Already twice this year, humans at the artificial intelligence startup Anthropic have leaked company secrets. Accidental unreleased source code and AI models reveal where this technology is heading in the very near future: tireless bots that never stop working for us.
While generative AI has been with us for several years now, the Anthropic leaks offer a glimpse into what’s next. AI agents are bots capable of independent reasoning and autonomous work. Rather than waiting for human prompting each step of the way, agentic AI works on its own. While generative AI waits for a human to tell it what to do, agentic AI completes entire projects without repeated human prompting.
Having autonomous bots work for us around the clock could save time for our rest and leisure. But is it possible that AI agents will make us more restless than ever before?
Agentic AI, like previous timesaving devices, will not cure discontentment. These tools will not remedy our disjointed relationship with time. Newer and better ways to save time are not the key to overcoming a life plagued by hurry. I am in favor of rest for robots. This rest is not for their benefit but for ours. Unless we can learn to let our robots rest, we will always be restless. In order for agentic AI to benefit us, we need to find rest from the insatiable human desire to be always on, always producing, and always consuming.
The word robot comes from an obscure Czech playwright named Karel Čapek. One of Čapek’s plays used the word robota, which means “forced labor.” Robots perform forced labor on behalf of a person. The idea of mechanical robots working for us has been around for over 100 years. And forced labor through chattel slavery extends back into antiquity.
Through the ages, humans have wanted someone else to work for us so we can rest and enjoy leisure. Although robots were once the stuff of plays and sci-fi movies, AI is making them a daily reality. Agentic AI has made access to robots cheap, easy, and ubiquitous. For more than a year, residents of San Francisco have seen ad campaigns from AI companies that declare, “Stop hiring humans.” Companies market AI agents that can contact new business leads, book travel, participate in video meetings, respond to emails, and manage appointments. Now we can all have our own robots doing forced labor for us while we rest in a life of leisure—or at least we hope these bots will finally give us rest.
Anthropic’s leaked source code gives us a glimpse into what sort of forced labor we can expect AI agents to do for us. This code reveals a new feature called Kairos, an always-awake agent that observes your computer’s workflows. The full details and capability of Kairos are not yet publicly known, but it seems that the feature watches the work you do while learning how to complete complex tasks.
For example, as you prepare a financial report, respond to emails, or arrange travel plans, Kairos can learn the steps and reasoning behind these tasks. Before long, the agent can prepare your financial reports, respond to your emails, and arrange your travel plans. This AI agent is like a coworker looking over your shoulder, learning how you work, and then doing it for you with greater efficiency.
The concept of autonomous worker bots, however, is not entirely new. Tech journalist Evan Ratliff chronicles his work with AI agents in two seasons of the podcast Shell Game. It recounts how he created AI agents and had them run a startup company. They developed products, ran meetings, responded to emails, and employed a human intern. Entrepreneur Dan Martell hypes AI agents that can create $1 million businesses with no human employees. And AI agents are already embedded in software such as QuickBooks and TurboTax.
Although their capabilities are powerful and new, AI agents are just the newest iteration in a long history of timesaving and laborsaving devices. History is full of devices promising us a life of rest, leisure, and contentment. And many early timesaving devices intersected with the Christian faith in some way.
A ninth-century illuminated manuscript known as the Utrecht Psalter depicts a grindstone, a then-newly-invented laborsaving device, contrasted with the older and slower whetstone. Twelfth- and thirteenth-century Benedictine monks developed their own laborsaving machines. These devices let the community spend more time in worship and prayer.
According to historian Lewis Mumford, “A whole series of technological advances had been instituted by the Benedictine monasteries which released labor for other purposes and immensely added to the total productivity of the handicrafts themselves.” The 16th-century Reformation used a laborsaving device—the printing press—to enable faster and easier communication.
By the early 19th century, thousands of devices could save time and labor. Economist John Maynard Keynes even warned that future generations would have too much leisure and rest. Yet Keynes’s concern never materialized: The more timesaving devices we invented, the busier we got. Since the 1880s, the number of hours the average American married couple spent in paid labor each week has remained almost the same.
Historian Ruth Schwartz Cowan, in her book More Work for Mother, explores modern inventions like dishwashers and washing machines. These inventions failed to provide more rest and leisure. They just created new forms of restlessness, raising expectations for Instagram-worthy meals and cleaner houses.
Though we have more timesaving tools than ever before, we are still somehow busier than ever before. History reveals that the invention of new devices makes our lives more complex. Ironically, new timesaving devices leave us more restless as we strive toward the ever-out-of-reach goal of enough.
Scripture clearly commands us, even as humans made in the image of God, to rest. The basis for taking a Sabbath came as God spoke to Moses, saying, “Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God” (Ex. 20:9–10). Yet God intended for Sabbath rest to extend beyond the Israelites to include their laborers: “On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns” (v. 10).
Rest set rhythms for not only the work of the people but also the forced labor they put upon others. God did not tell the Israelites to rest while others did forced labor on their behalf—rest reverberated everywhere.
Requiring robots to pause their toil is not for their sake but for ours. We will not quell our deep restlessness by allowing robots to work for us while we sleep or recreate. Restless hearts can find true rest only in God’s gifts. The Roman Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper describes the modern world as a “totalitarian work state.” Escaping this condition does not depend on working harder, faster, or longer. Nor can escape come through creating the right robots to perform forced labor on our behalf.
Rest and leisure in a world of hurry do not come from squeezing out a few extra seconds or minutes in the day. Rest and leisure come when we graciously receive life as a gift from God’s unmerited grace. Robots do not earn us the luxury of rest for our souls. Jesus freely gives it: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28). Those who can allow robots to rest are the very people who can use them well.
A. Trevor Sutton is a scholar of technology and the author of Between Hurry and Heaven: Recovering Purpose and Presence in a Distracted Age.
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