A neighbor's response on artificial intelligence, and why the harder question is not what AI will do to us, but what it reveals about us.
Written in April 2026 as a neighbor's response to a column in the Watertown Current that called for a conversation on artificial intelligence. It stands here, lightly edited for house style, as the first of the Forge Papers.
A recent column in the Watertown Current, "Conversations Needed on Artificial Intelligence," called for a conversation on AI. The author is right that we need one, maybe even more right than he knows. Let's get to the conversation he asked for, neighbor to neighbor.
Most of the AI debate starts from the wrong question. We ask "What is AI going to do to us?" when the harder question is "What does AI reveal about us?"
AI, despite the name, isn't intelligent the way a human being is. It doesn't reason, doesn't know, doesn't care. It runs patterns across the human language it was trained on. It mirrors humanity back to humanity. What comes out is shaped by what we input and by who is inputting. That is where bias comes in, and we will not engineer it out of AI because we cannot engineer it out of ourselves.
That matters theologically. We are made in the image of God, the Imago Dei. AI is made in the image of us, the Imago Hominis. No processing speed closes that gap. The machine cannot be more than its makers, and its makers cannot be more than the One who made them. Everything downstream, whether jobs, privacy, truth, children, or education, hinges on whether we still remember what a human being truly is.
The column is partly right that AI used carelessly can weaken critical thinking. But pointed rightly, the same tool becomes a Socratic partner. It does not do the thinking for you. It pushes you to think harder, the way a sparring partner makes a fighter sharper. That is not the death of critical thought. That is its gymnasium.
The real danger of AI is not the tool. It is the souls shaping it.
The largest companies building this technology are headquartered in places where few believe in anything above themselves. They are, in the most literal sense, building a Babel, a tower meant to reach a god of their own making, because they have forgotten the real one.
The answer to godless tech builders cannot be godly withdrawal. The Amish preserve an agrarian way of life worth honoring. But ours is a different calling: a foot in the world, hands in the work, salt on the food, light on the hill (Matthew 5:13-16). If we refuse to show up for the conversation on AI ethics, are we handing the definition of human over to the builders of Babel by default? That is not faithfulness. That is posterity forfeit.
The conversation belongs to every farmer, shop owner, teacher, pastor, parent, and citizen who still believes a republic draws its wisdom from the bottom up. You do not have to be an expert to have a voice. You have to be a human being and a neighbor, and you already are both.
This is stewardship, not fear. The conversation belongs to us. Let's not give it away.
The Forge Papers are published one at a time, about monthly, and never to fill a calendar. They are the working convictions behind Liberty Forge: data is property, the human stays in the lead, and efficiency never means a working family loses its living. They are argued in public so a neighbor can weigh them. If one of them changes how you see your own shop, farm, clinic, or classroom, write to me. That is the whole point.