In the September newsletter, Steve reflects on one of the most pressing issues of our time: how artificial intelligence is reshaping the way we think, reason, and relate to reality. Drawing on Pope Leo XVI’s recent encyclical on AI, he shares his personal experience using AI as a “co-intelligence” tool, cautioning that both smartphone addiction and unchecked AI use are eroding people’s grip on reality and their capacity for independent reasoning. Steve also walks through real examples of where AI has helped and where it has misled him in his theological research, offering families practical wisdom for using AI with discernment rather than dependence.
Some Thoughts on Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence is driving a technological transformation reshaping education, religion, worldviews, warfare, communications, labor, transportation, healthcare, robotics, and commerce—accelerated by an exponential explosion of discoveries and knowledge.
Pope Leo XVI issued his first papal encyclical on artificial intelligence. At 42,300 words, its length exceeds my ability to even begin synthesizing it into an abbreviated summary. Suffice it to say that AI should be important to Catholics, since the Pope chose it as the subject of his very first encyclical.
I’ll simply be sharing some of my personal thoughts, observations, and experience using AI. I use AI, but hopefully with active discernment.
Losing Our Grip on Reality
The major threat from AI is one that too few have recognized: a potentially destructive alteration in worldview that changes a person’s fundamental outlook on life, morality, and especially reason. AI didn’t originate this threat, but it is dramatically accelerating it.
So where did the technological threat originate if it wasn’t from AI? The Smartphone. I believe that it is literally causing psychological, neurological, and attention-deficit issues in reasoning ability. Most of all, the smartphone is causing a culture-wide shift from reality to a digital virtual reality. U.S. smartphone use now averages more than 4 hours a day, causing people, while swiping for tidbits of information or entertainment, to become profoundly dumb by weakening their grip on reality.
Let me make this simple. If you use your smartphone four or more hours a day, you are addicted to digital reality. If you regularly find yourself needing to check your smartphone at stoplights, then you are living in the twilight zone of virtual reality.
Thus, for tens of millions of Americans already addicted to digital reality, extensive use of AI will accelerate the descent into a loss of reality and reason—smartphones and AI are closely related.
If you are digitally addicted, ditch your smartphone for a flip phone for three years and don’t use AI until after that withdrawal period. I ran an AI query asking what percentage of Americans are likely to follow my recommendation to shed smartphones if they are digitally addicted. The AI response said that less than 1% of Americans will heed my advice.
The threats posed by digital addiction and virtual-reality worldviews began long before the advent of AI. Smart technological leaders recognized this. Have you ever wondered why Steve Jobs didn’t allow his kids to have an iPad, and why Bill Gates didn’t allow cell phones until his children were 14, or why Evan Williams, co-founder of Twitter, gave his two young sons physical books instead of iPads?
Never Let AI Do Your Thinking for You
When I began using AI, I chose three platforms to compare their effectiveness, or lack thereof. My very first question to AI was the safety and wisdom of using a Covid vaccine. I enjoy extensive personal reading on health issues and was tired of the lockstep, one-sided answers from search engines, TV broadcasts, and many religious leaders. All three AI platforms gave me Covid vaccine advice that take-the-fifth Dr. Anthony Fauci would be delighted with.
In my thinking, an intelligent person will want to know both sides of any important or controversial question. Otherwise, you are not educated on an issue, just opinionated. It was obvious that AI, along with the networks, search engines, and hundreds of religious leaders, were unintelligent when it came to the Covid vaccine question. Make no mistake, to pretend to be a reliable authority and only know one side of a two-sided issue is to be unintelligent.
AI, until recently, ignored the research of men like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Bryan Ardis, and Ed Dowd. To be fair, I’ve noticed that over the past few months, AI has improved its reporting on the vaccination question. The one-sided answers are now giving the other side some space.
Here’s my strongest recommendation when making an AI inquiry. You should never depend on AI for an accurate answer unless you have an educated sense of what the answer should look like. Otherwise, you could be getting “hallucinations,” which is AI-speak for phony, made-up answers.
From Co-Intelligence to Autonomous Intelligence
I received a gift book describing AI as “co-intelligence.” I liked that description since it matched my use of AI as a valued research assistant, but never as a replacement for my thinking, reasoning, and background reading. While writing this article, I was shocked by a recent article by the author of my co-intelligence book. He described the need to write an updated book due to the swift development of AI from co-intelligence to autonomous intelligence. The current term, “Agentic AI,” describes AI’s ability to reason, set goals, formulate plans, and then take a course of action to fulfill those plans – with minimal human input or supervision.
