The emergence of artificial intelligence or “AI” in our gaming is more than just a probability… it is an inevitability and most likely already here in ways we may not have recognized yet. In a business that is filled with over-worked programmers, risk-averse developers, and bottom-line focused studio executives, AI checks a lot of the boxes that might represent the salvation of the gaming industry… at the expense of the human artistry at the heart of the experience. As the costs of developing games get higher, the impact of just one title failing to hit its’ sales targets can result in studio closure and massive layoffs for the creative minds who were previously responsible for some of gaming’s greatest hits… and we have certainly seen too much of that over the last few years. But is AI the unrecognized savior of the gaming world, representing the only hope of bringing developmental costs down, allowing studios to mitigate financial risks and pursue even more creative endeavors? Or does AI represent the greatest threat that our industry has ever seen, pushing out and replacing the artistic creators it was intended to support? And the bigger, more personal question… what if supporting AI, regardless of the ethics behind it, would finally give me some of the remakes, remasters, and sequels that I have always wanted? Would I still maintain my moral high ground if AI offered me the solutions I have been seeking for years across multiple entertainment vectors?

What if AI could finally give me the full Metal Gear Solid remake I have always wanted, with or without creator Hideo Kojima’s blessing and support? Or finally deliver the Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic remaster of my dreams that seems stuck in a never-ending developmental nightmare? Even as I grapple with the ethical dilemma’s contained in allowing predictive algorithms to replace human involvement in these creative endeavors, I must admit that the selfish side of me is intrigued by the possibilities this could unlock in ALL of our media, not just gaming. Imagine being able to finally fix that terrible ending we’ve always hated to one of our favorite movies, television series, or video games… or simply use the “Thanos snap” of AI to completely erase an unwanted chapter and replace it with the narrative choices we would prefer. An entire multiverse of options would be unleashed, allowing our own individual interpretations to overwrite and replace the decisions made by artists and authors that we disagree with. We can use AI to give us everything we’ve ever wanted… an Iron Man who defeats Thanos without perishing in the process, a version of FFVII where Aerith steps out of the way of Sephiroth’s sword, or a Quantum Leap ending where Sam actually DOES return home. If we don’t like the ending we currently have, we can just use AI to CHANGE it so that the good guys win, the bad guys reconsider the error of their ways, and the true villains get what is coming to them. But as one of my favorite fictional scientists famously stated, just because we CAN do something doesn’t mean that we SHOULD. It’s an interesting conundrum…

In my real world life, I hate to admit this… but I would probably apply the “AI” lens to a large numbers of chapters in my life. I would take the magic eraser of AI and eliminate multiple moments of pain, reversing outcomes in my life that I felt were unfair. I would use the AI algorithm to rewrite the losses I’ve experienced, restore the lives of loved ones, and rewind my own poor choices. I would “rewrite the stars” to create a better story and the ending that I would prefer… but that isn’t necessarily a good thing and it certainly isn’t a new temptation. Long before the first programmer typed out the bits of code that would eventually become the building blocks of the AI concerns we grapple with now, humans have searched for the answers to their problems through constructs of their own design. Eve sought the ultimate intelligence by grasping for the forbidden fruit (Genesis 3:1-6), Cain tried to forge his own path to receiving the Lord’s acceptance (Genesis 4:1-10), humankind tried to reach heaven itself through their own means (Genesis 11), and even good ol’ Father Abraham himself tried to apply his human intellect to solve a spiritual problem by fathering a child (Ishmael) through an alternate direction than the Lord had given him. Abraham and Sarah tried to create their own fulfillment of the promise God gave them to have a son because the process was taking longer than they were comfortable with (Genesis 16-17)… so they took their situation into their own hands and even offered this “artificial solution” to the Lord as a better ending than the one He had written for them.

Genesis 17:15-19 Then God said to Abraham, “As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. And I will bless her and also give you a son by her; then I will bless her, and she shall be a mother of nations; kings of peoples shall be from her.” Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed, and said in his heart, “Shall a child be born to a man who is one hundred years old? And shall Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?” And Abraham said to God, “Oh, that Ishmael might live before You!” Then God said: “No, Sarah your wife shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac; I will establish My covenant with him for an everlasting covenant, and with his descendants after him.

