What's your definition of a "large language model"?
Here's a description of an LLM (large language model.) This is the only part of this Spotlight that was generated using one.
An LLM (Large Language Model) is a type of AI system trained on massive amounts of text to understand and generate human language. Here's the core idea:
How it works, roughly:
An LLM (Large Language Model) is a type of AI system trained on massive amounts of text to understand and generate human language. Here's the core idea:
How it works, roughly:
- It's trained on huge datasets (books, articles, websites, code, etc.) to learn patterns in how language is used — grammar, facts, reasoning styles, tone, and so on.
- At its core, it works by predicting the next word (or "token") in a sequence, given everything that came before. Do this well enough, at large enough scale, and the model develops a surprisingly broad ability to write, summarize, answer questions, translate, code, and reason through problems.
- The "large" refers to both the size of the training data and the number of parameters (adjustable internal values) in the model — often billions or even trillions.
- They're general-purpose — the same model can draft an email, explain a concept, write code, or brainstorm ideas, without being built specifically for any one of those tasks.
- They can pick up context within a conversation and adapt their responses accordingly.
- They don't "know" things the way a database does — they generate responses based on patterns learned during training, which means they can be confidently wrong (sometimes called "hallucinating").
- They don't have persistent understanding or consciousness — each response is generated fresh based on the input they're given (though some systems, like this one, can also draw on memory of past conversations).
The All-Knowing
Faith and Artificial Intelligence
The Bible describes God as knowing everything. This characteristic of God even has a special term associated with it - theologians say that God is "omniscient." This characteristic of God is also one that any human (since we're all definitely not omniscient) would at certain times love to have. For this reason, we've compiled knowledge for generations, up to the point that now, since we have powerful computers and a semi-organized internet of information, we have developed artificially intelligent models that can have access to (some might say "know") more than any individual human could possibly contain. Kind of like a little god - if that's what God is.
Let's consider knowledge, omniscience, intelligence and our relationship with it, as well as stepping back for a few seconds in this Spotlight to analyze this AI-hype tsunami that seems to be washing things away all around us.
Let's consider knowledge, omniscience, intelligence and our relationship with it, as well as stepping back for a few seconds in this Spotlight to analyze this AI-hype tsunami that seems to be washing things away all around us.
Now that you've answered the Icebreaker, here's another question - this one, also about LLMs.
Are you a large language model?
I (Kent) was sitting on an airplane recently and ended up reading about 25 pages of a book that was comparing developing children (toddlers and a little older) to these new AI that are built on LLMs. I only read 25 pages because it wasn't my book - it was on the Kindle of the person sitting in front of me, and they had no idea I was reading it, and I was disappointed when they put it down because their infant woke up.
It's understandable that this comparison is being made. When you interact with an LLM (some of whom have normal-ish names like Claude) the responses you receive can seem too-good-to-be-computer. If data, reorganized, can sound that reasonable, maybe that's all we are. Our head-computers take in lots of data and information over time and reorganize it and spit it back out in the best ways we can. Those among us whose brains have more organization to work with often spit out better, more coherent answers.
In fact, as we drill down into it, language has always been one of the most significant things that anthropologists will point to when addressing the uniqueness of humanity. Our ability to communicate sets us apart in incredible ways. Our failures to properly sort and apply data have had devastating consequences, and our successes in the same efforts have led to great advancements (well, great in the terms our own descriptions give to them.)
However, if you talk to a human being long enough, you'll find that we can't possibly be LLMs, because all an LLM is doing is guessing the next most logical thing to say. Talk to a human being for a long enough time, and they'll say the most surprising, most illogical, most idiosyncratic things. It's a wonderful thing about being human. It makes us surprising and deep and sometimes unable to express what we want to because we just don't have the words.
Humans weren't made in the image of an LLM. The Bible describes us as made in the image of God, and it goes on to say that God spoke stars and galaxies into being, that God is Word-made-flesh, and that God groans out prayers and cries in sounds words cannot express.
