Todd Singletary
Jul 22, 2017 · 2 min read

AI, The Human Touch, and Impermanence

How does AI fit within a Christian worldview for end of life issues?

I came across these 2 articles this weekend. One was sourced from Kyle Westaway Weekend Briefing (I highly recommend). The other was from an Apple News digest, but they both touch on artificial intelligence and its potential use for end of life and even afterlife care.

“Another nursing home in China has taken a pragmatic approach to encourage more human companionship — it rewards people who visit their elderly relatives with vouchers that can be used to pay the nursing home.”

This article is the easier one to parse from a Christian worldview. The church, even in China, has a huge ability to provide the human touch that AI will never be able to provide. There are obviously cultural factors in play and even logistical factors related to the one-child policy as mentioned in the article.

However, this loneliness for those in assisted living facilities is not limited to China. We should work towards filling the gap of human companionship so that we’re not dependent on robots to do what we are called to do anyway.


This 2nd story is a bit more complex. Is this simply a more technologically advanced way to preserve the history of someone’s life that you care about? We’ve done this through history via letters, memoirs, audio recordings, and most recently video. In one sense this feels like the natural progression.

The conversational piece points out what we all seem to desire — the end of death. We yearn for a world where death does not have the final say. We want to preserve life — even if through artificial means — to maintain relationships.

“Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end.” — Ecclesiastes 3:11

It is fascinating what technology can do, and we should be grateful for the positive impact it has on our world. We should also think Christianly about it to know where our responsibility lies.

Todd Singletary

Written by

Husband, Father, Auburn man, and Sinner saved by grace alone. RT ≠ endorsements.

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade