Bishop Nick Baines - 14/09/2026

Available for over a year

Dolly Parton and AI was not what I expected on Saturday evening at ‘The Last Night of the Proms’, but it was brilliant. At the end the conductor Sakari Oramo quoted Dolly, highlighted her authenticity and integrity, then offered these two words –authenticity and integrity as an imaginative re-definition of the initials AI. Given all the other news about the threats and possibilities of artificial intelligence, this was refreshing - opening up an original way of thinking about the vexed issues around the power of new technologies and who is in control. I’m currently researching a book on a man who was integral to the Polish Underground movement during the Second World War, and, particularly, the 1944 Warsaw Uprising. Using AI we have been able to discover things otherwise way out of reach to ordinary research. One of the things that shocked me was the 1937 Order for Execution of this man’s father by the Secret Police in September 1937 in Leningrad. Not only did the man ordering the death sentence sign the order, he also made the victim sign it. One of the fears being evoked about artificial intelligence is that we are signing our own death warrant by ceding control to machines that we have created, but can’t ultimately contain. And this is where Sakari Oramo’s AI - “authenticity and integrity” - comes in. How do ordinary human beings get the benefits of AI (as I have done in my research) without losing out on those characteristics that make us human in the first place? Authenticity and integrity depend on a person being clear about what makes a human being … and what makes humanity matter. They also require some sort of vision for the future that is willing to limit technological possibility in order to retain the essential core of personhood. Because, if our driving maxim is that all potential must be pursued as a good in itself, then the price we pay will be human agency. The Judeo-Christian principle underpinning this is clear: people are made in the image of God; technology isn’t. It’s said that politicians campaign in poetry but govern in prose. Important though the debate is, I was amused last week to see the slogan “Stop the Boats” transcribed on my television screen as “Stop the Poets” – an easy mishearing. More than ever, we need poets who shape language and ideas in such a way as to remind us as human beings of what it means to be authentic and integrated … especially when facing what some call existential decisions about technology. As the Proverb puts it: “Without a vision, the people perish.” What that vision sounds and looks like really matters.