Our relationship with language is much more miraculous and wonderful, like the one in whose image we were made, who taught us that using words in an organized and logical order is really only one (and perhaps the most mundane) of the many ways to use them.
It's understandable that this comparison is being made. When you interact with an LLM (some of whom have normal-ish names like Claude) the responses you receive can seem too-good-to-be-computer. If data, reorganized, can sound that reasonable, maybe that's all we are. Our head-computers take in lots of data and information over time and reorganize it and spit it back out in the best ways we can. Those among us whose brains have more organization to work with often spit out better, more coherent answers.
In fact, as we drill down into it, language has always been one of the most significant things that anthropologists will point to when addressing the uniqueness of humanity. Our ability to communicate sets us apart in incredible ways. Our failures to properly sort and apply data have had devastating consequences, and our successes in the same efforts have led to great advancements (well, great in the terms our own descriptions give to them.)
However, if you talk to a human being long enough, you'll find that we can't possibly be LLMs, because all an LLM is doing is guessing the next most logical thing to say. Talk to a human being for a long enough time, and they'll say the most surprising, most illogical, most idiosyncratic things. It's a wonderful thing about being human. It makes us surprising and deep and sometimes unable to express what we want to because we just don't have the words.
Humans weren't made in the image of an LLM. The Bible describes us as made in the image of God, and it goes on to say that God spoke stars and galaxies into being, that God is Word-made-flesh, and that God groans out prayers and cries in sounds words cannot express.
Our relationship with language is much more miraculous and wonderful, like the one in whose image we were made, who taught us that using words in an organized and logical order is really only one (and perhaps the most mundane) of the many ways to use them.
Hopefully that makes enough sense to get you started. As you continue into the Worship portion of the Spotlight, pray this prayer together:
Lord,
Let the words we speak
be a reflection of what you've put inside us.
May love find just one
of its many expressions in them,
and where words may fail,
let faith and trust remain.
Amen.
Lord,
Let the words we speak
be a reflection of what you've put inside us.
May love find just one
of its many expressions in them,
and where words may fail,
let faith and trust remain.
Amen.
The Bible has a word for the things that can't be Googled and the questions for which AI can't squeeze out an answer.
It comes up in a few different places, one example is here in Jeremiah 33:2–3 (NIV)
2 “This is what the Lord says, he who made the earth, the Lord who formed it and established it—the Lord is his name: 3 ‘Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.’
It's that word near the end, the one that is translated "unsearchable." The unsearchable things are the ones that can't be seen, can't be pursued, and certainly can't be obtained because they're unavailable to us. In this moment in Jeremiah, it's rather amazing, then, that God is inviting someone to "peek behind the curtain" a bit and get answers they would otherwise not be able to have.
Interestingly, that word, the 'unsearchable' one, is a word that has to do with barriers. It's used in other places in the Bible to talk about walls and fortifications - for example:
Deuteronomy 3:5 (NIV)
5 All these cities were fortified with high walls and with gates and bars, and there were also a great many unwalled villages.
Here, the 'unsearchable' word is translated as 'fortified.' You couldn't get in, you couldn't have these cities, because they were not open to inquiry or invasion.
Sometimes, the word is just translated as walls:
Deuteronomy 9:1 (NIV)
9 Hear, Israel: You are now about to cross the Jordan to go in and dispossess nations greater and stronger than you, with large cities that have walls up to the sky.
Walls up to the sky make these cities impenetrable, unsearchable. It sounds nice if you're inside these walls, protected from what's outside. In both these verses from Deuteronomy, though, this was a problem, because these were cities that God's people had been sent to take over. God's people looked at these cities and felt very much unable, unqualified, and unworthy of dealing with them.
It's kind of like how we feel about things we don't know and questions we can't answer. They're surrounded by obstacles and impenetrable - what are we to do?
