Posted 01/19/2026
Before we get into the guts of why your typical consumer-grade generative AI sucks for you and everyone around you, a story to illustrate everything about why it's bad. There's this guy at my work - he's socialable, well-liked by everyone and gets his work done well. One day I went to email him for a detail on something, I believe it was about the location of something in the building. But given that it wasn't urgent and he can be any number of places around our grounds, I was gonna email him.
So I email him, "where's the gizmo at in the building? No rush thanks"
What does he email me back? It went something like this:
"Thank you so much for your request. I'd be happy to look into the location of that item for you, so whenever I'm next available I'd love to show you the location of that item. Let me know if there's anything else I can do for you!"
It was immediately clear that this was some AI-generated response, and I was stunned at the message. Let's break this down: I email the guy a question that requires maybe a one word response, and he sent back two or three sentences. So this guy had to read my original email, think about what to do, decide to go to ChatGPT, type into ChatGPT "hey I got this email, can you send a response that I'll help him in a little bit? Make it sound polite and professional," wait for the AI to generate the response, copy that, paste it back into an email and then send that to me. All when he could have either waited to send the email, tell me in person or just... write an email himself saying "the gizmo's in the closet."
I choose this story carefully because it illustrates every point in the title of this article all at once. On a practical level, this is ridiculous - 5 extra steps for an action that could've been finished in 5 seconds. In social taste, I was appalled because the AI response danced around the question which required a very simple answer. (His email did not even answer all the questions from my original message to him.) My first thought upon reading his email was, "did he actually read my email...?" Due to this, I swore on the spot I wouldn't be emailing him again if there was even a slight chance that I would get these corporatized-non-answer-type emails as answers to such a basic inquiry. As for the moral, ontological, theological and theological levels, those take a little more explaining, so don't touch that dial and we'll learn why every time you ask ChatGPT a question, you're basically kicking a poor orphan in the knee.
First, definitions and nuance and stuff. The main type of AI stuff I'm referring to here are things like ChatGPT, Grok, Claude or whatever other OpenAI wrapper people come up with - general use generative AI. You know the kind - the glorified magic 8 ball with a trillion dollars of speculative (probably laundered) money behind it. No, it's not magic and it's definitely not sentient. If you've ever noticed that your iPhone from 10 years ago can "predict" what words you might type next, congratulations, you've seen "artificial intelligence" at work. Things like ChatGPT are just your predictive keyboard on steroids. There's no thinking going on in those data centers.
Second, yes, recent developments in AI technology may have led to advances in science and whatnot. (Article link) (Another article) (Have a third article) (Though, if you continue reading about modern AI, you might wonder about the validity and accuracy of these results, given the nature of generative AI and the transformer technology that drives them... hmm...) But you and I both know that that's not the majority of AI use going on today.
Dear office worker turned potential computer power user: have you ever faced a task so mind numbingly boring that was also so clearly automatable? And you thought to yourself, "if I could just write a script to modify the data in these 5000 spreadsheet cells for me, I'd have this done in 60 seconds!" Then, upon trying to find the right functions, the right syntax, the right format, you then realize that in the 30 minutes you spent researching how to automate the task, you could have just done the task yourself? That's how I see people using AI most of the time.
People have been tricked into thinking that AI is all-knowing and error free, but there are plenty of examples to go around as to why every AI website has to have a disclaimer somewhere on the screen that reads something like "always make sure to check answers for accuracy." There is an entire with a new post about every hour showcasing that AI is not omniscient - check it out and sort it by new to see even the most cutting edge AI models struggle with counting, basic identification tasks and much more.
But wait, isn't AI supposed to be a deadly-accurate computer that can do everything from folding my laundry to doing my taxes? Isn't a super-computer that knows everything? If it still struggles to consistently and accurately do things as basic as count, then what is it good for? ...your guess is as good as mine. Again, generative AI as we have it today is not thinking, and for tasks that involve math or problem solving, it's not even calculating things or using logic. Generative AI takes in a buttload of data - even against the wishes of industry giants; and yes, that includes everything you've ever written or will write online from now on - analyzes it and, in response to whatever you ask it, gives a guess about what "should" come in response. (And as for ChatGPT or your AI girlfriend seeming to already have a personality, that's only because there is a page worth of text telling the AI what tone to respond in invisibly sent with everything you ask it.)
One of the funnier responses to AI that I've seen are from the computer enthusiasts who jumped on the "rah rah go AI" bandwagon who wanted it to run their lives for them, found out how poorly AI handles even basic questions at times and then just went back to programming their own solutions to any problem requiring even a speck of accuracy or reliability computing-wise.
