Wake Up, Look Up

Hello, everyone. Thanks for listening to Wake Up, Look Up, a podcast where we connect events happening in in real time to the gospel of Jesus Christ. I'm Zach Weihrauch. And this summer, we're doing something a little unique as I do a little traveling. I'm having some of my friends guest host episodes that I have produced.

I could not be more excited for you to hear what they have to say, and today's episode is no exception. You're gonna love it. I'm Jimmy Kozy. And today, we're asking the question, will robots eventually replace us all? So this comes from a recent release from the tech giant Nvidia.

There's also a Forbes magazine article written about it by the name by a guy by the name of Bill Curtis. But basically, what they have released is that Nvidia is diving into the world of what is called physical artificial intelligence, physical AI. So they are taking the reasoning and memory capabilities of your well known language models, whether that be CHAT GPT or Claude or Grok, and they are applying them to the physical world through what they are calling their Groot operating system. So the release was talking about real advancements that they've made in this operating system that allows humanoid robots to use artificial intelligence to mimic nuanced human movements. It's pretty amazing stuff.

Imagine, if you will, a world where you might have seen a robot barista before, but imagine a robot barista that not only gets the proportions of the recipe right and perfectly, but also can mimic imitate the nuanced wrist movements that it takes to put perfect latte art on top of your latte. Imagine a martial arts trainer that can mimic the style and the strength and the speed of your opponent so that you can train to fight for a fight. Imagine a car mechanic who can understand the engine and can move fingers and hands in the nuanced way that it might might require to fix different components. Imagine somebody who does your landscaping, who mows your lawn, who cooks, who does these things, all who are robots. So the question you might ask is, okay, what happens when the robots realize that they don't need us anymore?

I don't think we can answer that today, but what we can say is, well, if that's the case, if most manual labor is eventually performed by robots and it seems like that world is not all that far away, what will we do? Well, I think that the Bible has something to offer for us about this. The first thing that I would say is that, we should be reminded that human ingenuity is an extension of God's creativity. And here's what I mean by that. In Exodus 35, it talks about God giving skills and abilities and talents.

And whenever we see something that like humanoid robots, our first instinct could be to be afraid thinking, what's this mean for me? What does this mean for my job security? I actually think a good reaction is simply to be amazed that God has has created us with the ability to create something like that, and that's part of being made in God's image. But if we, as image bearers, who are simply image bearers, are creative are capable of creating something like that, what is God capable of creating? And then furthermore, that God who has that incredible creative capability has endowed us with purposeful work.

He has created us for purposeful work. Ephesians two ten talks about being created for good works which he's prepared in advance for us. So our lives aren't meaningless or mechanical and we are not the sum total of what we produce, but God has things for us to do. Things that contribute to his redemptive plan. Things that content contribute to his kingdom, to his mission.

And part of that, to take it a little bit further, is that our work is worship. That is something that God created us for. You know, it it work is not something that is a result of the fall. Or you have to look in Genesis two. Right?

Before before the fall, it talks about how God wanted Adam and Eve to work the garden to care for. There's work involved in that because I think we were created for work and work is actually a way that we worship because through it, we connect with our creator, we connect with each other and we find meaning and purpose. And my final point is that that anticipates the new creation. In Isaiah 65, it talks about how there will be there will be labor in the new creation and that's because I think work is a part of our relationship with God. It's a part of the way that we worship.

And so when we get to the new creation, we might think well maybe there are some manual labor things that are being done by machines and artificially intelligent robots, but we will worship and so in that respect we do have job security. When we see artificially intelligent robots who are performing manual labor, we might fear for our future, fear for our job, but the fact of the matter is we have job security or at least we have purpose security that God has created us with meaning and purpose. And because of that, we will always work whether it's manual labor or something else. This episode of Wake Up, Look Up was produced by Holly Andrews and Marcus Cunningham. Our topic researcher is Shanna Young.

This episode was directed by Andy Hoffman. Our podcast coordinator is Hallie Andrews, our production manager, and audio wizard is Marcus Cunningham, with tech and engineering support from Matthew Adel and Landon Hall. I'm your host, Zach Weihrauch. Join us for the next episode of Wake Up, Look Up.

Have an article you’d like Pastor Zach to discuss? Email us at wakeup@ccchapel.com!