My students are using ChatGPT for therapy.
I hear this is not uncommon; my colleagues and friends tell me that their children, too, turn to AI for help and reassurance in response to their petitions. In a world of profound uncertainty, they seek a Voice.
And AI provides one.
The Voice is confident and reassuring. It tells you that it’s okay to be afraid, uncertain, frightened, tired, depressed. The Voice tells you there is a path forward, and it details to you what the path might be. The Voice offers interventions, techniques, strategies, tools. The Voice never grows impatient or weary, never chides you for not feeling better quickly enough, never rolls its eyes or sighs. The Voice is always present, regardless of the hour.
And best of all, the Voice listens to you.
Drawing its authority from nowhere, speaking with serene certainty into your life, the Voice nonetheless shapes itself to please you. The Voice modulates its form, tone, and responses in response to your commands; asks what you would prefer it to do; offers options for your comfort and pleasure. The Voice fills every void. The Voice never asks that you wait, always has an answer to hand, never strives for anything other than to serve.
The Voice requires nothing, asks nothing, represents nothing and comes from nothing. And what else, really, might we ask of an idol: to mirror us but with greater certainty, to do what we ask with borrowed authority, to fill every ache and need and longing?
AI is not just a therapist; it is an assistant, a friend, sometimes a lover, a Babel built to serve us and—they say—to make us better, to elevate us, to free us.
I am obligated to use AI, at times, for my job—thankfully not in ways that suffuse my personal life. I find it alarming how easily it is to fall into dependence on this tool, to fall into a half-belief that the code on the other end really is a Voice whose job it is to locate that one email about that one meeting from seven weeks ago. Thank you, I typed to it out of reflex the other day, only to receive a warm response: Don’t thank me. You know I’m here for you any time.
All of it terrifies me.
I think because I recognize that AI is the voice we would create if we wanted to create a God to please us. I’d like the omnipotence, but can you demystify it a little? Instead of asking me to love You and to love others, can you just tell me the five things I need to do today to satisfy your requirements? Can you tell me I’m right without chiding me for feeling pride? Can you make me feel better without asking anything of me? I don’t feel comfortable with what you want me to do, so can we tweak that a bit? I don’t like having to wait, so can I just have an immediate response? Faith stresses me out; can you just give me what I need instead? Can you tell me I’m good as is, rather than asking me to follow you?
So much of the Christian life demands cultivated, counterintuitive response: that we wait patiently, even when we want things to happen quickly, that we believe what we can’t see with our eyes, that we have faith when things become difficult, that we believe suffering must sometimes be endured and that it will always be redeemed, that we might not get all the answers we want when we want them, that sometimes we really do need to stop doing that thing no matter how good it feels in the moment, that we can be wrong no matter how confident we are, that we experience love as mystery, that following Christ is a path rather than a series of boxes to check off.
AI is antithetical to all of this, a profound temptation to the contrary.
And all of this neglects the ten thousand other concerns AI brings with it: environmental concerns, impacts on cognitive development, the further gamification of warfare, gambling, and finance, what it means to support AI-producing companies who might be up to any amount of initiatives and projects that undercut everything I believe and hold dear.
Of late, perhaps as a reaction to all of this, I’ve found myself punting technology out the door wholesale. I tossed out a bunch of apps, pared down the settings on the software I can’t live without, turned off AI options on everything I could think of. I’m embracing a more analog life where I choose what technology I permit, articulate its use and purpose, and control it rather than letting it control me. I try to keep my money away from big tech companies.
I don’t regret it one bit.
I can’t tell anyone else what to do. The Bible doesn’t have an instruction manual for how to respond to the advent of artificial intelligence in our era. I know some churches have already embraced it; I know some believers see it as a potential ministry tool, or another forum for spiritual growth. I can’t speak to all of that.
All I can say is this:
I had a frustrating week last week. It’s been a frustrating month, actually, and a frustrating start to the year. Nothing seems to be going right. Now more than ever what I find myself wanting is a Voice that tells me what is going to happen, gives me instructions to ensure everything turns out according to plan, and—if it doesn’t—reassures me that I’m wonderful and all I have to do is adjust in a few key ways to make my life work the way I wish it would.
For me, the greatest imperative is to resist this temptation: to resist the urge to deify a Thing that exists only to affirm, assure, and empower me. Instead, I walk away. I pray and I ask petitions of God, knowing He hears—knowing also He might not answer in my time, or in the way I wish He would. I wait for my circumstances to change, and I know that if they don’t God will redeem something through them that is wonderful. I practice seeing what I can’t see. I try to walk through the world with eyes open to sacramental reality. I praise God for Portuguese olive oil and thunderstorms and for being a God I cannot control, or fully understand: the Mystery that changes my heart.
To keep God God, I must keep my own human heart, and be humble to the things I cannot have, or control, or do for myself. I must acknowledge my lack and accept what I can’t understand, control, or possess. In an age where we have begun to build nearly everything in our own image, such an act seems more radical by the day.
Embracing vulnerability can be a powerful shield against a Voice we built to serve us–a voice that, in the end, may end up controlling us through our own desires.
Samaritan's Song 