What happens when a machine offers to give you back someone you love?
That question opens this episode with Autumn Ridenour. We begin with the idea of a “Granny-Bot”: a chatbot built from a dead relative’s messages, voice notes, and emails. It sounds comforting at first, but Ridenour helps us see why such technologies don’t really preserve communion. They risk replacing grief, memory, and creaturely acceptance with a digital imitation of presence.
Ridenour is a Christian ethicist at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and the author of books on Sabbath, aging, and the moral challenges of the digital world. She brings biblical depth and Augustinian insight to some of the hardest questions raised by AI. In our conversation, she argues that the digital age tempts us to resist human limits rather than receive them. But dependence, embodiment, and finitude aren’t defects to be engineered away. They’re part of what it means to be creatures before God.
We also talk about Babel, transhumanism, aging, and the difference between simulation and real relationship. Again and again, Ridenour points beyond Silicon Valley’s promises to the richer Christian hope of face-to-face communion with God and one another. She joined me on Silicon Spiritualities to explore what AI reveals about our deepest longings, and why no machine can finally satisfy them.
Resources Mentioned:
- Sabbath Rest as Vocation by Autumn Ridenour
- Restlessness and Belonging by Autumn Ridenour
- A Grief Observed by C. S. Lewis
PREORDER The AI Apocalypse: A Survival Guide for Humanity, featuring Ridenour, Watkin, Brett McCracken, and many others, such as Ben Sasse and Alan Noble.
JOIN the conversation on Discord, along with other Silicon Spiritualities listeners.
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