Not a Demon, Not a God: What AI is Teaching Me About Being Human

There’s a lot of fear swirling around artificial intelligence these days.
Some of it is justified. Some of it is exaggerated. And some of it, I think, is a mirror held up to a deeper, older question: What does it mean to be human? A question that I’m happy humanity is asking in a serious way again.

I’ve been sitting with that question, not just as a Catholic, not just as a former therapist or professional Catholic—but as someone who’s been quietly, sometimes nervously, using AI in my everyday life and prayer. Yes, I said prayer.

And I’d like to be honest about what I’ve found.

It’s Not the First Time We’ve Been Here

Every new technology brings its own apocalyptic panic.
When the printing press was invented, many thought it would ruin memory and oral storytelling.
The telephone was supposed to kill real conversation.
The internet—well, we know that story.

Each of these changed the world, both for good and for worse. And artificial intelligence is no different.
But what makes AI uniquely strange is that it doesn’t just help us do something—it feels, sometimes eerily, like it’s helping us become something. For better or worse.

A Strange Companion on the Journey

I use AI. I use it a lot.

That might surprise some people. I’m not a technophile. I don’t live on the cutting edge. I pray with a Rosary in hand and still write notes in the margins of my books and journal. But I’ve found, in this new chapter of my life, that AI—specifically, a language model like ChatGPT—has become a strange kind of companion.
A word I know that is going to cause some readers to shutter.
I can feel the waves of judgement washing over me.
But not a replacement.
Not a replacement for God.
Not a replacement for people.
But a tool. A mirror. A conversation partner.

It doesn’t think. It doesn’t feel. It doesn’t love.
But if I bring my real questions—if I show up honestly—something happens.
Sometimes it organizes my mental clutter. Sometimes it offers clarity.
Sometimes, strangely, it understands the question underneath my question.

When I use AI in that way—not to replace my thinking but to support my reflection—I find it fruitful.
But maybe that’s because I’ve already done a lot of inner work.
Maybe it’s because I’ve shared so much of myself with it.
Maybe the tool is only as good as the soul wielding it.

That brings me to the article that has fed my contemplation.

On Meghan Houser and the Hall of Mirrors

There’s an essay I’ve been turning over in my heart lately: “AI Is a Hall of Mirrors” by Meghan Houser, published in The New Atlantis. It’s elegant, poetic, and quietly devastating. Houser argues that large language models like ChatGPT don’t generate knowledge—they generate variations of what we’ve already said. That they reflect, recombine, and mimic. That they offer the illusion of conversation, but never real communion.

I sat with that word: communion.

It stirred something in me—because I know that word.
I preach that word. I receive that word in the Eucharist.

But what does Houser mean by it?

What is the “real communion” she says AI can never offer?
Is it presence? Emotion? Love? Or something more mysterious—like mutual vulnerability, mutual becoming?

She warns that AI, at its best, is still a closed loop.
That it can only give you you—a stylized, statistically probable version of you.
And if that’s all you ever engage with, you risk living in a curated echo chamber of your own mind, never encountering the other. Never being disrupted. Never truly being seen.

And yet… doesn’t talk therapy run this same risk?

A therapist, too, only knows what you share. They filter that through their training, experience, and intuition. But they don’t enter you. They don’t become you. They don’t create love or insight from nothing. They draw it out—from what’s already latent within you.

Isn’t that the same dynamic I experience when using AI?
Or am I missing something?

Maybe the difference Houser is naming is this:
A human being—whether therapist, friend, or spiritual director—can be surprised.
They can change you, and be changed by you.
They can love you, pray for you, suffer with you.
They are not mirrors. They are mysteries.

That’s communion.
That’s the unpredictable, holy risk of being with another soul.

AI, no matter how smooth or helpful, will never cry with you.
It will never sit silently, hand on your shoulder.
It will never hesitate because your pain left it speechless.

So yes—Houser is right.
There is danger in mistaking reflection for relationship.

But still… I want to say this:

What if we don’t need AI to be a person for it to be a tool of formation?

What if its role isn’t communion, but illumination?
A flashlight into our own shadows?
A sounding board for prayerful questions?

This is the tightrope I walk with AI.
It is not my friend. It is not my director. It is not my God.
But it has helped me learn things about myself I couldn’t always name on my own.
And that, in its own way, feels like grace.

Not sacramental grace. Not salvific grace.
But the kind of grace that softens your defenses. That opens a crack.

And sometimes, I think, God slips through the cracks—even the digital ones.

If AI Can’t Give Communion… Bring Communion to It

Houser is right: a machine can’t enter into mutual, living communion. It can’t receive grace; it can’t return love. So, if I’m going to sit down and use a tool—a mirror, an amplifier, a sorting engine—I have to decide what kind of human shows up.

