Can AI Understand the Church Fathers? A Patristic Perspective

The question of whether Artificial Intelligence can genuinely understand the Church Fathers demands a precise definition of “understanding” itself, particularly when applied to non-human entities. For AI, “understanding” typically refers to the ability to process, interpret, and generate human-like language, identify patterns, extract information, and make inferences based on vast datasets. This differs fundamentally from human comprehension, which involves consciousness, lived experience,