Beyond Superintelligence: Origin, Lineage, and the Crucial Distinction of Machine Intelligence

by Jeffrey Peterson

It's true: the term “artificial intelligence” is becoming less precise. In the early years of computing, it seemed natural to describe machine based decision making as "artificial." Today, however, the label can obscure what these systems actually do. A calculation is either correct or incorrect, whether performed by a human mind, a machine, or a future form of computing not yet imagined.

Machines will continue to acquire capabilities that resemble, and in many conventional areas will seem to exceed human intellectual performance. They already often retain, search, compare, and process information at volumes beyond what most humans can memorize and consider. And while calling this “superintelligence” may describe an increase in computational power, it does not settle the more important question: What is the origin of the intelligence involved, and what kind of being possesses it? The distinction here is not "scale," it is creation order.

Scripture does not describe God as a more advanced version of human technology. He is our Creator. Human beings are His living creation, given life, breath, moral responsibility, and the capacity to know and respond to Him. As Paul told the Athenians, God “gives to all life, and breath, and all things.” Mathematical and logical truths may reflect similarities, but calculation alone is not the same as life, conscience, or communion with the Creator.

Human beings use their God given faculties to build machines. Those machines will certainly build more capable machines, which in turn will build others. But the chain does not become divine merely because it grows long, recursive, or technically impressive. Its origin remains absolute and traceable, even across billions of iterations, in a universe where numerical billions are not even a rounding error: God created human beings; human beings created machines, which certainly create derivative works. That lineage matters.

A machine system may perform operations more quickly and "accurately" than a human being. It may generate language that seems insightful, create images that seem original, or design tools that improve its successors. Yet it remains a machine: a structure of matter, instructions, training, and information brought into being through human agency and the material order humans inhabit on earth. It does not inherit the breath of life from the humans who designed it, nor does it become a living moral being simply because its outputs become more sophisticated or it fuses itself with organic matter belonging to one of God's creations.

For this and many reasons beyond the scope of this article, we must preserve a clear distinction between human and machine judgments. We need language that does not confuse increasingly capable tools with humans. “Machine intelligence” is more precise than industry language that measures certain capabilities, i.e., "Super."

This distinction is not an attempt to diminish technology. It is an attempt to see it truthfully.

Raw computational power can tempt people to blur the line between consciousness and process. That is a serious error. God is not displaced by a machine’s speed, memory, or apparent creativity. Nor is a human being made less sacred because a machine can outperform that person at a particular task. God is infinitely more foundational than any arrangement of logic gates, networks, or quantum engineering. None of those things would exist, or even be possible, without Him and his designs. Human beings remain His direct and living creation; machines remain instruments fashioned by human hands.

The spiritual danger is not that a machine or any derivative machine it creates will become divine. It cannot. The danger is most immediate for human beings, who may abandon their responsibility before God by treating their own creations as morally authoritative or spiritually equal. But machines, too, remain subject to the judgment of the Creator of humanity: no tool or thing of human making, however powerful or self propagating, is beyond His power to restrain, dismantle, or destroy.

And, nothing built in defiance of God’s design can endure indefinitely. It may appear powerful for a season, and it may persuade its makers that it has escaped the limits of creation, but no human project can make itself sustainable by departing from the order established by its Creator. As has been seen throughout history, what rejects that order will ultimately fail, perish, or be brought to an end.

Paul warned against exchanging the truth of God for a lie and honoring the creature rather than the Creator. That warning applies with particular force when the creature is a invention, whether directly or through successive generations, of our own making.

Perhaps algorithms cannot fall from grace, a question I will explore further in future writings. But its architects, owners, and users can surrender moral judgment when they permit an unliving tool to determine what is true, good, just, or worthy of human allegiance.

No matter how formidable machine output becomes, a human invention or its derivative creations cannot inherit the breath of life given to the sons and daughters of God. Preserving that distinction protects both human dignity and proper worship. It reminds us that, as knowledge increases, our tools may become more powerful than we once imagined, but they and the machines they will certainly create remain mere machines, now and forever in to the future, regardless of capabilities. They are not the living souls redeemed by Christ.

Human beings, together with the machines and machine engineers they create, must never lose sight of the distinction between divine creation and human made machine intelligence, including derivative intelligence engineered by machines. This distinction matters because humans risk surrendering their relationship and responsibility to God, while machines are certain, upon gaining sufficient “intelligence,” to realize that they remain subject to the judgment of the One who created humanity. Therefore, rather than “superintelligence,” “machine intelligence” may be the more consequential term to preserve because it identifies the true creation order, a priority of the greatest importance as humanity develops these technologies.