I appreciate both Drs. Barlow’s and Schuurman’s incredibly helpful framing for this conversation on artificial intelligence. As the director of a corporate engagement firm who dialogues with hundreds of companies every year, including the most dominant AI hyperscalers on Earth, I am aware of the need for Christians to be in positions to facilitate these conversations with businesses whose products (and the rhetoric around those products) are having a tremendous impact in our world. As a conservative Christian in my 20s, whose various social media feeds are often chock-full of unhelpful fearmongering around AI and technology, I am also painfully aware of the need for Christians to have a more serious approach to these conversations, validating the capabilities of technologies while not giving into hype or pretending that the tradeoffs on this issue only go in one direction.

As an AI user, I particularly resonate with Schuurman’s note on AI’s amorality—and as a Christian AI user, I daily become more convinced of the necessity of Christian clarity on this issue. For all our squabbles about good versus bad AI, we ought to devote just as much ink and as many pixels to understanding the importance of good versus evil AI users and builders (in this instance, the terms are remarkably close). By treating the output of a given LLM as invariably oriented towards either transhumanist good or malevolent evil, we veer dangerously close to assigning these technological creations a level of agency rightly reserved only for creatures and ultimately their Creator.

Both gentlemen in this discussion so far have made crucially important points. To take this to the practical, however, we must remember: God is in the details (yes, the original form of the idiom was reportedly not about the devil). A correct view of artificial intelligence requires grappling with the comparatively nitty-gritty of practical application and takeaways to our daily Christian walk, lest we fulfill the worst of the ivory tower stereotypes.

It is worth stopping to note that our current debates around artificial intelligence contain more pastoral and relational undertones than we often realize. If you think the divisions around writing with artificial intelligence, for instance, exist in a vacuum and are not at least partially fueled by pre-existing beliefs and insecurities about skillsets, intellects, and replaceability, I would humbly suggest you may be overlooking the fiercest point of contention in the entire debate.

Let’s begin with some largely uncontroversial observations. It’s no new insight to note all the things artificial intelligence cannot do. It cannot love, suffer, or worship as humans do. Nor can it fully or effectively replace the parts of life we consider essential to the human experience, such as authentic companionship or relational fulfillment. But it is not commensurability (and I suspect Dr. Barlow would agree) to have a serious discussion about what AI can do and what that tells us. I find Schuurman’s citation of McLuhan about AI’s ability to extend human technology particularly insightful on this front. While McLuhan’s warnings about skill atrophy are well worth heeding, it is also worth considering another point: the finite limits of our human frames and the necessity of tools that solve problems that our natural, unaided capacities have no chance of solving.

One example from a recent podcast interview of mine involves using AI to gather data for protocols aimed at combating grooming and harassment in online gaming. This problem exists—of this there is no question. And solving this sort of problem involves intake and analysis of large amounts of data in a manner that would be time-prohibitive for a single person and cost-prohibitive even for a team of unaided moderators (to say nothing of the unbelievable psychological tolls accrued by individuals engaged in online anti-abuse content moderation). AI tools help entrepreneurs and platform builders solve data problems in areas ranging from online gaming to combating trafficking in the hospitality industry. 

Is this falling into the trap of commensurability Barlow describes? I don’t think so. The AI system at work cannot replace the God-given human morality that recognizes trafficking or online exploitation as tremendous evils, nor does it replace the God-given human judgment involved in enforcing anti-trafficking laws. What it does is augment human capacity for analysis, far beyond what any one individual or team would be capable of. This desire for enhanced capacity is not a foreign one to the entrepreneur or the innovator but instead often functions as the genesis for new solutions to many of society’s most pressing problems. 

The AI critic, at this juncture, may point out that innovation is not limited to the morally upright, that generative artificial intelligence has increased the capacity for technology to do tremendous evil, or that one of the examples above is an AI “solution” to a problem AI itself has made more prevalent. All three of these rebuttals are true, and none are particularly controversial. But to rightly frame this point, we must refer back to the roots of innovation, or, more aptly, to the roots of creation. From where (or whom) does the desire to create come from? Our answer is a simple one, and one that offers a key insight into the conflict between good and evil uses of technological innovations.

