A curious scene unfolded at our workplace just a few days ago.
Much of our development process now relies on artificial intelligence. It suggests code, reviews sections, points out errors, and organizes ideas. Then, suddenly, the credits for the platform we were using ran out. The renewal would only happen the next day.
We found ourselves looking at each other.
Not because we had forgotten how to program (though there is evidence of a certain mental atrophy). But because, without realizing it, we had stopped seeing much of the path the code took before reaching our hands. The tool had become so ingrained that it was part of our very way of thinking.
I suspect this will happen to society as a whole.
You might not be aware, but artificial intelligence has been fed with everything humanity has produced in written or graphic form or any other medium that can be digitized. Today, when it answers a question, it does so based on this knowledge. Moreover, it uses open sources on the internet to continue “learning” and thus respond in an updated manner.
In 2026, we crossed an important threshold: more than 50% of internet content was produced by artificial intelligence. Inevitably, this leads to the situation where artificial intelligence itself will be producing content from other content it has produced or helped to produce. As a result, human creativity is being sidelined by the ease of using accumulated knowledge… without producing any more relevant new content.
Let’s return to the text
Today, no one stops to think about electricity before turning on a light. We don’t ponder the engineering of reservoirs, the altitude they must be at to use gravity, and other similar things when we turn on a faucet. Nor do we understand the entire chain that allows a plane to cross the ocean.
We simply use it.
The same will happen with artificial intelligence.
But there is an important difference.
Electricity doesn’t interpret for us. Just as running water doesn’t think for us.
Artificial intelligence, in a way (and without being intelligence, just very fast logic), interprets. It summarizes. It organizes. It prioritizes. It suggests. It touches precisely what we consider most human: our ability to understand, which in turn connects with our creative capacity.
Perhaps that’s why it forces us to return to a very old question.
When an expert in the law asked Jesus how he could inherit eternal life, Jesus responded with two questions:
“What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?” (Luke 10:26, NIV)
It has always impressed me that Jesus didn’t just ask what was written. He asked how that man read it.
The problem was never just the text. The problem is also the reader.
This applies to the Bible. It applies to history. It applies to politics. It applies to artificial intelligence itself.
We are not just forming answers. We are forming readers.
Perhaps it is precisely here that the church needs to recover something it has lost over time.
A friend recently asked me if I wasn’t afraid that an artificial intelligence project aimed at preachers would make Christians think less.
My answer was uncomfortable even for me.
Perhaps we gave up on critical thinking long before artificial intelligence. Long ago, we learned to read the Bible through commentaries. We choose authors who confirm our tradition, our theological school, our preferences. Often, we know the interpreters better than the text itself.
Calvinists and Arminians (not to mention Molinists and other currents), for example, often accuse each other of forcing the Scriptures. Perhaps both should start with the same question from Jesus:
“How do you read it?”
This doesn’t mean disregarding tradition.
Quite the opposite.
Peter writes that no prophecy of Scripture is of private interpretation (2 Peter 1:20-21, NIV). Paul affirms that the spirits of prophets are subject to the control of prophets (1 Corinthians 14:32-33, NIV). Biblical interpretation was never an isolated, almost mystical experience between an individual and their text (indeed, sects arise this way). It always happened in the life of God’s people, where brothers correct brothers, generations dialogue with each other, and Scripture itself judges our conclusions.
The revelation was entrusted to the church, not the individual. Just consider how the church resolved the great disparity over the inclusion of Gentiles in God’s people. The apostles and elders gathered, heard different testimonies, examined the Scriptures, and reached a conclusion together (Acts 15:1-29, NIV). It wasn’t a political compromise but a common commitment before God’s action and His Word. Without that council, probably neither you nor I would have been reached by the gospel in the same way.
That makes all the difference.
Recently, I heard Luis Felipe Pondé advocate for the return of oral exams as a mitigating element against students’ use of artificial intelligence. I found the idea interesting. A written exam can reveal that someone organized information well. But a conversation reveals something deeper. It quickly discovers whether that knowledge has become flesh or remains mere repetition.
Perhaps that is exactly why Jesus asked so many questions.
He wasn’t collecting answers.
He was forming people.
And people don’t mature just by accumulating information. They mature when they need to respond before someone.
It’s curious to see that artificial intelligence itself pushes us back to this need. It can summarize entire libraries, compare translations, find parallels, organize arguments. All of this has enormous value. I use it daily myself.
But it is not part of the Body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:12-27, NIV)
It doesn’t participate in the communion of saints.
It doesn’t visit the sick. It doesn’t accompany the grieving. It doesn’t break bread. It doesn’t celebrate Communion. It doesn’t walk alongside someone whose faith is crumbling.
These things continue to happen among people.
Perhaps this is the true challenge of our time.
Not deciding whether we will use artificial intelligence. Remember what has already happened with the steam engine, the typewriter, the computer, the word processor, etc.
We will use it. Consciously or not.
The question is different.
Will we continue to allow the Word of God to occupy the center (2 Timothy 3:16-17; Hebrews 4:12, NIV), or will it become just another voice among commentaries, algorithms, videos, summaries, and opinions?
In the end, technology was just the starting point.
The question remains the same as it was two thousand years ago.
How do you read it?