The last thing I'll put here is from my own experiments with AI. I work with technology and I figured AI would be perfect for researching ultra-specific questions about different hardware and software. Nope. Any time I've had a super-niche question that I type into Google, I'll often sit there an extra 5 seconds to see what slop the AI overview section spits out, keep it in mind, and go on to find the answer on some website the AI didn't suggest and then realize that what the AI said was just completely made up. EVEN WORSE, I have confirmed myself a number of times that the sites off to the side of the AI answer are just... unrelated? The AI answer isn't taken from those sites and those sites themselves don't have the answer I'm looking for either. That AI also loves to make assumptions and interpret what I ask it in weird ways.
And in this case, we go back to the spreadsheet automation example I started out with... I could wrestle with the AI for ten minutes... or I could just type in "thing software manual," find and open that PDF, hit Ctrl + F to search, type in a keyword - boom, an answer right from the developer or manufacturer of the thing. No AI hallucinations, no second-guessing things.
If AI can't even interpret my search correctly and then will go on to make up some completely unrelated answer, then again I ask: what is the point of the AI?! In considering its foundation as a super-charged text predicter, the fundamental design of this computer program is completely flawed with how companies present AI to us. (Still waiting for that AI bubble to burst as of writing!)
Imagine a world where people are plastering cartoons everywhere. Advertisements, shows, paperwork, social media, office cubicles, just everywhere. Only, you don't see the kind of variety in these cartoons you'd see in the comics section of a newspaper - in the scenario, imagine every single one of these cartoons that people are putting everywhere at breakneck speed are all in the style of Dilbert comics.
A weird image about Jesus posted by your crazy relative on Facebook? Dilbert style cartoon. Ad for your kid's party? Dilbert style cartoon. Design document for a new mascot? Dilbert style cartoon. Warning sign in your workplace bathroom? Dilbert style cartoon. See a social media post online? Dilbert. Go outside? Dilbert. Every single cartoon thing you see: Dilbert style.
Of course, the situation is much worse than seeing Dilbert style comics everywhere. Most of you reading are probably familiar with the great Ghibli flood of 2025 where the internet was inundated with mock Studio Ghibli-style AI-generated artwork, much to the chagrin of the creator and, uh, I think anyone on the internet at that time. It would be one thing if all of these kitschy images being shoved in everyone's faces were all lovingly crafted pieces of art, but all of these images sit in the uncanny valley with more unsettling details popping up the more you look at them. If you look at most AI-generated images for more than 10 seconds, you'll feel like you're having a stroke with details melting into each other. Also, AI-generated images look like piss, speaking strictly from the data.
I've already shared above how I feel when people respond to my written word with AI-generated shlock. For anything from text to images to video: will someone explain to me how this isn't poor taste at best, and not creepy at worst? If text, images, audio and video are all means of facilitating communication between humans - y'know, the social animal? The animal made specifically for communicating with other animals within its species? - why would you want to stare at robot-generated slop everywhere you go? Don't you want a human response to your human-made text message? Don't you want to read human-made books? Human-made music? Human-made art? People are already roaring about misinformation, and now we want to introduce THE misinformation machine into all of this? (Obligatory Metal Gear Solid 2 reference)
Anyone who claims to advocate for more beauty and goodness in society but also generates things with AI, contributing to this corporate-backed homoginzation of thought, culture, decorum and style is a hypocrite, full stop. Is this too harsh of a statement? Keep reading and decide for yourself.
By using AI, you are helping waste land and polluting surrounding residents and wildlife. By using AI, you are driving the race to ruin peoples' water supplies. By using AI, you're making sure that some residents have worse air to breathe and have double the noise around their homes. By using AI, we're utilizing so much energy that Google is looking to expand NUCLEAR POWER. Do you get how many resources they're burning for a company to say "we need nuclear reactors for our product right now?!"
Even if you're no environmentalist, do you really want our world's time, energy and money being spent on the misinformation/instant sexual exploitation/scam machine?
"But don't you know there's no ethical consumption under capitalism?" I hear you say. This is surely true and applicable for smartphones where such things are forced upon us as necessary to do something as simple as pay rent, but last I checked, no one forced you to use AI. Can you point to me the exact moment when the company OpenAI shut down your capacity to reason? When they said "all emails must be proof-read through us" (despite the fact 99% of people don't give the wording of emails a second thought)? When did our apetite for media consumption and memes and entertainment become so downright ravenous that you "just have to" generate that funny image to send to your friend? Were the other five billion images already existing on the internet just not enough for you?
