Human Dignity in the Age of AI

Artificial intelligence does more than raise technical questions; it presses the deeper question of what it means to be human. Camden Bucey speaks with Jason Thacker, author of The Age of AI: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity, about human dignity, the image of God, and the crucial distinction between a human person and a machine.

They consider how Christians can receive technology as a tool under God’s providence without confusing imitation with intelligence, convenience with communion, or productivity with personal worth. The conversation also explores how technology forms its users, why embodied life and genuine relationships matter, and how transhumanism redirects the human longing for life beyond death toward technological self-salvation.

Against both utopian promises and dystopian fear, Thacker points to the sufficiency of Scripture and the hope of the risen Christ. Christians can engage emerging technologies wisely because human identity is given by the Creator, human dignity cannot be earned or erased, and Christ remains Lord over every age.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction

01:19 Meet Jason Thacker

03:24 From public policy to AI ethics

06:05 Teaching ethics, philosophy, and technology

09:53 AI’s anthropological challenge

12:58 What has changed since The Age of AI?

14:55 Humanizing machines and dehumanizing people

19:55 The image of God and human dignity

25:39 AI companionship and simulated relationships

28:11 How technology forms and disciples us

34:00 Embodiment, materialism, and personal identity

42:20 Transhumanism and the longing for immortality

48:35 Engaging Pope Leo XIV’s AI encyclical

53:22 Technology as ecological change

54:43 Scripture, Christian hope, and the future

Learn more: https://reformedforum.org/ctc975