Staying Human: Being a person in the age of AI 

From a podcast by Together for the Common Good

In this time of deep change, it is vital to find ways of staying human - and to do so within a constructive story of spiritual and civic renewal. As we recognize the failure of the hyper-liberal philosophy of the past forty years, people are feeling the loss of agency and we are seeing increasingly widespread discontent. With concentrations of money and state power intensifying, the breakdown of trust - and the rapid advance of AI - our political, cultural, and spiritual life is increasingly marked by confusion.

Serious questions lie before us: How can we restore our common life? How can we stay human?

Susannah Black Roberts, Senior Editor at Plough Quarterly and an editor at Mere Orthodoxy, addresses what it means to be human in terms of personhood - and what can be done at the personal and community level. She explores how we as Christians are called to live at this moment in our history, what kinds of practices we should adopt to live the way of Jesus in a world that threatens to make us obsolete?

Susannah opens up the territory for a vital conversation about upholding the sacred and resisting the dehumanising potential of AI to prompt us to consider what this means for discipleship and Christian witness in the places where we live and work. Here is a summary of her talk:

22 year old Ari Schiffman launched start-up Friend.com, an AI-powered pendant designed to act as a constant companion. The $1M advertising campaign, which promised unwavering friendship and support from the pendant, sparked backlash and graffiti responses, highlighting public discomfort with the idea of AI replacing human relationships. Schiffman’s assertion that AI could be “like talking to a god” and his acceptance of the risks involved - such as AI-induced psychosis - illustrate the moral and cultural crossroads society faces with the rise of AI companions.

Current AI technology is based on statistical prediction, not true logical deduction or consciousness. AI systems, such as large language models, generate text that mimics human responses but lack genuine understanding. The Turing test, once considered a benchmark for machine intelligence, is now seen as inadequate because humans are prone to seeing personhood where none exists - a phenomenon known as “pareidolia”.

AI companions have rapidly become part of teenage life. According to a 2025 Common Sense Media study, 72% of teens in USA have used AI companions, with one in three finding them as satisfying as real friends and discussing serious matters with them. However, a similar proportion report discomfort with AI interactions. In academia, AI use for generating marked material has soared among UK undergraduates, raising concerns about the erosion of genuine intellectual effort.

There are two central concerns:

• AI confuses people about what it means to be human and what distinguishes humans from machines.
• Bad uses of AI threaten to hollow out essential aspects of human experience - creativity, understanding, and the vocation of being a “maker” in the image of God.

Society is at a moral inflection point, similar to the upheavals of the industrial revolution, and that the challenge for Christian discipleship today is to embody a rich, fully human life in an increasingly anti-human age.

There needs to be a “massive campaign of public philosophy” to address the existential crisis posed by AI. Without a grasp of philosophy of mind, people are easily misled into believing that AIs are thinking persons and that the human brain is merely a machine. She points to texts such as Pope Francis’s “Antiqua et Nova”, A Note on the Relationship Between Artificial Intelligence and Human Intelligence, and Edward Feser’s “Immortal Souls” as resources for understanding the immateriality of intellect and the philosophical challenges of AI.

Th age of AI is like an “anti-Renaissance,” systematically devaluing distinctively human abilities. Only a Christian or transcendentally rooted humanism can offer a meaningful alternative. The danger is not just constructing a life without God, but constructing a life without humans, where efficiency and economic growth become ultimate goals, and humans are rendered superfluous.

Catholic social teaching emphasises the importance of human work and creativity as expressions of intelligence and stewardship. AI should be used only to support and promote human dignity and vocation. The question “What is the human vocation?” is central to discerning the proper role of AI.

The use of AI to generate essays and intellectual work should not be allowed. The purpose of education is to form essayists and philosophers, not to produce words. The act of contemplation and the sacred relationship between teacher and learner cannot be replicated by AI. Reading and writing are acts of joining minds across generations, forming a “gift economy” of intellectual and spiritual exchange.

AI is commodifying human attention and culture - human experiences and attention are now enclosed and monetised. Resisting this enclosure is essential to reclaiming free, authentic human experiences.

A renewed Christian humanism is needed that values both craft and intellectual work, rooted in community. We should encourage habits of life - long conversations, reading novels, making art and food, and engaging in household crafts - as forms of asceticism that train us to enjoy truly human things. Virtue is the power to do good things, developed through practice, not outsourcing. These would be practical steps for re-humanisation:

• Make intellectual and artistic work yourself.
• Strengthen networks of readers, writers, and artists.
• Learn and practice household crafts.
• Take advantage of communal rights and traditions, such as foraging and gardening.
• Use technology only where it genuinely increases human power and agency.

Living fully human lives in friendship and solidarity, passing on meaningful practices to future generations.

Worship is central. Worship is a communal, embodied act that brings together all aspects of human creativity and labour. Words, like all things, are primarily for worship, and true participation in life requires doing, not outsourcing. The ultimate goal is to glorify God by being fully and truly human.

Listen to the 75 min podcast here.