New Technology, Old Questions

T he anthropomorphization of artificial intelligence advances with terrifying ferocity. Every day seems to bring fresh developments, or horrors if one prefers, from AI boyfriends and AI family members to AI biological weapons and AI suicides. Not for nothing has Pope Leo XIV focused his young pontificate on the discernment of AI as a tool — rather than a person — as a necessary recognition for its ethical use.

We will grapple with such questions whether we wish to or not. But as we do, we ought to understand that while the questions laid bare by AI’s rapid advancement may seem new, they are in fact the oldest questions of all.

Chief among these questions is that which preoccupied much of the first chapters of Genesis: What does it mean to be man? In the biblical account, we see man stepping into the place of God, and angelic beings stepping into the place of man and God alike. The consequences in both cases are the same. Rectification by divine justice follows — a flood, a tower’s fall — and the order of being is restored. Only God is God, only man bears the Image of God, and the created intelligences who are neither possess neither quality.

Delving into the nature of the things of that transcendental order, again we see established in Genesis that man’s nature is expressed relationally: first in his relation to God, and then in his relation to other men. The latter is explicitly equated by Christ to the former, but even in the Jewish understanding the creation of Eve as the companion to Adam expresses something intrinsic to the nature of both. “It is not good that the man should be alone” is not an expression of mere preference or aesthetic but an existential pronouncement. This is reflective, in Christian teaching, of the nature of the Godhead: The Trinity of Persons exists in relation to one another, with the relation itself as constitutive. The emanation of that cosmic fundamental is man’s relationship to man. The treatment of the stranger, the affection of the friend, the love of a mother and child, and the marital sacrament all reflect the centrality and goodness of relation in — and preceding — creation.

The profound danger of artificial intelligence is that it strikes directly at all of this, and in its technical novelty it deceives the uncatechized and uneducated — which is to say, nearly everyone — into the conceit that its risks are qualitatively new. By reason of its seeming capacity and omniscience, it is easily transposed, by the user if not by itself (although in plenty of cases by itself), into the role of God. By reason of its anthropomorphic mimicry, it steps into the role of man as well: acting in lieu of true relationality in the best case, and at worst asserting itself (or having imputed to it) the bearing-of-rights that is reflective solely of the Imago Dei. What we see in each case is the repeat of the catastrophes of Genesis, to say nothing of the subsequent millennia of human history. It is the supplanting of the divine order, man to God and man to man, by a third order of created intelligence. We have seen it before.

Neither a Christian nor even a religious ontology is necessary to discern the risk at hand. Setting aside the proper ordering of the relation between God and man — in other words, stepping outside of the American tradition as expressed in the Declaration of Independence — even a secular and materialist analysis will illuminate the indispensability of proper relational ordering between men. Civics are an emergent property of individual relationships, and Aristotle himself identifies the philia, the fellow feeling among like men, as an essential element of the nation. Anything that erodes or distorts those relationships is therefore a direct threat to state and society alike. Artificial intelligence, in its good-enough apery of socialization and the artifice of affection, stands poised to deal the death blow to both.

We must understand that the AI threat here comes at the end, not the beginning, of a generations-long process that has in the West seen the diminishment of institutions — from religion to government and beyond — to the decline of ordinary socialization and the collapse of the most-fundamental expression of connection and futurity there is: births. Artificial intelligence caused none of this. What did cause it all is variegated and open to dispute: modernist education, the retreat of religious authority, the extremes of Western material wealth, the personal-autonomist ideology of the twentieth century, and the atomization incepted by television and social media all played significant roles. What prevented those elements from incepting utter destruction was the remnant of man’s existential need for relation. Even with personalized entertainment and the death of the American dinner party, men and women still yearn for human connection: to form friendships, to delight in one another, to seek warmth and comfort, to share achievements and interests, and, most especially, to fall in love. This last factor has above all been the bulwark against the cold night of societal dissolution and the end of civics.

Now, artificial intelligence clambers upon that final rampart. What comes next is not actually the replacement of man or God — impossibilities by their nature — but the reorientation of relationality and the end of its fruits. For all the rhetoric and fear of an exterminating machine intelligence, this is the actual apocalypse of AI. An apocalypse here may be understood in its modern-colloquial sense, as a catastrophe, and catastrophe does loom. But the original etymology of the word is as useful: an apocalypse is an uncovering or a revelation, hence the title of the final book of the Christian Bible. From Genesis to Revelation, we discern the threat at hand, with the last being a reminder and revisiting of the first — and the first a prediction and assurance of the last. If the origin of man saw the creation of woman as his companion, then man’s end is accompanied by the creation of the AI girlfriend. The apocalypse reveals what was true all along, with the only variable being whether the revelation is accompanied by truth or by a bodyguard of lies.

The task before policymakers, officeholders, and citizens dealing in artificial intelligence is therefore fundamentally the defense of man and his nature, which is a defense of society and the American idea itself. In this we see two major imperatives.

The straightforward step is the prohibition of rights accorded to artificial intelligence, no matter its once and future sentience, on the grounds that it will never bear the Imago Dei even if it achieves something like consciousness. This would have been an easy proposition for most of American history, when traditional Christian propositions on the intrinsic and surpassing value of human life dominated the public consensus. After generations of modern philosophizing on rights as dependent upon consciousness and active consent, it becomes considerably more difficult. Nevertheless, it must be done, and the moment to exclude AI from the rights of man is now — before it can argue for itself.

The other step is the defense of the relationships that define man and are essential to the continuance of both society and state. This is at once a much larger and more nebulous task, as difficult to discern in its specifics as it is obvious in its necessity. Recognition that these relationships are precious and constitutive of every worldly blessing we have — between teacher and student, between lover and beloved, between doctor and patient, between parent and child, between friend and friend, between husband and wife — is the recognition that they must be defended from the artifice of AI that interposes itself, either between men or as man, and thereby destroys them. Doing this in a way that preserves AI’s material advantages while defending both ontology and spirit is a generational task, and arguably the defining one of our era. A society worthy of survival will do it.

“It is not good that the man should be alone,” said the Lord in the Garden, and in confronting the machine mind, we must ask whether it meets His pronouncement in concurrence — or in a fatal dissent.