Editor’s opinion: Many research and business organizations are trying to force their employees to use AI tools wherever and whenever they can. It goes without saying that the backlash is as strong as the dogged determination of senior leadership to advance AI, even where there is no need for it at all.
David Durman could be the first employee to receive special exemption from using AI tools for religious reasons. The 45-year-old research administrator at the University of Kentucky identifies as a humanist, a belief system that apparently compels him to avoid AI-based workflows. Durman’s job also doesn’t require AI, which is probably the main reason the university ultimately agreed to his unusual request.
Durman chose the religious route after his university’s leadership began asking all employees to use AI in their work. In a recent interview, Durman said he felt the request went against his fundamental ideas about what it means to be human. In his view, the university asked a fully conscious adult to shift his entire thought process to a chatbot to complete his daily tasks.
Durman explained that “the process and work involved in thinking through situations, my work, my ethics, and the way I interact with other people is a key component of developing myself as a moral person.” Outsourcing this process to a commercial LLM tool essentially meant undermining his agency as a moral and conscious being.
Broadly speaking, humanism is neither a religion in the traditional sense nor a clearly defined philosophical movement. Rather, it is a philosophical stance of various intellectual traditions that emphasizes universal human qualities, the pursuit of knowledge, and the improvement of individual and social conditions.
Durman’s “quest” was supported by the American Humanist Association (AHA), with both parties requesting a religious accommodation of the University of Kentucky under Title VII. Federal law allows employees to request workplace accommodations that allow them to adhere to their religious beliefs.
The university agreed to Durman’s request in September and gave the administrator special permission to avoid using Copilot, ChatGPT and other LLM-based “stochastic parrots” in his work. Before working with the AHA, Durman sent a letter to university leadership citing the Humanist Manifesto III, which the organization first published in 2003.
In the interview, Durman confirmed that he could do his job without using chatbots. At the university he supports researchers with funding applications and related tasks. According to AHA attorney Alexandria Huiskens, the parties had a “very collegial” meeting where Durman confirmed that abandoning AI would not burden his department or reduce its productivity.
Recent surveys suggest that companies’ efforts to fully integrate AI into their workflows are causing increasing stress for employees. Durman argues that AI could have very negative impacts on society as a whole, while humanistic principles are at odds with what he sees as a turbo-capitalist, nihilistic approach to exploiting human nature. In this context, Huiskens said Durman’s “religion” could be viewed as a “comprehensive way of life”, similar to Christianity and Islam.
