AI will not teach you to love another well

Thoughts after a family dinner discussion about AI

Photo by Cash Macanaya on Unsplash

Last night at our family dinner, my adults sons and husband and I discussed AI.

I felt like I was watching a giant wall of water about to sweep the people I love out to an abyss. I felt a need to resist. To set up a boundary and a warning sign.

This quote front Good Will Hunting came to mind. In the smallness of my thoughts this is why AI will always be dangerous.

“So if I asked you about art you could give me the skinny on every art book ever written...Michelangelo? You know a lot about him I bet. Life's work, criticisms, political aspirations. But you couldn't tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel. You've never stood there and looked up at that beautiful ceiling. And if I asked you about women I'm sure you could give me a syllabus of your personal favorites, and maybe you've been laid a few times too. But you couldn't tell me how it feels to wake up next to a woman and be truly happy. If I asked you about war you could refer me to a bevy of fictional and non-fictional material, but you've never been in one. You've never held your best friend's head in your lap and watched him draw his last breath, looking to you for help. And if I asked you about love I'd get a sonnet, but you've never looked at a woman and been truly vulnerable. Known that someone could kill you with a look. That someone could rescue you from grief. That God had put an angel on Earth just for you. And you wouldn't know how it felt to be her angel. To have the love be there for her forever. Through anything, through cancer. You wouldn't know about sleeping sitting up in a hospital room for two months holding her hand and not leaving because the doctors could see in your eyes that the term "visiting hours" didn't apply to you. And you wouldn't know about real loss, because that only occurs when you lose something you love more than yourself, and you've never dared to love anything that much.”

AI can make a boy out of a man. I fear if we let it, it can make an empty shell of a person out of a boy.

You can know nothing and think you know everything.

We are meant to love one another and not just be efficient machines who know a lot of things.

Our ability to relate to one another, suffer with one another and learn from one another can never be replaced by technology.

When we let it replace those things, we are letting it take away our very consciousness. (I heard this from Christian Wiman) We’re letting it take away our dependence on each other, which, as a Christian I believe is at the core of what it looks like for human beings to image the Triune God.

Well, I’m off to work. Those are my deep thoughts on a Tuesday morning.

I hope you have a moment today where you are like, “Wow! That’s a gift, that’s a kindness, that’s beautiful.“

I pray you look another human being in the world-weary eye and be willing to walk through life with him.

I pray you will be willing to know a person in all her mess.

I pray today you will see that it is not a waste to spend your life letting Jesus (not AI) teach you to love another well.