In September 2024, OpenAI released a new large language model that incorporated a “reason” feature into its Generative AI ecosystem. Utilizing this feature when providing a prompt, the user is given a “chain of thought” about how the model answers the question first before its response. There are clear benefits to these advances, but I was troubled by the language the company (and much of the industry) is using to describe what AI does.
While AI systems will inevitably only get better, more refined, and likely more helpful as they are applied throughout our lives, one of the most concerning part of our AI revolution is how these tools are subtly shifting how we understand what it means to be human.
Often without thinking, we use human-like, anthropomorphic language to describe these advances, mislabeling what these machines are and what they are doing. This language is also dehumanizing to us given how technology alters how we see ourselves as mere machines.
Much of the current debate over the good and bad of AI boils down to a simple, yet profound question: What does it mean to be human? Recapturing a robust theological and philosophical anthropology is essential for the age of AI, and who better to offer that response than the Church.
AI Is Not Neutral
A prevailing view on technology is that it is something we simply use — for good or evil — and it is a value neutral tool. We assume that we are fully in control of these tools and that they do not shape us as we develop and use them. But what if technology is more than tools we use, but tools that are shaping our perspective of the world around us — including God, ourselves as human beings and the ways we are to live in the world?
Most are familiar with the adage of “when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” When someone picks up a hammer, we instantly know that it is designed to hit things. Media theorist Neil Postman extends this truism and notes that “To a person with a pencil, everything looks like a sentence. To a person with a TV camera, everything looks like an image. To a person with a computer, everything looks like data.” Theologian and ethicist Jacob Shatzer adds that “when you’ve got a smartphone with a camera and the ability to post something online, everything looks like a status update.” And we can extend that again to say that to a person with access to powerful AI tools, humanity itself begins to look like a mere machine.
Postman argues that those truisms call to our attention the fact that every technology carries its own prejudice, purpose or design with intended and unintended consequences. He explains, “Embedded in every tool is an ideological bias, a predisposition to construct the world as one thing rather than another, to value one thing over another, to amplify one sense or skill or attitude more loudly than another.”
He goes on to state that “new technologies alter the structure of our interests: the things we think about. They alter the character of our symbols: the things we think with. And they alter the nature of community: the arena in which thoughts develop.”
But we are often so blinded by the formative power of technology that we fail to see many of these values and prejudices.
Humanizing Our Machines
One of the primary ways that we see technology, namely AI, shaping us as human beings is through the language we use to describe these machines as well as ourselves. Have you ever noticed how we often refer to the various AI systems we use each day by names like Siri or Alexa? Maybe how without even thinking about it we refer to these systems as “she” or “he”? Or why there seem to be such a push to create “embodied” AI and other versions of these technologies that look, communicate and interact with us as if they are just like us?
Given the language and data processing capabilities of AI, some wonder about when and if these machines will wake up or gain consciousness and awareness. Others may even say that we are creating the next stage of human evolution as we make these machines in ‘our own image’ just as God made us in his image.
The language we use in describing AI and its capabilities is quite revealing about how we see God, ourselves and our neighbor and is contrary to a robust Christian vision of the human person as seen in the doctrine of the imago Dei.
Technology has long had a profound shaping influence on how we understand the question of what it means to be human, and AI has become like rocket fuel poured on that question as we begin to make machines that mimic and imitate what we have long thought was exclusive and uniquely human.
The icon used next to the “reason” feature was a light bulb reminiscent of how we think of human beings in technical terms, like an idea being like a light bulb, our bodies being like computer hardware, our minds processing information like that of software, our blood vessels like wires connecting various parts of our bodies, our faults being like technical glitches or bugs, and even how we might download information into our brains during a meeting or lecture.
Not What We Do, But Who We Are
But despite this dehumanizing language that blurs the distinction between humanity and machines, the Christian tradition reminds us that we are not simply machines or tools. The Scriptures remind us that the value, dignity and exclusivity of humanity isn’t rooted in what we do but who we are as unique image bearers of our creator (Genesis 1:26–28).
God made us in his very image and nothing — not even the most advanced AI systems — will be able to change that status given to us by our Creator. This status is inalterable, unchanging and not based on our capacity, attributes, functions or contributions to others.
Questions of the ethical development and use of AI must be re-centralized on the notion of human dignity as an ontological status driven by the love of God and love of neighbor, which is the summation of the Christian ethic given to us by Jesus himself in Matthew 22:37–39.
Until we begin to see how these technologies shape every aspect of our lives, including how we understand what it means to be human, we will fail to understand just how far reaching and life-altering these technologies are and will be in our technological society.
The message the Church must emphasize in this age is: You are not a machine, and our machines are not truly like us either. God has made you wholly unique and set apart, not based on what you do but who you are as an image bearer of the Almighty God.
Jason Thacker is assistant professor of philosophy and ethics at Boyce College and The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. He also is a senior fellow in bioethics and director of the research institute at The Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) of the Southern Baptist Convention. Thacker is the author of “The Age of AI: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity” and “Following Jesus in the Digital Age,” and he has edited “The Digital Public Square: Christian Ethics in a Technological Society.” He was the project leader and lead drafter of “Artificial Intelligence: An Evangelical Statement of Principles,” and his work has been featured in Christianity Today, The Gospel Coalition, Slate and Politico. He holds a B.A. in communication studies from the University of Tennessee and an M.Div. from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
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