Would Jesus like Waymo?

Are robots (and robot cars) repugnant?  To Baptists?  

The Washington Post has the story:

Would Jesus like Waymo? Baptists have thoughts.
As religious groups contend with artificial intelligence, some Baptist pastors are lobbying against a bill that would allow driverless cars to operate commercially in D.C. They say autonomous vehicles are antihuman. By Liam Scott
 

"Would Jesus like Waymo? The Rev. A. Michael Charles Durant doesn’t think so.

“Jesus either walked or rode a beast,” Durant said in an interview at the Tenth Street Baptist Church in Washington, where he serves as pastor. “He would be opposed to technology that was opposed to people, and I believe that this is opposed to people.”

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"In recent months, Durant has joined local Baptist pastors and other top leaders in the National Baptist Convention — which bills itself as the largest Black religious organization in the United States — in opposing autonomous vehicles, including in the District, where the D.C. Council is weighing a bill that would legalize their commercial operation.

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“God created us to be interdependent,” Durant said from his green-carpeted office. “The greatest danger is not that humans will be not needed, but that we create an environment where humans don’t need each other.”

"Their opposition to autonomous vehicles comes as religious communities grapple with artificial intelligence and what the technology means for the human condition and all its messy beauty.

“Automation can dehumanize humanity. The Book of Genesis declares that God created man, and then he breathed into man’s nostrils, and man became a living soul,” said C.H. Johnson, the pastor at Christ Missionary Baptist Church in Maryland. “If we’re not careful, technology can rob us of our humanity, can rob God’s creation of our humanity.” 

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"In his first encyclical, published in May, Pope Leo XIV elevates the ethics of AI to a religious imperative. In “Magnifica Humanitas,” Leo argues that the unconstrained proliferation of AI may threaten humanity and foster inequity.

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"Not all religious leaders oppose robotaxis. At an April event hosted by the Innovation Majority Institute think tank, the Rev. Thomas Bowen, from Shiloh Baptist Church in D.C., recalled when taxis drove right by him as a Black man in the District and New York years ago. He said he was excited when Uber and Lyft came on the scene but that he has faced similar issues with those services.

“Why should I have to put on a suit to get a taxi?” said Bowen, who is the general secretary of the Washington-based Progressive National Baptist Convention.

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"For the National Baptist Convention’s annual gathering this week in Florida, Durant, chairman of the group’s board, prepared a video to screen in which he called on his fellow pastors to oppose autonomous vehicles in their communities around the U.S."