While all of these examples sound horrible in retrospect and resulted in very catastrophic outcomes that completely changed the course of the entire world (the original sin, the first murder, the tower of Babel, and the division between the children of Isaac and Ishmael), they really aren’t much different than the real-life choices each of us make on a regular basis… and they represent this entire AI predicament in a nutshell. Each of these moments represent a time that a human believed we could write a better chapter for ourselves than our Creator could… and each of these decisions ended in disaster. And as I reflect on my own struggles with deciding if AI is a gift that makes previously impossible things possible or a curse that offers all of the gain without any of the pain, I’ve realized that I still have a LOT to learn as a follower of Christ.

John 11:21 Now Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died.

Like Martha, I often look at an unanswered prayer about a preventable problem and say “Lord, if you would’ve simply done this one thing differently, this wouldn’t have happened.” Like Cain and Abraham, I frequently offer compromises to the Lord in hopes that He will simply accept my solution… and create larger problems when I try to force His hand. And in my human arrogance, I convince myself that I can author a better story for my life than the omniscient God of the universe, simply because I disagree with some of His artistic choices. And as we wrestle with the temptations of AI, the shortcuts it can provide, and the solutions it presents, we reach a question that can provide all of the clarity we need… do we truly believe that the process of achieving a goal is as important as the achievement of the goal itself? Does the end justify the means, or does the path that we choose to take give the end its’ meaning?

Isaiah 46:9-10 Remember the former things of old, for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like Me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things that are not yet done, saying, “My counsel shall stand, and I will do all My pleasure”.

At its’ heart, AI is iterative, giving us what we think that we want without actually challenging us into changing the way we think. It offers us a “Tower of Babel” solution… outcomes that may surpass our current capabilities but can’t truly take us farther than our limited minds can imagine. And that is at the heart of the problem with our desire to achieve the Lord’s will and His destiny for our lives without enduring the roads that were designed to take us there. The Almighty, all-knowing God doesn’t see our story in parts, but as a whole… they are chapters in a story that He wrote before any of us ever existed. It is the presence of these challenges and setbacks that develop us into who we truly are… and removing them or creating shortcuts around them would reduce us to a pretty boring, shallow, and predictable algorithm. To questions His choices (or believe we can do better) is a temptation that only leads to our own feeble, misguided, uneducated attempts to rewrite the stars without understanding the impact this would have on the orbits of every other celestial body in their vicinity.

Does this mean that many of the Lord’s decisions will result in outcomes that we will disagree with or perhaps never fully understand? Yep. Will we frequently find ourselves in the position of sacrificing what we desire so that His will can be done? Most likely. But it is only when we resist the temptation of choosing a faster, easier, less painful path that we actually GROW into who He designed us to become. As much as I would prefer to have my cake AND eat it too, any cake that promises a crown without a cross and growth without discomfort is a lie. Sure, maybe I will never get the MGS remake I’ve always wanted without AI creating it… but if Hideo Kojima, the architect of the series, doesn’t personally craft it, is it really even Metal Gear Solid anymore? And if the Creator of the universe didn’t design it for us, then it ISN’T a gift we want… no matter what it promises. It doesn’t mean that the cake being offered by these shortcuts doesn’t exist… just as the serpent told a “version” of the truth to Eve and Ishmael “technically” exists as a son of Abraham, these hollow solutions DID offer a version of cake… for a horrible price. But they were NOT a fitting replacement for what the Lord had promised them if they had obeyed Him… and the world would be a completely different place if they had simply chosen NOT to try a slice. So let’s avoid these “AI shortcuts” in life that promise us all of the benefits of following the Lord while second-guessing His decisions and trying to do things our way, even if we don’t understand His reasons for doing things. He has a higher purpose for each difficult page and every hard-to-understand chapter of our book… and they will all make sense once the full story reaches its’ final conclusion.

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