ChatGPT Spirituality: Connection or Correction?

Good friends challenge you. Will ChatGPT?

Professor Rob Saler discusses differing perspectives about using OpenAI ChatGPT in education. He mentions a friend who uses ChatGPT for therapy and highlights its benefits as a supplement or substitute for human therapists.

Meanwhile, Saler himself teaches AI and technology to theology students and uses the example of ChatGPT therapy to challenge their assumptions about AI and reality. He writes,

If “real” connection comes from feeling truly connected, then there is no reason to think that AI technologies will not be able to replicate and perhaps even surpass person-to-person connection...

However, Saler also points out that genuine human interaction includes friction, resistance, and correction. But AI typically lacks this.

Saler turns the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer's argument for the presence of another human being in confession to prevent self-serving idolatry. From it, he concludes that we should not overlook the unique gift of human connection and the potential to free ourselves from our own desires.

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