AI and Christian Ethics

Christian ethics is rooted in three sources that work together: Scripture, which gives us the framework and the story; tradition, which gives us the accumulated wisdom of the church across centuries; and reason, which applies both to present circumstances.

Applied to AI, the ethical questions the Christian tradition generates are different from — and more demanding than — secular frameworks focused primarily on safety and bias.

Christian ethics asks: What is this doing to us? Not just: Is it safe? Not just: Does it work? But: Who are we becoming as we use it? Are we becoming more dependent on God and more capable of love — or less?

Christian ethics asks: Who bears the cost? The prophetic tradition demands that every innovation be evaluated by its impact on the most vulnerable. Who is displaced? Who is surveilled? Who is exploited for training data? Who benefits?

Christian ethics asks: What does this do to human dignity? Every technology either honors or diminishes the imago dei. AI that empowers human beings to do meaningful work, that increases human flourishing, that expands access to knowledge — that honors dignity. AI that reduces people to data points, that replaces human presence with simulation, that concentrates power — that diminishes it.

These are the questions Poor Culture is committed to asking — not as obstacles to progress, but as the theological work the moment requires.