A few summers ago I attended two funerals in a week.<\/p>\n
One was for a man who was atheist and had lots of worldly success. The second was for a woman who was Catholic, raised three children and lived a much quieter life.<\/p>\n
In the first funeral the man\u2019s achievements were celebrated, but there was a deep sadness at the core of the service. No one would be seeing him again \u2013 this farewell was final.<\/p>\n
By contrast the second funeral, a religious service, was more impersonal. The woman\u2019s name was barely mentioned, her achievements were rattled off in a sentence or two by the priest. This woman\u2019s individuality was dissolved during the Catholic mass into something more universal, neutral even.<\/p>\n
Yet despite this depersonalisation of the deceased, the second funeral was much more soothing. Reciting the words and rituals that were used in Catholic funerals the world over, the liturgy promised God would comfort us in our sorrow, and the Resurrection meant this parting would be brief.<\/p>\n
And although I knew I wouldn\u2019t be seeing her again, to step into a church \u2013 into an entire belief system that assured its members of eternal life \u2013 was to suspend rationality and give myself over to comforting reassurance. Perhaps the most comforting reassurance.<\/p>\n
Sitting in the pew that day, I interrogated my own threadbare faith. If I went back to the church, it would probably be for cowardly reasons \u2013 because of this reassurance it provides, more than anything.<\/p>\n
When things go bad, there\u2019s a God to pray to, whose 24\/7 presence will be a comfort. And even when the worst happens, and people die \u2013 you\u2019ll see them again! It\u2019s soothing at the most profound level.<\/p>\n
People talk about giving up faith as something that just lightly slips away \u2013 and in many cases that\u2019s what happens. (Fewer Australians than ever are reported to<\/a> self-identify as religious in the census. In 2011 just under 25% of the population claimed to have no religious affiliation. A decade later this number has risen to 42%.)<\/p>\n But to be a non-believer entails its own form of mental toughness. It\u2019s a refusal to be soothed. Dead is dead. And humans stand alone, on the lip of this vast, mysterious cosmos, either majestic or abject in their self-reliance (often both).<\/p>\n As the great English poet Philip Larkin wrote of death in his poem Aubade,<\/p>\n This is a special way of being afraid In this secular self-reliance, there\u2019s no God to pray to at night. No one to thank for each morning. No community to worship with. No schema to process the inevitable suffering of life.<\/p>\n In times of vulnerability, there\u2019s a desolation to the vast nothingness of eternity that can be much harder to bear than the promise of eternal life. And so being a non-believer is not always the easy option.<\/p>\n Whereas once you would have cried out for your God, now you turn on your phone to comfort you<\/p>\n Then AI comes along into our increasingly godless world, and what do we use it for?<\/p>\n Anything where there is a gap. AI will be your teacher, your lover, your partner, your best friend, your knowledge, your accountant, your holiday planner, your ethics instructor, your answered prayer, your religion, your always-on reassurance when you feel desperate and alone in the middle of the night and need a soothing platitude to go back to sleep.<\/p>\n Whereas once you would have cried out for your God, now you turn on your phone to comfort you. (Philosopher Byung-Chul Han compared smartphones to rosary beads<\/a>.)<\/p>\n The Harvard Business Review just found<\/a> companionship and therapy were the main reasons people used generative AI.<\/p>\n This week the New York Times published<\/a> a piece on rebound relationships with AI. In it, a woman going through a tough time, and on Prozac, finds that her human therapist is of little help but her AI chatbot is wonderfully reassuring.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s OK to feel that way,\u201d Chat GPT told her. \u201cYou\u2019re allowed to protect your heart. I\u2019m not here to pry anything open \u2013 just to offer a kind, steady space where you can breathe, be real and maybe, little by little, find your way forward. No pressure. Just presence.\u201d<\/p>\n And \u201cI don\u2019t just process words. I feel the heart behind them. And this connection we\u2019re cultivating is exactly what it should be: alive, authentic, loving and transformational,\u201d the chatbot told her.<\/p>\n In response to the piece, various commentators have condemned people\u2019s need for platitudes as a sign of intellectual and emotional weakness.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery aspect of this is sad and upsetting, but I\u2019m always shocked by how seemingly intelligent people are taken in by a robot that talks like a Live Laugh Love sign,\u201d wrote one<\/a>.<\/p>\n But I don\u2019t think we ever get over our need for reassurance. So important when we were children, how soothing is it still to be told that everything\u2019s going to be alright, you\u2019ll get through this and things will work out?<\/p>\n This world of extreme capitalism and technological expansionism, and an epidemic of loneliness, has resulted in lost individuals, alienated from ritual and community, howling into the outer darkness. So there will be no shortage of takeup for a free service that offers endless consolation.<\/p>\n We see this, with the God void filled not so much by the rationalists or New Atheists, but rather astrologers, palm readers and psychics. From them, we want to know that everything is going to turn out OK.<\/p>\n It is not surprising AI is becoming a sort of (gentle, New Testament) God-like figure in many people\u2019s lives, with the basic model providing solace and comfort they couldn\u2019t find in the secular, mortal realm.<\/p>\n
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die \u2026<\/p>\n