Artificial intelligence often feels weightless.
We type a prompt, receive an answer, draft an email, summarize a document, create an image, or generate computer code in seconds. The experience is quick, polished, and almost effortless.
But AI is not weightless.
Behind the screen are data centers, power grids, water systems, mined minerals, human workers, training data, and companies with growing influence over information and daily life. Behind the convenience are questions Christians should take seriously: What does this technology cost? Who bears that cost? Does it serve truth and neighbor-love? And what is it quietly forming us to become?
The Christian response should not be fear or blind enthusiasm. AI can help people with disabilities, support translation, assist research, expand access to information, and reduce repetitive work.
Yet usefulness is not the same as wisdom.
“Test everything; hold fast what is good.”
1 Thessalonians 5:21
Christians need neither worship technology nor flee from every new invention. We should receive useful tools with gratitude, examine them carefully, and resist what diminishes truth, justice, responsibility, and love.
The Cost to Creation
AI is often called “digital,” but digital technology is deeply physical.
Every AI response depends on computer chips, servers, electricity, cooling systems, buildings, cables, and the people who build and maintain them. Large data centers do not exist in an imaginary cloud. They occupy land, draw power from electrical grids, and often require substantial amounts of water.
Demand is rising as more computing capacity is built for AI and other digital services. In 2023, U.S. data centers consumed about 176 terawatt-hours of electricity—roughly 4.4% of the nation’s electricity use. This figure describes data centers overall, not AI alone, but AI development and deployment are contributing to rising demand. A 100-megawatt data center can require enough electricity to support approximately 80,000 U.S. households.
Water is part of the story, too. The heat produced by computing equipment must be managed, and many data centers use water in cooling systems. The Congressional Research Service, citing International Energy Agency estimates, reports that a 100-megawatt U.S. data center may consume roughly 2 million liters—about 530,000 gallons—of water per day across direct and indirect use, averaged across cooling approaches. About 725,000 liters, or 190,000 gallons, may be consumed on site. Actual use varies by cooling method, location, and facility design.
These facts do not mean every use of AI is irresponsible. But they should make us more careful with the word “convenience.”
A chatbot request may take only seconds. Yet, when multiplied across millions of users, AI places real demands on creation. In regions with limited water or stressed electrical grids, communities may rightly ask how new data centers will affect land, utilities, water supplies, and local infrastructure.
The Bible calls human beings to stewardship:
“The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.”
Genesis 2:15
To work the garden is to cultivate it; to keep it is to guard and care for it. Dominion is not permission to consume without restraint.
“The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof,
the world and those who dwell therein.”
Psalm 24:1
The earth belongs to God. We are stewards, not owners with unlimited rights.
But AI’s material footprint is not only environmental but also human.
The Cost to Workers
The apparent ease of AI can hide human labor.
Many AI systems rely on people who label data, review outputs, transcribe recordings, test systems, and moderate disturbing material. Some workers may be exposed to violent, abusive, or sexually explicit content so that others do not have to see it. Others complete repetitive tasks through contractors or online platforms, sometimes with limited security or visibility.
The final product may look fully automated, but it often rests on human work that is difficult and unseen.
Scripture repeatedly commands justice for workers:
“You shall not oppress your neighbor or rob him. The wages of a hired worker shall not remain with you all night until the morning.”
Leviticus 19:13“Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you.”
James 5:4
Every product involves labor. The question is whether we will see the people behind our convenience and care about fair wages, safe conditions, transparency, and accountability.
Love of neighbor includes the neighbor whose labor is hidden behind a screen.
The hidden costs of AI are not borne only by workers; they also extend into the moral ecology of truth.
The Cost to Truth
AI can generate convincing text, images, audio, and video. It can also generate falsehood.
Current systems sometimes fabricate information, produce flawed computer code, and give misleading advice. They may also generate citations that are false or impossible to verify. The International AI Safety Report 2026 identifies these reliability failures and warns that current methods can reduce them but do not sufficiently eliminate them in many high-stakes settings.
Christians should care deeply about this because truth is not optional.
“Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor.”
