There’s trouble brewing among some of the smartest folks in our world. Just a month ago, a group of prominent computer scientists called for a six-week time-out in the development of Artificial Intelligence. What are they worried about?

In their open letter, they assert that AI systems with human-competitive intelligence can pose profound risks to society and humanity. Is it possible that we’re over-our-skis, allowing progress to rocket past our boundaries and beyond our control?

Theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking says that “the development of artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.” Elon Musk says, “AI scares the hell out of me. It’s capable of vastly more than almost anyone knows, and the rate of improvement (in AI) is exponential.” The progress in unleashing Artificial Intelligence into the modern tech-dependent world is not passive or benign. Last week, Musk said in an interview, “What is happening is that they’re training AI to lie.”

At a time when human intelligence is – arguably – in decline, the rise of robotic thinking – to displace the demand for thoughtful information collection and moral and ethical conclusions – is emerging as an unforeseen complication in a world already polarized by foundational differences.

Eons ago, just after Noah’s family/crew disembarked the Ark, God’s order was for mankind to fan-out and populate the world. Not surprisingly, the antithesis became the agenda. Here’s what happened: “Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there. They said to each other, ‘Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.’ They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. Then they said, ‘Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.’ But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. The Lord said, ‘If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.’ So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth” (Genesis 11:1-9).

God made man in his image, with astounding potential. Placed in an environment of unlimited opportunity – the Garden of Eden – their potential was compromised when their freedom became their liability, and their decisions pointed them away from God’s bounded privilege.

Adam and Eve’s fall set the stage for failure to follow. Sin caused their expulsion; more sin resulted in the Flood. Within a few generations after God’s preservation of the human race, they were back at it. In one place with one language, they came to one conclusion, “Let’s make a name for ourselves.” God’s insight: nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.

God’s discipline at Babel was to confuse the conversation and separate the strategists. Today, thousands of years later, we’ve resolved the language differences through translation technology and reassembled the rebels through transportation. Once again, collaboration against God’s timeless directives allows “progress” – like potentially-manipulative Artificial Intelligence – to elevate mankind to a place where God becomes a problem to be addressed and dismissed.

Until He chooses to intervene: “Come, let us go down.” He’s going to do that again; when He comes the next time, things are going to be disrupted, big-time! Are you helping folks get ready for that divine intervention?