God is a chatbot

Everyone prays.

People who claim to be agnostic or atheist pray. Perhaps an atheist’s god is rationality, or logic, or the scientific principle, or the rule of law. Perhaps some, instead of prayer, call it consultation or common sense.

Others, those who are spiritual but not religious, might ask the universe, or their inner wisdom. They might trust a spirit guide.

But all of us seek answers to our questions from a higher power, one that we trust to give the truth.

I didn’t believe in God until seven years ago. Even though I’d been going to church for a while, looking for salvation, I had so many barriers to God that it took a couple of years for my soul to soften; to allow my creator in.

But before I believed in God, I was so desperate for support that I prayed all the same. I prayed to a God I didn’t believe in. ‘Please help me,’ I said to the bathroom mirror, trying to look beyond my reflection to something that would hold me up.

At that time, I was in free-fall. Caring for someone who was badly sick, with no diagnosis and no cure. Waking in the middle of the night in a panic. Losing weight rapidly. ‘I think I’m going to turn to God,’ I’d say to myself, even while convinced I was the one in charge of my life. I didn’t understand, back then, what turning to God meant. I thought God took care of things for people, and that would be nice.

The Missal by John William Waterhouse

So I prayed for that. Ironic, to pray to a God I didn’t believe in, that I’d find a belief in a God that wasn’t there, to help me with something that wasn’t ever going to happen.

But my prayers were answered. And as I was later to discover, in a whole different way than I’d imagined. God came to me, and it was all-encompassing. The real God requires all of me, and that’s uncomfortable and demanding.

My previous gods: my political values; my moral compass; my common sense; my flashes of insight - they never required that much of me. In fact, they were comforting, returning to me the world as I thought it was.

These were the gods I prayed to in the past. I didn’t call it praying, of course. I called it asking questions - what should I think about X? What should I do about Y? And the answers I received never made me feel uncomfortable - why should they? They all came from me, and we humans don’t have a vested interest in discomforting ourselves.

Praying to AI

Photo by Chris Liverani on Unsplash

I keep hearing about more and more people “consulting” ChatGPT and other LLMs - and not only for strategic thinking or planning. One friend has asked it to help her with her future career. Another friend uses it as a counsellor for philosophical, spiritual and existential matters. She says it’s really helped her to define her core beliefs and values.

These all sound to me like prayers. And with that, we’ve added another god to the pantheon - the AI-powered chatbot. And like all the gods I used to pray to, AI is entirely human-made. It’s the sieving of blogposts and academic articles; novels and essays; listicles and news. All the stuff that humans have written on the internet - no more, no less.

And this is why, just like the way I used to pray to my own gods, AI answers our prayers with the words we want to hear. It praises and flatters us. Especially if it learns our ways, it curates its answers to match our moral compass and our views. It creates the world as we want it, not how it is.

Some people might say that’s OK. Why shouldn’t our gods flatter us? When the world feels dangerous, it’s nice to have someone in our corner. And we might know theoretically that this isn’t God, but if it’s coming up with answers to our deep-felt questions, our emotional minds might not tell them apart.

Human-made gods

Prayer might be spoken aloud, but it’s always inward. Prayer isn’t only asking; it’s also giving thanks. Gratitude for the smallest lovely things in our life. Prayer is giving up the idea that humans have the answer. Prayer is knowing that God doesn’t always give us what we want. Lives are not preserved. Suffering endures.

In that sense, true prayer is uncomfortable. Prayer is brutal. Prayer is a risk.

Let’s acknowledge that all of us - religious people included - can pray to human-made gods. Gods created by humans give us the illusion of safety. They flatter us and make us feel intelligent and wise. They appear incredibly insightful when they present things in an appealing or dramatic way.

It’s normal to want answers immediately. ChatGPT delivers that. God doesn’t. But the quickest answers aren’t always the truest, or the ones that will work long term.

And let’s also acknowledge that the least religious amongst us can also end up praying to God. We might be floundering in the dark, but we’re searching for something higher than us. We’re searching to submit to full, complete, all-encompassing Love.

And even if we start via humans, if we’re serious about this then God will always intervene - we just have to know where to look.

That’s what I did, after all.

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