David Durman never has to use ChatGPT or Microsoft Copilot at work. The University of Kentucky granted the 45-year-old research administrator, whose job includes editing grant applications and handling compliance, a religious accommodation on Sept. 25 under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
The law requires employers to make reasonable room for workers’ sincerely held beliefs, and the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission says that includes deeply held ethical and moral convictions. Durman is a secular humanist.
The American Humanist Association, which helped him prepare the request, says his case breaks new ground. Staff attorney Alexandria Huiskens called it “the first of its kind at the AHA and for humanism generally.”
For Durman, the objection is about what happens when a machine does the thinking. “The process and work involved in thinking through situations, through my work, through my ethics” matters to him, he told Religion News Service, which first reported the story. “Offloading that labor, regardless of whether it’s taxing or not, is undercutting my ability to be a moral actor.” He also objects to AI’s environmental impact, its threat to jobs and its effect on human creativity.
AI wasn’t required for his job, yet he asked for the accommodation ahead of time, worried that it could become mandatory as the university encouraged employees to try it. According to the AHA, the university concluded that letting him skip AI wouldn’t create an undue hardship. University spokesperson Jay Blanton said “an accommodation could be provided” in this case and that accommodations may be revisited as technology and job duties change.
Durman may still have to attend AI-related meetings, work alongside colleagues who use AI and submit materials through systems that run on it. He just can’t be made to use it himself.
He isn’t the first worker to get out of AI on faith grounds.
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In May, North Carolina software developer Erin Maus won an accommodation from using AI for coding based on her Unitarian Universalist beliefs. She now writes and reviews her code by hand. Durman’s case pushes the idea further, because a belief system that doesn’t depend on a god or the supernatural just qualified for a religious exemption from AI.
