Uploaded February 2024 | Updated September 2026, 18 hours ago
No buzzword is buzzier than 'AI'. Depending on who you talk to, it's either going to deliver the perfect utopia we've always dreamed of, take over the world and wipe us off the face of the earth – or simply fail to take off altogether.
Whichever of these scenarios we're heading towards, what we do know is that AI poses all kinds of weird new questions about human identity, consciousness, sentience, and value. Can a machine learning model be a person? Can it be self-aware? Can it suffer? Does it need rights?
And in the middle of all that – what happens to our understanding of who we are before God? So much of our understanding of what it means to be 'made in the image of God' has to do with our minds: our ability to reason, problem-solve, create. When AI can do all of that better than us – when AI becomes more human than humans – what does that say about who we are, and about who God is?
To untangle all this, Paul Woolley and Grace Fielding chat to Eve Poole, author of 'Robot Souls: Programming in Humanity', which explores how understanding human 'code' can help us build safer AI. Eve is a leadership expert, author, and frequent commentator on ethics in public life. She was formerly Third Estates Commissioner, one of the most senior lay roles in the Church of England, and was appointed OBE in 2023 for services to education and gender equality. Find out more at evepoole.com
No buzzword is buzzier than 'AI'. Depending on who you talk to, it's either going to deliver the perfect utopia we've always dreamed of, take over the world and wipe us off the face of the earth – or simply fail to take off altogether.
Whichever of these scenarios we're heading towards, what we do know is that AI poses all kinds of weird new questions about human identity, consciousness, sentience, and value. Can a machine learning model be a person? Can it be self-aware? Can it suffer? Does it need rights?
And in the middle of all that – what happens to our understanding of who we are before God? So much of our understanding of what it means to be 'made in the image of God' has to do with our minds: our ability to reason, problem-solve, create. When AI can do all of that better than us – when AI becomes more human than humans – what does that say about who we are, and about who God is?
To untangle all this, Paul Woolley and Grace Fielding chat to Eve Poole, author of 'Robot Souls: Programming in Humanity', which explores how understanding human 'code' can help us build safer AI. Eve is a leadership expert, author, and frequent commentator on ethics in public life. She was formerly Third Estates Commissioner, one of the most senior lay roles in the Church of England, and was appointed OBE in 2023 for services to education and gender equality. Find out more at evepoole.com
