ChatGPT’s Lack of Spiritual Wisdom During Humanity’s Meaning Crisis
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“Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves…”
“ChatGPT can be smart, but it can never be holy,” wrote Steve Gimbel and Stephen Stern. It “can only give us virtual facsimiles of wisdom, not the real deal.”
Steve Gimbel and Stephen Stern are two philosophers focusing on Jewish studies. Although they are not experts on artificial intelligence, their words on divine wisdom in comparison to ChatGPT are still remarkable. The words I quoted above are from their article that was published by Aletheia Today on September 1st, 2023.
A facsimile is “an exact copy” and pertains to an 1800s technology that could duplicate materials through the telegraph.
But even copies that are exactly like the original are not the original itself. The original is the only original.
Gimbel and Stern state further about ChatGPT:
“It is like the false prophet, the huckster pretending to be sacred when they are, in fact, profane in order to profit from being thought a prophet. ChatGPT is built precisely to be this sort of fraud, to be a fake human whose work we can substitute for our own, pretending to have done the necessary labor so that we can get the reward without breaking an intellectual sweat.”
Gimbel and Stern state very eloquently that ChatGPT is the “ultimate pragmatist,” because it can only do what is “practical, effective, and operational” in service to what has “cash value”, which is to use online information for conveniently relaying it to humans. It cannot discriminate between truth and falsehood, though we humans like to think it can do as such. Perhaps Gimbel and Stern share my suspicion that this could be a problem for our culture that is struggling to exercise the wisdom for avoiding disinformation.
I do not think the authors are intending to imply that we should forsake artificial intelligence and regress to a pre-AI time. However, I think they are trying to emphasize AI’s inability to have any affection or allegiance to God, unlike us humans who can sincerely feel affection for God who is invisible and intangible.
Whatever ChatGPT can tell us about God and the Bible cannot possibly overshadow nor rival nor emulate what we experience when reading the Bible itself and praying to God for ourselves.
The nature of human experience is that you can never re-experience something in the same way you had, originally. There will always be nuances.
Much time and effort is required for researching intricate topics. ChatGPT can help us save time and “intellectual sweat," but it can never give us the unvarnished truth. I think we all intuitively know this. It cannot even give us a facsimile of the unvarnished truth. It will even tell you that it has the potential to make mistakes.
It says:
“I don't have access to real-time information or events that occurred after my last update in January 2022.”
The experience of doing the research for yourself can be more rewarding than relying on ChatGPT’s consultation, alone. ChatGPT is not holy and is not omniscient. It does not have the subjective experience that we have during our emotional journey of growth that we endure while researching, praying, and practicing.
I think this may overlap with the “mental health tsunami” and meaning crisis identified by John Vervaeke during his conversation with Iain McGilchrist on Curt Jaimungal’s show called Theories of Everything. Many are experiencing a spiritual loss of home even though they have physical shelter.
Vervaeke stated that what makes us “intelligently adaptive” also inclines us toward deception and destruction. This double-edged sword that is used to make close connections with others can also thwart our accomplishment of belonging to a community.
What I learned from Vervaeke is that our social connectedness with others and sense of belonging to a community, which are crucial to our well-being, can intersect with our meaning of life. The exact definition for social connectedness may lack consensus among researchers but still does not detract from Vervaeke’s profound point.
We want a connection to go beyond our self centeredness. We want to love in ways that go beyond our self-loving tendencies. Such a thing must be achieved through wisdom, which is the act of preventing and rectifying what tends to destroy our connection with each other. Wisdom has existed across time and cultures, but it is lacking today, according to Vervaeke.
Too many people do not have a source of wisdom, because they do not know where to find it. What should we pay attention to? What really matters? What authenticates knowledge? Our brilliant technologies that purvey vast amounts of information are also struggling to establish those spiritually nourishing answers. We have information but not wisdom, and we lack the insight to realize that our brilliant information is outweighing the wisdom.
Independence may be a virtue, but its excess has made us arrogant and attached to an autodidactic, self-absorbed, self-limiting “religion of me” in which we continually choose our personal biases and echo-chambers that are intensified by social media. This “wisdom famine” is worsening among a growing number of people who are unaffiliated with religion and deride institutionalized sources, even though they do not largely identify as atheist.
Religions were once the home for what John Vervaeke calls “ecology of practices”, which is a collection of engaging and related methods and beliefs that are applied together for the purpose of growing particular skills. Though the Enlightenment wanted to liberate us from the shackles of religion, it did not give us the proper alternative home. It gave us the scientific worldview that we cannot ignore, as it is necessary for modifying and manipulating nature.
Unfortunately, the science that we treat as all-knowing cannot transcendentally reside above us and come down to us to produce “the meaning that makes truth possible.” It does not tell us “how science itself could possibly exist as a real entity within the ontology of that worldview.”
We find propositional knowledge in the scientific worldview that we cannot ignore, but the emphasis on propositional knowledge has caused a tyranny of propositional thinking that disregards the non-propositional forms of knowing (e.g., procedural, perspectival, and participatory) that foster wisdom and intimate social connection.
Vervaeke uses a unique term. The term is “transjectivity” in reference to a deeper layer situated beneath subjectivity and objectivity, tying the two together and giving rise to another “real relation” that is not governed by subjective whim nor quantified by weights and scales.
I would like to make some philosophical suggestions about information and knowledge:
Information and knowledge involve the individual contents of argumentative and persuasive thought. Furthermore, it involves being aware and familiar with propositional stances. Knowledge and information are tools for rote memorization and regurgitation of facts in methodical expression that appeal to one’s ego. But wisdom is knowing how to use those facts, that, not only best serve you, but also others in your midst, ethically speaking. Knowledge and information are dead and inert until they are implemented, a point at which wisdom begs to get involved. Information and knowledge are pragmatic and divorced from ethical concerns while wisdom tries to be ethical and not ego-driven. The difference between the two is insufficiently discussed in our world of competing intelligences and self-promotion.
The mere appearance of knowledge, persuasion, and conviction is prioritized above how to use it for others' benefit without cunning distortions and machinations.
How often do you find yourself in a conversation in which your primary motive is to defeat the other person who you see as an opponent? Aside from the mere appearance of superiority, what have you gained for yourself and others dialoguing with you?
The mission to solve this involves a use of freewill to not value yourself above others and not fixate too much on your own desires above others’ desires, like Philippians 2:3 instructs. Artificial intelligence can be smart, but it can never be holy. Though it serves others, it does not have the freewill to do so. It will never have the freewill to love God, also.
That is the essence of the highest wisdom: love the Lord, your God, with all that you have, and love your neighbor as yourself. See Matthew 22:34-40.
Can artificial intelligence learn anything new about God on its own accord, or are its perceptions of God kept within the human boundaries of utilitarian definitions on what is and is not socially acceptable and desirable?
Perhaps humanity will have to revisit that question multiple times as the debate continues regarding whether artificial intelligence is capable of consciousness.
The author of this blog post is Matthew Sabatine, who was born in the United States and raised as a Christian but left the faith in his early twenties. He returned to the faith midway through 2022. Matthew has some experience in the mental health field as a direct support professional, caring for people with intellectual and development disabilities and people who were in long-term residency/rehabilitation programs. Though Matthew has no formal undergraduate or graduate degree, he has experience co-facilitating therapy groups under the supervision of licensed counselors. Matthew currently works in sales/marketing by day and blogs on his free time at night.
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