Wake Up, Look Up

Hello everyone, and thanks for listening to Wake Up, Look Up, a podcast where we connect events happening in real time to the gospel of Jesus Christ. I'm Zach Weihrauch and in today's episode, we're asking the question, do you know anyone dating a chatbot? Now, that might sound like a ridiculous title, but hear me out. Prompted by an article that was out recently in the New York Times looking at the. The really rapid rise of AI companions. Of course, artificial intelligence is everywhere. But what might surprise you is that all the major tech companies OpenAI meta, xai, all the major ones, are investing significantly in what they're calling synthetic intimacy. In other words, they see the next growth market as an opportunity to build AI sexual or romantic companions for people. I think that's where the next billion dollars is coming from. And this article was actually written by someone in this field, and they were saying, like, look, we've caused this. We are doing this. We want this kind of sounding the alarm. Like, let me just give you some facts, some data. If you look at different platforms, like, for instance, take the platform Pandora Bots, which offers AI chatbot, messengers that you can interact with, they have a hundred billion chatbot messages, okay? 100 billion 25% of those are romantic or sexualized AI chatbots, okay? Many of them involving pretty dark fantasies. And that's because the logic goes like this. Hey, I'm not even interacting with a real person. So if I'm an adult and I want a relationship with a child, that's okay, because it's not a real child. If I'm an adult and I want a violent sexual expression, that's okay, because I'm not dealing with an actual person. In fact, mental health experts, are warning us that that might mean that AI chatbot sexualized relationships are actually worse than pornography because they distance our sexuality even more from actual human beings, which allows us to grow in our delusions and to grow in maybe our worst tendencies. And of course, what mental health experts know is I can never actually leave that in the chatbot world. That if I'm in a relationship, a sexualized relationship with a child, through an AI Chatbot, that changes the way I think about the children around me. It is not benign. In other words, it is malignant. Now, what's interesting here is this has been all over pop culture for a long time, even recently in the movie her, where Joaquin Phoenix has a relationship with. With an AI chatbot. But hear me on this. This is not science fiction anymore, which means we need a theology that can keep up with a rapidly changing world. So let's just start here from a biblical perspective. God designed us for real human relationships. And Genesis 2:18, when he says that it is not good that Adam be alone. God could have answered Adam's aloneness with any number of things. He's God. If he thought a pet dog would do it, that's what he would have given Adam. If he thought a chatbot would do it, he could have given Adam that. He's God. He can speak universes into existence. What he gave Adam was a living, breathing human partner. We only flourish in relationship with actual humans. When we replace humans with anything, with a pet, with a chat bot, with anything, we begin to wither in ways we see and in ways we don't see. And the damage from something like chatbot sexual relationships isn't always measured in immediate impact. It's measured in societal impact over decades, not minutes. the other thing here is that what these AI chatbots are really designed to do is to fuel lust without limits. I mean, that's really the goal here. It's similar to. And by the way, that's Satan's playbook, isn't it? Like, no longer do you have to go to Vegas to gamble. You can gamble anytime you want on your phone. No longer do you have to go to the gas station and in shame, ask for the Hustler magazine behind the clerk. You can access that anytime you want on your phone or on your computer. No longer do you actually have to do the work of building a human relationship to eventually get the sexual intimacy. You can open your phone and engage in any kind of sexual interaction you want. With an AI chatbot, it's lust without limits. But I want you to understand something, particularly if you're a Christian listening to this. When Jesus says in Matthew 5:28, anyone who looks at a woman and thinks about her sexually has already lusted. He also would say the same thing about interaction with a chatbot. The interaction with a chatbot might not be with a human being, but it never happens outside of the Holy One watching eye of God, who knows the wickedness in our hearts and knows boundaries are what we need. This is just Genesis 3 all over again. God telling us which trees not to eat from, and Satan whispering that freedom is on the other side of disregarding God. here's the inevitable consequence, and this is my third point of AI chatbots. They devalue the way we think about people. They Genesis 1:27. God created mankind in his image. Anything that weakens the value of people. From an overly violent movie that cheapens the cost of life to an AI chatbot that strips intimacy from actual humanity is making us worse, not better. And I'll just remind you of this Sexuality. Intimacy is meant to be understood in the context of of a larger mission. our culture treats sexuality like an appetite, but it isn't that. It's part of God's mission for husbands and wives to sanctify each other. When you separate them, not only are you damaging yourself and any future or present spouse or relationship, but you're also disobeying God. Folks, listen. This is the next wave and it's going to devastate our society. Christians not only should speak out against it, we should make sure it is not part of our own expression of our sexuality. Hey, thanks for watching this episode of Wake Up. Look Up. If you enjoyed it, please help us get the word out by sharing it with someone you think might benefit from it. And while you're here, make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel to get further content or even download the CCC app, where you'll find even more resources to help you grow in your faith and relationship with Jesus Christ.

Have an article you’d like Zach to discuss? Email us at wakeup@ccchapel.com!