Ephesians 4:25
A fabricated image can make an event appear real. A cloned voice can imitate a loved one. A false article can spread because it appears polished and authoritative. The risk is not merely that people will be fooled; it is that public trust itself will weaken.
Proverbs gives timely counsel:
“The one who states his case first seems right,
until the other comes and examines him.”
Proverbs 18:17
Christians should slow down before sharing dramatic images, videos, claims, and quotations. Verify sources. Look for original reporting. Ask whether the content may have been altered or generated. Do not share something merely because it confirms what you already hope or fear is true.
Truthfulness is an act of love because it protects our neighbors from manipulation.
The Cost to Work
AI may make some work easier. It may assist research, reduce tedious tasks, improve accessibility, and help people communicate more effectively.
But it may also reshape tasks, reduce demand for certain roles, pressure employees to produce more, or disrupt entry-level opportunities. The International AI Safety Report 2026 concludes that economists disagree about AI’s eventual labor-market effects. Early evidence shows no overall employment effect, but also indicates reduced demand for early-career workers in certain AI-exposed occupations, including writing.
Work matters because people are not merely consumers or units of productivity. Work is one way we serve others, develop skills, exercise responsibility, and participate in God’s care for the world.
“And to aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands.”
1 Thessalonians 4:11“Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.”
Ephesians 4:28
The issue is not preserving every task exactly as it is. Some dangerous and repetitive work should be reduced. The concern is whether technological efficiency promotes human flourishing or merely intensifies extraction.
Employers should ask whether AI helps workers do more meaningful work or treats them as expendable. Workers should ask whether it strengthens judgment and skill or weakens habits of patience, attention, honesty, and responsibility.
The Cost to Relationship
AI can seem personal. It remembers details, responds immediately, sounds sympathetic, and offers encouragement at any hour. For lonely or grieving people, that can be powerfully appealing.
But a machine’s apparent attentiveness is not human love.
AI can simulate empathic language, but it cannot truly bear burdens, make a covenant, forgive an offense, share a meal, sit beside someone in grief, or offer embodied care.
“It is not good that the man should be alone.”
Genesis 2:18
The danger is not merely that someone might call an AI system conscious. The greater danger is settling for artificial companionship because it asks less of us than real relationships do.
The International AI Safety Report 2026 notes that AI-companion apps have tens of millions of users. Evidence about their psychological effects is still early and mixed, though the report notes that a small share of users show patterns associated with increased loneliness and reduced social engagement. It also finds early evidence that reliance on AI can weaken critical thinking and encourage automation bias—the tendency to trust an AI output without enough scrutiny.
Real friendship involves patience, vulnerability, forgiveness, sacrifice, and presence. It can be inconvenient, but it is one of God’s gifts.
“And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together.”
Hebrews 10:24–25
The church should become more committed to embodied community, not less: shared worship, meals, prayer, service, conversation, and friendship.
Use Technology Wisely
Artificial intelligence is neither a savior nor inherently evil. It is a powerful human-made tool, and like every tool, it reveals something about the hearts and priorities of those who build and use it.
Christians should welcome AI where it supports accessibility, learning, truth, and faithful service. But we should resist uses that normalize deception, exploitation, plagiarism, manipulation, isolation, or moral passivity.
Before using an AI tool, ask:
Is this true, and can I verify it?
Does this respect the people affected by it?
Is it helping me serve others or avoid responsibility?
Is it replacing a task requiring human care or moral judgment?
What labor and natural resources support this convenience?
Is it shaping me toward wisdom, gratitude, and love?
“Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time.”
Ephesians 5:15–16
The hidden cost of AI is not only electricity, water, labor, or money. It also includes truth, attention, work, character, and relationships.
Christ is Lord over every server, algorithm, office, classroom, laboratory, and data center. Because He is Lord, Christians can use technology without becoming enslaved to it.
We can ask harder questions. We can choose patience over constant convenience. We can protect the truth. We can care for hidden workers. And we can love our neighbors in an increasingly automated world.
~ Sunny
Sources and Further Reading
Congressional Research Service, Data Centers and Their Energy Consumption: Frequently Asked Questions.
International AI Safety Report, International AI Safety Report 2026.
International AI Safety Report, 2026 Report: Executive Summary.
All Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (ESV).