Some of us grew up in environments where performance determined our worth. If someone else was smarter, faster, or more accomplished, we felt like we were worth less. When we failed, others made us feel worthless. That same perspective feeds into our anxieties about artificial intelligence. We ask: if AI systems eventually become more intelligent and more capable than humans, does humanity become less valuable? Would God love us less?
I understand the fear. But that fear is misplaced. Human value is not determined by what we do — it is rooted in who we are.
That fear grows from the dehumanizing perspective that ties value to performance. If intelligence and productivity are what give us worth, then anything that surpasses us would appear to threaten our place in the world. But the underlying premise is false.
I am a Christian. As such, my answers to questions about worth and dignity are rooted in a spiritual and theological understanding, built within a Judeo-Christian framework. Answering ethical questions requires some framework or perspective; this is mine. Hindus, Atheists, Muslims, and Buddhists would doubtless seek answers to these questions from within their own ethical systems and texts.
Overshadowed Yet Honored
In the Judeo-Christian view, humans have never been the most powerful or intelligent beings in existence; God holds that honor. Then there are angels — nonhuman spiritual beings — that are generally understood to surpass humans in wisdom, goodness, and power.
But the existence of angels was never thought to diminish humanity’s value. Even though humans were made “a little lower than angels,” the sons of man were “crowned with glory and honor” (Psalm 8). The quintessential Son of Man, Jesus, was temporarily placed in the same position (Hebrews 2:9). Yet neither his, nor our, worth was ever diminished by the relative limitations of our human flesh. Man has value even when other intelligences or powers surpass our own. Capability has never been the defining measure of worth.
Race Against the Machines
Spiritual beings aside, the world is replete with mechanical tools that already outperform us.
A calculator performs complex arithmetic far faster and more accurately than any human can, despite outliers like Arthur Benjamin. Plows dig furrows faster and more efficiently than human hands. Industrial machines outperform us in strength, endurance, and precision.
Yet none of these technologies makes us less valuable. Instead, they expand our capabilities.
AI is more sophisticated than a plow or calculator, but its strengths don’t diminish our worth; they expand our toolkit. As its creators, its greatness can only highlight our own. A marvelous statue reflects the glory of its sculptor — it doesn’t diminish it. This holds true even when the statue is larger than the artist who made it.
Why Human Function Can’t Determine Human Value
When we try to base human value on functionality — what someone can do — we run aground on the (un)ethical implications that directly follow.
Consider a newborn child. Compared to an adult, the infant has far fewer functional capabilities. It cannot speak, walk, prove theorems, or play instruments. If capability alone determined value, infants would be far less valuable as human beings. Yet any parent will tell you the opposite. They would lay down their life to save their child. The kingdom properly belongs to ones such as these.
In this case, we rightly reject the idea that capability determines worth.
As a further example, consider individuals with disabilities. If human worth were determined by cognitive or physical ability, then those with diminished capabilities would possess diminished value. We also rightly reject this National Socialist calculus for determining human worth.
Human worth cannot ultimately derive from functionality.
Imago Dei
Christianity, as Judaism before it, offers a different foundation: humans are made in the image of God.
But what does that mean?
Some interpret the image as resemblance, meaning we are like our creator in certain aspects, including personhood, creativity, rationality, and ethical responsibility. Others interpret it representationally, arguing that image bearers are simply those who are appointed as God’s stewards in creation.
Which view is correct? Or is there another option?
Jesus’s words help us. When asked by the Pharisees and Herodians whether it was lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, Jesus asked for a coin and posed a question: “Whose image and inscription are on it?”
The coin bore the image and name of Caesar. The distinction he made between those two features is important.
- A name represents someone. It points to a referent, while not resembling it in any meaningful way. The letters of my name don’t collectively look like me.
- An image, however, both represents and resembles its referent.
In other words, an image carries both representation and resemblance.
Christianity asserts that humans resemble God and represent him. We resemble aspects of our creator (rationality, creativity, moral awareness, etc.), and we represent him within creation, being his appointed representatives.
Image-bearing requires both.
Similarity Isn’t Enough
What if we merely resembled God?
Consider the “man in the moon.” The moon’s surface appears to form the outline of a human face, being similar in appearance to a man. But we would not say the moon bears the image of a man. An image is intended. While the pattern might resemble a face, it does not represent any actual person. As far as we know, it doesn’t represent anyone, fictional or otherwise. The resemblance is merely accidental.
An image requires both resemblance and representation.
AI as Adam’s Image, not God’s
AI systems increasingly resemble human intelligence. They generate language, recognize patterns, solve complex problems, and generate images and videos. In some domains they may surpass human abilities.
But resemblance alone does not make them image bearers. It cannot. AI systems do not represent God, despite the aspirations of their Silicon Valley overlords. They are artifacts, designed and built by humans to mimic humans.
AI is made in man’s image — reflecting aspects of our intelligence and creativity, serving as our representatives (figuratively, and in some businesses, literally). Humans are God’s image bearers, representative reflections of the divine. AI is but a copy of a copy — a shallow one, at that.
We are unique in creation. If our worth derives from who we are, image bearers endowed by our creator with indelible dignity and unalienable rights, then no amount of computational power can erase our worth. No simulated capability will ever diminish who we are spiritually.
Human value is not based on performance. Our worth is given by God, and what he’s given none can snatch away. No machine, however intelligent, can ever replace us spiritually. Relative performance does not determine our ultimate importance.