蜜芽传媒

According to a report in the Times, 1 in 7 homes plan to buy a robot vacuum cleaner in the next year. This statistic comes from the Aviva report 鈥楬ow we live鈥� which also states that 1 in 10 households already have one. With mild embarrassment, I feel the need to admit that our household is one of those 10% and not only that, but, like many other people, we have personified the machine. In our house, she鈥檚 called fluffy and we talk about her as though she is an actual person.

If a robot vacuum cleaner is at one end of a spectrum, just a small step along from a washing machine or a vacuum cleaner that you push round the house by yourself, at the other end lies generative artificial intelligence chatbots, representing a much greater leap forward. They challenge us to ask a whole raft of questions about what we use technology for. The writer, Joanna Maciejewska has famously said 鈥淚 want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes.鈥� Of course, that is not really the choice. The reality is that AI can do both the laundry and dishes, and art and writing. This poses the question of what human beings will do then? If we use technology to make our lives easier what are we going to do instead of vacuuming the carpet?

At its heart, this asks us to reflect on what makes our lives worthwhile. If a machine can do much of what we currently do, what will we do instead? One response to this question is to reflect on the fact that we are human beings not human doings. As the Genesis creation stories remind us, God created humanity in the image of God and our worth is in our very existence, not in what we do.

At the same time, to be created in the image of God means that, like God, we create. Human beings are, by their nature, creative and our calling is, constantly, to work out what that means in the world today. We cannot know how technology will evolve in the future nor how it will affect us, but we can be confident that human creativity will continue to be essential. Whatever happens and however AI develops, the human capacity for growth and ingenuity is immense and our creativity will take us to places we cannot yet imagine.

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