Theological Education and the Ethics of AI

The rapid emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) in higher education—and particularly in theological education—represents for me one of the defining theological questions of our age and of the years to come. It has led me to wrestle with a question that is fundamentally ethically rather than merely technological. That is, briefly, I am not only interested in what AI can do but also what AI is silently doing to us—to our understanding of identification, our relationships with one another, and how our understanding of ethics is changing.

To explore this question, I will first consider the issue of identification—how AI participates in constructing and representing who we are—and then turn to the question of ethics, specifically how AI may shape our responsibility for and relationships with others. If AI participates in shaping how persons are understood, it also influences how they are recognized, valued, and treated. Questions of identity, therefore, cannot be separated from questions of our responsibility toward the least privileged in society.

First, I am concerned with the implications of AI for communities that have historically occupied the margins of society, including Latine and immigrant communities. I come to this question from my work in cultural hermeneutics, which reminds me that no technology is neutral. Every technology reflects assumptions about what is normative, how power should be exercised, whose identity becomes the default, and what it means to be human.

Therefore, I ask not only what AI can accomplish, but whom it serves, whom it overlooks, and how it reshapes our understanding of the other. For instance, the categories through which AI defines Latine peoples and migrants will profoundly influence how U.S. society--and societies across the globe--come to see communities that neither design nor govern these technologies, yet whose identities are defined by them.

Recently, I asked an AI system to define “Latino/a/e/x.” In response, it outlined the heritage-based uses of each term, noted which terms different ethnic and generational groups tend to use, and concluded that no single term is universally correct. While this answer offered a veneer of information—general enough to seem accurate—it failed to engage the deeper complexity of these nomenclatures and their histories. These terms are shaped by colonization, economics, migration, race, gender, sexuality, language, and power, among other forces.

The risk is that such an answer may be treated as “fact.” Students in theological education may use it to define anyone who “looks” like they come from Latin America, without recognizing how deeply problematic that assumption is. In this sense, AI does not merely provide information; it participates in shaping social perception. It can flatten complex identities into categories, obscure histories of struggle, and reproduce dominant assumptions under the appearance of neutrality.

For this reason, I believe that Latine voices must be active participants in the ethical and theological conversations surrounding AI. Communities that have long experienced being defined by others have essential wisdom to offer about the ethical consequences of allowing technologies to classify, represent, and speak for them.

Second, if AI participates in shaping how identities are understood and represented, it also participates in how we perceive the other and, consequently, how we treat the other. Too often, society defines the other before truly seeing the other. I would argue that our ethical and theological task is the reverse: to see the other before defining the other. To encounter another person with compassion before categorizing them is, I believe, one of the marks of being fully human.

Here I find resonance with Pope Leo XIV's insistence in Magnifica Humanitas that technological innovation must always remain subordinate to the dignity of the human person. AI should never become an end in itself; rather, it must remain a tool that serves humanity without reducing persons to categories, predictions, or data.

This conviction has profound implications for Christians, particularly those who serve as pastors, advocates, chaplains, and other spiritual care providers. They stand on the front lines of society, accompanying or engaging people in moments of vulnerability, suffering, and hope. Their vocation begins not with classification but with presence, not with diagnosis but with relationship. It is rooted in the conviction that every person is more than the categories by which they are described and bears the image of God worthy of dignity, attention, and care.

As AI becomes increasingly integrated into pastoral contexts, the central question is not whether it can assist pastoral leaders, but whether it might reshape how they, their parishes, and their congregations perceive those who seek to become part of their communities. AI-generated memes that portray migrants as threats to society—as people who take jobs, commit crimes, or endanger the nation—are not harmless images. They help shape public imagination and influence who is welcomed, who is feared, and who is deemed worthy of belonging.

What may have once seemed far-fetched in Christian communities is already a reality in many churches and parishes influenced by Christian nationalism. Such portrayals can predispose pastors and their communities to encounter vulnerable persons first through labels—“undocumented,” “criminal,” “sexual deviant”—rather than as human beings whose stories have yet to be heard.

The ethical concern is not simply whether the AI-generated information is accurate. It is whether the technology has already framed the encounter before the encounter has begun. It is important that pastoral leaders receive the person as a person before interpreting the person through political categories. AI may assist pastoral ministry, but it must never become the lens through which the humanity of the other is first perceived.

AI—as one of the defining theological and moral questions of our time—reminds me of the fruit that was "pleasing to the eye" (Genesis 3): attractive, promising, and seemingly capable of expanding human knowledge, yet—as the story teaches us—requiring careful ethical discernment. As AI is increasingly designed and deployed by some of the most powerful institutions in society, it is quietly shaping the ways we understand and define ourselves and, perhaps more importantly, how we perceive and treat one another—especially those who have long occupied the margins, including Latines and immigrants.

As Dean of a theological institution, I see my task not merely as evaluating AI's remarkable capabilities in the classroom—which are, in many respects, amazing—but, more importantly, as discerning whether its use might diminish our capacity to recognize the image of God in every person and to treat marginalized communities with the dignity they deserve.

This is why theological education must engage AI not merely as a technological tool but as a profound ethical and theological question. We must ask not only what AI can accomplish, but how it forms us, whose humanity it recognizes, whose complexity it erases, and how it shapes our relationships with one another. If AI is helping to define our neighbors, then theological education must ensure that it does not diminish our capacity to encounter them first as persons created in the image of God.