For any AI users still reading this: you had a choice, you have a choice and you'll always have a choice: no one is forcing you to use AI. You can live happily without AI. Do you know where all the hype that "ohh EVERYONE'S gotta use AI or you'll be left behind" came from? Marketing. It's so billionaires can become trillionaires. It's not because AI will solve all your problems - because it is by its very design, technologically unable to solve your problems well or efficiently or accurately. AI as you know it exists to make rich people richer.
So every time you use AI, just know that your input, every single thing you type into AI, is being recorded, processed, sold to every advertiser under the sun to profile and stalk you so that rich people who care not for you can piss in some peoples' water supply. To do what? Generate a few sentences you could have thought yourself had you just stopped to ask yourself, "what's my very next step in whatever matter I'm facing?" Whether you see it or not, peoples' lives are actively being made worse because people are using AI.
Of course, if you don't believe me on that front, hopefully at the very least my dear AI user would care that their brains are losing the ability to think well as a result of over-reliance on AI.
Though I guess if such an AI user wouldn't even care about themself, perhaps we might care about what God has to say on the matter.
One of my favorite parts about being Christian is that, in the area of discussing thought and philosophy, if you can make a case that God doesn't like something, then even if there may be other reasons to approve of something, the case is kinda shut on the matter if the Father says no, right? Basically, if dad says no cookies, then that's it. No cookies for you. (Note: divine command theory is still a bad way to think about ethics in Christianity though, see this article for some info on that.)
That may be an easy case to make for something like genocide being bad, but supporting or condemning AI is a bit tougher to work out here. Based on all of the reasons above, a Christian can easily say that as it all stands right now, supporting AI by using it or directly financially supporting it is a no-no. It harms God's creation (pollution and other damages to animals and humans, including human brains), it degrades the dignity of the human person (people are quickly conflating the worth of a person with their ability to do work, their productivity, their output), it's a tool of mass deception (one of AI's biggest uses right now is some type of grifting, goes against God's love for truth and goodness, and at the end of the day, its very design cannot guarantee accuracy or truth or ethical output) and so on. I think these are reason enough to not use or support AI in any fashion as things stand. Really, for Christians or anyone else, for that matter. It's everyone's planet, everyone should be respected and everyone should be a fan of truth and upright communication.
It still remains however that its inherent existence does not appear to be wholly bad to the Christian mindset. Many make the argument that it's another tool amongst many different computing tools, and on its own, yes, it can be seen as just a tool. So I will take this time to say that if an generative AI/LLM is run locally and used ethically, generative AI can have its place in our lives. But 99% of people who hear about and use AI will not take the time to look into this and people will find themselves going the easy route of using one of the big corporate AI models, which is the elephant in the room that deserves to be sealed away in a realm of darkness.
I would like to offer that God made you and he loves you, and he especially likes it when humanity uses our minds and resources for good use. He loves our good art, our good tools, our good creations. Anyone from Aquinas (link, link) to Tolkien will agree on this matter, and if you don't believe this already, I highly recommend doing so - it's beautiful to know that our creator not only loves us for ourselves, but delights in our works as any father delights in seeing his child grow and develop.
As beautiful and Biblical as this belief is, sometimes it feels that there are few people that believe this in the day-to-day. People may state that God loves the works of Michelangelo, but I have heard way too many people that excuse themselves from singing in mass by saying, "God doesn't want to hear me sing, my voice is terrible!" Sorry, but yes he does! Parents out there - do you say that you hate seeing the crayon drawing that your kid made for you because it's not something befitting the Sistine Chapel? Do any of us besmirch the work of the amateur musicians in our lives because they messed up a few notes at family music night? If no one reading this is a professional musician, then why the heck does anyone go to karaoke nights?!
Again - God loves your works! He loves your walking, the way you speak, He loves the supposed imperfections in your handwriting, your crooked teeth, He loves your smile, He loves your notebook doodles and the sandwich you made the other day. If God made us and loves us and these good things that we do, why are we trying to not only deceive others into thinking we wrote that email we copied from ChatGPT, but we also want to shirk our share in sub-creation (as Tolkien called this) and short-change God out of some of the very things He made us for in His infinite wisdom?
I don't know about you, but whenever I've gone to those parishes that have crowds of people from cultures who are less stuck-up about trying to make absolutely everything in life "perfect" (whatever nebulous, commercially-defined standard that may be), their off-key singing in mass is one of the most beautiful sounds you can hear. A group of people who sing their off-key notes to God has much more of a direct connection to the divine than most of us could ever hope to have.
