WASHINGTON (RNS) — Three prominent religious leaders outlined a slate of concerns about the potential dangers of Artificial Intelligence on Tuesday (Sept. 15), raising moral questions about the fast-developing technology a week after a researcher garnered attention for quitting his job amid fears AI could “kill us all by the end of the decade.”
“The way that it’s developing has essential, consequential, moral choices embedded in the very structure of this technology,” said Walter Kim, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, referring to AI.
Kim delivered the remarks while participating in a panel discussion as part of The Pro-Human Assembly, an AI-focused gathering convened in Washington, D.C., this week.
The conference, which featured a diverse array of political speakers, was organized by the Future of Life Institute, a nonprofit that advocates against the risks of AI. In addition to the religious leaders, the conference laid bare the broader spectrum of Americans concerned about the potential impacts of AI: Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Democratic Socialist, spoke immediately before Steve Bannon, the right-wing political strategist and onetime adviser to President Donald Trump.
The conference comes as the AI sector remains roiled in an apocalyptic debate that began roughly a week ago, when AI researcher Jacob Coxon resigned from AI giant Anthropic. In a social media post, Coxon accused his former employer and its main competitor, OpenAI, of “racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.” Soon after, a current Anthropic employee, Evan Hubinger, publicly agreed with Coxon, saying on X he and others at the company “really do earnestly believe” that there is a greater than 10% change that “AI could kill all humans!”
In response, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called for slowing the pace of AI development, saying his company is committed to doing so.
The dangers of AI hung heavy over Tuesday’s conference, including the faith-focused panel, titled “Protecting the Human Experience: A Faith Perspective.” In addition to Kim, the panel featured Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone, the Archbishop of San Francisco, as well as Elder Gerrit W. Gong, who sits on the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and sent a video message.
Their concerns, the men argued, begin with the way AI is built. Kim noted that AI primarily learns from training materials created within industrialized civilizations “that are already in the cloud.”
He asked: “What about the humanity in the majority of the world that is actually not being involved in the definition of what means to be human by artificial intelligence?”
Cordileone voiced discomfort with the potential impact of AI on average users. He advocated for keeping AI away from children in their formative years so they can “develop the capacity for human relationship.”
Kim warned about the consequences of a “frictionless existence,” where answers are simply provided to the user by AI. And sometimes, he said, AI can be manipulated to give a more palatable answer.
“When we begin to train ourselves that answers need to be immediate, frictionless, then, I think, you cease — not just as an individual — to be fully human. You fray the fabric of humanity itself,” he said.
Cordileone pointed to Pope Leo XIV’s recent encyclical focused on AI, noting the pontiff’s concern about the technology being used to guide weapons that choose targets and attack from afar.
“If we remove the possibility of looking at someone in the face, then we lose any kind of a moral guidance when it comes any sort of a conflict,” Cordileone said. “We have this side of which … is a consequence of being created in the image of God.”
Kim also referenced a claim made by some in Silicon Valley that AI could result in replacing so many jobs that people would no longer have to work. The evangelical leader questioned whether such a development could be positive, asking, “is there something about the struggle of the workplace that is profoundly meaningful?”
Gong, in his video message, praised potential benefits of AI, saying that members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints use AI for “translation and communication” as well as “pastoral and community support.”
But Gong also voiced worries about bias inherent to certain AI models. He noted his involvement with the Consortium for Evaluating Faith and Ethics in AI, a collaboration between leaders of several faith-based colleges such as Brigham Young University, Baylor University, the University of Notre Dame and Yeshiva University. In a recent paper, researchers from the group argued that AI models express a bias toward Catholicism and against a number of other religious traditions when asked about converting to a faith.
Bias inherent in some AI models, Gong said, “amplifies and compounds religious bias at scale.”
Organizers of the assembly also unveiled a “Pro-Human AI Declaration,” which suggests a list of principles to guide AI development such as “keeping humans in charge” of AI, barring the development of AI superintelligence “until there is broad scientific consensus” and insisting that “AI corporations should not be exempted from regulatory oversight.”
The declaration’s signatories, which organizers said already exceeds 1 million, included some religious organizations, such as the Buddhism & AI Initiative and the Congress of Christian Leaders, as well as a several individual rabbis and other faith leaders.
Several speakers at the conference raised the question of government regulation. But Cordileone argued that for legislation to be effective, religious leaders must work to help form moral citizens.
“We need virtuous citizens if we’re going to have any kind of ethical regulation — or even to the point of stopping it,” he said.