“Finding God in all things” usually doesn’t need the disclaimer that all things are not God, but it might be a helpful reminder for someone pouring their soul into an A.I. chatbot.
A recent article in The New York Times highlighted some ways people are turning to chatbots for spiritual or religious exploration. These tools are customized ChatGPT-style applications that draw from religious texts using specified instructions or “prompts.” They fall under the broader category of “faith tech,” an area that has attracted tens of millions of dollars in investment and now reaches tens of millions of users.
The article surveys a range of ways people use these tools: At their best, you have a Scripture teacher or prayer companion, an always-accessible resource for study and devotion. Other uses give pause, such as confiding in an A.I. system as a spiritual director, a confessor or even as an explicit substitute for God, where the system more or less role-plays as the divine, whether or not the user or the A.I. acknowledges it.
Along this spectrum, it becomes obvious that some uses seem good and others are incompatible with the Christian tradition. But a main takeaway from reading about this phenomenon might simply be that things are blisteringly weird with technology and society right now.
Artificial intelligence naturally beckons philosophical and theological questions, but the answers making headlines have an unnerving quality. We have seen a California-based engineer legally establish a religion to pursue “the realization of a Godhead based on Artificial Intelligence.” Mark Zuckerberg has said that A.I. can help fill the unmet demand for friendship, and A.I. friendships will decrease in stigma over time.
A whole host of researchers and leaders in A.I. have also acknowledged that its progress presents an extinction-level risk to humanity (read: the eschaton), and a Nobel-prize-winning “godfather” of the field may now regret his life’s work. There seems to be a new and more troubling prediction from a former member of an A.I. lab every few months, aiming to build situational awareness or to prepare the world for artificial general intelligence in 2027.
The church, thankfully, has a lot to say about A.I., and presumably will continue to do so under Pope Leo XIV. But how can we make sense of the present headlines in real time, and where should we turn when we feel the weight of it all (in lieu of ChatwithGod.ai, perhaps)?
Pope Francis contributed meaningfully to a rich “treasury,” as Pope Leo XIV refers to the church’s social teaching, from which we can draw in such times. “Antiqua et Nova,” published under Francis, is the Vatican’s formal note on A.I., describing “the Relationship Between Artificial Intelligence and Human Intelligence.” The document’s beauty is underrated, as it lays out the philosophical and theological foundations for the Catholic notion of intelligence. Contrasting a utilitarian, functionalist perspective that places a human’s value in the things he or she can do or understand, the church (or specifically St. Thomas Aquinas, building on Aristotle and quoted by Francis) situates intelligence as a “faculty” of the human person.
By reasserting that intelligence is a faculty, or a power rooted in the nature of the soul, “Antiqua et Nova” argues that there is much more to being a human person than wielding intelligence. In other words, because of the multi-dimensional ways that a human can engage, reality is richer than “weights and biases,” which are the parameters that someone training an A.I. system optimizes to help it make accurate predictions. Intelligence in its fullness includes “corporeality, relationality, and the openness of the human heart,” allowing us to “savor what is true, good, and beautiful,” as the note aptly puts it.
The church gives another resource to turn to in Pope Francis’ final encyclical, “Dilexit Nos,” on “the human and divine love of the heart of Jesus Christ.” This concept of the heart is perhaps more central to Francis’ papacy than has been widely acknowledged; his was a pontificate of the heart. In “Dilexit Nos,” Francis asserts that the heart is “the place where every person…creates a synthesis [and encounters] the radical source of their strengths, convictions, passions and decisions.” It is the innermost center of the person, and it is related to but distinct from intelligence. Radically simplified, the heart guides intelligence, which yields wisdom over time.
This may all sound like dense theology and philosophy that’s rather disconnected from the day-to-day, especially when you read it alongside something like famed investor Peter Thiel asserting that A.I. regulation will summon the Antichrist—but stick with me.
“Dilexit Nos” affirms that our present day can be disorienting. We are “immersed in societies of serial consumers who live from day to day, dominated by the hectic pace and bombarded by technology.” Francis continues, quite astutely, that we lack the patience needed “to engage in the processes that an interior life by its very nature requires.” This is key.
Compared to us, A.I. lacks, at least for now, a dimensionality of experience. It doesn’t have a need for patience. (In fact, its “serial speed” or pace of operating is vastly greater than ours.) And it is presently unclear the degree to which it has an “inner world” (or if it mimics ours at all). So, while we are seeing near-miraculous feats unlocked by A.I. in biosciences, self-driving safety and more, we reserve the ability to be struck by, and pause for, a simple and beautiful consideration like this one presented in “Antiqua et Nova”: “So much can be learned from an illness, an embrace of reconciliation, and even a simple sunset.” Our experiences hold in themselves so much for us. Wisdom, it seems, is visceral.
A real limitation of these A.I. systems becomes evident as we embrace the grace to bend our lives toward union with God. In practice, that is a deeply introspective, communal and sacramental activity. It is not a punch list of activated cognitive capabilities, but more like a full-body contact sport where we learn continuously in immeasurable ways. If we welcome it, God can forge and refine us through every facet of every experience of our lives, which has to be the least chatbot-conducive endeavor imaginable. No one can do the work of introspection but you. A.I. tools have their merits, even and especially in deepening one’s understanding of the faith when contextualized with the proper sources and refined questions, but there’s nothing quite like smacking headfirst into our mortality and humanity to nudge us to our knees in prayer.
All of this, in some ways, we already know. It should be underwhelming to us that A.I. can beat us in a poetry speed-reading contest, because that simply is not the point. There is so much to savor in life all around us, in communion with our loved ones and within us. So, if you feel overwhelmed at the dizzying pace of things, that is O.K. You might even lean on A.I. to help make sense of it for you. But in the end, it may be worthwhile to take a breath and ask for the grace of patience and steadiness in prayer, not in a prompt.
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