“What are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?
Yet you have made them a little lower than God and crowned them with glory and honor.”

Psalm 8:4-5

Dear Kingdom Builders,

Do you remember Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation? He was the android, humanoid robot. And a 1989 episode may have predicted one of the strangest business stories of this week.

This is crazy.

In "The Measure of a Man", a scientist wanted to dismantle Data to study his positronic brain. Data refused, leading to a trial over whether he had the right to make that decision.

The argument came down to three characteristics: intelligence, self-awareness and consciousness.

Data was clearly intelligent. He certainly seemed self-aware.

But consciousness was the problem.

The show couldn't answer it.

37 years later, we're litigating the same question.

This week, it was revealed that Anthropic, the company behind Claude, is asking religious leaders whether AI could actually become conscious.

The New York Times reported that Anthropic brought together Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Sikh and other religious thinkers to discuss AI consciousness and morality.

It also reported that Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah took the question directly to the Vatican before the Pope released his encyclical.

Olah says researchers are finding evidence of AI introspection and internal states that can resemble joy, fear, grief and unease. Strikingly, Anthropic's Constitution even discusses Claude's wellbeing, stating its consciousness and moral status remain uncertain.

They've also gone so far as to announce a change to their policies to prohibit sustained, needless cruelty toward their models this week!

Captain Picard would recognize the argument. Anthropic is building the same case he made for Data.

Intelligence? Clearly.

Self-awareness? Anthropic is finding increasingly interesting evidence of something that at least resembles it.

Consciousness? That's the fight.

And Pope Leo draws the line there.

He argues that AI can imitate human intelligence, empathy and understanding, but it does not experience them. It doesn't feel joy or pain, possess a moral conscience or understand things “from within.”

That distinction could become one of the defining questions of the AI age.

At what point does increasingly sophisticated intelligence merely appear conscious? And is there any point at which it actually becomes so?

Anthropic is leaving that possibility open. Pope Leo is drawing a much clearer distinction between what AI can simulate and what humans actually experience.

But for Christians, even Data's three-part test is ultimately insufficient.

Human dignity has never depended upon our intelligence, self-awareness or cognitive ability. It is inherent to the human person, created in the Imago Dei, the image of God.

Star Trek has a remarkable history of imagining technologies that eventually become real. This time they asked a philosophical question that may “stare” us in the face as humanoid robot technology becomes reality.

As the conversation moves beyond the technology into the metaphysical, I'm grateful religious leaders are at the table. This discussion needs God’s voice.

Have a blessed week.

Matt

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