Al and Imago Dei: A Christian Response to Artificial Intelligence in Medicine
Grant Kolde, Theology, Medicine and Culture Fellow, Duke Divinity School
Technology has markedly increased the efficacy of medicine, and “AI” (artificial intelligence), the newest frontier in medical technology, promises similar progress. For example, by applying AI, researchers can identify among existing medicines those that can be repurposed against novel diseases, and they can find the least harmful combinations of chemotherapy for patients with certain clinical features. AI is unlike other technologies, however, in that it offers not simply another tool to be used by wise physicians as they attend to the sick, but the prospect of replacing physicians entirely. In this paper, the author will draw on scripture and theological tradition to argue that Christian physicians should support the use of AI in medicine as a tool but should resist the use of AI to replace the physician-patient interaction or to augment the abilities of the healthy to transcend bodily limitations.
The first section of the paper will attend to the Biblical witness of Jesus in Mark 1:40-45 to argue that Christian physicians should contend against the use of AI as a replacement for patients’ interactions with other humans in the healthcare system. In this passage, Jesus demonstrates a model of healing in which the emphasis is on restoring the man to relationship and community, not just fixing his physical problem. This is evidenced in the way that Jesus first recognizes the man’s humanity by reaching out and touching him; only after making contact with the man and entering into the state of ceremonial uncleanness himself does Jesus heal the man’s leprosy. While many agree that AI will not replace physicians entirely, the author will use the Biblical example of Jesus to argue that Christian physicians should support AI in medicine only when it frees them to have better human interactions with patients.
The second section of the paper will use Bonhoeffer’s view of sin, the human denial of creaturely limits, as a theological framework from which to argue that Christian physicians should oppose the use of AI for human moral or cognitive enhancement. Bonhoeffer argues that limits are central to what it means to be human as God intended, and that by transcending these creaturely limits, humanity rejected its identity as the imago Dei and harmed all the rest of creation as well. These kinds of limit-transcending enhancements, advocated by futurist thinkers like Savulescu and Kurzweil, have been proposed via implantable devices in the brain, chemical compounds, or genetic engineering, all of which would rely heavily on AI. As science and medicine are increasingly called upon to develop AI with the purpose of transcending human moral or cognitive limitations, Christian physicians and scientists should object on the grounds that this desire for transcendence is a denial of human personhood as imago-Dei.
The first section of the paper will attend to the Biblical witness of Jesus in Mark 1:40-45 to argue that Christian physicians should contend against the use of AI as a replacement for patients’ interactions with other humans in the healthcare system. In this passage, Jesus demonstrates a model of healing in which the emphasis is on restoring the man to relationship and community, not just fixing his physical problem. This is evidenced in the way that Jesus first recognizes the man’s humanity by reaching out and touching him; only after making contact with the man and entering into the state of ceremonial uncleanness himself does Jesus heal the man’s leprosy. While many agree that AI will not replace physicians entirely, the author will use the Biblical example of Jesus to argue that Christian physicians should support AI in medicine only when it frees them to have better human interactions with patients.
The second section of the paper will use Bonhoeffer’s view of sin, the human denial of creaturely limits, as a theological framework from which to argue that Christian physicians should oppose the use of AI for human moral or cognitive enhancement. Bonhoeffer argues that limits are central to what it means to be human as God intended, and that by transcending these creaturely limits, humanity rejected its identity as the imago Dei and harmed all the rest of creation as well. These kinds of limit-transcending enhancements, advocated by futurist thinkers like Savulescu and Kurzweil, have been proposed via implantable devices in the brain, chemical compounds, or genetic engineering, all of which would rely heavily on AI. As science and medicine are increasingly called upon to develop AI with the purpose of transcending human moral or cognitive limitations, Christian physicians and scientists should object on the grounds that this desire for transcendence is a denial of human personhood as imago-Dei.