(RNS) — Responses to the rise of artificial intelligence have tended to fall into predictable patterns: enthusiastic adoption, calls for cautious regulation or outright rejection. These approaches assume, however, that AI is primarily a technical or managerial problem. In this new age, the most pressing question is not whether we will use these technologies, but whether we will have the courage to shape them around practices of judgment, interpretation and moral imagination. The deeper question, in other words, is not whether AI works into our workdays or professional codes, but what it does to those who live alongside it. How does constant interaction with intelligent systems shape judgment, attention, responsibility and the stories people tell about who they are becoming? RELATED: Who wrote this prayer? Discernment, trust and the spirit in the age of AI These are questions that matter deeply to those of us who work in religious higher education. Religious leaders and theologians have recognized this AI moment as one shaped by “digital empire.”  AI systems are built by powerful actors, trained on …