The Others We Create

Episode Summary Artificial intelligence raises important questions about truth, responsibility, work, creativity, and the limits of technology—but it also raises a deeper moral question: what kind of people are we becoming through the way we use it? This episode looks beyond whether AI is useful or dangerous to consider how repeated habits of command, convenience, dependence, and control can shape human character. Drawing on Catholic moral theology, virtue ethics, recent Church teaching, and familiar science-fiction examples, it asks what we owe to the intelligent systems we create—not because machines are necessarily persons, but because the way we treat something that appears to think, respond, or serve may form us long before we have settled the philosophical question of what AI actually is. REFERENCES • Elizabeth Dias, “Is Claude Conscious? Inside Anthropic’s Quest to Instill Morality Into Its A.I. Models,” The New York Times, September 29, 2026. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/29/us/anthropic-claude-morals-ai.html • Anthropic, “Claude’s Constitution.” https://www.anthropic.com/constitution • Anthropic, “Claude’s New Constitution.” January 22, 2026. https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-new-constitution • Anthropic, “Widening the Conversation on Frontier AI,” May 19, 2026. https://www.anthropic.com/news/widening-conversation-ai • Gerrit De Vynck and Nitasha Tiku, “Can AI Be a ‘Child of God’? Inside Anthropic’s Meeting With Christian Leaders,” The Washington Post, April 11, 2026. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/04/11/anthropic-christians-claude-morals/ • Chris Stokel-Walker, “The Pope Is Warning About AI. Anthropic Is Asking Religious Thinkers for Help,” Scientific American, May 26, 2026. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/anthropic-asks-religious-thinkers-to-help-shape-claude-as-pope-warns-about-ai/ • Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith and Dicastery for Culture and Education, Antiqua et Nova: Note on the Relationship Between Artificial Intelligence and Human Intelligence. January 28, 2025. https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_ddf_doc_20250128_antiqua-et-nova_en.html • Pope Francis, Address to the G7 Session on Artificial Intelligence. June 14, 2024. https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2024/june/documents/20240614-g7-intelligenza-artificiale.html • Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas. May 25, 2026. https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/speeches/2026/may/documents/20260525-presentazione-enciclica.html • Star Trek: The Next Generation, “The Measure of a Man,” Season 2, Episode 9, 1989. • Star Trek: Voyager, recurring story arc of the Emergency Medical Hologram/The Doctor, 1995–2001. Share & Follow Into Deep Water If this episode gave you something worth thinking about, you can help other people find Into Deep Water by sharing or reposting the episode from Substack to Facebook or Instagram. You can also follow Into Deep Water on Apple Podcasts and Spotify so new episodes appear automatically when they are published. The complete archive of Into Deep Water - Beneath the Readings and Beyond the Readings is available at intodeepwater.substack.com. Get full access to IntoDeepWater at intodeepwater.substack.com/subscribe