Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, recently announced that ChatGPT will roll out a new erotica feature in December, part of an adaptation that will loosen restrictions and “treat adult users like adults.”
The Bulletin sat down with Russell Moore, Mike Cosper, and Brandon Rickabaugh, public philosopher and founder and CEO of the Novus Initiative, to discuss AI chatbot companions, the illusion of online intimacy, and the call of Jesus in a world of rapidly changing technology. The entire interview can be heard in episode 221. Here are edited excerpts.
What are AI companions, and how are they used?
Brandon Rickabaugh: AI companions constitute a host of potential relationships. These bots could purchase things for you on Amazon or do work for you. Mental health bots have been around for a long time, predating ChatGPT. You also have companion bots that are trained to behave like a close friend, romantic partner, or spouse. Now you’ve got companion bots that can serve the purpose of erotica too.
Most of the research about these companions piggybacks off the psychology and sociology of pornography use. Psychology models also predict the kinds of behaviors people have with these chatbots. When people use these, they anthropomorphize; they attribute humanlike properties like mind, consciousness, and agency to these bots.
Elon Musk’s SuperGrok subscribers can pay $30 a month to access AI companions that offer erotic content. Is it accurate to compare this to drug dealing, selling something we know is going to make you an emotional addict and is dangerous for your health?
Russell Moore: Yes. A recent report in Harper’s Magazine spoke of “freebasing” pornography (like heating and smoking a drug so the high is particularly intense). AI companions possess all of the problems of digital pornography plus an illusion of emotional connection. God’s design is sexuality in the context of relationship, and relationship in the context of covenant, and covenant in the context of God. Now you have the illusion of relationship and sexuality without covenant, without genuine reality at all.
I talk with pastors dealing with men who say, “I’ve fallen in love with a chatbot. She understands me better than my wife does.” This algorithmic technology is specifically designed to reflect back to that person what he expects from a partner and a relationship. When you add sexual content to that longing for connection, that is a really dangerous combination. We haven’t even figured out how to deal with the old-school porn problem in our churches, much less this.
Rickabaugh: When we say that they “understand,” that is anthropomorphizing. The truth is that chatbots have no understanding. There’s no sentience behind them at all. I encourage computer scientists to use non-anthropomorphic language in their models and also their interface, but it sneaks in. We cannot talk about chatbots knowing or feeling things because there is no sentience in them.
That’s helpful, Brandon, because what Russell’s describing is this person’s perception of connection. It seems very deceitful that someone perceives an understanding when it’s not really there.
Mike Cosper: The language I have found helpful here is “frictionless relationships.” A normal relationship between a man and a woman has some friction, conflict, difficulties connecting and communicating. We have to get through that friction to preserve intimacy or repair relationships when they’ve been harmed.
With these AI chatbots, that friction’s removed. The algorithm always adapts to keep the human being in the relationship happy. The goal is to get your attention and keep you logged in. The danger is greater for young people, but also for the elderly and lonely. These things are profoundly seductive.
I do not believe these companies care about age verification. My state, Kentucky, has tried to require age verification for porn sites; but there are easy ways to get around those safeguards. Companies will diligently stay ahead of that to protect young people from getting addicted to this stuff? That’s a giant joke.
We often hear the church needs to step up and provide community for lonely people. While certainly that’s a part of what is needed here, does the church have larger work when it comes to companionship AI?
Moore: The church needs to recognize this in a way that doesn’t treat it as freakish, science-fiction-y, and weird. Otherwise, people don’t want to talk about it. Also, it’s awkward to talk about sexual and relational temptation in anything but abstract terms. A pastor who stands up and talks about erotic chatbots will have people coming up after and saying, “Why did you bring that up? That’s risque.”
The New Testament does not have that kind of reticence about dealing with temple prostitution and other issues in the first-century world. We need to acknowledge how vulnerable we all are. Technology has shaped all of us in some ways we can see and others we can’t. We should not laugh at this and treat it as futuristic or outlandish. This is real. This is here right now.
