We, Robots? – Religion & Liberty Daily

Robots are finally having their moment. And it’s been a long time coming: Inventors have dreamt of automated robots for centuries. Ovid, in his Metamorphosis (8 AD), tells of the inventor Daedalus creating robot-like automata in his workshop. In the late 15^th century, Leonardo da Vinci used his studies in anatomy to develop plans for a mechanical knight robot. In 1770, Wolfgang von Kempelen impressed royalty with his Mechanical Turk, a chess-playing robot secretly operated by a human moving the chess pieces. Yet, until recently, these robot precursors were just fanciful hopes and far-off dreams.

But not anymore. Many in the tech industry claim that a “Chat-GPT moment” for robotics is here with major breakthroughs occurring almost daily around the world. What Ovid, da Vinci, and von Kempelen dreamt about may soon be in your workplace, home, church, or local grocery store.

Almost overnight, the global AI focus has tilted toward robotics and the bourgeoning field of embodied AI. In the United States, companies like San Francisco–based Gatsby Robotics are offering home cleaning services performed by humanoid robots. In China, over one million robotics companies are at work actively solving robotics engineering problems and bringing new products to market. In South Korea, a Buddhist robot monk called Gabi recently participated in a sugye initiation ceremony, pledging devotion to Buddha and his teachings. The global AI arms race has clearly—and suddenly—taken a very robotic turn.

This rapid profusion of robotics, however, is raising questions about the future of human work. As Marshall McLuhan prophetically warned decades ago, this new technology is being put out before being thought out. Beyond working out the mechanics of software and hardware, we must also figure out the moral implications of our interactions with humanoid robots. Our capacity to remain human must keep pace with these advances in humanoids. Before creating a world of humanoid robots, we must know what in the world it is to be human. Before descending deep into the uncanny valley, we must know what makes humans human and how to conserve this while living alongside humanoid robots.

The word robot has been around for over a century, first used by the Czech playwriter Karel Čapek in his play Rossum’s Universal Robots (1920). The Czech word robota means “forced labor” or “drudgery,” offering some indication of what Čapek had in mind for the purpose of robots. Čapek’s play proved to be very popular in its day, and it helped inspire Isaac Asimov’s later sci-fi robotics literature. Long before Čapek, the ancient Greeks had devised plans for automatons and machines capable of autonomous work. And, of course, countless creatives ranging from John Muir to Rube Goldberg devised machines capable of completing automated tasks. It is fair to say that robots have existed in the human imaginary for a very long time.

The age of AI, however, is turning imagination into innovation. AI is fueling major new developments in robotics and the field of embodied AI. Building upon previous forms of AI, embodied AI combines intelligence systems with physical bodies resulting in agents capable of perceiving, learning, and acting within diverse physical environments. Or, simply put, this combines AI brains with robotic bodies to achieve unprecedented capabilities.

Embodied AI is a departure from other forms of AI. Popular consumer AI applications such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude are large language models (LLM). These chatbots are computer programs that learn by consuming massive text datasets while generating statistically plausible responses. LLMs learn about the physical world through human language. In this sense, LLMs depend on mediated knowledge through language.

Embodied AI, however, learns through direct interaction with the physical world. For example, LLMs read about how easily an egg can be broken while a robot directly encounters an egg in the physical world. A chatbot can provide a second-hand account of the pressure needed to crack an egg; a robot knows this through primary interaction with real eggs. Chatbots read about the physical world while robots reside in it.

Some scholars argue that embodied AI is the key to reaching artificial general intelligence (AGI), or machines capable of human-level intelligence. While technology scholars are divided as to the theoretical possibility of AGI, embodied AI does appear to be a step-change in making this a reality. Advances in embodied AI have prompted the Chinese tech company DeepSeek to declare, “Humanity now stands on the eve of AGI.”

What exactly will the humanoid robot future look like? While the long-term future of embodied AI is opaque, the ways that this technology is already being used can help give a glimpse into where things are heading. Humanoid robots are becoming increasingly capable of handling tasks previously exclusive to humans. For example, a recent article in the journal Nature reported how humanoid robots have surgically removed gallbladders from live pigs. While human surgeons assisted in controlling the robots’ movements, this is just part of training humanoid robots to do it on their own in the future. Japan has its Moonshot research program with humanoid robots caring for its growing elderly population. And highly automated “dark factories” that require very few human workers are already leading to layoffs in the automotive industry in Detroit.

