There was a time when only the loonies were talking about walking on the moon, or tooling around in flying taxis, or robots not only playing soccer but changing the rules for their own pleasure.
All that was pure nonsense until it happened. And now something else once thought impossible is on the verge of being taken seriously. The Washington Post recently featured an article in which Anthropic, a multibillion-dollar tech company, gathered Christian leaders together for help in considering whether their newly created morally sensitive chatbot could be considered a “child of God.”
Their corporate intentions might have been good, but is this really happening — that a once seemingly impossible question is becoming normalized?
To hear a soulless machine treated as a junior Jesus stripped of divinity, and to see technology become so overreaching that it tempts redefining humanity, is alarming.
Raising the question also requires us to consider what comes next. Has technology drained the sacred from religion to the point that God can be treated like ordinary merchandise — an unsettling prospect?
To many, the theological issues immediately reveal the incongruities. Several versions of the Bible show Jesus equated his own incarnation as flesh and blood. God breathed life into humans, and no technologist could ever do that, no matter how ingenious. No algorithm can substitute for God, and humans are governed by souls, not data nor code.
Adding to the controversy was the timing. It came at a time when the president was photographed posing as Jesus and criticizing Pope Leo for stating that he had “blood on his hands” for the bombing in Iran. Some in the White House, including Paula White, a senior adviser on religious affairs, compared her boss with Jesus.
The times were beginning to feel like a dagger was being thrust into the heart of Christendom.
Several spiritual leaders — unlikely to be invited to a comfortable meeting at Anthropic — pushed back against the chatbot controversy. As a minister who authored an AI-focused book, “The Rise and Fall of the Techno-Messiah,” the author sees this debate as another step toward an era in which technology could eventually write its own Bible, create its own religion, and attempt to take God’s sacred place.
In an interview, Dr. Felix Njeh, an engineer, researcher and author of “The AI Reckoning,” described the chatbot issue as “pure nonsense. We are dealing with the complex issue of soul versus systems. Man was formed by God’s hands, filled with God’s breath, and functioning as a living soul. AI is coded by human minds. AI has processing power, but no breath of life. AI has input and output, but no impartation from God.”
Dr. Ralph Martino, pastor of a multicultural church in Washington, D.C., and co-host of Gospel Access, a YouTube spiritual news hour, asked: “Can a chatbot receive salvation? Never. Salvation is not a software upgrade, regeneration is not a system update, and being born again is not downloading new data. It is receiving divine life.”
He added that we’re living in a time where intelligence is increasing, intimacy with God is decreasing and information is multiplying. “That is what AI does. But transformation is missing. Instead of listening and relying on God, too many are depending upon technology. And here is the deception.”
The deeper issue is also not whether AI can rise to our level, but whether we are letting ourselves fall to theirs. Harvard researchers report that one in eight adolescents and young adults use AI chatbots for mental health advice at unexpectedly high rates, often using the tools for guidance and comfort rather than turning to their religious leaders.
Nevertheless, religious leaders like Njeh and Martino are cautioning against strictly regarding AI and other technologies as evil. Martino added: “We must understand that AI is not the enemy. It is not a god nor a devil. If there is evil involved, it is not technology, but the people and corporations behind it.”
Now that the chatbot role is bubbling to the surface, technology deserves much more scrutiny from religious soul-tenders. They should carry the message that tools are meant to serve us, not replace the relationships and spiritual grounding that sustain us.
As AI advances, we must resist the insidious temptation to assign divinity to machines.
The Word itself offers a helpful guide for caution and clarity: “Test everything; hold fast what is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21).
Dr. Barbara A. Reynolds is the author of eight books, including “The Rise and Fall of the Techno-Messiah: Artificial Intelligence and the End Times,” and chairs the AI Committee for Everyday People for Black Women for Positive Change, where she is chaplain.