Rickabaugh: Jesus talks about technology. The Sermon on the Mount has a fundamental debate about mechanization versus non-mechanization of persons. Technology can operate beneath the surface, at the level of the will, heart, emotions, and thoughts, where we treat ourselves and others as non-people. In contrast, the Sermon on the Mount makes clear that personhood matters. We are children included in God’s kingdom. Jesus talks about this all over the place. You can understand that as a kind of discussion about technology, if you get clear on what counts as a technology.
Moore: The Bible speaks directly to issues of technology and spiritual formation, some in ways that might not have even been understandable until now. Isaiah and Jeremiah talk about the man who constructs an idol, creates its mouth, creates its ears, and then expects it to speak to him and to hear him. He experiences disillusionment and disappointment because it’s not there to respond to him when he cries to it. That’s exactly what I’m seeing right now, even apart from the sexual content. People say, “I’ve really been trusting my chatbot to tell me what to do. Now I’m starting to feel like it’s just giving back to me what I’m expecting.” That prompts some people to ask, “What am I doing? What’s happening? What’s actually real?”
Rickabaugh: Disillusionment is the perfect description. If you look at the AI community, at Silicon Valley and the beginning of the AI movement, you’ll see people radically enchanted but disillusioned with themselves.
Cosper: Most artificial intelligence is not designed with an ethical superstructure, but within a very humanistic framework of logic, ethics, and human relationships. If that’s the case, there’s no metaphysics that values humanity and offers some way of processing ethical issues. The conversation will constantly move into places that are very dark and full of evil.
Steven Adler, an AI researcher who led product safety at OpenAI, recently wrote an op-ed for The New York Times on this topic. He said, “To control highly capable A.I. systems of the future, companies may need to slow down long enough for the world to invent new safety methods—ones that even nefarious groups can’t bypass.” Talk to me about the value of slowness in the midst of this rapidly developing technology.
Moore: We can pump the brakes in terms of cultivating slowness in our own lives, but there is no mechanism to slow down technological development when you have large, multinational companies. We haven’t even figured out policy or cultural standards for how to deal with the old social media companies and search engine companies, much less what’s happening right now.
When I talk to people in Silicon Valley who are working on this technology, often they will say, “If we’re not doing it, China’s doing it” or “If China’s not doing it, India’s doing it,” or someone else. The language is really similar to nuclear weapons technology: “This isn’t great, but we have to be on top of it.” That makes it difficult for any individual or even for any state or nation to get a handle on this. Because of this, churches and Christians need to say, “How can I cultivate slowness and spiritual formation even in the midst of all of that that I cannot control?”
Rickabaugh: We can slow down and ask, “Can we buy a license at ChatGPT now?” You can make a strong case that Christians need to say no. There are many different applications of AI we can say no to—to the mental health use, to music selection in an app. I can’t do anything about large-scale AI, but I can say no to all sorts of things that are within the effective range of my will.
As we do this, we take seriously what Jesus says about humanity and realize that the Spirit is just as powerful as the Spirit’s always been. These technologies do not push on any new button in terms of human nature. The answer to human flourishing is becoming more and more like Jesus in terms of our whole person. That’s going to require pulling away from a lot of things, including various kinds of technology.
I am very hopeful about what the church can do if the church switches its understanding of spiritual formation. Within the past decade, people have turned spiritual formation into a kind of technology. When people talk about the spiritual disciplines being the thing that transforms you, I want to say, “Hold on, hold on. It is the Spirit that transforms us.” You can do the disciplines all day and become an angrier person.
If you turn spiritual disciplines into the sort of thing that you can do a particular amount of time on a particular kind of schedule in a particular kind of way, that’s turning it into a technology. That’s very dangerous. Apps are coming out that are intended to take the role of pastors. You’re going to have spiritual guides that track all of your health data.
So what does it look like to follow Jesus in the church? I think it requires us to be very mindful about what these technologies are and what they do, what we can say no to, what it would take to be the kinds of people that say no to that. The history of technology and the history of the church have got this profound relationship that has affected spiritual formation. I’m actually very hopeful about being able to do a lot of great good when people are radically disillusioned, like Russell said. The church has the capacity to show people what people are.
