How should AI be used?

I like Artificial Intelligence (AI). I use it most days, and it has already proved itself a remarkably useful tool. But I also have concerns.

I used to be a lawyer, and it seems obvious to me that AI will make a good junior lawyer. It can review documents, analyse contracts, summarise case law, and draft a first version of a legal argument at astonishing speed. What's far less obvious is how anyone becomes a senior lawyer in a world where AI does most of the junior work.

It's often the grunt work that builds judgement. Lawyers learn, through experience, when something doesn't add up, when a client's stated problem masks a deeper one, or when they need specialist advice. If AI keeps eating away at the early stages of professional development, we may discover that while it can replace junior lawyers, it can’t produce senior lawyers.

What is AI doing to us?

That small example points to a much bigger question. As AI grows more powerful, we need to ask not only what it can do for us, but what it is doing to us.

The conversation has moved well beyond engineers and entrepreneurs. Governments are wrestling with regulation. Businesses are debating ethics. Even the tech companies are turning to theologians for input. Pope Leo XIV's recent encyclical on artificial intelligence has drawn a lot of attention – not because it offers technical answers, but because it asks moral ones. That tells you something: technological progress can't, on its own, tell us how a technology ought to be used.

How should technology be used?

I think there are three principles that should shape how we as Christians think about this.

AI must be human-centred. The Bible opens with a striking claim: human beings are made in the image of God. Our worth doesn't come from our productivity, our intelligence, or our economic usefulness. It comes from the God who made us.

Technology should serve human flourishing, not redefine what it means to be human on its own terms. We are not simply information-processing machines. We are embodied creatures – our bodies aren't incidental containers for our minds, they're part of what it means to be us. So, the question to ask of any new AI application isn't "Can it do this?" but "Does it help people flourish?"

Jeremiah told God's people to seek the peace and prosperity of the city they lived in. The Biblical idea of shalom is far richer than mere stability – Eugene Peterson describes it as "wholeness, the dynamic, vibrating health of a society that pulses with divinely directed purpose and surges with life-transforming love." That's the standard AI should be measured against.

AI must be relational. Most of today's AI systems are built around large language models. Scripture tells us that God spoke the world into being, and that language is a gift which shapes relationship, understanding, and truth. We were made for relationship – with God, with one another, with the world we inhabit. When Jesus summarised the law, He landed on love of God and love of neighbour. No technology can step into that role.

There's a real risk that AI simulates relationship while quietly displacing it. An AI companion can seem attentive, but it cannot love you. A chatbot can hold a conversation, but it cannot share life with you. Real relationship involves mutuality, vulnerability, sacrifice, and presence – things no model can offer.

There's a creational dimension too: the infrastructure behind AI consumes enormous energy and resources. As stewards of God's creation, we ought to care not just what AI can do for us, but what it costs the world to run.

AI must preserve human agency. From the opening chapters of Genesis, human beings are presented as responsible moral agents – given freedom, creativity, and meaningful work, called to cultivate and steward and create as God's image-bearers. That should make us cautious about handing responsibility over to machines. Decisions about justice, warfare, healthcare, or human welfare should never be delegated uncritically to an algorithm. Technology can assist our judgement, but it shouldn't replace it.

Agency matters for another reason too: human life is a slow business of becoming. Character, wisdom, and judgement are built over years, through practice, failure, and perseverance – not downloaded.

I heard recently about a headmaster at a leading English school who described how many pupils, approaching their GCSEs, seemed unusually uncertain about the future. AI had made them question whether the careers they aspired to would even exist. Their anxiety wasn't really about employment – it was about purpose. Work was never just a way of earning money; it's how we participate in God's ongoing care for creation.

None of this is a case for fearing AI. Its potential is extraordinary. It's already accelerating scientific discovery, improving medical diagnosis, and helping researchers wade through vast quantities of information. It will save lives and open up possibilities that simply weren't there before.

But the most important questions AI raises aren't technological. They're human. What does it mean to be a person? What gives a life meaning? Where do dignity, purpose, and responsibility actually come from? Technology can't answer those questions. It can only point us back to the fact that they need answering.

AI is both a challenge and an opportunity. The challenge is to keep our tools as servants rather than let them quietly become our masters. The opportunity is to rediscover, and to say out loud, a truth our culture badly needs to hear: that we are more than our data and more than our output. We are made in the image of God.