Should we be afraid of AI?

By Dave Deane

Photo by Steve A Johnson on Unsplash

Fear isn’t just a feeling—it’s a window revealing, not just the frightful things out there, but the fragile things in here: what we love, what we depend on, what we’re afraid to lose. And in that sense, fear doesn’t simply come as a response to danger—it comes from value. Our deepest fears orbit the things that matter most to us.

Unlike previous technologies, AI isn’t neutral. It’s architected by human intelligence. And we’re still playing catch up with what that means—not just in how we regulate these tools, but in how we even talk about them, because we humans aren’t wholly transparent to ourselves. So, these ethical fears aren’t hysteria—they’re what happens when knowledge outpaces wisdom. When we hand powerful tools to people with almost no guardrails, not because AI is evil, but because we never stopped to ask: just because we can do something, should we do it?

But there is another level of fear that’s concerned with WHAT AI is. This is less ethics, more metaphysics, asking questions like: Can AI become conscious? Have intentions? Develop desires? Might it surpass us—not just in power, but in personhood?

In fact, some experts warn that by the late 2020s, AI may surpass human intelligence across most domains. That’s a terrifying thought—but I think an even more terrifying question is: what does it say about us that we believe it could?

Whether our fear is ethical or existential, I don’t think it’s really about machines—it’s about meaning.

We don’t just see the world—we see the world through what we love. And what we love shapes how we see ourselves, each other—and ultimately God.

Which leads to a second point: what our desires project.

If fear reveals what we’re afraid to lose, desire projects what we’re still struggling to find. Together, they form a kind of compass—one oriented by loss, the other by longing.

Here’s the great irony: the more we try to make machines more like humans, the more we end up making humans more like machines. The issue isn’t that machines are gaining value—it’s that we’re forgetting our own. We’ve stopped asking what makes us valuable. Now we just ask if we’re still useful—

Maybe that’s the real anxiety beneath all the headlines and hype. Not the fear of what’s out there—but the ache of what’s missing in here.

Which leads us to a third point: what the Gospel reclaims.

Where fear reveals what we’re afraid to lose, and desire projects what we’re longing to find, the gospel of Jesus Christ reclaims it all—finding what’s lost, fulfilling what’s lacking.

And this isn’t a new story. From Eden to Babel and beyond, humanity’s oldest mistake has never just been what we do—but who we’re becoming as we do it. We eat the fruit, build the tower, make the machine. But unchecked power   without wisdom doesn’t make us gods—it only reveals how deeply we’ve forgotten we’re not. That’s the lesson of Babel in Genesis 11. It wasn’t about architecture—it was about arrogance: a people united not to glorify God, but to “make a name for ourselves.” The danger wasn’t in the bricks; it was in the hearts guiding the hands that laid them.

And so it is today. AI excites the ancient temptation to be like God, without God. To create intelligence in our image and call it divine. To transcend mortal limits. Escape death. And build a kingdom without a cross. 

But in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, we discover that the way to build an everlasting kingdom is not with a tower of bricks but a cross of wood. The cross was not a glitch in the system—it’s the breaking and remaking of it. The gospel doesn’t help us outgrow our humanity. It redeems it. God doesn’t save us from being human. He saves us as human beings. Because our deepest problem isn’t computational—it’s moral. It’s not informational—it’s relational. And here’s the wonder of grace: while we were still climbing Babel’s steps, God came down. Not to upgrade our software—but to resurrect body and soul. That’s what the gospel reclaims—the whole reality. 

AI is something of a cautionary tale in the making. But as we play our part in the story, we’d do well to avoid its twin temptations: to demonise it as a monster, or to deify it as a messiah. We don’t need to collapse into fear and sensationalism. But we must not bow in awe and adoration. AI is not the end of us. It is a tool—and like every tool, it reveals the heart that holds it.

In the end, the greatest threat to your humanity is not a machine with artificial power—but a heart that’s forgotten its true source. The Christian hope is not post-human. It is post-death. Jesus didn’t rise from a server farm. He rose from a grave.

Article excerpts taken from Questioning Christianity.

Read the full resource here: https://www.questioningchristianity.com/watch-and-read/should-we-be-afraid-of-ai