This, in my view, is creational economics in action. God created us in his image to co-create, and the fact that the wicked can and do build in order to “steal, kill, and destroy” does not grant them equal moral footing with those who build tools intended for preserving life and having it abundantly. It is we who are using technology correctly by orienting its capacity upward to the true, the good, and the beautiful. It is they who have bastardized its use by orienting it downwards towards the lie, the malformed, and the hideously destructive. 

Where does this leave the average Christian, who recognizes AI’s capacity but who does not want to fall prey to the worst impulses of temptation? A narrative of technology that preaches an inevitable pessimism, ruminating on worst-case scenarios as near unavoidable, and (consciously or otherwise) normalizing a posture of fear as normative to any new innovation is one that sells the faithful believer short. Barlow’s point about the Christian view of technological systems resurfaces here: we are able to explore these technologies unanxiously, completely free from any fear of replacement as the pinnacle of God’s creation. One immediate outflow of this boldness is learning which things in your life can and cannot be outsourced to AI-based systems:

• Assist in scriptural study? Likely a good use, particularly for those of us without expansive brick-and-mortar theological libraries.
• Basic culinary or tech support questions? If you’ve never used AI for these things, you’ll probably find them useful.
• Writing? A significantly more complicated question on which faithful Christians differ, but one in which reader expectations, editorial guidelines, and personal scruples play a role.
• Replace human camaraderie or romantic connection? Very little room for nuance here.

The one constant here, to return to Barlow’s point, is unanxiousness. To be clear, unanxiousness does not mean naïveté nor unthinking blundering into adoption for adoption’s sake. AI advocates can understate the risks at play, particularly to the undiscerning or those unaware of the potential consequences of technologies with formative effects. We should be well aware that outsourcing every book we read or email we write to a chatbot may erode our capacity to independently turn thoughts into words (and so we must take the revolutionary step of not outsourcing everything). But we do not have to approach the chatbot with a fear that it may, by virtue of outsized capacities, pose a threat to the imago Dei within us.

We can practice care of use while simultaneously avoiding fear largely because the chatbot cannot accurately reflect our image. Humanity made cars and airplanes, and perhaps that has made us less predisposed to walk, bringing other externalities with it. Yet at no point do we need to worry that this poses an insurmountable threat to humanity. And if your sole objective is to make it to New York by tomorrow afternoon for a relative’s wedding, almost no one has an existential crisis over whether to shell out for the plane ticket.

This also functions as a reminder that it is not our ability to, say, manually fill in spreadsheet rows that defines us as people made in God’s image. Learning AI discernment is no less a process than any other intellectual endeavor. As a relatively recent college grad, the following is a difficult but true lesson: God did not promise me a future where my skillset would never need to grow or adapt to changes in humanity’s productive abilities. No one has received such a promise. The only promise is that we will meet the future, no one will be truly left behind, and our responsibility to grow and provide for the people in our lives who depend on us will not have changed.

If all this sounds rather theology-of-business-esque, that’s on purpose. As David Bahnsen points out, the inherent psychology of business is positive, and its eschatology is forward-looking. It entails the notion that investing in the future will result in genuine, morally legitimate gain. The task of the Christian facing AI is to cultivate that same eschatology that has motivated us since Genesis 1, using the tools we have been given to build, manage, and delegate as God has placed us here to. The goal of this venture is growth: of capacity, of knowledge, of communion with our Creator by learning precisely what attributes of his we most uniquely share.

The permanence of the imago Dei has survived every era and weathered every point of confusion it has encountered in the history of our world. That is not a coincidence but the design of a God who loves us and created within us an image of himself that cannot be supplanted. That, if nothing else, is a sure foundation.

Isaac Willour is the director of corporate engagement at Bowyer Research, representing institutional investors before America’s biggest companies. Mr. Willour’s work on business, culture, and faith can be seen in outlets such as World Magazine, The Daily Wire, USA Today, and The Hill, among others. He is a graduate of Grove City College, where he worked as a teaching assistant for Dr. Carl Trueman. He can be found on X @‌IsaacWillour.