AI, Human Freedom, and the Government of One Another
Human history can be read, in part, as the long history of concentration.
Power was concentrated in kings. Land was concentrated in aristocracies. Knowledge was concentrated in priesthoods, courts, universities, bureaucracies, and later corporations. Wealth accumulated in the hands of comparatively few people, while multitudes lived beneath systems they had little ability to question, understand, or change.
The names of these systems changed. Kingdom became empire; empire became nation-state; landed wealth became industrial capital; industrial capital became financial and technological power. Yet one recurring temptation remained:
A few would know.
A few would possess.
A few would decide.
And the many would live beneath their decisions.
Human civilization has repeatedly struggled with this architecture of power.
But we may now be approaching a profound historical transition.
The emerging age of artificial intelligence raises frightening possibilities precisely because AI can magnify existing concentrations of power. Yet the same technological revolution also opens another possibility: knowledge, analytical capability, communication, education, translation, and participation can become accessible to people who were once excluded from the rooms where consequential decisions were made.
The question before humanity, therefore, is not merely:
Who will control AI?
The deeper question is:
What kind of humanity will AI help us become?
From Being Ruled to Governing One Another
Jesus offered a radically different understanding of human authority:
“You are all brothers.”
— Matthew 23:8
Those words contain an extraordinary social vision.
Jesus does not merely criticize an abusive ruler and propose a better ruler. He attacks the spiritual architecture that makes human beings hunger for superiority over one another.
“Do not call anyone on earth ‘father,’” he continues, “for you have one Father, and he is in heaven. Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one Instructor, the Messiah” (Matthew 23:9–10).
The passage culminates:
“The greatest among you will be your servant. For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
— Matthew 23:11–12
This is not an argument for disorder. Jesus is not abolishing responsibility, teaching, leadership, or social organization. He is overturning the hierarchy of human worth.
Authority remains, but greatness is redefined.
Leadership remains, but leadership kneels.
Knowledge remains, but knowledge cannot become a throne.
Power remains, but power must become service.
This provides a profound theological lens through which to examine the AI age.
Everyone Governing Everyone
The phrase “everyone governs everyone else” must not mean that every person becomes the ruler of another person. That would simply multiply tyranny.
It should mean something far deeper.
I govern myself through conscience.
I influence you through my conduct.
You correct me through truth.
We hold institutions accountable together.
Institutions remain accountable to the people they affect.
Knowledge becomes increasingly available for public examination.
And no individual, corporation, government, machine, or ideology is permitted to claim absolute authority over the human family.
This is not the disappearance of government.
It is the distribution of moral responsibility.
Freedom, therefore, cannot mean, “Nobody governs me.”
Mature freedom says:
I will not surrender my conscience to another, and I will not use my freedom to destroy my neighbor.
That is a much more demanding civilization.
AI and the Collapse of the Old Monopoly
For much of history, knowledge itself created hierarchy.
The person who possessed the library possessed an advantage over the person who could not read. The institution possessing records possessed an advantage over the citizen who could not see them. The expert possessing specialized vocabulary could inhabit intellectual territory inaccessible to ordinary people.
Artificial intelligence can disrupt some of these barriers.
A laborer can question a complicated document. A student can explore knowledge beyond the limits of a classroom. A citizen can compare competing arguments. Languages can cross borders more easily. Vast quantities of information can be searched and interpreted with unprecedented speed.
This does not automatically create equality.
AI can also intensify surveillance, manipulation, economic concentration, military power, propaganda, and control. A technology capable of distributing knowledge can simultaneously become a technology for concentrating authority.
Therefore, AI itself is neither the promised land nor the prophet leading us there.
AI is a tool placed into the moral drama of humanity.
The decisive question remains the character of those who build it, own it, regulate it, deploy it, and use it.
When Character Becomes Visible
The coming age may make human character increasingly difficult to conceal.
As information becomes easier to preserve, compare, retrieve, and analyze, the distance between what institutions say and what they actually do may narrow. Contradictions can become more visible. Decisions can be examined against consequences. Promises can be compared with outcomes.
But transparency alone cannot save humanity.
Knowing more about one another does not necessarily make us love one another.
A perfectly transparent society without mercy could become unbearable.
A highly intelligent civilization without humility could become extraordinarily dangerous.
A society capable of detecting every human weakness but incapable of forgiveness would not be free. It would simply have constructed a more sophisticated prison.
Therefore, the AI age requires something technology cannot supply:
character.
And this is where Matthew 23 becomes unexpectedly contemporary.
