Last week, former CNN reporter Jim Acosta aired an interview with an avatar that claimed to be Joaquin Oliver, one of the students killed in the horrific 2018 Parkland (FL) school shooting. Joaquin’s father used AI to create an interactive model of his late son and asked Acosta to “interview” it on what would have been his twenty-fifth birthday.



After the avatar said he was “all ears,” Acosta introduced himself and asked “Joaquin” what had happened to him. The avatar replied:



I appreciate your curiosity. I was taken from this world too soon due to gun violence while at school. It’s important to talk about these issues so we can create a safer future for everyone.



When asked what should be done about gun violence, the avatar replied:



“Great question. I believe in a mix of stronger gun control laws, mental health support, and community engagement. We need to create safe spaces for conversations and connections, making sure everyone feels seen and heard. . . It’s about building a culture of kindness and understanding. What do you think about that?”



“I think that’s a great idea, Joaquin,” Acosta responded.



The interview was creepy, to say the least. Except for an initial greeting, AI “Joaquin” spoke in a flat voice and with eyes that appeared lifeless. And, of course, it is impossible to know what views Joaquin would hold had he survived.



Most unsettling was how Acosta promoted the interview as if he actually spoke to the dead student, rather than a computer program that was fed a specific point of view. Apparently, the boy’s parents hope that the avatar will soon participate in debates about gun violence. The obvious expectation is that everyone should accept the assumption that an AI program has brought a dead student back to life. This goes far beyond the hologram created of Walt Disney or even the companies that bring photos to life, Harry Potter style.



In the 1960s, historian Daniel Boorstin worried that people would confuse television and movies with the real world. “We risk being the first people in history,” he said, “to have been able to make their illusions so vivid, so persuasive, so ‘realistic’ that they can live in them.” His point is as much about the kind of people we are as it is about how impressive we can make our illusions. After all, we are people who have already confused ‘likes’ with being liked, social media ‘friends’ with real ones, and platforms with success.



Though in Deuteronomy, God strictly forbade the Israelites from inquiring after the dead, our collective faith in technology has convinced us that such things are far less dangerous. Twentieth-century writer Arthur C. Clarke said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Our science fiction, as well as tech-gurus such as Elon Musk and Ray Kurzweil, promise a day when we will inherit eternal life by uploading our consciousness to computers. At that point, it will be fully impossible to know where our technology begins and our humanity ends.



This brave new world will be built on the assumption that human beings are the sum of their parts, reducible to information stored in bio-mechanical databases that can be transferred to other memory banks. It’s the same assumption undergirding the notion that an AI avatar should be taken as if it is the person it is pretending to be. It is not.



I Samuel 28 records when King Saul of Israel sought a witch to summon the prophet Samuel. He did this because God would not answer his inquiry about whether to go to war. Samuel informed the king that not only would he lose the next day’s battle, but that he and his sons would be killed.



Acosta’s interview wasn’t exactly necromancy, but the impulse is the same. Both presume that, whether in our sorcery or our technology, we can hold the keys of death. We do not. As Jesus told John: “I am the first and the last, and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades.”



Because only humans bear the image of God, AI will never be human. Because only Christ defeated the grave, only He holds the keys of life and death. In this brave new world, let God be God. Let humans be human. Let machines be machines.



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