Oh, and given the unstable and random nature of AI, anyone putting their trust in it for decision making and guidance is probably acting on the same level or instinct that drives people to divination and psychic shenanigans. I'm not sure either that God will prove be the number one fan of people making and using AI to speak to horribly-flawed copies of deceased loved ones, much as He was not a fan of Saul summoning the spirits of the dead. (If you're working on a degree in theology right now, please make this your thesis and send it to me when you're finished, I feel like there's a lot more to be said here...)
So, does God hate AI? Maybe not. But he certainly loves you and loves it when you write things, draw things, scribble things, THINK things. Can we use tools to do all these things? Sure. But - and I don't use this phrasing lightly - for the love of God, do it from your heart. Don't do it from Sam Altman's heart.
If you're around my age, then you've only heard of the generations before us having to stand up against the government in being drafted into meaningless wars. "Thankfully," you think, "I don't have to fight against something as awful as being drafted into a war. We're past those times now." Unfortunately, such a thought would be misguided.
Do you know who calls for and stops wars now? Corporations. It's no secret, either - 30 minutes of research into Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Boeing and any other company associated with the phrase "military industrial complex" and their lobbying history will demonstrate this. Couple that with the billions of dollars spent in such industries, this shouldn't be a surprise to anyone.
Using this information, we can look into some natural outcomes. I wonder if Microsoft has caught on to the possibility of selling AI solutions to the military? After one Google search, sure enough. I wonder if the US military is upfront about their AI use. One search later, we have our answer.
If you live in the USA, you may not currently be facing the possibility of being drafted into a purposeless war fueled solely by the pride of its leaders, but don't think for a second you have any less responsibility in civil disobedience than those in the 60's dodging the Vietnam War draft. Think about this: AI makes its money and gains more data to be trained off of as someone uses it. They take that money and data and continue to train it for purposes such as automated drone killing-machines and creating surveillance states. Do you think that they made all these AI tools out of the goodness of their hearts? Are those advertising campaigns to try and get every person in the world hooked on some form of generative AI just business as usual? No, because the creators of modern AI are aiming to make as much money as possible off of you and everyone else, and one of the easiest ways to do this is to sell stuff to the military.
So what am I saying here? By using AI, you're either directly or indirectly aiding in the efforts to feed the egos of people who decided to start killing masses of innocent people in places like Palestine? Well... I'm not gonna say you're helping in those situations.
Let's go back to the "no ethical consumption under capitalism" bit. Couldn't such an argument be made for tons of goods we take for granted? Cars? Computers? Food? Perhaps. But with the use of AI as we have it right now, you have two options: continue life as you've lived before, thinking for yourself, writing by yourself, creating whatever else on your own; either that, or sell your mind off to atrophy, get less-human results and indirectly support the military industrial complex. Why would anyone support the second option? Because we're too worried about how the tone of our email and "need" the war-mongering robot to check it for us?
I've heard more and more people say they're apolitical, or that it's too difficult to affect change in our world today. If you're one of these people that's checked out on this front, I present to you the easiest form of protest of all time: don't use ChatGPT/Grok/Gemini/etc. Where your grandparents may have protested the building of a supermarket in town in the past, the scale of things have gotten much bigger - instead of making one supermarket to change the culture of a town, companies such as OpenAI want to change the culture of the entire developed world in one fell swoop. Your grandparents had the choice of simply not shopping at the new supermarket in town - you too now have the choice to simply not use AI and go about your life as before. Where you live, you may not have opportunities for civil disobedience, but you now have the opportunity every day for cultural disobedience as more people around you seem to want to outsource their thinking to generative AI.
If you've ever had even a slight foreboding feeling about AI turning into Skynet and killing all of humanity but you still decide to use ChatGPT to generate a funny cat image, please just don't complain about Skynet when things fall apart.
I feel pretty strongly about this. I feel so strongly about this that I don't even care if you don't read the full article, so long as you at least this summary.
By using generative AI such as ChatGPT, Grok, Gemini, etc.:
Is pointing the finger at the consumer who uses something like ChatGPT too harsh? I don't think so, because the responsibility is on us to decline whatever destructive garbage tech oligarchies decide to try and foist upon us not for the betterment of humanity, but primarily for the sake of their bank accounts. I have said all that I've said in this article because I love you, I love our world, I love humanity, I love life and I love God who calls us to live love in ALL that we do - if I've offended anyone, I apologize for the hurt feelings, but I do insist that you look past that and see the evidence and source I've given that should drive you far, far away from AI usage. If you don't agree with two of the reasons not to use it, remember the other seven and stay far away from it!
Thank you and have a blessed, AI-free day!
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