Presentation of the Lord

In this episode, I reflect on the intersection of artificial intelligence and faith. We explore the emergence of the Chinese chatbot Deep Seek and a recent note from the Roman Catholic Church on AI’s implications for human relationships and societal well-being. Drawing parallels with the biblical figures Simeon and Anna, I emphasise the importance of faith, devotion, and presenting ourselves to God. Despite societal disparities exacerbated by AI, we are reminded that God’s transformative power works through our everyday acts of service and devotion, inviting us to be agents of His love and goodness in the world.

00:00:00 So once again, artificial intelligence has been in the news, and I suspect that’s going to be the case for quite a few years. Yet we had the rise of a new Chinese chatbot, Deep Seek, that famous for using a large language model that didn’t need the the massive resources and computing power and information processing that previous models like ChatGPT and Gemini and so forth. But also, we had the release of a note from two Roman casters that I cast you for the doctrine of the Faith. The old CDF and the diecast for Christian Education released this interesting note. It’s called a note on the relationship between human intelligence and artificial intelligence. A note that happens to be 14,000 words or about 30 pages long. So just over an hour to to read. But the thing about the note that I found really fascinating. You know, I love this field. I love technology and geeks and gadgets and and all of that. So I kind of devour any information I can get is that it was mostly positive, but raising lots of questions around what is significant as we move forward, how do we actually develop and cultivate true relationships, human relationships? How do we look for the the full human flourishing that we need that to be established? And it also noted that the current disparities that we experience in the world, the huge gap between the rich and the poor, the accessibility and availability to things like healthcare services that will perhaps be even worse than the exacerbation of those gaps, will continue with the development of AI systems.

00:01:52 And so we need to be really mindful of all of that, because one of the other things that we’ve seen in the recent months is just this rise of a certain group of very rich men, mostly, who are offering undue influence over political spheres and things like that. And that all stands in stark contrast to our gospel today. Like if Luke hadn’t told the story of Simeon and Anna. We would never have known anything about them. No other document would record them. They wouldn’t have been social media influencers of their day. No one would have really cared what they thought or did. I mean, we all know people like Simeon and Anna, people that are simply devoted to the faith, going about their daily duties, offering the service to the Lord. I mean, we presume that Luke was exaggerating a little bit by telling us that Anna kind of was pretty much 24 over seven in the temple precinct. Perhaps she had a house. Perhaps she had a home that she could go to and sleep and eat and and so forth somewhere else.

00:03:05 But we know those people that come and spend hours a day in prayer, you know, just devoted to their service, particularly when you go into the city, churches that are open all day, the these people that give their service to the Lord. You know, the thing about Simeon, the Holy Spirit was working in him. You know, long before the Holy Spirit was given to the rest of the community at Pentecost. The Holy Spirit, of course, was at work. And we see that right across the pages of the Hebrew Scriptures, that there is this profound sense that God is always at work in his people. God is longing for us to experience and encounter him. And so Simeon was open to this Simeon who were told that he would see the Messiah, the chosen one of the Lord. Before he died. So obviously Simeon is getting towards that, that period when he’s, you know, wondering about death and that sort of thing. And Anna, of course, I love the the Jerusalem translation of this, that it’s only when she turns 84 that her days of girlhood are now over.

00:04:13 I think that’s a delightful kind of phrase for those who are getting around the age of the 80s. Know that you know, your your days of girlhood are only just beginning to come to an end. But their sense of the power of God being at work within them that call to experience what God is doing, that they were faithful and the God was able to use them. You know that that is this gift that we are all able to experience and receive, that God will do what the world never can, and the God will make use of what we have never been able to experience in any other way. That all we need to do is be like these two people. Be faithful in the small things. Allow the goodness of God to gather within us that desire to share that you know that just as Jesus was presented in the temple, so also we’re invited to present our own bodies as living sacrifices to the Lord. As Saint Paul tells us in his letter to the Romans that we’re invited into this experience of surrendering to God, that if we do that, if we are able to open ourselves to his grace and his goodness, you know the most amazing things can begin to be changed and transformed.

00:05:35 The light of the nations begins to be revealed among us, and all it takes for our world to be converted is that every single one of us begins to experience that presence. They were open to the movement of the Holy Spirit that we begin to see this possibility of letting the light of the Lord’s love begin to flow from within us. We don’t need to be a social media influence. We don’t need to be a billionaire in order to change the world. The little sphere of influence that we have, if we are the light to the nations, if we allow the love and the goodness of God to change us, if we present ourselves and offer ourselves as a sacrifice before the Lord, God will do the most extraordinary and amazing things with us and through us. So, on this feast of the presentation, let’s indeed present ourselves and our hearts and our lives. Complete with their sin, complete with all their dysfunction, complete with all of the mistakes that we’ve made. We bring it all, and we offer it to the Lord, knowing that he can change and transform us as we grow in wisdom, as we grow in grace, as we allow God and His goodness to continue to change us and transform us to be his people.