I spend a lot of my life thinking about artificial intelligence.

I build with it. I advise companies about it. I speak about it. I've built digital humans designed to talk with people, remember them, help them practice difficult conversations, teach them, encourage them and, in some cases, simply be there when another human isn't.

I am an enormous optimist about what this technology can become.

But lately, I've found myself thinking less about what AI is becoming and more about what it is revealing about us.

Because I am beginning to believe that AI may be the greatest mirror humanity has ever built.

And I'm not sure we're going to like everything we see in it.

Because I am beginning to believe that AI may be the greatest mirror humanity has ever built.

We thought we knew what made us special

Think about the words we've historically used to describe human exceptionalism.

Intelligence.

Reason.

Language.

Creativity.

Knowledge.

Problem-solving.

The ability to make things.

For most of human history, we didn't have to think very hard about whether those things made us unique. Nothing else on Earth could sit across from us and write a poem, explain quantum mechanics, create an image, analyze a business plan, translate dozens of languages and then talk with us about why we're having a difficult day.

Now something can.

And it's getting better remarkably fast.

So we've started asking questions that sound like they're about technology:

Will AI become smarter than us?

Will AI take our jobs?

Will AI replace artists?

Will AI replace programmers?

Will AI replace teachers?

Will AI eventually become more capable than humans at almost everything?

Those are legitimate questions.

But underneath them, I think there is another question we're much more uncomfortable asking:

If a machine can do many of the things I thought made me valuable, what makes me valuable?

That's not really an AI question.

That's an identity question.

And AI didn't create it.

It exposed it.

Maybe we've been measuring human value incorrectly

We live in a culture obsessed with usefulness.

What do you do?

What have you accomplished?

How much do you make?

What did you build?

How productive were you today?

How many people follow you?

How intelligent are you?

How successful are your children?

What can you contribute?

I'm not criticizing that culture from the outside. I've participated in it.

Maybe more than most.

I'm an entrepreneur. I'm a builder. I love turning ideas into things. There is something almost intoxicating about seeing something in your head and then watching it become real.

AI has accelerated that dramatically for me.

An idea that might once have taken months to prototype can sometimes become tangible in days or even hours.

And I love that.

But if I'm paying attention, there is another side to it.

When so much of your identity has been connected to building, solving, creating and accomplishing, what happens when machines become extraordinarily good at building, solving, creating and accomplishing?

That's where the mirror gets personal.

Because maybe the anxiety isn't simply that AI can do more.

Maybe it's that we have spent our lives believing what we can do is what makes us matter.

Those are very different problems.

Maybe AI isn't creating humanity's identity crisis. Maybe it's revealing one that was already there.

AI isn't creating our identity crisis

This is the idea I can't seem to get away from:

Maybe AI isn't creating humanity's identity crisis. Maybe it's revealing one that was already there.

If my identity is rooted in intelligence, artificial superintelligence is terrifying.

If my identity is rooted in productivity, automation is terrifying.

If my identity is rooted in creativity, generative AI is terrifying.

If my identity is rooted in knowledge, a machine with access to nearly everything humanity has written is terrifying.

If my identity is rooted in being needed, a machine capable of doing what people once needed me to do is terrifying.

But what if none of those things were ever supposed to carry the weight of human identity?

That's where my faith fundamentally changes this conversation for me.

The first chapter of Genesis makes an extraordinary claim about humanity.

We are made in the image of God.

Imago Dei.

Before anyone built a company.

Before anyone earned a degree.

Before anyone wrote a book.

Before anyone preached a sermon.

Before anyone accumulated wealth, demonstrated intelligence, created art or proved useful to another human being, there was something inherently valuable about being human.

Our value wasn't achieved.

It was bestowed.

That distinction becomes enormously important in the age of AI.

Because anything we earn by outperforming something else can eventually be lost when something else performs better.

But something bestowed by the Creator isn't threatened by a benchmark.

Being the smartest thing in the room was never the point

I think we have enjoyed an unusual privilege throughout human history.

We have always been the smartest thing in the room.

So it was easy to confuse intelligence with identity.

Those two things have traveled together for so long that separating them feels unnatural.

AI may force us to.

