October 2024
A primer for dialogue between Christian theology and sociology
By Dr Alex Fry
It’s now hard to browse news sites without finding something on Artificial Intelligence (AI). Responses to AI range from apocalyptic-style predictions to the worship of AI as a form of salvation. It’s unsurprising that societies such as the UK and USA are responding to AI by drawing on themes and concepts from the Judaeo-Christian tradition. After all, this has been their dominant worldview for some time.
In a forthcoming paper for Implicit Religion, I’ve argued that awareness of AI’s detrimental impact is creating a sense of existential threat. This is a type of anxiety resulting from fears about life. In the case of AI, it’s creating fear for some because it can bolster inequality. Many have noted that this is often the result of AI being trained on imperfect data, replicating existing biases. However, others note that it’s also because the business model of tech giants can be highly exploitative, tracking individuals’ online behaviour. It does so to manipulate individuals into engaging with advertising space sold by tech giants. It’s a profound invasion of privacy.
This existential anxiety requires individuals to make sense of how AI is impacting us. This process is called meaning-making—how we make sense of knowledge, experience, relationships and ourselves. Much ink has been spilt trying to understand how AI existentially threatens us and how we might respond directly to this existential threat. However, very few seem to be consciously aware that they are undergoing meaning-making and none seem to offer an explicit framework for doing so. Instead, the focus is on highlighting the social issues and suggesting policies to address them rather than the deeper, existential concern.
Of course, policy response is a necessary undertaking. But it doesn’t allow us to come to terms with AI’s impact and reflect more deeply on why existential concerns matter to us as human beings. Hence, anxiety remains whereas meaning-making can reduce anxiety.
I’ve previously argued that Christian theology has potential to aid meaning-making in societies that have historically been Christian. I believe that aspects of Jürgen Moltmann’s theology may be especially useful here. This is because he offers conceptually appropriate foundations to develop a theology-informed response to AI. Broad insights from three of his works are particularly relevant, given that:
- Their theology represents substantial development in Trinitarian theology, where the relational nature of God and His creation is recognised.
- The concept of salvation offered takes account of current suffering.
- There is insightful perception of how the processes of modernity come to impact society.
Starting in reverse order, Moltmann’s understanding of modernity is useful because it is these conditions that have come shape AI’s influence on society. In God in Creation, he explains that perceptions of God’s transcendence have led to perceptions of the world’s immanence, encouraging humanity to subjugate the natural world for gain. It does this by fragmenting the pursuit of knowledge, enabling humankind to master their natural environment. This is reflected in society’s fragmentation, where different institutions seek narrow forms of knowledge to aid humanity’s exploitation of the world.
Whilst Moltmann was primarily concerned with ecological matters in this text, it’s relevant to AI. What he describes as the segregation of knowledge inquiry relates to what Max Weber—a founding father of sociology— referred to as systematisation. This is breaking up of society into discrete institutions, each carrying out its own specialised tasks and the result of the technological advances that accompanied the industrial revolution, where complex tasks were broken up and widely delegated for efficiency. We find AI at the end of this trajectory.
This segregation of knowledge and breaking up of work into discrete, often repetitive tasks leads to what Karl Marx—another founding father of sociology— called alienation. Alienation is when individuals feel estranged from their very nature as human beings because of the way that the labour market is organised. Indeed, experience often tells us that work that lacks meaning or purpose can have a negative psychological impact. However, AI leads us into existential angst beyond the sphere of work.
So, God in Creation responds to the same context that has produced AI. This theology therefore has the potential to speak into AI’s current impact by offering an alternative vision with how we might engage with the world as something other than an object of domination.
Equally, in Theology of Hope, Moltmann recognises that the Christian notion of salvation needs to offer saving from a person’s current suffering. Hence, the Christian proclamation of salvation needs to be contextually embedded in people’s earthly realities. This makes a Moltmannian explanation of salvation deeply practical and has clear synergies with the current discourse of AI as salvation or apocalypse; this approach encourages the development of a soteriology that speaks directly to the experience of alienation and other forms of existential anxiety.
In The Crucified God, Moltmann develops his Trinitarian theology, where God is seen in deeply relational terms. This God is in relationship with creation, including humanity. If the breaking up of society and labour into discrete units leads to existential anxiety, it stands to reason that an understanding of how deeply connected humanity and the world is, because of its creator, has potential to provide a remedy.
Naturally, the question of how one might develop a Moltmannian response to AI’s existential threat in a manner that makes sense to society. Although this is beyond the scope of the current article, it is worth noting a rich intellectual tradition of public theology. Nigel Biggar encourages an articulation of Christian belief that is authentically but not necessarily distinctively Christian, allowing greater traction in pluralistic societies. Given the Christian heritage of societies such as the UK, which is also now (non)religiously very diverse, this approach has appeal.
And this is the task of the public theologian—to engage with society in the pursuit of the common good in a way that is intelligible to those beyond the Church. Such theology will need to grapple with the social implications of AI. Moltmann’s work, at least in principle, is well set up to begin this task.
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Dr Alex Fry is a Visiting Scholar in the Centre for Formation in Ministry.
View his 2023 presentation on AI and Christian Ethics to the Centre for Formation and Ministry.
The video is part of a series on Science and Faith themes which includes presentations on theology and climate change, wellbeing, catastrophe and wonder. The collection also includes resources on ageing and spirituality.
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