Last week, Bishop Robert and I spent four days in Oxford with the bishops across the Church of England. A lot of our time was spent with several distinguished speakers reflecting on being the Church in the age of Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Some of our theological reflections were around ‘making’ and being a ‘maker’, and what it means for God to be creator and for humanity not to idolise and worship what we have made. Whilst we are called to delight and join in with God’s creativity, so too we need to acknowledge our ‘limitedness’ as part of what it means to be embodied human beings.
One of the pervading issues of our day is the drive for AI to override our limits and to be and do all things, yet Adam and Eve in the beautiful creation narrative in Genesis 2, were told not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They were to resist the temptation to be all-knowing in their desire to be equal to God, but instead were to know and rejoice in their limits as they lived to the glory of God.
God who is infinite, is a God of abundance and generosity and his love, mercy and grace know no bounds, and yet we have been given a world to care for which has limits and boundaries for our own flourishing.
September is the season of Creationtide in the Church’s calendar, and a good time to reflect on our tendency to live as those who have no limits, and our failure to attend to the misuse and squandering of resources which has led to us imposing degrading limits on places and people across our world who lack even the basic resources of life.
At the heart of all of this is the importance of relationship. The creation narratives reveal the truth of God creating us to live in perfect relationship with God and one another and with all of creation. Our focus on AI last week confirmed my passion for the importance of the Church creating spaces for relationship and belonging – and it is interesting to see the ways in which eco initiatives in churches and schools are actually contributing to this.
AI is rapidly replacing human relationship, and we have been seduced by the anthropomorphising of AI, even in the way websites and online places of information offer us ‘chats’ and ‘help’. As the use of AI grows, I hope we will grow in confidence and courage to explore and proclaim what it means to be members of the body of Christ; and in our different contexts to go on creating community in different ways such that people of all ages and stories discover the love and hope of Jesus Christ and know their own worth lived out in relationship.
The irony is that as we get drawn more and more into interacting with AI, we are too easily failing to notice the way human worth is being reduced. Many people are becoming more isolated, and jobs and roles which have given people dignity and worth are gradually disappearing. The robotic lawn mower in public spaces is a tiny example: It appears so clever and economically good, but it has possibly removed employment, care and pleasure from a human being.
I believe it is important that as the Church, we speak loudly of the importance of relationship and human dignity and justice; and I am continuing to reflect on the injustices, seen and unseen, which are being driven by AI, as well as where AI might enable justice.
Whilst September is marked as Creationtide, October will embrace Black History Month. The danger in both these ‘special’ months is that it is as if matters of creation justice and racial justice are not year-round issues as we live out our daily lives. However, if these months provoke better awareness of both beauty and brokenness, lived out in relationship, then that can still be a good thing.
So, I hope that just as September might prompt every individual and worshipping community to ask what we can do to contribute to justice for creation, I hope that October will provoke us to ask what is not being noticed regarding racial injustice, and what could be lived differently to contribute to and participate in a more racially just world, in our local contexts and beyond.
As part of this, please do commit to learning about and participating in the West Midlands Racial Justice Initiative which includes our diocese, and take a closer look at all that is being promoted in the Diocese of Gloucester.
As we walk through the remaining days of September and into October, may we pay ever closer attention to relationship with God, with creation and with all people. And in all this I hope we will go on paying attention to AI and what place we want it to have in our world, as we seek to give glory to God our creator three-in-one.
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Surely the elephant in the room is how to manage AI once it becomes more intelligent than humans, is some area such as mathematics it already is, and how to reconcile this extreme intelligence with our relationship with God. Unfortunately AI has been created without the judgement needed to make human relationships