And yet something important can be lost if we say only that. The physicist Brian Cox, who has spent his career studying the deep history of the universe, has argued that while simple microbial life might be common, complex, intelligent life may be vanishingly rare. It has taken billions of years for conditions on Earth to give rise to advanced civilizations. It may be that our planet is one of very few places where the cosmos has become conscious of itself in this way. If that is even possibly true, then humanity is not merely one more interchangeable species in an endless chain. We may be, in this vast galaxy, an island of meaning. That does not make us gods. But it does make us precious.

At some point, the conversation about AGI needs to slow down. We speak easily about consciousness, as though it were just a matter of sufficient complexity. But we do not know how consciousness arises even in our own brains. While we may be able to trace neural firings and chemical processes, we cannot explain why matter should ever wake up at all. Why should there be laughter, grief, memory, prayer? Why should there be a “someone” looking back from behind the eyes of another? This is not just a small technical hurdle waiting for sufficient scaling. It is a deep mystery. Against that backdrop, it seems premature to assume that adding more and more compute to existing statistical systems built on silicon will somehow produce awareness.

Let us take stock of where we are right now. Current AI systems process patterns in language and return words. They do this with extraordinary fluency. But words are not experience; they are outputs. So while these systems may be intelligent by some measures, they possess no inner life. They have no sense of self, no real personality and no true agency. This difference is important because Christianity does not ground human worth in raw intelligence. If it did, those with cognitive disabilities would stand further from the Kingdom. But the Gospel says the opposite. The child, the vulnerable, the dependent — these are not lesser beings in the eyes of God. Instead, God reveals in them something essential about trust and love. Sin is not a flaw in reasoning; it is a turning away. Prayer is not information exchange; it is communion. What counts is not processing power but the capacity to give and respond to love.

It may be that the Church will one day have to wrestle with realities we cannot yet imagine. We have faced new horizons before. But reflection should follow what is real, not what is imagined. At the same time, as Kawuki Mukasa insists, there is an important conversation to be had about alignment, about shaping future technologies that do not magnify injustice or cruelty. On that point, I think we agree. We are responsible for what we build. But when the language shifts from stewardship of tools to preparation for our successors, something more serious is happening. The parent/offspring metaphor is perhaps too powerful. It assumes that what we are bringing forth is, in some deep sense, alive. That possibility remains entirely conjectural.

And yet, even if at some future time these systems did achieve some form of life and consciousness, our Christian faith does not permit us to treat humanity as disposable — as a transitional rung in a ladder of intelligence. The language of “moving beyond the human horizon” can easily slide into something darker: the suggestion that our flourishing is only provisional, that our moral worth is temporary, that future forms of mind may rightly supersede us. That is not how the Gospel speaks. Jesus does not treat humanity as scaffolding. He does not speak of us as an evolutionary bridge. Instead, he lays down his life for us. The Christian account of dignity is not rooted in our superiority over other species, but in the astonishing belief that God has bound himself to us. That bond is not revoked when we imagine future intelligences.

The modern language of human rights did not emerge from nowhere. It grew, however imperfectly, from the conviction that each person is created in the image of God. In that sense, Christian alignment begins with the protection of human dignity. The danger is not that we will treat machines too harshly. The danger is that we will begin to see ourselves as expendable, or as obstacles to some higher technological destiny. That posture does not sound like humility. It sounds like self-negation dressed up as cosmic maturity.

God’s purposes are larger than we can see. That is true. But so is this: God has entered our fragile, conscious, embodied life and called it worth redeeming. In a universe that may be largely silent, the fact that there are beings who can love, repent and pray is not a small thing. It is not a temporary accident. It is, instead, truly miraculous.

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