Though it may sound like mere sci-fi, we will soon live in a world of humanoid robots. Or, since China recently announced at the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference that they expect to produce more than 100,000 humanoid robots this year, we are already living in a world of humanoid robots. With all these humanoid robots in our factories and learning to clean our houses, it is time to figure out the social and moral implications of our interactions with humanoid robots.

Most immediately, humans will interact with humanoid robots in the realm of training. Since it is very time-consuming and costly for robots to learn tasks through simple trial-and-error reinforcement learning, robotics companies are gathering large amounts of data to train robots through simulation. This training takes a variety of different shapes, but almost all robot training involve humans working with robots in some way.

In some cases, tech companies are paying people to do chores and clean apartments in an effort to gather real-world data for robot training. In other cases, teleoperators work side-by-side with robots or control them remotely in order to complete menial tasks like pouring water or wiping tables. Either way, training humanoid robots requires humans to think and act like robots. In order to train robots to be like humans, humans have to fit into the world of robots. A teleoperator who stops to sneeze or scratch an itch—or, heaven forbid, admire a beautiful flower—introduces flawed data into the robot’s training.

Yet, human-robot interactions will persist long after the push to train humanoid robots is over. Once humanoid robots are deployed in our factories, nursing homes, and schools, we will live and move and have our being alongside these machines. This means that humans will have close, repeated interactions with humanoids. This will inevitably change human morality and how we navigate the world as moral agents.

The insights of Alasdair MacIntyre are helpful here. In his book After Virtue, MacIntyre outlines a schema for understanding virtue and how moral formation occurs. According to MacIntyre, virtue formation involves three distinct elements: practices, narrative, and a shared moral tradition. As humanoid robots are intertwined in all three of these domains, our morality cannot help but take on a more robotic posture.

Practices are, according to MacIntyre, coherent and complex human activities developed over time that conform to a set of standards and foster internal goods. Examples of practices include farming, architecture, and family life. Our practices form our virtues and morality. However, as humanoid robots shape our practices, our virtue and morality will furtively become robotic. The habits and values of machines will habituate us to think and act in machinelike ways. Human values such as compassion, patience, and mercy may be supplanted by machine values such as efficiency, optimization, and output.

Narrative is another essential aspect of MacIntyre’s virtue formation schema. This has to do with the stories that a community receives, believes, and shares. Human practices are situated within the world of human narrative. As MacIntyre puts it, “Humans are at their core ‘story-telling’ beings.” Our moral imaginary is shaped by the stories we tell and retell. What happens when we can no longer tell or believe a story without machines? Now that Čapek’s Rossum’s Universal Robots is over a century old, we have been thoroughly steeped in stories about humans needing machines to survive.

Finally, MacIntyre argues that practices and stories are lived out within a shared moral tradition that makes sense of human flourishing. What constitutes the “good life” is articulated and cultivated within a community of people over time. Human communities will be reshaped as we welcome humanoid robots into our homes to care for our children and aging parents. The family will expand to include not just father and mother, children and grandchildren, but also humanoid robot help. As with our practices and narratives, humanoid robots will shift our shared-moral traditions in a decidedly machine-like direction.

With this robot moment upon us, we must hold fast to what it means to be human. At its etymological core, being human means being made of the organic stuff of creation (Latin: humus). As we read in Genesis, “For you are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Gen. 3:19). Essential to being human is the recognition that we are not God, life is a gift, death is a reality, and resurrection is our enduring hope. What makes humans human—and enables us to conserve the permanent realities of our being—is the recognition that God is creator of heaven and earth.

The words of Psalm 115 offer wisdom for this age of embodied AI:

Not to us, O LORD, not to us, but to your name give glory, for the sake of your steadfast love and your faithfulness! … Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases. Their idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands. They have mouths, but do not speak; eyes, but do not see. They have ears, but do not hear; noses, but do not smell. They have hands, but do not feel; feet, but do not walk; and they do not make a sound in their throat. Those who make them become like them; so do all who trust in them. (Psalm 115:1, 3–8)

Being human is being made in the image of God. Being human is loving the Lord your God and your neighbor as yourself. Being human is being called by God to engage in dignified work for the wellbeing of others and for the life of the world. Can these things happen within a world of humanoid robots? Absolutely. Yet, descending deep into the uncanny valley will make it that much harder to see the light and remain fully and beautifully human.