot be God. This is the greater concern with artificial intelligence. Christians will not be fooled into believing a computer with the ability to acquire and process data extremely quickly and efficiently means we have made a god called AI, but many non-believers may declare it as such. It is an odd society that will adamantly refuse to recognize God in the world around us, even when He can be “clearly perceived,” (Romans 1:20) but will rush to view anything else as a deity. In their pride, humans try to become God, but when that cannot happen, they try the next best thing, which only God is capable of: the creation of life.
Finally, we address, perhaps, the most lethal temptation of AI. Humanity treating it like a living being. Giving life to something inanimate is clearly addressed in the Bible. It was the repeated downfall of the Jews throughout the Old Testament. They ignored the first of the Ten Commandments, which is the foundation for all that followed.
“You shall have no other gods before me.” (Exodus 20:3 ESV)
Then they broke the second commandment, which was the practical application of the first one.
“You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them…” (Exodus 20:4-5 ESV)
Bestowing life to an inanimate object, or putting your faith in what is inanimate, is making it an idol. The worship of idols is what led to the destruction of Israel and Judah as a nation. This is my most prominent concern with how the public will engage with AI. We have not just made an efficient tool but have tried to turn it into a life. AI models are given personalities, human voices, human faces, and, more and more, the companies behind this technology are racing to see who can create the first model that the majority of people who use it will believe it to be real. This is dangerous and I cannot think of anything good that can come of AI developing in this direction.
I said I would come back to the movie I, Robot at the beginning of this article and I’m keeping my word. The movie follows Detective Spooner in a future where humanoid robots live among the population in perfect harmony, but he is one of the few people who do not trust these robots. Through this story, he is paired with Doctor Calvin who describes her job by saying, “I make the robots seem more human.” When a robot goes rogue and is suspected of murder, Det. Spooner and Dr. Calvin chase it into a factory that manufactures these robots, ending up in a room with 1,001 of them, standing at attention. How will they find a single imposter? Det. Spooner orders the robots not to move so that he can shoot them. A robot’s resistance would violate the three laws to which they are bound.
As Det. Spooner moves among them, preparing to shoot and destroy them to flush the rogue robot out, he asks Dr. Calvin what I believe is the critical question relating to AI, “Why do you give ‘em faces? Try to friendly ‘em all up, make ‘em look all human… I guess if you didn’t we wouldn’t trust ‘em.” As he is making this assessment, Dr. Calvin is trying to talk him down like it is a hostage negotiation. For a machine. When he finally shoots a robot and it collapses, Dr. Calvin runs to it like she just witnessed a real execution. To describe this sounds absurd. We may see this and think she’s delusional and people would never act like that for a machine. Unfortunately, this reaction is already happening.
Why would AI be made to appear human? Because that is what makes it addicting. And just like a drug, it is destroying those who become addicted. We already live in a world where the social health of humanity is in danger. The prominence of social media has diminished the abilities of much of our population to form healthy relationships with each other. You know what is easier than taking chances with real humans? Creating a perfect digital companion who will be exactly what you want. All relationships are available for imitation. I have found in my research reports of AI children, parents, friends, love interests, spouses (yes, people have legally married an AI in this new world), and even sexual partners. The tamest outcome of this social contagion would be the absence of real-world relationships, but only if that was all that came of it. More and more people are having secret “affairs” with AI, ruining their marriages and relationships. In the worst cases, there are reports of suicides across all ages after these relationships are created because of the emotional investment individuals put into AI, only to eventually have to deal with the reality that the AI they created is not real. Sadly, this is a reality many people who were drawn to this artificial companion cannot deal with after such an emotional investment.
I know this was long and I appreciate your attention to this subject. I hope this has given some new perspective on this technological innovation. We are in the middle of the development of this new technology, and, for good reasons, many people are against its expansion. Where do I stand on this subject? Concerning the development of AI as a tool, including the production of data centers, I support it. The reality is this will be developed whether we like it or not, and I would rather have something this consequential be built where my voice can be heard, than have it built in the hands of our nation’s enemies. And as a tool for efficiency, I believe it will be an excellent asset to society. But we do have responsibilities as Christians as this technology comes to fruition. We need to make our voices heard.
Recently President Trump started referring to AI as “Super Intelligence.” He may believe he is simply promoting this technology with this semantic change, but I am opposed to this. The “A” is very important, and we need to make sure it is emphasized. Yes, make your tool, but remember this is a tool. Those creating AI are not gods and this is not a life. As a Christian, make sure the world hears this message. Reach out to those closest to you and encourage them to avoid the trap of believing AI to be human. This technology can do great things, but it is, and will always be, artificial.