You may know, though, that even these walls up to the sky ended up falling down for God's people. There can be victory, even against these unsearchable places!
But, I think, that's becomes our default take. We come up to a question for which we do not know the answer, one surrounded by fortifications too significant for us, and we think: We'll figure it out. We always do. We'll just get more data and more knowledge and we'll crack the case. In science, in philosophy, in religion, we tend to believe that those things that seem most unsearchable just haven't been properly bombarded.
However, in the case of God's people in Deuteronomy, the cities they overcame fell not because of Israel's persistence or cleverness or the size of their army. The walls came down because God decided to open up the impenetrable place. Only God could have done this, and so God did. If God hadn't wanted Israel to overtake those cities...it wouldn't have happened. No amount of siegework or knowledge or marching around would have been up to the task.
There are questions like this, too. Late in the book of Deuteronomy, there's a verse that says this: 29 The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever.
Some things are, and are meant to be, unsearchable. Some knowledge just doesn't belong to us. And if we're going to engage in a conversation about artificial intelligence and all that it can accomplish, we will do well to be okay with not knowing everything, because we do not need to know everything. And what a relief! Thank God - you don't need to know everything. It's okay for some things to be unsearchable.
Does that mean we shouldn't ask questions and search for answers? No, of course not. What it means is that the search for these answers isn't existential. Finding the answers isn't the difference between having meaning and being meaningless. It means that as we search for answers, we can rest assured that there are secret things that belong to God and he is kindly, happily, and responsibly holding those things so that you don't have to. You don't have to be the master of all knowledge. We, as humans, don't have to amass all the knowledge there is to know in order to win. There's one who has won at this game, and he loves us and shares with us all we need.
This was beautifully and poetically put by 18th century hymn writer Andrew Kippis, as he observed the late-enlightenment era and all that didn't satisfy. Here are his words:
1 Great God, in vain man's narrow view
Attempts to look thy nature through.
Our lab'ring pow'rs with rev'rence own,
Thy glories never can be known.
2 Not the high seraph's mighty thought,
Who countless years his God has sought,
Such wondrous height or depth can find,
Or fully trace thy boundless mind.
3 Yet, Lord, thy kindness deigns to show
Enough for mortal men to know;
While wisdom, goodness, pow'r divine
Thro' all thy works and conduct shine.
4 O! may our souls with rapture trace
Thy works of nature and of grace,
Explore thy sacred truth, and still
Press on to know and do thy will!
It comes up in a few different places, one example is here in Jeremiah 33:2–3 (NIV)
2 “This is what the Lord says, he who made the earth, the Lord who formed it and established it—the Lord is his name: 3 ‘Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.’
It's that word near the end, the one that is translated "unsearchable." The unsearchable things are the ones that can't be seen, can't be pursued, and certainly can't be obtained because they're unavailable to us. In this moment in Jeremiah, it's rather amazing, then, that God is inviting someone to "peek behind the curtain" a bit and get answers they would otherwise not be able to have.
Interestingly, that word, the 'unsearchable' one, is a word that has to do with barriers. It's used in other places in the Bible to talk about walls and fortifications - for example:
Deuteronomy 3:5 (NIV)
5 All these cities were fortified with high walls and with gates and bars, and there were also a great many unwalled villages.
Here, the 'unsearchable' word is translated as 'fortified.' You couldn't get in, you couldn't have these cities, because they were not open to inquiry or invasion.
Sometimes, the word is just translated as walls:
Deuteronomy 9:1 (NIV)
9 Hear, Israel: You are now about to cross the Jordan to go in and dispossess nations greater and stronger than you, with large cities that have walls up to the sky.
Walls up to the sky make these cities impenetrable, unsearchable. It sounds nice if you're inside these walls, protected from what's outside. In both these verses from Deuteronomy, though, this was a problem, because these were cities that God's people had been sent to take over. God's people looked at these cities and felt very much unable, unqualified, and unworthy of dealing with them.
