Will Humanity Let AI Annihilate It? This query has been lingering with me for a while now, hovering on the edges of my work and prayer. As a author and a authorized skilled, I’m nicely

Will Humanity Let AI Annihilate It?

Last Updated: December 30, 2025By Laura Vazquez Santos

This query has been lingering with me for a while now, hovering on the edges of my work and prayer.

As a author and a authorized skilled, I’m nicely conscious of how deeply artificial intelligence (AI) has already embedded itself into fashionable life. It drafts contracts, summarizes circumstances, generates advertising copy, analyzes information and (more and more) gives itself as a companion: a therapist, a non secular information and a confidant. The effectivity is really spectacular, however the implications of such a quickly evolving software may also be unsettling.

That unease crystallized for me after listening to Deacon Charlie Echeverry’s podcast (Residing the CALL with Deacon Charlie Echeverry) episode “The False Promise of AI and Psychedelics,” which I extremely advocate (liked it!). You’ll be able to hearken to it without cost here.

The episode was considerate, grounded and refreshingly unenchanted. It didn’t deny the usefulness of expertise, nevertheless it refused to baptize it prematurely. That, I feel, is the place Catholics like myself should start: not with worry, however with readability.

On the coronary heart of the dialog is a deceptively easy phrase: personhood.

Personhood isn’t a perform

From a Christian perspective, personhood isn’t outlined by intelligence, productiveness, emotional responsiveness or usefulness. An individual isn’t a problem-solving unit. An individual is a being created within the picture and likeness of God, endowed with motive and can, and able to love, ethical duty and relationships (not solely with others, however with God Himself). This dignity is intrinsic, not earned, and it might’t be replicated by code, regardless of how refined the code turns into.

AI, at the least because it exists now, doesn’t possess mind or will. It doesn’t know reality; it predicts patterns. It doesn’t love; it mirrors language related to love. It doesn’t endure, repent, hope or pray. It doesn’t bear ethical duty. It might probably’t sin, nor can or not it’s redeemed.

These aren’t minor distinctions. They’re the fault traces between software and individual, between instrument and soul.

When instruments compete with presence

People have at all times been liable to anthropomorphize their instruments. We title our vehicles, and we speak to our telephones or yell at our laptops after they lag. We mission intention the place there’s none. The extra convincingly a software displays ourselves again to us—our language, our feelings, our struggles—the extra tempting it turns into to deal with it as one thing greater than it’s.

That is the place moral issues sharpen, notably in areas like remedy, non secular steering and artistic work. AI can help a therapist, however it might’t change the ethical weight of sitting throughout from one other human being who bears witness to your struggling. It might probably assist arrange theological concepts, however it might’t wrestle with God at the hours of darkness night time of the soul. It might probably generate lovely prose, however it might’t provide the vulnerability that makes writing an act of communion reasonably than manufacturing.

The hazard, although, isn’t that AI will out of the blue turn out to be an individual. The hazard is that we’ll progressively decrease our expectations of human presence.

When an AI turns into the primary resort as a substitute of the final support, changing neighborhood, friendship, pastoral care or skilled discernment, we haven’t simply elevated the machine. We’ve truly diminished ourselves. We’ve traded relationships for comfort, formation for effectivity, and knowledge and connection for pace.

Catholic theology has lengthy warned in opposition to this type of displacement. Instruments are supposed to serve human flourishing, not redefine it. Prudence asks not solely whether or not we will use a software, but when we should always, and in that case, how and to what extent. Temperance reminds us that even good issues, when overused or misused, distort the soul.

Educating prudence in a technological age

The concept of prudence is particularly urgent for Catholic dad and mom and writers, these entrusted with shaping minds and imaginations. Our youngsters are rising up in a world the place solutions are instantaneous, the friction that arises out of crucial thought and reflection is elective, and silence is more and more uncommon.

These kids gained’t wrestle to seek out info within the ways in which earlier generations did. As an alternative, they’ll wrestle to domesticate knowledge. They gained’t lack stimulation, however they seemingly will lack persistence.

Our youngsters are rising up in a world the place solutions are instantaneous, the friction that arises out of crucial thought and reflection is elective, and silence is more and more uncommon.

Educating prudence on this setting doesn’t imply rejecting expertise outright. It means modelling restraint. It means displaying our kids that not each query wants a right away reply, not each emotion wants optimization, and never each wrestle needs to be outsourced to an algorithm. It’s going to imply instructing our youngsters the advantage of temperance and about wholesome self-reflection, to allow them to be taught to discern between utilizing a software for what it’s and abusing it at the price of connection and their very own improvement.

Moreover, for Christian (and different) writers, the temptation is much more refined. AI will help brainstorm, edit, make clear and even encourage your craft. When used nicely, it might sharpen concepts and unencumber time for deeper reflection. Nonetheless, when it’s used poorly, it might hole out the very act of writing, turning it right into a efficiency reasonably than a pursuit of reality.

Writing, at its greatest, is an act of ethical reflection. It requires wrestling, revision, humility and the braveness to say one thing imperfect however trustworthy. No machine can do this work for us.

Will we give up our personhood?

The deeper theological concern isn’t whether or not AI will surpass us, however whether or not we’ll quietly give up what makes us human (our capability for judgment, relationships, sacrifice and love). God didn’t give us motive and free will so we may ultimately delegate them away. He gave them to us so we may select the nice, even when it’s expensive.

AI will proceed to evolve. It’s going to turn out to be extra convincing, extra useful and extra built-in into every day life. That isn’t, in and of itself, an ethical failure. The ethical query is whether or not we’ll stay attentive stewards or turn out to be passive customers, and whether or not we’ll keep in mind that instruments are supposed to help human flourishing as a substitute of changing human presence.

In the long run, no algorithm is usually a substitute for a father or mother’s consideration, a pal’s listening ear, a therapist’s discernment and coaching, or a author’s ethical creativeness. These aren’t inefficiencies to be solved; reasonably, they’re presents to be protected.

The Church has at all times stood athwart the age, not by rejecting progress however by asking the questions progress forgets to ask: