But he heard a different gospel as a young college student attending UC Berkeley. “I admit it: ‘Grow up in a secular home. Go to Berkeley. Become a Christian’—it’s almost laughable. But that’s what happened.”
Later he would spend decades “teaching on science, technology and faith in churches and university classrooms,” but in December 2022, hosting his Chico State colleagues for a holiday party, AI became front and center.
More broadly, Cootsona realized that “we ought to ask not what AI can do, but whether we are shaping it to serve us, or quietly letting it go the other way.” That’s what he addresses in “An AI Made For Us: A Theological Manifesto” ($4.99 in paperback, independently published).
Though approached from a Christian perspective, Cootsona’s application of what he calls “The Jesus Rubric” (“technology is for us, not us for technology”) may aid those of many faith traditions. AI systems “lack moral agency, and so ethical responsibility falls back on us as human beings and the institutions that design, deploy, and use AI.”
Cootsona is neither a doomsdayer nor a superficial optimist. In a fallen world the key is Christian hope. “As followers of Jesus, we believe that the full humanity for which AI must be made is the humanity revealed in him, which is to say embodied, relational, morally engaged, and capable of suffering and forgiveness.”
“AI represents a dazzling extension of our created creativity. But the point of that creativity, from a theological angle, is love of God and love of neighbor. Where it undermines them, it needs to be questioned, resisted, boundaried, or redesigned. If AI serves love, it becomes a way to care for our neighbor.”
His practical chapters for individuals, communities and churches, including “Sabbath,” “Focal Practices,” and “Creative Collaboration,” are eminently intelligent—with no artificial ingredients added.
