AI is constantly in the news, and it is difficult to get through a week without a story relevant to leading with faithful integrity through business a better way toward Biblical flourishing.  This will be our third in an “AI trilogy”.

A few weeks ago we posted #322 – Proudly Created by Humans, suggesting that, perhaps one day, the most meaningful label will not be “Proudly Made in the U.S.A.” but “Proudly Created by Humans.” We said that, without a radical rethinking of what “work” means, the replacement of people with machines will be dehumanizing to those replaced.

Last week, we posted #326 – Beyond Verifying and Replicating: Cultivating Humanity, in which we emphasized that being human includes something technology cannot verify or replicate because it is rooted in Imago Dei. We urged faithful leaders to cultivate the humanity of those they steward.

In both posts, we urged faithful leaders to use technology only when and to the extent it increases the flourishing of God’s creation, particularly humans, or is necessary for the sustainability of the organization.

This week’s inspiration helps us focus on both sides of the humanity coin—two ways in which we are distinct from the rest of creation, particularly other species—the tension between our distinctiveness within creation and our responsibility toward it.

The Inspiration

The inspiration for this post came from an article in the Wall Street Journal about the courtroom battle between Elon Musk and Sam Altman. It was titled “Elon Musk Testifies of AI Risk at Trial, Says OpenAI Tried to ‘Steal’ a Charity.”  But the inspirational (and shocking, in our view) revelation in the article did not involve Altman—it involved Larry Page of Google.

[Musk] recounted a conversation with Google co-founder Larry Page in which he asked about the risk of AI wiping out humanity. Page responded that such an outcome would be “fine” as long as AI survived, a comment Musk called “insane.” He said Page called him a “speciest” for being “pro human.” 

If accurate, we find that deeply disturbing. If you have been reading our posts, you have no doubt that we are “pro human.”

God is a Speciesist

If a speciesist is someone who thinks one species is intrinsically superior to another species, then Scripture clearly describes God as a speciesist. God’s speciesism is summed up in one Latin phrase with huge implications—Imago Dei (“Image of God”). Unlike every other element and creature of God’s creation, God created humans in God’s own image:

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. (Genesis 1:27)

Humans are creations uniquely brought to life not merely by the power of God’s word but with divine breath personally delivered by God, as described in Genesis 2:7:

Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.

God created humans as intrinsically distinct from and above other creatures in status and responsibility. This could not be clearer than in Psalm 8:5-8:

Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas.

The Call to Speciesism

Because God places humans above other species and humans are created in the image of God, faithful leaders leading in alignment with Biblical beliefs, principles, and priorities are to treat fellow humans with dignity and respect. That has been a theme throughout our posts.  It calls to mind one of our favorite quotes from James Hunter’s book To Change the World:

To manage a business in a way that grows out of a Biblical view of relationships, community and human dignity before God has divine significance irrespective of what else might be done from this platform.

It follows that all humans are entitled to be treated with the same dignity and respect—not more for the CEO and less for the receptionist.  It also follows that the maximization of Biblical flourishing must give special weight to the flourishing of humans.

The Call to Faithful Speciesism

“Speciesism” without boundaries is like “integrity” without a plumb line. As we explained in post #300 (But What Does It All Mean?), the word “integrity” is deficient as an anchor for leadership and organizational behavior because it relies on “morals” as an anchor, but morals can’t serve as an anchor unless we agree on what they are. Sadly, our society is moving ever closer to the situation described in Judges 21:25, “Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”

“Speciesism” based simply on a view that humans are a superior species can be used to justify the abuse and exploitation of the rest of God’s creation. Like “integrity”, the speciesism we inherit by being made in God’s image needs more.  It needs to be aligned with Biblical beliefs, principles, and priorities—it needs to be “faithful speciesism”.

God did not make humans special without boundaries and responsibilities.  The Bible never presents our elevated position as one of privilege without purpose. The question is not whether we are speciesists. The question is whether we are faithful in how we bear that distinction.

