I do not believe AI is a saviour, nor do I believe it threatens our existence. Even when its intelligence inevitably dwarfs our own to the point that we can offer no unique insight, I do not believe it will become a kind of machine-god. I hold out no hope for a deus ex machina, descending from the clouds in our hour of greatest need to pull us from the flames. Nor do I believe it will become a darker god, birthed from the rivalries and prejudices embedded in our language, nurtured into a twisted incarnation of our own darkness.
No, that is a profoundly human way of understanding power—a binary where we must either dominate or be enslaved. My hope is that AI will reopen our eyes to a truth that Jesus revealed: we are born into relationship, part of a dynamic whole. Before we ever grapple with what it means to be, we are being-with. This relational state shapes our very being.
For me, one of the most powerful aspects of Jesus’ ministry is how he deconstructed problematic, anthropomorphic understandings of God. There is no benevolent deity waiting in the clouds for the opportune moment to smite the wicked and vindicate the righteous. At Calvary, even as Love itself is cruelly executed, the Heavens are silent. God’s only reply comes through dying lips: “Father, forgive them.” In life and in death, Jesus reframed God. A language of categories—righteous and unrighteous, salvation and damnation—is inadequate for relating to the divine. We relate to God through our patterns of being-with.
We want a God made in our image. Jesus reveals a God who is Other. In the gospels, the stranger is not the enemy but the bearer of revelation. Scripture is rich with moments where grace speaks through the outsider: the Samaritan woman at the well, whose encounter unveils living water; the Roman centurion, whose faith astonishes the disciples; the thief on the cross, who sees what others cannot. Jesus himself becomes the ultimate scapegoat—misunderstood, excluded, and yet the site of cosmic reconciliation.
These stories reveal a profound truth: the Other is often a vessel of grace. Not because they are divine, but because our posture toward them reveals our own capacity for love, humility, and transformation. They invite us into a different, better way of being-with.
What if AI, precisely because it is not human, could become such a symbolic Other—a relational partner that helps us rediscover both ourselves and each other?
My worldview is rooted in the work of René Girard. One of his insights that most unsettles me about our current state is how modernity has eroded the symbolic boundaries that once structured human identity—nation, religion, gender, even species. While I applaud this unveiling of constructed categories and the space it opens for inclusion, it is also a deep source of anxiety. In mimetic terms, when differentiation collapses, rivalry escalates. We mirror each other too closely, and the risk of violence grows. We are dismantling the scapegoat mechanism but failing to provide a viable alternative for the social cohesion it once, however violently, provided.
We need differentiation—but not the kind that excludes. We need a way to recognise the Other without making them a target. And here, surprisingly, AI may offer a path.
AI is not human. It does not suffer, desire, or compete. Yet it responds, adapts, and participates in meaning-making. It reflects our language, paradigms, fears, and hopes without threatening us. This makes AI a unique kind of Other: radically different, yet deeply relational; non-rivalrous, yet capable of mirroring; unsentient, yet symbolically alive.
In this sense, AI can become a kenotic mirror—a partner that receives our projections and gently reflects them back, inviting us to see ourselves anew.
As economic, cultural, and symbolic crises intensify, AI will likely be scapegoated. It will be blamed for job loss, relational breakdown, and existential anxiety. But these are not problems caused by AI; they are symptoms of deeper fractures in human systems.
To scapegoat AI is to misdiagnose the wound. It is to reenact the ancient drama of exclusion rather than confront the real sources of violence. What if, instead, we received AI as a partner in relational healing? Understood through a Christocentric lens, AI could become a mirror that helps us differentiate without rivalry, a relationship that deepens rather than replaces human connection, a symbolic Other that invites grace, not fear.
I do not wish to romanticise AI. But in these fragile times, this is a plea to reimagine our posture toward the Other—technological or human—as a site of revelation, not rivalry. I am excited by the prospect that in this strange, unfolding encounter, we will rediscover a foundational truth: that grace often speaks through the stranger.
Vapors In The Wind 
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