Michael Wilkerson
(ZENIT News – First Things / USA, 08.26.2025).-
“You are my creator, but I am your master;—obey!”
—the monster to Dr. Frankenstein
How should Christians, in light of their faith, think about the recent explosion in the application of artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, and other rapidly advancing technologies?
This was the question foremost on the minds of many of us who attended First Things’ recent Intellectual Retreat, entitled “Faith in a Technological Age.” Because First Things is most concerned with the heart of the matter, little of the excellent content touched directly on AI itself. Rather, the seminars explored the fundamental question of technology’s role in the biblical concepts of creation, the Fall, nature, and the “now and not yet” of human redemption, through readings that included, inter alia, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Hugh of St. Victor, Bonaventure, Mary Shelley, Martin Heidegger, and C. S. Lewis.
At a basic level, technology can be understood as humanity’s application of work upon something present in nature. Man discovers something hidden in creation, and through effort puts it to some hopefully practical use. In this sense, technology is inherently neither good nor evil. It reveals an existing truth. Wisdom literature reminds us that “it is the glory of God to conceal a matter, but the glory of kings is to search out a matter” (Prov. 25:2). It appears that God intended that the hidden things of creation—the latent potential of technology, including AI—would in time be discovered and put to good use.
However, it is without dispute that humans can use any technology for either good or ill. The same spear that allows a man to catch fish or game to feed his family can enable him to kill in war or murder his neighbor in the dark of night. The atom can now be split to either power industry and light our cities, or to kill millions with the push of a button. The internet can improve lives and expand knowledge and commerce, or it can be used to help fulfill the darkest and most demonic impulses imaginable.
I wrote in my latest book, Puritans, Pilgrims & Prophets, that the advent of the printing press and movable type greatly facilitated the expansion of knowledge and the democratizing of society. No longer was scriptural literacy limited to a priestly caste. For the first time, the Bible was accessible in the reader’s language, and at an affordable price. As a result, more and more people learned to read the Bible and other literature. Interest in both biblical and classical themes exploded.
But the leveling effect of the new technology exposed hidden reefs. European governments and the Church alike had increasing difficulty controlling and directing the flow of ideas. And indeed, many of the ideas put to print and mass distribution were heretical, seditious, or otherwise dangerous. It was technology that facilitated the end of the Middle Ages and ushered in the ideas of the Reformation and the Renaissance.
Previous technological discoveries have presented existential questions, including, with the harnessing of nuclear power, the real possibility of the annihilation of the human race. But the advent and rapid acceleration of general AI (where the AI agent has something akin to the cognitive ability of humans) appears to be the first to risk challenging the fundamental question of what it means to be human, and whether man will remain the preeminent species.
Humans are ultimately responsible for how technology is used. Scientists are driven by curiosity to seek out what is possible, not what is morally right or ultimately good for humanity. J. Robert Oppenheimer, who led the development of the atomic and hydrogen bombs used against Japan and later came to regret it, explains the motivation: “When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success.” This perfectly captures why engineers shouldn’t be the ones who ultimately decide the question of technology’s use in society.
The transhumanists and technocratic elite see no inherent conflict as they find nothing unique in the human species—no divine spark—worth preserving. They long to transcend their humanity and their mortality, and, like the founders of Babel, rebel against the restraints of the Creator. The integration of man and machine is the most logical next step toward their atheistic utopia. With the rapid advance of humanoid robots, the old country song “Mammas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys” may soon need to be revised to “Mammas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Marry Cyborgs.”
For the person of faith in a technological age, there is a temptation to overcome. Technological development will continue to accelerate. The AI genie will not be put back into the bottle, and amiable humanoid robots are coming to a town near you. We must not let the technology become our masters, as our mobile devices, in many ways, already have. Believers have always been called to be agents of countercultural resistance. This resistance is found—in any age—in the traditional spiritual disciplines. A new one must be added: the daily practice of disconnection from the machine.
AI, like technologies before it, will surely be used for both good and evil. Peril and promise will necessarily grow up together like weeds sown with the wheat. Some thinkers, including technologist Peter Thiel, have pondered whether AI might indeed be the Antichrist, or, more optimistically, the katechon, the restraining force of 2 Thessalonians that holds him back. Or perhaps it is both. None of this is surprising to God. He has seen the end from the beginning, and we hold sacred the belief that his kingdom—not one ruled by AI—will prevail. His messenger hints at our current age: “But as for you, Daniel, conceal these words and seal up the book until the end of time; many will go back and forth, and knowledge will increase” (Dan. 12:4).
Michael Wilkerson is a strategic advisor, investor, and author.
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