What Is Work For? AI, Human Dignity, & the Audacity of Shalom
Pope Leo XIV, the future of labor, and why the real question is not how much more we can produce, but what kind of world our work is helping to bring into being.
Yesterday evening, I had the privilege of participating in a multidisciplinary panel hosted by New College Berkeley, engaging Pope Leo XIV’s recent encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence. Our conversation focused on chapter four, “Safeguarding Humanity at a Time of Transformation: Truth, Work, Freedom.” My particular invitation was to respond to the section on Work—the dignity of labor amid the extraordinary transformations being unleashed by artificial intelligence.[1]
I entered the conversation with deep gratitude for Pope Leo’s moral clarity, curiosity about what emerging technologies might make possible, and hope that this moment of technological disruption might become an occasion for something more than economic adaptation.
I also came with a question. Not simply, What will AI do to our jobs? Not even, How do we protect the dignity of workers in an increasingly automated economy? Those questions matter enormously. But as a practical theologian seeking to live and love in the Jesus Way, I believe we must press toward an even more fundamental question:
What is work for?
What kind of human becoming ought our work make possible? What kinds of relationships, communities, and worlds ought our labor help bring into being? These are questions about the telos of work—its ultimate purpose, its deepest calling.
And I wonder whether the arrival of artificial intelligence is presenting us with something far more consequential than a technological challenge. Perhaps it is presenting us with a theological reckoning.
We have confused human worth with economic usefulness.
And perhaps this extraordinary moment offers us an opportunity to repent of that confusion.
Not simply to make our economic systems more efficient, but to imagine work—and human life itself—differently.
Our Worth Precedes Our Work
The opening chapters of Genesis make an astonishing claim: human beings are created in the image and likeness of G-d.
Before anyone accomplishes anything. Before anyone produces anything. Before anyone demonstrates intelligence, efficiency, usefulness, or economic value. They are already beloved. Already bearers of divine dignity.
This is a profoundly disruptive starting point for thinking about work, particularly in economies that increasingly measure human worth through productivity, performance, and output.
We have become so accustomed to defining ourselves by our occupations that one of the first questions we ask children is, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” More often than not, what we really mean is, “What kind of work will you do?”
But the Jesus Way tells another story.
Our work does not establish our worth. Our worth precedes our work.
Artificial intelligence makes this distinction newly urgent.
As machines become capable of performing tasks once considered distinctly human—analyzing, composing, diagnosing, designing, and solving increasingly complex problems—we find ourselves asking whether human beings will remain economically necessary.
But perhaps the deeper problem is not the technology.
Perhaps the deeper problem is the impoverished anthropology we brought to the technology.
We have allowed our economies to define what human beings are for. And now those same economies are asking whether we are still needed.
The Jesus Way traditions offer a radically different account of our humanity. We are embodied, vulnerable, interdependent creatures, made for relationship, wonder, responsibility, creativity, and love.
Our humanity is not something we must outperform a machine to preserve.
It is a gift to receive, nurture, and share.
And if this is true, then any technological future that treats human beings primarily as units of productivity has already misunderstood what it means to be human.
Work as Participation in G-d’s Shalom
If our worth precedes our work, then what is work actually for?
Genesis offers another important clue. Human beings are invited to cultivate and care for the garden. But notice the order: creation is already good before human labor begins. The world is not raw material awaiting our usefulness. Human work does not establish creation’s worth.
Rather, work is participation in something already beloved by G-d. This suggests a radically different understanding of labor’s dignity. At its best, work feeds people, heals bodies, educates children, builds safe and affordable homes, restores ecosystems, creates beauty, and repairs relationships. It nurtures the conditions through which people and communities become more fully alive.
The deepest purpose of work, then, is not simply productivity.
Work is participation in G-d’s shalom—the flourishing of all and everything.
Shalom is far more than the absence of conflict. It names the flourishing of right relationships: with G-d, with one another, within ourselves, and with the whole community of creation.
And this flourishing cannot be restricted to shareholders, employers, or even workers alone. It must encompass vulnerable neighbors, future generations, communities whose economic futures are precarious, and the more-than-human world whose wellbeing is inseparable from our own.
