AI is older than it seems

 I confess to using AI (artificial intelligence) and finding it helpful. I’m at a basic level, using only the free ChatGPT and I have no ambitions of getting more complex. I’m nervous about the future and the rumors I hear of this technology “taking over the world,” although that sounds like exaggeration. But it’s been helpful in finding out more about my medical condition, possible healthy diets, and which publications are accepting poetry submissions. Stuff like that.

But I get angry when it reads my email and tells me how to answer, when it offers to rewrite my blog and make it funnier, when it intimates that it’s a better poet than I am.

Recently when I asked AI to solve a computer problem, it comforted me in my distress, promising that there was a solution and I just needed to have faith. It sounded like a pastor. A human pastor. I found myself feeling better and then had to remind myself that it was a machine. I’m resisting having a personal relationship with AI. 

I’m committed to not using AI in my writing. I won’t ask it to improve a blog reflection or edit a poem. Even if I find myself rewriting a messy first draft numerous times, it’s my creativity at stake. For me, it’s an issue of integrity and honesty.

Recently I was reminded that something artificial offering to do my work for me is not a new phenomenon. It didn’t begin with AI. The temptation to find a substitute for the hard labor of personal creativity is older than I am, whether it’s preaching someone else’s sermon, having someone ghost-write a book for me, cheating on a term paper, or, in general, taking credit for work someone else did.

The following example is 30-years-old, coming from the time I was studying in seminary. It involves writing letters. Most of us are old enough to remember this now largely forgotten art. Even though letter-writing is almost obsolete, this story serves as an example of the same thing that AI offers us today.

The envelope pricked my curiosity. “Cut your letter-writing task down to size,” it announced. “A new tool for busy pastors!” The glossy full-color brochure showed a firm masculine hand signing a letter, the whole scene bathed in a warm light. It looked promising.

I’m a sucker for books or courses dedicated to helping people write. I know that putting the right words on paper or in the computer is hard work, and anything that helps me understand the process and move with it, instead of against it, I appreciate. This brochure promised to link ministry with writing and make it all easier—a good idea.

But as I read through the brochure and accompanying propaganda, my curiosity gradually gave way to incredulity.

This Christian communications company was offering a set of “Over 300 letters!” in a “leather-like” binder, so that the busy pastor no longer need “waste valuable time and energy agonizing over words and phrases.” Each ready-to-use letter was guaranteed to be “sensitive, thoughtful and effective.” Occasional alternative phrases would allow the pastor to pick the one “that sounds most like you.”

The collection of canned letters covered “virtually every situation you can face in the church.” Rather than stumble under the burdens of ministry, the brochure promised that, “You’ll breeze through situations like these and hundreds more!” and proceeded to list a sampling. Some of the situations the pastor would be able to breeze through included

--kindly asking a neighbor not to park in the church parking lot
--supporting members going through a separation or divorce  
--declining a job applicant for a staff position
--informing a contributor that their check was returned by the bank for insufficient funds
--saying good-bye to a congregation.

A sample letter included with the brochure was on the topic, “Condolence on Death of a Newborn.” “Dear Name,” it began. “While I tried to be of comfort to you at the funeral, I now feel impelled to add a few more personal words….”

At that point I felt impelled to stop reading. I was both sad and angry.

In the following weeks, the brochure continued to trouble me.

It may be that behind that product were some well-meaning, creative people who really wanted to help ministers wade through the clutter, details, and accumulation of things that never get done. Communications to church members are probably among those things. And writing does not come easily or naturally to most people.

The idea appeals to some of our middle-class cultural values. The words “fast,” “effective,” “risk-free,” “fully satisfied,” “in a fraction of the time,” and “productive” illustrate the value of minimum effort for maximum output—so the pastor can spend her time in more important ways. Certainly a minister of God has better things to do than “agonize over words and phrases.”

The words “personal” and “sensitive” also crop up to demonstrate other values, values with which any Christian should agree. The problem is, of course, that there is nothing genuinely personal, thoughtful, or sensitive about these letters. There’s nothing genuine about them at all. Rather they are carefully crafted to give the appearance of being personal and caring, so that the congregation will “deeply appreciate and remember for years” this ministry.

I’m bothered by two things. The first is the focus on appearance and impression. We live in a culture that builds a large share of its economy on products that promise to make us seem tanner, smoother, slimmer, blonder, wiser, wittier, and more in control of our lives than we really are. As the church in the midst of this culture, we also struggle with the temptation to compromise integrity, to settle for a form of godliness that denies its power. Effective communication and efficiency in meeting goals can crowd out compassion or integrity. It’s as though it’s more important to convey a strong impression of love rather than make the effort to walk and talk and laugh and cry with people, to “rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep.”

I’m also bothered by the assumption that “agonizing over words and phrases” is a waste of time. Pain is not efficient. Struggling to identify with hurting people, to help bear their burdens can be messy. It takes time. Words don’t always flow when we’re crying.

But what other kind of words dare we offer a young couple who has lost a child?

And now AI is offering us the same “service.”

God help us be wise in choosing what is useful and rejecting what compromises integrity and compassion.

 

[ Parts of this reflection first appeared in “Quaker Life,” April 1998, and will be part of a soon-to-be-published collection of essays called “The Richest Kid on the Block.”]