Posted September 16, 2026
The ongoing debate over artificial intelligence would be curious if it were not so urgent. According to Axios, President Trump has “explicitly placed AI doomerism in the same bucket as the Russia investigation, climate change, and his impeachments” as the latest entry in a catalog of “hoaxes.” A CNN commentator similarly asks, “If AI really could kill us all, why give any ground to China?”
By contrast, Time reports that “many AI researchers have said, in private and increasingly in public, that this moment feels like February 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic was just beginning and the world stood on the brink of changing dramatically—first a little, then all at once.” Neuroscientist Erik Hoel similarly calls this “humanity’s Flight 93 moment,” urging us to do with AI what the brave passengers did on 9/11 in crashing the plane before it could strike the Capitol or the White House. In his view, we must ban AI superintelligence and “recursive self-improvement” (where AI improves itself apart from human engagement) to prevent “both existential risk and human disempowerment.”
In “The AI Tipping Point,” Time details at length the recent history of AI issues that have led to the place where so many leaders in the field are alarmed for our future. The article concludes:
Even if you believe all these powerful actors—governments in Washington and Beijing, executives with trillions on the line—are willing to take unprecedented steps in the interest of AI, there remains the paradox that hinders progress. Each side’s willingness to act depends on the actions of others.
Therein lies my focus today.
The American republic is the world’s longest-running experiment in democratic self-governance, with the oldest active written national constitution of its kind in the world. However, James Madison, known as the “Father of the Constitution,” observed in Federalist 51: “In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and the next place oblige it to control itself.”
For a government to “control” itself and then those it governs, those who comprise that government must be worthy of our trust. As Madison asked, “If man is not fit to govern himself, how can he be fit to govern someone else?”
In a poll released yesterday, Gallup found that 89 percent of Americans believe corruption is “widespread throughout the government of this country.” Seventy-one percent say the same about businesses located within the US.
We live in a day when 72 percent of Republicans and 63 percent of Democrats view the opposing party as more immoral than other Americans. Only 28 percent of us have a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust in the mass media, and only 53 percent of us trust the American people as a whole.
How, then, are we to achieve consensus on AI, Iran, China, the economy, abortion, euthanasia, or a host of other critical issues?
Cultural commentator David Brooks has launched a new podcast with The Atlantic, The Permanent Questions with David Brooks, focusing on life’s deepest issues. In his inaugural interview with Notre Dame philosopher Meghan Sullivan, Brooks states:
We as a society are over-politicized and under-moralized. That is to say, we pay attention to every little political scandal, but many people have been given no instruction on the basic questions of how to live, of how they should find their calling, what they should really want. . . .
America seems to be going through some sort of spiritual, relational, and social, and maybe moral, crisis. You know all the stats: rising loneliness, rising despair, rising distrust, rising polarization.
We’re living through a period of great technological advance, but we’re losing our humanistic core. Because of technological improvements and social deterioration, our lives are objectively better, but subjectively worse. The elements of civilization that lift the spirit and nurture the affections are playing a smaller and smaller role in our national life. Religion, literature, art, theology, history, philosophy, friendship, even conversation.
In describing our culture, he points to Søren Kierkegaard’s “aesthetic” stage, in which we seek what Brooks calls “pleasant experiences” as the purpose of life. I am afraid he’s right. Neil Postman’s warning in 1985 that we are “amusing ourselves to death” in the entertainment age is even more urgent in the world of social media, content streaming, and AI.
But the good news is that the bad news can prompt our pursuit of the best news.
In addition to the aesthetic, Kierkegaard proposed two higher stages: the ethical, where we seek meaningful existence through moral action, and the religious, where we employ a “leap of faith” to discover ultimate purpose and fulfillment through a relationship with the divine. When we submit ourselves fully to our Maker, he empowers us to embrace morality we cannot otherwise achieve and guides us to happiness we cannot otherwise experience.
Not that our purpose should be to be happy or even to be moral. Our purpose in knowing and serving God should be to “be conformed to the image of his Son” (Romans 8:29), to be shaped into the likeness of our Lord so that “Christ is formed in you” (Galatians 4:19) and people see Jesus in us (cf. Acts 4:13).
Some 62 percent of Americans identify as Christians, comprising more than two hundred million believers. Imagine the impact if each of them manifested the character of Jesus in our broken culture, continuing his earthly ministry through their own. Now imagine the impact where you and I live if we did the same.
The attorney and writer Bob Goff is right:
“Our problem with following Jesus is that we’re trying to be a better version of us, rather than a more accurate reflection of him.”
Which goal will you choose today?
“People had only to look at Jesus to see what God is like. People today should only have to look at us to see what Jesus is like.” —Randy Alcorn
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