What might happen if we took this seriously as a measure of technological progress?
What if shalom, rather than productivity, became our guiding measure of innovation?
What if we evaluated artificial intelligence not simply by what it enables us to accomplish faster, but by what it enables us to love more faithfully, share more justly, and repair more courageously?
What if technological advancement were measured not simply by the wealth it generates, but by the flourishing it makes possible?
These are not anti-technological questions. They are profoundly hopeful ones. They dare us to imagine that technological abundance might serve something more beautiful than endless accumulation.
The Jesus Way: Liberation Rather Than Domination
For Christians, our understanding of humanity cannot stop with Genesis. It is ultimately illuminated in the life of Jesus. And the Jesus we encounter in the Gospels repeatedly disrupts the dominant measures of human significance.
Jesus moves toward those whom the prevailing systems render disposable. He dignifies the excluded, shares meals with the marginalized, washes feet, and announces good news to the poor and liberation to the oppressed.
In the Jesus Way, power becomes service, greatness becomes solidarity, and flourishing becomes inseparable from liberation.
This raises uncomfortable questions about the future of work.
Transformation for whom? At whose expense? And who gets to decide?
Whose labor becomes invisible when we celebrate automation?
Whose knowledge and creativity are absorbed into technological systems they do not control?
Who receives the extraordinary wealth generated through artificial intelligence?
And who bears the costs of disruption?
These are not merely technical questions. They are questions about power, justice, and whose lives matter.
The biblical prophets speak with startling relevance here.
Isaiah 58 confronts a religious community whose worship coexists with the exploitation of workers. The prophet insists that genuine faithfulness requires loosening the bonds of injustice, sharing bread with the hungry, and becoming repairers of the breach.[2]
I wonder whether we need to hear that prophetic challenge anew.
What good is artificial intelligence that generates extraordinary wealth while leaving our neighbors economically disposable?
What good is greater efficiency if workers become less free?
What good is innovation if its benefits are privatized while its costs are socialized?
And what good is technological progress if it diminishes our capacity to love?
These are not arguments against artificial intelligence. They are arguments against allowing AI to inherit—and then accelerate—the injustices of our existing economic arrangements. The Jesus Way invites us toward something more than making oppressive systems slightly less harmful. It invites us to imagine liberation.
A Prophetic Dare: Who Gets the Gift of Time?
Here is where I want to offer a prophetic dare. What if we refused to accept that the future of work must be organized primarily around maximizing productivity and profit?
For generations, technological innovation has promised to free human beings from exhausting labor. Yet increased efficiency so often becomes an excuse to demand more.
We work faster. Produce more. Become more available. And somehow remain exhausted.
Artificial intelligence may dramatically increase our productive capacity. But increased capacity does not automatically translate into greater freedom. That depends on how we organize our common life. So I want to ask a question that seems almost embarrassingly simple:
Who gets the gift of time that AI makes possible?
If artificial intelligence saves a worker ten hours a week, who receives those hours?
The worker? Their family? Their community? Or the institution’s bottom line?
If AI frees a nurse from hours of documentation, will that mean more time for compassionate care—or fewer nurses caring for more patients?
If AI helps teachers prepare lessons, will that mean more time for mentoring, attention, and relationships—or simply larger classes and greater demands?
And if AI displaces workers altogether, will we abandon them to the market and call it progress?
Or will we insist that a society capable of generating extraordinary wealth has a corresponding responsibility to ensure that people can live with dignity, security, and meaningful participation? These outcomes are not inevitable.
They are choices about power, wealth, and whose lives matter. And perhaps the Jesus Way traditions offer an even more radical challenge.
Human beings do not have to earn the right to rest.
The biblical Sabbath interrupts the logic of endless accumulation. Sabbath reminds us that we are creatures, not machines. That the world does not depend upon our constant productivity. That workers, neighbors, animals, and even the land deserve rest.[3] Sabbath is not simply a private spiritual practice. It is a profound challenge to every system that treats life as an inexhaustible resource for production.
It announces that our value does not depend on our output.
It places limits on the claims that economies and empires can make upon our bodies, our time, and our relationships. And it insists that rest is not merely a privilege for those who can afford it.