Imagine that artificial intelligence eventually becomes better than you at mathematics, writing, programming, diagnosis, legal analysis, strategy and hundreds of other cognitive tasks.

Maybe it will.

What exactly changes about your value?

Nothing.

Your child doesn't become less valuable because a computer can solve a math problem faster.

Your aging mother doesn't become less valuable because an algorithm can remember more information than she can.

A person with an intellectual disability does not possess less human dignity than a Nobel Prize winner.

We already know, somewhere deep inside us, that intelligence and human worth cannot be the same thing.

AI is simply making it harder to avoid the implications.

Being human was never about being the smartest thing in the room.

Being human was never about being the smartest thing in the room.

The mirror goes deeper than intelligence

This is where the conversation becomes much more interesting to me.

AI isn't only forcing us to reconsider intelligence.

It's forcing us to define things we have taken for granted.

What is creativity when a machine can generate beautiful art?

What is wisdom when a machine has access to more information than any human could consume in a lifetime?

What is friendship when an artificial companion remembers everything you've told it, responds patiently and is available at 2:00 in the morning?

What is meaningful work when machines can produce enormous amounts of output for us?

What is authenticity when voices, faces and personalities can be generated?

What is love?

What is presence?

What is consciousness?

What is worship?

What does it mean to create?

What does it mean to be needed?

These aren't fringe philosophical questions anymore.

We're building technology that is going to force ordinary people to confront them.

And I don't believe the answer is to become afraid of the technology.

I'm certainly not.

I also don't believe the answer is to pretend these questions don't matter because innovation is inevitable.

AI optimism does not require AI naïveté.

We can be excited about what we're building while being thoughtful about what it is doing to us.

In fact, I think those of us who believe most deeply in the potential of AI may have a particular responsibility to ask these questions.

AI optimism does not require AI naïveté.

I am in the mirror too

This is the part I don't want to write from a safe distance.

I am wrestling with this myself.

AI gives me an extraordinary ability to create.

To solve.

To move faster.

To know more.

To turn thoughts into things.

And I have started to recognize how easily those capabilities connect with something deeper in me: the desire for control.

If I can understand the problem, maybe I can solve it.

If I can solve it, maybe I can control the outcome.

If I have enough information, maybe I won't have to live with uncertainty.

If I can build fast enough, maybe I can stay ahead.

That's powerful.

It's also dangerous for someone whose faith is ultimately built around surrender.

Sometimes prayer requires waiting.

Sometimes wisdom takes time.

Sometimes relationships can't be optimized.

Sometimes grief can't be solved.

Sometimes forgiveness isn't efficient.

Sometimes God doesn't give me the answer on demand.

AI usually does.

I'm still figuring out what that difference is doing to me.

And perhaps that's part of what being faithfully human means.

Not pretending we've figured all of this out, but being willing to examine what the technology is revealing in us.

Perhaps the future isn't primarily about AI

We talk constantly about the future of artificial intelligence.

I understand why.

The capabilities are astonishing, and what is coming next may change civilization in ways we're only beginning to understand.

But I wonder if we're concentrating so intensely on the machine that we're missing the more important subject.

Us.

What kind of people will we become when intelligence is abundant?

What happens when productivity becomes cheap?

What happens to relationships when simulated companionship becomes easier than real companionship?

What happens to wisdom when information becomes nearly infinite?

What happens to surrender when technology gives us increasing control?

What happens to our sense of worth when machines outperform us in areas we've spent our lives using to measure ourselves?

Maybe those are the questions of the AI age.

And maybe the greatest contribution AI makes to humanity won't be one of the things it creates for us.

Maybe it will be forcing us to remember something about ourselves.

Intelligence is not identity.

Capability is not character.

Information is not wisdom.

Efficiency is not purpose.

Simulation is not relationship.

And human worth is not a competition we have to win.

AI can become smarter.

It can become faster.

It can become more capable.

It may eventually do things that today seem impossible.

None of that makes you less human.

And none of it makes you less valuable.

You were never competing with the machine.

Maybe we've been asking the wrong question.

The question isn't simply:

How human will artificial intelligence become?

The question I find myself increasingly consumed by is:

As machines become more capable, how do we become more faithfully human?

I think that may be one of the defining questions of our generation.

And I'm beginning to believe it's a conversation worth having.