Kentucky university administrator received a religious exemption from using AI at work
Nontheistic humanist David Durman secured the right not to use AI at work, citing his beliefs. This is the first notable case of its kind outside traditional faiths.
On October 30, 2026, it became known that David Durman, an administrator at the University of Kentucky, received a religious exemption (an official release from an employer requirement) from using AI in the workplace. Durman is a nontheistic humanist. He does not consider himself a believer in God in the usual sense.
Humanism, according to him, is a set of beliefs about human experience and how people interact with the world. At the center is human well-being and development, individual and collective. Durman believes that the use of AI contradicts these beliefs. The argument is this: a person becomes a moral subject through the active work of their own mind, and delegating part of this work to a model weakens the skill.
When AI became widespread in everyday life, Durman turned to the American Humanist Association (AHA, a nonprofit organization that promotes secular humanism) to find out how to obtain legal protection from mandatory use of AI. In a statement published by AHA the same week, he listed his objections to the technology: interference with earning a living, environmental costs, displacement and appropriation of human creativity.
The difference from previous cases is that requests for exemptions usually came from religious groups. Here the basis is a secular worldview. Public discussion of AI has also taken place at the level of the church: Pope Leo XIV called AI a threat to human dignity. Durman shows that the argument about dignity and thinking can also be made without a theological framework.
In practice, this means that employers will have to consider such requests not only from religious employees. The mechanism of religious exemptions in U.S. employment law has existed for a long time. The question is how it applies to requirements related to tools rather than rituals or schedules. The University of Kentucky has not yet publicly described exactly how Durman’s work will be restructured.
It is unknown under what conditions the exemption was granted: its duration, the list of tasks that cannot be assigned to AI, and the employer’s own reaction. There is also no data on how many such requests have already been submitted to other organizations and how many of them have been granted.