It's kind of like how we feel about things we don't know and questions we can't answer. They're surrounded by obstacles and impenetrable - what are we to do?
You may know, though, that even these walls up to the sky ended up falling down for God's people. There can be victory, even against these unsearchable places!
But, I think, that's becomes our default take. We come up to a question for which we do not know the answer, one surrounded by fortifications too significant for us, and we think: We'll figure it out. We always do. We'll just get more data and more knowledge and we'll crack the case. In science, in philosophy, in religion, we tend to believe that those things that seem most unsearchable just haven't been properly bombarded.
However, in the case of God's people in Deuteronomy, the cities they overcame fell not because of Israel's persistence or cleverness or the size of their army. The walls came down because God decided to open up the impenetrable place. Only God could have done this, and so God did. If God hadn't wanted Israel to overtake those cities...it wouldn't have happened. No amount of siegework or knowledge or marching around would have been up to the task.
There are questions like this, too. Late in the book of Deuteronomy, there's a verse that says this: 29 The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever.
Some things are, and are meant to be, unsearchable. Some knowledge just doesn't belong to us. And if we're going to engage in a conversation about artificial intelligence and all that it can accomplish, we will do well to be okay with not knowing everything, because we do not need to know everything. And what a relief! Thank God - you don't need to know everything. It's okay for some things to be unsearchable.
Does that mean we shouldn't ask questions and search for answers? No, of course not. What it means is that the search for these answers isn't existential. Finding the answers isn't the difference between having meaning and being meaningless. It means that as we search for answers, we can rest assured that there are secret things that belong to God and he is kindly, happily, and responsibly holding those things so that you don't have to. You don't have to be the master of all knowledge. We, as humans, don't have to amass all the knowledge there is to know in order to win. There's one who has won at this game, and he loves us and shares with us all we need.
This was beautifully and poetically put by 18th century hymn writer Andrew Kippis, as he observed the late-enlightenment era and all that didn't satisfy. Here are his words:
1 Great God, in vain man's narrow view
Attempts to look thy nature through.
Our lab'ring pow'rs with rev'rence own,
Thy glories never can be known.
2 Not the high seraph's mighty thought,
Who countless years his God has sought,
Such wondrous height or depth can find,
Or fully trace thy boundless mind.
3 Yet, Lord, thy kindness deigns to show
Enough for mortal men to know;
While wisdom, goodness, pow'r divine
Thro' all thy works and conduct shine.
4 O! may our souls with rapture trace
Thy works of nature and of grace,
Explore thy sacred truth, and still
Press on to know and do thy will!
Genesis 11:1-9
Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. 2 As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.
3 They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”
5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. 6 The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”
8 So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why it was called Babel—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.
We still use bricks, right?
John 1:1-5
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. 2 As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.
3 They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”
5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. 6 The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”
8 So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why it was called Babel—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.
- Amazingly, the "unsearchable things" word returns in this story. It's in verse 6, and translated in a somewhat different way. Can you tell which word it is?
- As a group, name 3-5 ways that the AI/LLM moment and the Babel/Tower moment are similar.
- As a group, name at least 2 ways they are different.
- What are you afraid of when it comes to AI and LLMs?
- What are you optimistic about when it comes to AI and LLMs?
We still use bricks, right?
John 1:1-5
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
not to mention...Data Centers
React to these words from the Presbyterian Church USA website concerning data centers.
"In 2018, the General Assembly affirmed the Precautionary Principle, noting that “to manage the risks to health and safety from new and existing technologies, we need the Precautionary Principle or precautionary approach, based on the principles of sustainability, participation, sufficiency, and solidarity as developed in Christian environmental ethics.”
Data centers raise fundamental questions that should concern any faith tradition committed to justice and care for creation. Who controls land and water? Who bears the burden of rising utility costs and environmental degradation? Whose voices are excluded from decisions that reshape entire communities? These are not abstract policy questions. They are lived realities for people already pushed to the margins.
