What Are Humans For? (& Why AI Can Never Take Your Place)

Technology pessimists are saying that AI will kill us all. To me, technology optimists are even scarier, believing that AI will eliminate our need to work, think, create, communicate, learn, invent, and have relationships. Either scenario would end humanity as we know it. To make sure we are using emerging technology—including AI—to benefit humanity, rather than to eliminate humanity, we need to think through both the purpose of technology and the purpose of human beings. Table of contentsHumans were created with a purposeVocation is how we live out that purposeTechnology exists to serve our vocationsTechnology fails when it displaces our vocations Humans were created with a purpose The first purpose statement given in the Bible for human beings occurs at the very beginning of our creation: Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” (Gen 1:26)1 That God made man “in our image” is connected to man having “dominion … over all the earth.” Just as God has dominion over all that...