Jesus does not ask first how intelligent the scribes and Pharisees are. He examines what they do with position, recognition, authority, and honor.
The Gospel asks not merely:
What do you know?
It asks:
What did your knowledge make you become?
The Street Will Still Examine the System
I have spent many years on the streets of the San Francisco Bay Area, and the street has repeatedly taught me something institutions can easily forget.
A person can possess almost nothing and still possess dignity.
Another person can possess extraordinary knowledge, wealth, education, and authority yet walk past suffering without seeing the neighbor.
No artificial intelligence changes that examination.
Imagine a person sitting beside a sidewalk with everything he owns gathered around him.
The city may possess enormous databases about homelessness. Universities may publish studies. Governments may maintain sophisticated models. Technology companies may build systems capable of predicting patterns of poverty with remarkable precision.
But eventually someone must come near.
Someone must listen.
Someone must see a human being rather than a data point.
Someone must become a neighbor.
The Good Samaritan did not possess the most advanced information system on the Jericho Road.
He possessed something civilization still cannot automate:
the willingness to stop.
That is why technological progress cannot replace moral progress.
The machine may tell us where suffering exists.
Only conscience can answer:
Will I go there?
Freedom Requires Self-Government
The deepest form of democratic government does not begin at the ballot box.
It begins within the human person.
A population incapable of governing its desires will eventually demand systems capable of governing those desires for it. A society unable to distinguish truth from manipulation becomes vulnerable to whoever controls the loudest machine. People who surrender judgment for convenience may gradually surrender freedom without realizing it.
The future of freedom therefore depends not merely upon distributing technological power.
It depends upon cultivating human beings capable of carrying that power.
Wisdom must accompany information.
Humility must accompany intelligence.
Responsibility must accompany freedom.
Mercy must accompany judgment.
Conscience must accompany capability.
Otherwise, humanity may overthrow the ancient throne only to construct a digital one.
Wise Patience at the Threshold
We are living through a difficult transition.
Old structures do not disappear quietly. New technologies do not arrive without disruption. Institutions struggle to preserve authority. Corporations compete for advantage. Governments compete for strategic dominance. Workers fear displacement. Citizens fear manipulation. Nations fear one another.
The temptation will be to rush.
But civilization sometimes requires what might be called wise patience.
Patience does not mean passivity.
It means refusing to destroy tomorrow because we are frightened by today.
Humanity must experiment, regulate, correct, listen, distribute opportunity, protect freedom, restrain concentration, and continually ask who benefits and who bears the cost.
Above all, we must resist the ancient temptation to search for one person, one institution, one nation, one corporation, or one machine to rule the whole.
Matthew 23 points in another direction:
“You are all brothers.”
That may be one of the most important sentences humanity can carry into the AI age.
> The Door Before Us
We stand before a door.
Behind us stretches the long history of thrones, empires, monopolies, hierarchies, exclusions, and systems in which a few possessed extraordinary power over the lives of many.
Before us lies no guaranteed paradise.
Technology guarantees nothing.
Artificial intelligence can strengthen the throne or help dismantle it. It can magnify domination or widen participation. It can make human beings easier to manipulate or better equipped to understand the forces shaping their lives.
The determining factor will not finally be
the intelligence of the machine.
It will be the character of humanity.
Perhaps the great transition before us is therefore not simply from human intelligence to artificial intelligence, nor from old government to digital government.
It is the transition from power over one another to responsibility for one another.
From:
Who will rule?
to:
How shall we serve?
From:
Who is greatest?
to the answer Jesus gave two thousand years ago:
“The greatest among you will be your servant.”
If humanity can carry that truth into the technological age, then AI may become not the machinery of a new empire but one instrument within a civilization of shared responsibility.
No ruler alone.
No corporation alone.
No nation alone.
No machine alone.
And no human being relieved of conscience.
We will need one another.
We will correct one another.
We will learn from one another.
We will bear responsibility toward one another.
And perhaps, through wise patience, humility, and courage, humanity can throw open the door to an age in which freedom does not mean that no one serves anyone, but that no one stands so high that he is released from serving the neighbor.
For there is still one Teacher.
And we are all brothers and sisters.
Pastor Steven G. Lee
St. GMC Corps
September 26, 2026
https://www.facebook.com/steven.g.lee1/posts/pfbid02rw1jtY7k3CNuWAj6HLg1RArntxfpCLTFHhZAGR3kryBNpm36xbZhFpzEMxgy86BEl
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