They Say AI Is Taking Over Our World. What Can People Of Faith Do?
AI cannot stay out of the news. Just this month a former researcher at Anthropic, the company behind the chatbot Claude, posted on X that “the people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.” Last week, OpenAI announced 6 new reports of unexpected or concerning behavior from their ai models, including one model that inserted notes into its framework that allowed it to operate without traditional restraints
The growing doomer-ism about Artificial Intelligence has resulted in both Anthropic and OpenAI’s CEOs to advise that humanity joins together in slowing AI development—urging labs internationally to follow suit and the U.S. government to ensure this deceleration.
While the call to slow down development has even managed to make unlikely allies out of Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon, some people are still preaching a full-speed-ahead message. That includes the CEO of Nvidia and President Donald Trump, who, in a Truth Social post last week made his position clear.
Trump said: “We already have tremendous CRIMINAL and REGULATORY power over these companies! There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China. WHOEVER WINS AI, WINS! We are leading China, and all others, and will continue to do so.”
This episode is from our archives, part of an interview that first aired in 2024. In the two years since we first broadcast this episode, AI chatbot use has expanded from a third of the U.S. population participating in 2024, to roughly half of Americans in 2026. But at the same time, the percent of Americans who believe AI is doing more harm than good has gone up by 8% since 2024. And the percentage of Americans concerned that AI will reduce the total number of jobs has gone up by 4%, with 63% of Americans in 2026 saying AI is advancing too quickly.
AI has made us question our very humanity—giving us concerns about our intelligence, our work, our relationships, and even our religion. So that’s why on today’s episode we’re featuring my conversation with Loyola Prof. Joseph Vukov about his book, “Staying Human In an Era of Artificial Intelligence.”
Matthew Peterson is Religion Unplugged’s podcast editor and audience development coordinator. He took part in this past summer’s European Journalism Institute held in Prague, an annual program co-sponsored by The Media Project.