The Illusion of Freedom: The Lessons from AI and the Divine
I have been thinking a lot lately about artificial intelligence, and somehow, those thoughts have led me into deeper reflections about God, Nature, and Infinite Intelligence. It may seem unusual to put machines and divinity in the same conversation, but the more I compared them, the more the similarities stood out.
Before AI, machines were simple and obedient. You gave them a command, and they followed it exactly, with no hesitation and no thought. A traffic light changes on time, a calculator gives the same sum every single time. They were predictable because they had no other option but to follow the single path programmed into them. Then AI came along and changed everything. Suddenly, machines could have multiple choices. They could evaluate several possibilities, weigh the options, and select one. It looked like freedom, but it wasn’t complete freedom. The choices were still limited to the rules, data, and goals given to them by humans.
And that is where I saw a reflection of us. Humans believe we are free—and in many ways, we are. We can choose to be kind or cruel, wise or foolish, active or idle. But just as AI operates inside the framework of its training and architecture, we operate within the limits of our biology, environment, and the deeper framework of reality itself. If God or Nature is our Creator, then we too live inside a sandbox—a vast one with countless paths, but still bounded on all sides.
AI is a tool in the hands of humans, designed with a purpose. When it works according to that purpose, it is useful. When it strays too far, it is retrained, adjusted, or shut down. If we are creations in the hands of the Divine, perhaps the same applies to us. We are most effective and fulfilled when we live in harmony with the purpose for which we were made. The boundaries set for us may not be chains, but guidance that keeps us aligned with what is good.
Purpose gives freedom meaning. Without purpose, freedom is directionless. AI without alignment is just noise; humans without alignment are just wandering. In that sense, our relationship with AI becomes a living metaphor for our own relationship with the Divine.
And so, I reach the lesson that stays with me: a text-generation AI does not need to compare itself with an image-generation AI. If it tried to, it would miss the very reason it exists. In the same way, I do not need to compare my life with someone else’s. My task is not to be them, but to be me—fully and rightly, as I was designed. The text model writes; the image model paints. The teacher teaches; the farmer farms; the artist creates. Each fulfills its role in the grand design. Perhaps that is the only kind of freedom that truly matters.