Close up of a web browser open to OpenAI.

Photo by Jonathan Kemper on Unsplash

I have reached an age where I do not understand new things. Sitting and watching my oldest child navigate the complexities of apps on the family iPad as she flows effortlessly from game to game is evidence of my inability to assimilate.

Sure, I play the games. Even engage them, but I don’t get the appeal. I’m lost to the attractiveness of it all. The chasm-like disconnect is palpable. Maybe my father felt something similar watching me play Donkey Kong on our then cutting-edge 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System.

Wait. Hard stop.

Why am I describing this as a shortcoming, as a flaw? Societal pressure? Am I struggling in an attempt to stay humble and grounded in my own self-awareness? Or am I succeeding at full-on personal flagellation by pointing out in sniper-like precision my inability to adapt? Is it fear that motivates my words? Is my sense of relevancy crumbling under the weight of post-modern times?

It feels like I’m standing at the end of a tunnel waiting on a torch to be passed to me that I know isn’t coming. I know this because I look ahead, I watch my oldest and realize the light is ahead of me. I look down and wonder, what do I do with the coldness left in my hands? Do I chase the warmth up ahead? Do I try and build my own fire? Can I be content? Can I thrive and carve out my own space in the darkness of my life? Will this light I offer draw others to me?

I snap back into the present, thoughts swirling, leaving me with a feeling as if I’ve just stepped off the Zipper at a local carnival. I know my feelings are manipulated by more than the Mario Kart and Wild Kratts apps glowing from the seductive tablet. My aversion is a growing gesture of hostility for all I don’t see as necessary.

These and similar thoughts have been simmering like a crock-pot in my mind. The developing talks and discussion around ChatGPT have caused quite a stir as they enter a territory I feel I have some stake in; the art and discipline of capturing words. What is ChatGPT? In the basic sense, it’s operating software. Think DOS on hyperbolic steroids. ChatGPT generates language with basic prompting using Artificial Intelligence technology. Imagine telling Siri to deal with an unnecessary email from your co-worker and having it done in the amount of time it takes to empty your garbage. Imagine telling Alexa to produce a blog post, program some computer code, and write an academic paper as you decide on Thai or Korean for dinner. And because ChatGPT utilizes reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF), a sensation mimicking back-and-forth conversation can happen between a human user and a chatbot. It’s still unclear, or debatable, how much a bot “remembers” from multiple chats with a user. However, discussions are taking place about the potential.

I’ll set aside the comparisons to Terminator’s Skynet, The Matrix, and Her and limit my focus to the circling whirlpool of worth I detect slipping away—not only a loss of creativity but a loss of relationships. This may sound dramatic, but I openly struggle to accept words possessing influence generated on a capture-all motherboard wrapped, packaged, and sent down an assembly line Henry Ford would be jealous of. I’m falling short of coming to grips with progress while clutching my wordsmith pearls of vanity.

As a preacher, writer, dare I admit on some micro level, a public theologian, I perceive my words as a tool to construct connections with others. A link calling us to grander interconnections. An invitation to hunt for something greater than our own reflections. An act riddled with levels of intimacy, with as much emphasis on listening as speaking, a practice vanishing quicker by the day. When I write an article like the one you are reading right now, I provide half the needed space to give it life and meaning. The other portion is filled in by others like you. To read what I say and choose to agree or disagree, to decide to build off my thoughts or determine to kick my feeble ramblings to the curb. Leaving them and my ego to die along the shared-for-mass consumption road. This interaction with another soul is something I don’t believe AI can replicate…yet. Yes, we’ve established AI can fill a blank page, but it’s incapable of possessing an actual voice. It leaves us with a compilation of nothing but regurgitation dumped nicely into an informational ashtray. If chatbots are the new oracles of technology, a fateful discovery awaits those who bow at its altar—one where we realize we’re emptying ourselves into a hollow shame.

In 1987 the prophet from Kentucky, Wendell Berry, penned an infamous essay on a newfangled contraption; the computer. Berry believed this new innovation would demand much from him. Berry wrote, “In order to be technologically up-to-date as a writer, I would have to sacrifice an association that I am dependent upon and that I treasure.”[i] The association Berry was referring to was his spouse Tanya. She was, and is, his editor and contributor to many of his literary works. To introduce a computer, even with the promise to advance his writing prowess, was to lose a dynamic of their relationship he, and, I imagine she, had no desire to move on from since they did not view their relationship as outdated or needing an upgrade.

As a minister and a Baptist one to boot, I’m constantly searching for the incarnational. I long for flesh and blood, a real presence across from me. I don’t see AI text generation meeting this need. Are there benefits? I’m willing to concede and say there are, but I’m okay with missing out on them. I’ve been casually late to most everything in my life, so I’m built for the task of having the next hot trend pass me by. Only this time, maybe I’m not so much missing what’s happening but openly rejecting the invitation. I’m comfortable to continue producing the imperfect sentences, stories, and relationships I know are all my own.