You don’t need to believe in a god to get a religious exemption from using AI at work

David Durman, an administrator at the University of Kentucky, has become the first Humanist known to win a workplace accommodation letting him abstain from using AI. Durman is a nontheistic Humanist, meaning he holds no belief in a god, yet his request was granted as a religious exemption — a route typically associated with the devoutly faithful.

Durman described Humanism to TechCrunch as "a collection of beliefs about the human experience and how humans interact with the world," centered on human well-being and flourishing, individually and collectively. He argued that overreliance on AI erodes the capacity for moral reasoning: "The way we become moral actors for ourselves and for others is through the active application of our minds," he said, warning that diminishing that through AI use will harm that ability.

To build his case, Durman turned to the American Humanist Association, a nonprofit that advances secular humanism, which published a statement from him earlier this week. In it, he contended that AI interferes with people's ability to earn a living, carries environmental costs that spell disaster for the planet, and that its supplanting and theft of human creativity threatens cultural institutions like art and literature. Alexandria Huiskens, a staff attorney at the AHA, framed the accommodation as part of a broader pattern: concern about AI and human dignity, she said, runs through Catholic teachings, Universalism, and Humanism alike, and nontheists should know they are also protected by the law at work.

Durman was inspired to pursue the accommodation after reading about Erin Maus, a Unitarian Universalist and software engineer who secured similar protections. His case is one of the first to be discussed publicly, which he said reflects personal conviction rather than an attempt to tell others how to think or feel — though he hopes it encourages people with similar concerns to pursue protections wherever they feel is most appropriate. The University of Kentucky said it reviews religious accommodation requests individually, weighing the employee's job responsibilities and the circumstances of each request, per spokesperson Jay Blanton.

The episode lands amid wider unease about AI and dignity, including from Pope Leo XIV, who has decried AI as a threat to human dignity. What remains untested is how broadly employers and courts will read "religious" accommodation frameworks to cover secular ethical systems, how such exemptions will interact with jobs where AI is deeply embedded in workflows, and whether more institutions will formalize opt-out policies — or push back as requests multiply.