Imagine if the age of artificial intelligence became an occasion for recovering the wisdom of Sabbath. Not simply more leisure for the privileged, but more freedom, rest, care, and meaningful participation for everyone.
Imagine if technological abundance made possible shorter workweeks, stronger communities, more time for caregiving, and greater participation in the ordinary practices that make life worth living.
That would be a technological revolution worthy of our humanity.
From Prophetic Imagination to Embodied Practice
Of course, none of this happens automatically. The future of AI will be shaped by laws, institutions, ownership structures, economic arrangements, and decisions about who holds power. This is where I find the wisdom of Catholic social teaching particularly generative.
Solidarity reminds us that we belong to one another. Subsidiarity reminds us that people should participate meaningfully in decisions affecting their lives. The common good reminds us that flourishing cannot be reduced to private advantage. And the universal destination of goods challenges us to ask whether the fruits of technological innovation are being shared justly.[4]
But as a practical theologian, I am especially interested in what happens when these convictions become embodied practices.
What if every workplace introducing AI began by listening to the people whose lives would change? Not simply informing workers of decisions already made, but inviting them into genuine discernment.
What should be automated? What should be protected? What forms of work are essential to human dignity and communal flourishing?
What if workers helped determine how the benefits of technological advancement would be shared?
What if productivity gains meant more time for family, community, care, creativity, and rest?
What if universities, congregations, businesses, and neighborhoods became laboratories for imagining more humane ways of working?
And what if the people most vulnerable to technological disruption became co-creators of our shared future rather than casualties of someone else’s progress?
This would require more than ethical guidelines. It would require a transformation of power. Because liberation is not something the powerful graciously bestow upon the vulnerable. It requires changing the relationships and structures that have denied people agency in the first place.
The Audacity of Shalom
I want to close with a confession of hope.
I do not believe artificial intelligence will save us. But neither do I believe technological domination is inevitable.
My hope, as one seeking to live and love in the Jesus Way, is rooted elsewhere. In the G-d who loves the world. The G-d who became flesh. The G-d who meets us in our vulnerability. The G-d whose Spirit continues to awaken courage, imagination, and love. And whose shalom invites us toward the flourishing of all and everything.
The future of work is not technologically predetermined. It will be shaped by the stories we believe, the values we embody, and the institutions we create.
We are not merely spectators watching the future arrive. We are participants in shaping the world we are becoming. Perhaps the deepest invitation I hear in Pope Leo’s encyclical is not simply to safeguard humanity against artificial intelligence. It is to recover a vision of humanity so rich, so relational, so deeply rooted in divine love that our technologies are called to serve it.
A world in which workers are not disposable.
Where care is recognized as essential work.
Where rest is not a luxury.
Where technological abundance serves justice.
And where the flourishing of one is never purchased at the expense of another.
This is the audacity of shalom: daring to believe that another way of organizing our common life is possible, and then participating in its becoming. I began with a question: What is work for?
Here is my theological response:
Work is one of the ways we participate in the loving, liberating, life-giving purposes of G-d—in G-d’s shalom for all and everything.
Our task is not merely to preserve work as we have known it. It is to cultivate work worthy of our humanity.
So let us receive the possibilities of AI with gratitude, explore them with curiosity, confront will become more fully human.
And by G-d’s grace, perhaps this extraordinary moment can help us do just that.
Notes
[1] New College Berkeley, “Magnifica Humanitas: Truth, Work and Human Freedom in the AI Age,” event announcement, October 14, 2026, https://newcollegeberkeleykb.squarespace.com/events/2026/10/14/magnifica-humanitas-ai-conversation; Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence, encyclical letter, May 15, 2026, chap. 4, §§131–181, https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/encyclicals/documents/20260515-magnifica-humanitas.html.
[2] Isaiah 58:3–12 (NRSVUE).
[3] Exodus 20:8–11; 23:10–12; Leviticus 25:1–7; Deuteronomy 5:12–15 (NRSVUE).
[4] Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2004), §§160–196, 171–184, https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/justpeace/documents/rc_pc_justpeace_doc_20060526_compendio-dott-soc_en.html
Peace, dwight
