Wendell Berry's Warning: Technology Must Serve Humanity's Highest Aims, Not Displace Them
Source: https://www.facebook.com/americanspectator/. "Wendell Berry’s Warning for the Age of Artificial Intelligence | The American Spectator | USA News and Politics." September 20, 2026. spectator.org
The Gist
The author uses writer Wendell Berry's decades-old refusal to buy a computer as a lens for thinking about AI today. The core message is: just because a technology makes things faster or more powerful doesn't mean it's good for us—we need to seriously ask whether new technologies like AI actually serve our deepest values and highest purposes, drawing on religious wisdom, before we embrace them.
Conclusion
As we confront AI, we must evaluate this technology (and all technology) not by whether it increases our power, speed, or efficiency, but by whether it serves our highest human and spiritual aims—requiring serious moral and even spiritual deliberation rather than either uncritical adoption or blind rejection.
Premises
- Wendell Berry's 1987 essay argued that emulating machines (speed, ease, quantity) should not be the standard for human progress; instead, we should aim at 'that which is most high.'
- History and scripture (the Tower of Babel, the Ten Commandments, the Sabbath, idolatry warnings) show that when technology usurps the place of the highest good, it subverts language and human coherence, isolating people from each other.
- Technology is not inherently good or bad—the Bible does not reject technology outright (God endorses human work in Eden, Psalm 90 blesses 'the work of our hands')—but its use must be tested against higher values like love of family, community, country, and God.
- Past technological revolutions (like the computer and social media) demonstrate this dual potential: they produced real benefits but also caused significant harm to many lives when adopted without sufficient ethical scrutiny.
- The capacity to do something (power) does not make it good to do—paralleling the lesson of the Garden of Eden—so increased power from technology raises the stakes for both reckless use and failure to realize its potential good.
- AI is likely to be more powerful than almost any previous invention, meaning the stakes of getting this evaluation wrong are especially high, demanding the most serious, all-embracing moral discussion society can muster, potentially including prayer and appeal to Providence.
Assumptions
- There exists an identifiable 'highest good' or spiritual aim that can serve as a legitimate standard for judging technology.
- Human progress and technological/machine progress are meaningfully separable categories.
- Religious and scriptural frameworks (biblical narratives, Jewish commandments) provide valid and broadly applicable guidance for evaluating modern technology like AI.
- Society is capable of, and would benefit from, deliberately engaging in this kind of values-based deliberation before or during AI adoption, rather than being driven purely by market and competitive forces.
- The harms caused by past technologies (e.g., social media) are illustrative of a general pattern rather than exceptions.