Don’t let A.I. become your master

A Reflection for Saturday of the Thirty-first Week in Ordinary Time

Find today’s readings here.

I spend between 40 and 45 minutes reading about artificial intelligence each morning. I began this practice when I started the O’Hare Fellowship at America Media, and while it has inspired story ideas, it is mostly a personal practice. I, and as I imagine many American Catholics, navigate this technology with a curiosity about its promise. But I also have a firm commitment to understanding the social currents and injustices that keep it functioning and keep its makers afloat. And believe me, it usually feels a bit like I’m stepping in quicksand—its ubiquitous nature sinks me deeper and deeper as I attempt to dig up its inner workings. But alas, I keep trying.

After all of my reading, if I could write one tagline for the product A.I. companies promise to deliver, it would be this: Skip to the good part. No more hours debugging code, no more tedious data entry tasks, no more writer’s block, no more disagreement, no more awkward interactions with friends, in fact, no more social interaction necessary at all. 

I’m not a total doomer: I also recognize the benefits of A.I. in medicine, business and education. But I take seriously the responsibility of vocalizing how our American society is lapping up the structural convenience of this frictionless technology with greedy hunger.  

Today’s Gospel message from Luke is apt in our present time. “No servant can serve two masters. You cannot serve God and mammon.” I think it begs a serious question: Are we as Americans worshipping a different god right now? Are we worshipping the god of convenience, the god of speed, the god which takes the struggles away? Are we serving a master that is manipulating our attention on such a micro-level that it is inconspicuously severing our relationship to God and others? How might a recognition of this dynamic change our habits around using A.I. and other technologies like social media that sap our attention? 

The rhetoric around generative A.I. is that it is a tool to be used to enhance human work. I think it can be that. But its design presents a slippery slope that quickly blurs the line between “using a tool” and “serving a master.” 

A time of societal change like our present moment requires digging our heels into our firm Christian conviction that we are made in the image of God to serve God. We should all reflect on our own behaviors as consumers of this technology and take seriously anything that surfaces which threatens to distract us from our faith in God. Then, as the Jesuits say, we should be “contemplatives in action.” Though the influence of these technological structures can be overpowering, we still have the choice to be responsible consumers, responsible citizens and responsible people of God. We just need to act.

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