Silence in the face of these realities is not neutral. When faith-based institutions fail to interrogate corporate secrecy, environmental harm, and the use of public funds to support these projects, they risk aligning themselves with power rather than with the people most affected."
"In 2018, the General Assembly affirmed the Precautionary Principle, noting that “to manage the risks to health and safety from new and existing technologies, we need the Precautionary Principle or precautionary approach, based on the principles of sustainability, participation, sufficiency, and solidarity as developed in Christian environmental ethics.”
Data centers raise fundamental questions that should concern any faith tradition committed to justice and care for creation. Who controls land and water? Who bears the burden of rising utility costs and environmental degradation? Whose voices are excluded from decisions that reshape entire communities? These are not abstract policy questions. They are lived realities for people already pushed to the margins.
Silence in the face of these realities is not neutral. When faith-based institutions fail to interrogate corporate secrecy, environmental harm, and the use of public funds to support these projects, they risk aligning themselves with power rather than with the people most affected."
Pray Together
Close with a song to think about - "Scientists in Japan" by Sara Groves. It's a power song that urges us all to pause and think as the future takes place around us.
Scientists in Japan are building a robot to take your job.
Doctors in France are growing a heart that will save your mom.
Eyes wide open, and your jaw on the floor,
we see science fiction ain't fiction no more
There's a meeting of minds slowly designing our future days;
Back at the office they're running some copies from the DNA.
We rob from Peter to extend Paul's life
'cause dying ain’t no way to die.
Who's gonna stay here and think about it?
Who's gonna stay, who's gonna stay?
Who's gonna stay here and think about it?
Who's gonna stay?
Everybody's left the room.
There's no one here to talk it through.
Now stay, stay, stay.
Set machines in motion, just to set machines in motion, just to watch em roll.
There's no destination in sight just the rhythm of a barcarole.
Don't know where we're going, but we've got the means -
put a front load washer in our time machine!
Who's gonna stay here and think about it?
Who's gonna stay, who's gonna stay?
Who's gonna stay here and think about it?
Who's gonna stay?
Everybody's left the room.
There's no one here to talk it through.
Now stay, stay, stay.
Eyes wide open and your jaw on the floor,
We see science fiction ain’t fiction no more!
Who's gonna stay here and think about it?
Who's gonna stay, who's gonna stay?
Who's gonna stay here and think about it?
Who's gonna stay?
Everybody's left the room.
There's no one here to talk it through.
Now stay, stay, stay.
Doctors in France are growing a heart that will save your mom.
Eyes wide open, and your jaw on the floor,
we see science fiction ain't fiction no more
There's a meeting of minds slowly designing our future days;
Back at the office they're running some copies from the DNA.
We rob from Peter to extend Paul's life
'cause dying ain’t no way to die.
Who's gonna stay here and think about it?
Who's gonna stay, who's gonna stay?
Who's gonna stay here and think about it?
Who's gonna stay?
Everybody's left the room.
There's no one here to talk it through.
Now stay, stay, stay.
Set machines in motion, just to set machines in motion, just to watch em roll.
There's no destination in sight just the rhythm of a barcarole.
Don't know where we're going, but we've got the means -
put a front load washer in our time machine!
Who's gonna stay here and think about it?
Who's gonna stay, who's gonna stay?
Who's gonna stay here and think about it?
Who's gonna stay?
Everybody's left the room.
There's no one here to talk it through.
Now stay, stay, stay.
Eyes wide open and your jaw on the floor,
We see science fiction ain’t fiction no more!
Who's gonna stay here and think about it?
Who's gonna stay, who's gonna stay?
Who's gonna stay here and think about it?
Who's gonna stay?
Everybody's left the room.
There's no one here to talk it through.
Now stay, stay, stay.
Posted in Searchlight Edition
No Comments