AI and the
Theology of the Body, Part Three
07/02/2026
A
third author we want to include in our conversation about AI and the theology
of the body is Dr. Carissa Véliz. She’s a professor of philosophy at Oxford,
and unsurprisingly very articulate, thoughtful, kind, and she also did not
mince words. And of our three interlocutors so far, she’s the toughest and most
pessimistic about AI. Is it only a coincidence that the one person in favor of
AI was a white male who teaches business while the two pessimists are minority
females: an India reporter and a Hispanic professor?
Professor
Véliz gives numerous examples where biases were evident in AI results. She
writes in her 2026 book, "Prophesy": “Another reason [algorithms are
unfair] is that most of these algorithms are fed with historical data, and
racism is baked into it…” She continues: “Predictive algorithms identify
correlations, and not being white is associated with having fewer
opportunities” (137). Carissa Véliz is arguing we should learn from history –
as AI does because data is typically historical – but we should not get stuck
in the past. Like the old definition of insanity: you keep doing the same thing
and hoping for a different result.
The
full title of Professors Véliz’ book, though, “Prophecy: Prediction, Power, the
Fight for the Future, from Ancient Oracles to AI,” suggests a darker and more
sinister reason for the rise of AI, namely, dominance, or the word she more
frequently uses “despotism.” She explains how predicting what you and I will do
next is highly lucrative. She argues: “In the data economy, we are being
surveilled…Our data is feeding the machines deciding our futures” (140).
She
gets more specific: “Data brokers all over the world have a data file on you.
It contains information like your name, age, gender, income, education, and
occupation. Data brokers…track family life events like marriages, divorces,
funerals, and pregnancies…They track your location, which allows them to know
where you live, where you work, how well you drive (Fort Smith drivers are in
big trouble), whether you are buying drugs, or going to a psychologist, or
attending a family planning clinic, whether you are having an affair (through
patterns like two phones coming together in a hotel every week)” (141).
And
here’s the financial ROI for all the surveillance and data mining: “They then
‘add value’ by predicting what you’ll do next and selling that to the highest
bidder” (141). Recently I was talking to several priests about why it takes the
pope sometimes a long time to appoint a new bishop to a diocese. One priest
remaked along the lines of Professors Véliz’s point: “Some priests turn down
episcopal appointments because unlike the past when sins were forgiven and
forgotten, today sins are forgiven and never forgotten.”
Now
all that sounds pretty bad, but Professor Véliz believes things are much worse,
arguing that AI is being used not only to make money but to consolidate power.
She insists: “The act of surveillance is an act of despotism.” She elaborates:
“Surveillance creates asymmetries of power, because the surveilled (you and I
on our phones) is at the mercy of the watcher [AI]. The more information the
watcher [AI] has on their subject, the more power they have over them, and the
easier it becomes to predict and influence their behavior. There is no
surveillance for the sake of it. Surveillance makes no sense without predicting
and an intention to control” (144-45). She cites the totalitarian regimes of
the Soviet Union and China as illustrations of the striking similarities
between “authoritarian states” and “authoritarian corporations” (149). Sort of
makes you want to go and live on Gilligan’s Island, doesn’t it?
Once
again the theology of the body comes to our rescue and helps us separate the
wheat from the chaff of artificial intelligence. On the one hand AI can be
“wheat’ in the way it surveils us. How so? Well, surveillance doesn’t have to
be creepy. For example, parents diligently surveil their babies, gawking at
every move, taking pictures of their first steps, and even putting cameras in
the corners of the bedroom in case anything goes wrong at night. Young lovers
surveil each other while on romantic dates and cannot take their eyes off each
other (or their hands). They cannot bear to be apart, even for a moment. God,
for his part, is constantly vigilant for his children. Psalm 139 asks: “Where
shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I
ascend to the highest heavens you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are
there.” It is good to be super-sensitive, therefore, to AI’s constant
surveillance, because it reminds us of God’s omnipresence and omniscience.
God's unwaveringly gaze upon us.
But
John Paul also reminds us God does not surveil us for the sake of dominating
us, but rather for the sake of dying for us as a Spouse. John Paul touches on
one of the touchiest passage of Scripture, Ep 5:22, which reads: “Wives be
subject to your husbands as you are to the Lord.” You know how all brides love
to plaster that passage on their wedding cakes. The pope-saint immediately
clarifies: “When [St. Paul] expresses himself in this way, [he] does not intend
to say that the husband is the ‘master’ of the wife and that the interpersonal
covenant proper to marriage is a contract of domination by the husband over the
wife.” Then the Holy Father adds a little later: “This relationship is…not
one-sided submission…Husband and wife are, in fact, subject to one another.”
Then
he reveals the root of this mutual submission: “Christ is the source and at the
same time the model of that submission – which confers on the conjugal union a
deep and mature character” (474). In other words, if you want to know why God
surveils us, we only have to look at the cross. God watches over us not to
dominate us but to die for us. That death to self is how Jesus loves his Bride,
the Church – he cannot take his eyes and hands off us – and that death to self
is how husbands and wives should love each other. And that dynamic is the exact
opposite of how AI interacts with us. That is, AI surveils us to dominate us;
Jesus surveils us to die for us.
Praised be Jesus Christ!
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