Living Intelligence

He had a beard. He wore a greenish-gray hat and a greenish-gray t-shirt.

He was tall, and the guitar looked small in his hands.

He sang for us, the crowd, a lullaby he had written for his wife.

The lullaby was beautiful.

It was something wholly new in the world, an original. It had tones and tunes unique. It was seasoned with his life and their relationship. Sprinkled with Colorado, life in the twenty-first century, scriptural allusions, his longings, his knowledge, his experience.

And the song was alive as he sang it live. Though he had played the song many times before, he played it for us, on a day, in a moment, at a time, in a room, at a temperature, with an air. Singer and listener became united in a singular moment of living artistry and beauty.

When the song ended, the musician admitted a fascinating reality.

He said he can feel when the crowd is “pulling on” a song, and when the crowd does, he said he has “access to more” inside himself as he plays. He plays better and gives more when the audience draws on the song.

So together we made this moment and this song. Something happening at a physical level but also at a spirit level – metaphysical – between beings.

Moments like this, with a dynamism like this, are uniquely human.

Humans are created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27), with spirit and life (Genesis 2:7). We are not just atoms firing, automated towards survival or programs cycling through algorithms of zeros and ones. We are spiritual, connecting and creating in love and truth and beauty, like our Maker.

Artificial intelligence cannot compete. It is, after all, artificial. It is only material. It cannot achieve the reality or aliveness or love captured in something as simple as an everyday concert of a musician with his audience.

AIs may achieve high levels of mimicry and usefulness, but they will never feel the “pull” of the crowd and have “access to more.” They will never feel the room and the air and the people and the divine. They will never, by themselves and of themselves, make something beautiful and alive and spiritual and glorifying, something relational. It is not in them; it is not of them.