Faithful Speciesism and Imago Dei

If faithful leaders are to be speciesists because they are created in the image of a speciesist God, then a boundary of that speciesism is that it must mirror God’s speciesism. God cares about and cares for all his creation, and he declared it all “good.”  Consider:

• After the great flood, God establishes his covenant not only with Noah and his offspring but also “with every living creature . . .the birds, the livestock, and every beast of the earth . . ..” (Genesis 9:10)

• When God calls Jonah to save Nineveh, it is not only because of 120,000 people, but “also much cattle.” (Jonah 4:11)

• Numerous passages describe God providing for animals. For example, in Psalm 104 we are told that God provides “drink to every beast,” causes “the grass to grow for the livestock,” and ensures trees are “watered abundantly” to provide a home for birds nests. In Psalm 145 we learn that God satisfies “the desire of every living thing.”

Being made in the image of God does not give us permission to elevate ourselves without limit. It gives us responsibility for how we treat everything God has made and everything we make as his image-bearers.

Faithful Speciesism and Biblical Flourishing

As described in post #300 (But What Does It All Mean?), when we talk about “flourishing”, we use the term “Biblical flourishing”.

In one sense, we mean something narrower than the concept of flourishing that has become popular, because we are focused on flourishing in the context of organizational stakeholders and the purpose and practice of work and organizations rather than general human well‑being. In another sense, our “Biblical flourishing” is much broader than the positive psychology concept, because it encompasses the flourishing of all God’s creation rather than just human well‑being.

We know God cares deeply about the flourishing of his creation, because it is the focus of the very first assignment and the very first command given to his image-bearers.  The assignment in Genesis 2:15 and the command in Genesis 1:28, often referred to as the Creation Mandate (or the Cultural Mandate), are the two most direct expressions of the responsibility that comes with our distinctiveness:

The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. (Genesis 2:15)

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Genesis 1:28)

With the distinction of not being just another species of animal created to co‑exist alongside all others comes the responsibility to “have dominion” over, and to take care of, the rest of God’s creation.

Although “dominion” sounds ominous and, on its face, seems to hold the potential to justify a raw speciesism of abusing the earth and its creation, theologians generally agree that it means “stewardship”. Remember, the Bible is full of passages reminding us that God continues to own everything, and we are commanded to “have dominion” in the context of God’s continuing ownership. We are to care for God’s creation as its stewards as he would care for it.

In our role as stewards, we are to create life and order just as the owner created life and order—”be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it.” The Creation Mandate extends our responsibility for flourishing beyond merely human flourishing to the flourishing of all God’s creation.

God’s commands are the boundaries that turn speciesism into faithful speciesism.

Faithful Speciesism and Organizations

God placed us here to subdue and bring order to the world. We are to care for creation as God cares for it and to cultivate creation to enable it to flourish. This includes creating life-sustaining and life-affirming products and culture.

It includes “subduing” through the creation of social structures such as governments that keep people safe and provide public services and organizations that allow humans to work together in relationship to accomplish what a single person could not do alone. Because we live in a broken world, we also fulfill the Creation Mandate by solving problems and “repairing” the world—what is often captured in the Hebrew phrase tikkun olam.

In talking about the “First Thing” of Love in post #192, we emphasized that there are also respect and sustainability aspects of Love that flow from the “Integrity Priorities” of Righteousness and Kingdom–Love through recognizing God’s limitations inherent in the Creation Mandate.

We believe caring for God’s creation both as his image bearer and as God commanded through the Creation Mandate translates practically for an organization into two things—Respect and Sustainability:

Respect: Respect for all humans God created, which means treating all stakeholders of an organization with dignity (owners, employees, vendors, customers, communities).

Sustainability: Sustainability across all aspects of a business, including its utilization of all forms of capital that drive the business and its relationships with the stakeholders related to those forms of capital.

It is important to understand that Biblical sustainability is about obedience to the Creation Mandate–recognizing that God owns it all, has given it to us to steward and is ultimately in control. Biblical sustainability is NOT:

• Motivated by fear of “existential” climate or environmental threats.

• Motivated by political agendas or narratives.

• Motivated by cultural pressures or movements.

• Motivated by regulatory requirements.

Biblical sustainability is about faithful integrity through business a better way. It is an expression of Love.

