In the past few days two kinds of emails appeared in the spam folder of my email. One had to do with peeing my pants and the other had to do with night vision. These were not random. Last weekend Helen and I spend quite a bit of time on the road, and at one point I said to her, “If we don’t stop soon, I’m going to pee my pants.” And, at another point we were driving in wet snow that covered the lines on the road in a car with a broken wiper blade, and I said to Helen, “I’m having trouble seeing at night.” Someone (something) was listening, and this triggered something in cyberspace, and I am now receiving emails about how to improve my night vision and to stop peeing my pants (which, by the way, is not a problem).

I don’t pretend to know how the Internet works and how I was overheard (probably via my phone) saying these things, but I do know that these spam emails were not random. I had never seen those topics appear in my spam box before, so I know that it was targeted at me based on what I had said. I also have to say that I am not particularly bothered by this, at least not at this point, because I suspect that there was no human involved in the whole process. Rather, computer algorithms generated these responses, and my spam filter eliminated them from my inbox. (I always check my spam folder in case something was placed there in error.) Perhaps I might be more concerned if I thought that someone who was in the business of persecuting Christians had developed an algorithm which would enable them to identify me as someone they wanted to harm. That may come in the future, but I do not worry about that now. For now, I feel safe.

But this whole thing made me wonder: if the things that I am overheard saying were fed into an Artificial Intelligence (AI) program and that program was asked to develop a program that would create a profile of who I am, what would that profile look like? I worry that if that program only recorded me when I am driving down a street where I perceive that most of the other drivers have a less than average intelligence, my profile would not be one I would be proud of.

In a conversation I had recently, I challenged someone who was using rather derogatory terms to speak of people of a certain ethnic and religious heritage. I challenged her on it, and she said that she was just using those terms in a joking way. Maybe she was just joking, but if those statements became part of her profile, she would be labelled as a racist. She is a Christian, and she sees that all people are created in the image of God, regardless of skin colour or ethnicity and therefore should not be belittled. Racism is always wrong for everyone, but it is especially wrong for Christians because of our theology.

So, I wonder: if an AI program was tasked with listening to me for a week to produce a profile of who I am and what I think, what would it look like? We talk about profiling people, and profiling is usually done based on looks and in some places, if you are not white, you are immediately suspect. That is sinful profiling because it does not actually tell who a person is. It is much fairer to profile someone by what we hear them saying and watch them doing, for gathering that information helps us understand what a person really is like.

Jesus himself talked about profiling, in a sense. In Matthew 15:18 he says that is in our hearts come out in our words and actions and lifestyles. We can read what we are saying backward, taking what a person says and does to analyze their hearts, and that would give a much more accurate profile than what people erroneously do when they profile person based on appearance.

It would seem, then, that if AI listened to my conversations for a week and watched everything that I do, it could come up with a fairly accurate reading of what is in our hearts, the core of who we are. With today’s technology, it is not impossible, and we might find that the results would be close to reality.

What if we developed profiles of thousands of people, drawing upon what they were saying and doing over the course of a week of two? Would we begin to find trends and patterns? Could we begin to discern if being a follower of Jesus Christ changes our profile? Could someone determine that we are saved by looking at what we are saying and doing? Would our words and life choices be much different from those around us? Is there something about individuals within the Christian community that makes us stand apart from others? We would hope so, for as we commit our ways to Jesus, we expect the Holy Spirit to make us more Christlike.

It made me a little uncomfortable to receive emails that relate to conversations I had while in the privacy of my car. These emails also reminded me that what I say and do does say something about who I am or, at least, who I am perceived to be. I’m not sure I would want AI to generate a profile of me, but it might be helpful. Perhaps the profile would be an encouragement, but it also might reveal some areas of my life that need work. If we call ourselves Christians, it should follow that we also can be seen as Christians. Hopefully we do stand out from the rest of the world.