Why AI and the soul?

 Artificial Intelligence is very powerful because it is very popular.  It is a great tool when it is used to enhance human intelligence.  90% of high school students in America admit to using AI (like Chat GPT) to help them write papers. 
From the 1700s philosophers began to forecast mechanical reckoning as equaling human reasoning.  Rene' Descartes, Leibnitz, and Thomas Hobbes were proponents of this, basically saying that the brain was just neurons with no room for personality or an innate soul.  
Ancient religions speak of the human as an organic soul.  The monotheistic religions of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity believe that we are made in the image of God differentiated from both animals and inorganic or mechanistic matter.  This difference is not just in complexity but in substance- much like a plant is different from a rock.  
In an effort of questioning, defiance of this belief, and curiosity, we have been trying to downgrade the idea that we have a soul, a God-given (birth) identity.  
Machines were first invented to make life easier for human beings.  The plow, the wheel, various washing machines, types of stoves.  But perhaps with the longer invention of the computer and eventually the cell phone and accompanied internet- the machine has become addictive.  The machine or its mechanics (programmers) have learned to keep us addicted to what we like- setting up algorithms to forecast and predict our likes based on previous choices.   
In 1952 AI began to not just be programmed to repeat, but began to learn on its own.  February 10, 1996, IBM had a computer "Deep Blue" beat the chess grandmaster (5/11/97 in a public match).  Computers can recognize rules and patterns faster than we can.  They can make less logistical mistakes and do calculations faster than we can.  If reasoning (as Hobbes, Leibnitz, and Descartes suggest) is just calculation- adding or subtracting- then they are smarter than us.  But what if there is more?  

My contention with this blog is to show we are more valuable than computers or machines.  Not from a secular point of view, but from a soul-God-valuing point of view.  We are not created to serve the machine.  We are created to serve the most organic being- God.  The difference might boil down to the word "love."  Christians say "God is love" and we are called to "love God with our heart-soul-mind-and strength and love our neighbor as ourselves."  Machines can be taught to say "I love you."  You can get Alexa or Siri to say it back to you.  But that doesn't mean they really do- they are just echoing your voice, replying to your wishes.