A research administrator at the University of Kentucky has secured a legal exemption from his employer’s AI mandate on the grounds that using tools like ChatGPT would violate his humanist beliefs.
Tom’s Hardware reports that David Durman works as a research administrator at the University of Kentucky (UK) and identifies as a humanist. He told Religion News Service that letting artificial intelligence do his thinking for him would compromise his moral development. The university had been asking employees to use AI tools, including ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot, but Durman sought and received a Title VII religious accommodation exempting him from that requirement.
“The process and work involved in thinking through situations, through my work, through my ethics, through the way I handle other people, is a key component in being able to develop myself as a moral person,” Durman told RNS. Handing that labor over to a machine, he said, undermines his capacity to act ethically, no matter how convenient it might be. “And offloading that labor, regardless of whether it’s taxing or not, is undercutting my ability to be a moral actor,” he said.
Title VII, part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, bars employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin. Humanism is often described as a secular philosophy rather than a religion, but federal courts have previously ruled that it qualifies as one for legal purposes. To win a Title VII exemption, a worker has to show that the belief behind the request amounts to a deep moral conviction, one that functions as an article of faith, and the accommodation can’t create “undue hardship” for the employer.
The American Humanist Association helped Durman pursue his request. Staff attorney Alexandria Huiskens said the case breaks new ground for the organization. “This is the first of its kind at the AHA and for humanism generally to exempt those who see AI use as flying in the face of their freedom of conscience,” she said. She framed the accommodation as consistent with how other religious traditions are treated at work. “For us, humanism is a comprehensive way of life,” she said. “It’s built on inherent worth and dignity, and everyone should have room to exercise this comprehensive way of life at work the same way Christians do, or Muslims do.”
The accommodation doesn’t remove Durman from all contact with AI at the university. He still has to attend meetings and work alongside colleagues who use the tools, and he may have to submit materials to AI systems when a job requires it. What’s changed is that he’s no longer personally required to run the software himself.
Ironically, Durman’s humanism “faith” is much more in line with the beliefs of AI evangelists and the Effective Altruism (EA) movement popular in the Silicon Valley hallways of power. Author Wynton Hall discusses the clash of AI technologists’ secular humanism and traditional faith in his New York Times bestseller Code Red: The Left, the Right, China, and the Race to Control AI.
As Hall explains, the Silicon Valley elite have long been at odds with traditional Christian values:
What's really at stake, Hall argues, is the oldest argument in Western civilization: secular humanism's belief that mankind is innately good and perfectible through engineering, versus the Judeo-Christian belief in fallen human nature that requires divine redemption, not technological upgrades. "Artificial intelligence is defective in the same way that a natural man is defective," Hall quotes the pastor and theologian John Piper as saying. "It can rise no higher than the natural, fallen, unregenerate heart of man." The Reverend Billy Graham agreed: "The real problem, you see, isn't with computers or the code someone devises to control them. Our real problem is within us—within our own hearts and minds. . . . This is why our greatest need is to have our hearts changed—and that is something only God can do."
The transhumanist movement, which Hall explores at length in CODE RED , takes the logic further still. In a famed 2004 issue of Foreign Policy on the theme of "the world's most dangerous ideas," political scientist Francis Fukuyama singled out transhumanism as the chief menace, warning that its incremental advance makes it appear "downright reasonable" until we start nibbling at "biotechnology's tempting offerings without realizing that they come at a frightful moral cost." Former Trump campaign strategist Stephen K. Bannon called it an "immoral Godless technological tsunami that openly declares its intent to transform human beings into a 'posthuman' state."
Hall's closing note, though, is not doom. He points to Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan, who now holds large gatherings in his home where Christians discuss faith with seekers in Silicon Valley. Just a few years ago, Tan said, such gatherings would have been "reviled in San Francisco." He added: "People are so ready to make AGI their god. What we're trying to do with events like this is give them an alternative."
Read more at Tom’s Hardware here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of AI, free speech, and online censorship.
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