Fr Robert Hendrickson

Dear Friends in Christ,

One of the things I’ve noticed lately is an uptick in worry about artificial intelligence. Of course, there are the fantastic worries such as AI taking over planetary defenses and launching a purge of humanity. This is not, I’ll admit, a worry that overly occupies me. There are more grounded worries, too, though. Automated trucks, for example, may virtually eliminate the need for delivery worker jobs or truck drivers.

Whole industries may find themselves unneeded in relatively short order. It’s not only manual labor that is being automated. We now see AI customer service bots handling (sort of) routine complaints or inquiries. AI generated art, photos, and writing are increasingly common—indeed whole business built on AI generated design have appeared virtually overnight.

My worry, however, is less that AI is going to take the place of humans than that we are ceding our humanity to it. We are too willing to set aside that which makes us whole, healthy, and connected for the sake of mind-numbing distractions, busyness, or just basic economic need. In a culture where we’ve created massive economic pressure around education, housing, and healthy food we are creating an ecosystem in which simply functioning as human is increasingly a luxury.

We often talk of anthropomorphizing animals or inanimate objects. We talk of imprinting creatures or things with human characteristics. However, the increasingly forgotten truth of human existence is that we are products of theomorphizing. We are imprinted with the image and likeness of God. We are given gifts of love, creativity, connection, and joy in all those things that are a reflection of God’s own nature.

But in our rush to consume rather than create, maintain rather than thrive, isolate rather than connect, and condemn rather than heal we are rapidly denying that which is most noble in our very creation. We are setting aside that which makes us fully alive and becoming a kind of drone-like AI ourselves. We operate too often as if we were drones created for the perpetuation of an economic, social, and political system that devalues our existence and denies our holy and God-shaped creation.

It’s easy to be mad about the state of things. In fact it’s a useful product to keep us all plugged into politics-as-salvation. The far more revolutionary act might just be to create art. To create music. To build something imperfect and to revel in the act of creation. To connect, love, and pray. Such things are far from useful as the world might have it—but they may be the most Godlike, holy, and human things we can do.

Let’s not worry so much that AI is becoming too human-like but that we are forgetting what it actually means to be human, to be fully alive, ourselves. We were created for more.

Yours in Christ,

—Fr Robert