We are well on our way from Agentic AI to Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), in which machines are supposedly capable of human-level intellectual performance across many areas. Now wonder these AI developments are causing a Pope, priests, parents, and even some AI developers to lose sleep at night due to the threat of a dystopian future. Turning millions of minds over to machines is a historically unprecedented loss of one of God’s prime gifts to humanity. The tempter’s promise to Eve of knowledge beyond human limits sent the world into millennia of human suffering and tragedy. The temptation is being repeated, while dramatically shrinking the need for reasoning, reading, and research.
I repeat my point that you shouldn’t trust an AI answer unless you already have a fairly solid grasp of what a good answer should look like. Otherwise, you don’t know if you are getting a brilliant answer or are being led far astray.
When AI Gets It Right … with Limits
To my surprise, AI can be useful for theological research. As a test, I asked a major AI platform to provide a four-page summary of the various Christian beliefs on one of the thorniest doctrines: predestination. The Dominicans and Franciscans, as well as the Calvinists and Arminians, have been battling over predestination and free will for centuries. I was hoping that my predestination question might blow a few fuses at a nearby data center.
To my astonishment, I received one of the clearest, succinct, and accurate presentations of the various Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox views on predestination I’ve encountered. As a Calvinist Evangelical Presbyterian, I’d assumed I understood all of God’s eternal plans. Becoming Catholic moderated that exaggerated view, yet I was surprised to learn that Aquinas held a strong doctrine of predestination, though more biblically balanced than Calvin’s. Such a good answer could easily persuade me, or anyone, to put excessive trust in AI. That would be a mistake.
And When AI Steers You Wrong
I was recently preparing a Luke21 podcast episode on biblical prophecy. As I’ve taught several times over the years, Revelation 20 is a key chapter not only for properly understanding the entire book of Revelation but also for developing a proper view of all biblical prophecy.
An interpretive key to Revelation 20 is an overlooked verse in Matthew 12:
“Or how can one enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man? Then indeed he may plunder his house.” (verse 28)
The strong man is Satan, who had control of the world. With the first coming of Jesus, the strong man was bound, so the Great Commission would be possible. Matthew 12:28 briefly describes a similar scene in Revelation 20, where Satan is bound with a great chain.
I gained insight into the connection between the binding in the Gospels and in Revelation while reading Augustine’s City of God as an Evangelical pastor. It profoundly enriched my understanding of biblical prophecy.
While writing notes for my podcast, I asked AI for the exact passage in the City of God to save me time looking it up. AI told me I was wrong. It said that there was absolutely no connection between Matthew 12:28 and Revelation 20. It told me to look into another of Augustine’s works.
Thankfully, I had read Book XX of the City of God several times. In fact, I highlighted most of it and then went over it again, underlining with red ink. I knew that AI was acting unintelligently. So I pulled my hard copy off the shelf and found the simple reason AI misled me. In the footnote where Augustine connects Jesus binding the strong men in the gospels with Revelation, he cites Mark 3:27. AI couldn’t figure out that Matthew 12:28 and Mark 3:27 are parallel passages in the synoptic gospels. If I hadn’t had a solid knowledge of Book XX of the City of God, AI would have steered me to another unrelated writing of St. Augustine.
What’s the big deal with this AI miss? There are tens of millions of sincere Evangelical Protestants who are of the opinion that the binding of Satan is an event sometime in the future, rather than something that occurred 2,000 years ago. That’s a BIG miss. If I didn’t read books, along with the use of AI, I might fall into the error of the dispensationalists (rapture-at-any-moment folks).
I gladly use AI as a co-intelligence assistant, but if it ever tempts me to lessen reading, reasoning, and thinking, then I’ll take a 12-gauge to my computer.
I began this article saying I wished Pope Leo’s encyclical on AI was shorter. I’ve already run past our usual newsletter length, and I have additional important topics to cover. Next month I will send Part II of “Some of My Thoughts on AI.”
Yours in His Majesty’s Service,
Steve Wood
P.S. I wish to express a special “Thank You!” to everyone who supports our mission financially. We are grateful for your generosity and pray for each of our donors by name.
Kindle is Helping Transforming Grace Reach the World
First, thank you to everyone who donated to Family Life Center during our special Transforming Grace: How to Rescue Young Catholics Drowning in a Secular Culture offer and received a copy of the book. That offer has ended, and Transforming Grace is available exclusively through Amazon.
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