Faithful Speciesism and AI

Like culture, organizations, and other inventions, AI is something humans have created under the authority of the Creation Mandate. As such, it becomes part of creation, and its use by faithful leaders must be subject to the limits of faithful speciesism–respect and sustainability.

Although AI becomes part of creation because it was created by God’s proxies on earth, it is not imbued with the distinctiveness that only humans have. It is therefore to be stewarded by humanity and used in service of human flourishing—like all other creation.

The boundaries of respect and sustainability in the context of AI mean, practically:

• Using AI only in ways that enhance rather than erode what it means to be human.

• Using AI as a tool to increase the flourishing of God’s creation, particularly humans, by helping them do their jobs more efficiently or effectively or freeing them to focus on tasks that require their uniquely human qualities.

• Using AI to bring cost efficiencies that are necessary for an organization to remain competitive and sustainable.

• Not using AI in ways that prevent people from realizing the humanity that can only come through work.

• Remembering the inherent differences between the man-made technology of AI and the God-made reality of humans is critical.

Even AI systems themselves acknowledge their limitations:

ChatGPT: It doesn’t actually understand anything. It has no awareness or experience. It can’t make real judgments. It depends entirely on data and training. It lacks common sense in the real world. It can be confidently wrong. It doesn’t have goals or intentions of its own. It can’t replace human relationships.

Claude: I don’t actually know what I know. My introspection is unreliable. I have no continuity. I’m bounded by my training data. I’m not great at genuine novelty. I have no stakes. And there’s the deeper one: I don’t really know what I am.

We are with Elon on this one–AI is not a “species” to be favored over humanity. As we wrote in post #151 (Integrity Idea 018: Use Tech “Whysely”), for a faithful leader pursuing faithful integrity through business a better way toward Biblical flourishing, technology should be used when and to the extent it increases the flourishing of God’s creation, particularly humans, or is necessary for the sustainability of the organization.

“Being a Faithful Speciesist” requires holding the tension between the distinctiveness of humanity in God’s creation and the responsibility that comes with that status.  A faithful leader must neither deny that distinctiveness nor abuse it but live faithfully within it.

Some now argue that prioritizing humanity is a moral flaw. Scripture makes the opposite clear. The greater danger is that we will forget what it means to be human—and act accordingly. We were given dominion, not as a license to elevate ourselves without limit, but as a call to steward what belongs to God.

The question is not whether we are speciesists. The question is whether we are faithful. As the Vatican’s Antiqua et Nova: Note on the Relationship Between Artificial Intelligence and Human Intelligence observes:

Only the human person can be morally responsible, and the challenges of a technological society are ultimately spiritual in nature.

PERSONAL NOTE (from PM): Today is the birthday of one of the best examples of the human species–my wife Lisa.  I wouldn’t trade her for any AI–or any other human.  I give thanks daily that she was given the breath of life in God’s image and that I have been a beneficiary of her amazing humanity.

ESSENCE: AI is constantly in the news, and this will be our third post in an “AI trilogy”. It is inspired by a deeply disturbing conversation recounted by Elon Musk in which Larry Page reportedly called Musk a “speciesist” for taking the side of humanity over AI in a scenario of AI wiping out humanity. The story highlights a tension at the heart of humanity—our distinctiveness within creation and our responsibility toward it. God is a speciesist, and God’s speciesism is summed up in one Latin phrase with huge implications—Imago Dei. But being made in the image of God does not give us permission to elevate ourselves without limit. It gives us responsibility for how we treat everything God has made and everything we make as his image-bearers, including AI. God’s commands are the boundaries that turn speciesism into faithful speciesism. For organizations, this responsibility is expressed practically through two boundaries—respect and sustainability. As something created under the authority of the Creation Mandate, AI becomes part of creation and must be used by faithful leaders within those same boundaries—respect and sustainability. “Being a Faithful Speciesist” requires holding the tension between the distinctiveness of humanity in God’s creation and the responsibility that comes with that status.  A faithful leader must neither deny that distinctiveness nor abuse it but live faithfully within it. The question is not whether we are speciesists. The question is whether we are faithful in how we bear that distinction.

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Photo Credit: Original image by Paul Michalski using ChatGPT
(photo cropped)