We were delighted to welcome theologian, researcher and Mesa scholar Dr Anthony Buck to GWC recently…
Dr Buck spoke to us about the seminar that he delivered at GWC to postgraduate students related to an article he is working on about the theology of agentic AI.
“God generated every aspect of creation, not just the material aspects or the immaterial aspects, but even just the concepts that are operative within creation. But when we create AI, we’re taking from what God has already created. So we don’t create AI out of nothing. The other difference is that humanity is created in the image of God, and that means we need to also be thinking about, well, in whose image is AI being created? And is it that we are creating something in our own image when we’re developing AI? Or are we developing something that really is only loosely related to us, but is almost its own kind of category, a new thing in the world? And then, even if AI did not have life breathed into it, it’s still able to take action, especially when we’re thinking about agentic AI. So we need to think a little bit more thoughtfully about what does it mean to have agency? And what is the relationship between the agency that an AI has and the agency that we possess as people created in the image of God? One of the things that I stressed was that we don’t want to simply have very simplistic answers to what AI is and how we respond to it. ”
Dr Anthony Buck