Description
Invited lecture at the Faraday Institute for Science & Religion, Cambridge, UK, part of their "AI for Humanity" initiative.Abstract:
This is an examination of the theological significance of language in the age of generative AI, arguing that the remarkable success of Large Language Models (LLMs) and the risks they pose to human flourishing both stem from the same source: the extraordinary power of language itself. Drawing on the Judeo-Christian concept of Logos – language as the creative, ordering principle through which reality is spoken into being – the paper offers a theological interpretation of why LLMs work as well as they do. Rather than being explicitly taught rules or given embodied experience, these systems acquire surprising capacities simply by processing vast quantities of human text. This suggests that language is far richer than the reductionist "nothing but syntax" view of computer science allows: it is, as theology has long maintained, metaphysically-rich, saturated with meaning, structure, and intelligence.
Yet precisely because language is so powerful, its mass automation raises urgent concerns. Drawing on developmental psychology and linguistic relativity research, the paper argues that language is critical to the formation of perception, cognition, selfhood, and moral reasoning. Theologically, to speak is to participate in God's creative activity, as a linguistic creature that mirrors a speaking God in an eminently linguistic universe. Human language is sacramental, arising from embodied life and genuine experience, which implies that automating it at scale could lead to linguistic pollution: an accumulation of AI-generated text in our informational ecosystems akin to the PFAS forever chemicals that pollute biological ecosystems: synthetic, persistent, devoid of life, and potentially damaging to the organic processes of meaning-making. Where the Christian tradition speaks of the Word made flesh, AI-generated language represents an inversion: disembodied speech, fluent yet intentionless, disconnected from true presence and responsibility.
The paper concludes that while generative AI need not be rejected outright, its use demands careful discernment and self-restraint, both individual and collective, to preserve the authenticity of the linguistic ecosystem upon which the flourishing of human thought, personhood, and spiritual formation depend.
| Period | Apr 2026 |
|---|---|
| Held at | Faraday Institute for Science and Religion |
| Degree of Recognition | International |