AI and the Cultural Mandate

At the moment of Adam’s creation, God gave him dominion over all the living creatures of the earth. Adam’s first recorded act as master over these creatures was to name them. Adam was not simply choosing a name for the animals. He was establishing an “ontology,” giving order to newly minted creation. But after the Fall, man began to abdicate his responsibility to order the world, leading to both chaos and evil. A dominant theme of the last century was a move to technocratic organization — embodying a pervasive abdication of dominion. Data and AI technologies present us with a choice. Many approaches would accelerate that technocratic course toward a transhumanist vision: the idea that that, by handing more of our lives and decisions over to technology, we can transcend the limitations, imperfections, and responsibilities of our human condition. In contrast, we believe that these technologies offer tools to reassert human control, revitalize American companies, and restore dominion in the digital age.