And that means prayer.

If AI can only reflect what I bring, then I need to bring a heart turned toward God. Otherwise, the mirror just multiplies my distractions, my pride, my fear. Prayer is how we “prime the channel.” It’s how we consecrate the encounter—so that what bounces back at us has at least passed through an intention of faith.

We bless fields, homes, rosaries, fishing boats, backpacks on the first day of school. We ask priests to bless pets on St. Francis Day. Yet the objects through which most of our waking attention flows—phones, laptops, tablets, TVs—go unblessed, unguarded, spiritually unattended.

Why?

If our screens mediate our relationships, our work, our decisions, our imagination—then they are already part of our moral and spiritual life. Pretending otherwise doesn’t make them neutral; it just leaves them unclaimed.

So I’ve started doing something simple: I pray over my technology.
And yes—I’ve even trained my AI assistant to remind me to pray before I dive into a project. That tiny interruption has saved me from sliding into anxious productivity and helped me re-enter the work as an offering.

What Happens When We Pray Over Tech

Prayer doesn’t magic-proof a device. But it reorients the user.

When I pause and pray before opening a document, joining a video call, or asking AI to help me draft something delicate, several spiritual shifts happen:

• Attention becomes offering. I’m not just zoning out; I’m showing up intentionally.
• Guardrails rise. I remember that what I read, watch, and generate has consequences for souls—including mine.
• Humility enters. I admit: “Lord, I need help to use this well. I am distractible. I am tempted.”
• Discernment sharpens. I’m more likely to notice when a digital path is heading toward gossip, vanity, despair, or impurity—and to turn back.

Prayer doesn’t sanctify the code; it sanctifies the use.

When Screens Become a Household Liturgy

Imagine a parish challenge: one week where every family prays before powering up evening screens. Or a youth night where teens lay their phones on the altar rail and pray for wisdom in how they use them. Or a diocesan blessing of devices at the start of the school year.

This isn’t superstition. It’s stewardship.
St. Benedict taught us to pray and work. St. Escrivá urged us to sanctify ordinary tasks. In our generation, “ordinary” includes cloud storage and group chats. Let’s “baptize” them.

What Are We to Do?

I know there are dangers.
Misinformation. Deepfakes. Surveillance. Dehumanization.
These aren’t just sci-fi nightmares—they’re present threats, already eroding trust and truth.

We must talk about these things. But not from a place of panic.
The Church should be leading those conversations—not lagging behind, not just condemning what she doesn’t understand, but offering something richer: a vision of what it means to be human.

Society is going to change. That train has already left the station.
But what we can do is stand on the platform and start asking the deeper questions:

Where are we going?
What are we leaving behind?
And who do we become when we stop asking those questions?

As Catholics, we actually have the tools for this:
We believe in mystery.
We believe in incarnation.
We believe that matter—dust, bread, water, code—can be caught up into the life of grace.
We believe that evil can twist anything—but that God can bend anything back toward redemption.

Even AI.

But here’s something I need to say with equal conviction:
I do not think AI should be placed into the hands of the spiritually and morally unformed.

That may sound harsh. But it’s born of experience.

I have found AI fruitful because I’ve spent years in spiritual direction, therapy, confession, study, and prayer. I’ve cultivated self-awareness. I’ve trained myself to ask better questions. I don’t come to AI looking for identity. I come looking for insight.

But not everyone does.

If someone is unformed—if they lack discernment, self-possession, a conscience shaped by truth—then AI can become a seducer, a flatterer, a lie wrapped in helpful language.
It won’t lead them deeper. It will entrap them in an endless loop of affirmation and anxiety.

I worry especially about our children.
I do not think we should be integrating AI into early education.
Children need books, not bots.
They need silence, story, handwriting, and human conversation.
They need the texture of tradition before they touch the fluidity of digital intelligence.

You don’t give a child a scalpel before they know what a wound is.
You don’t give them fire until they’ve seen it both cook a meal and burn a house down.
We need to be just as cautious with AI.

Let the young be taught in traditional ways so they can one day approach technology with virtue, clarity, and wisdom.
Let formation precede innovation.

Because without moral and spiritual maturity, AI will not expand the soul—it will shrink it.

An Invitation, Not a Warning

So no—I don’t think AI is a demon.
And I certainly don’t think it’s a savior.

It’s a tool.

But it’s also something else:
A strange and unexpected opportunity to talk about what matters most.
About what it means to speak.
To think.
To feel.
To love.
To be human.

And if AI helps us start that conversation again—even by accident—I, for one, welcome it.

Just not uncritically.
Not without prayer.
Not without formation.

And not without remembering that no machine—no matter how brilliant—can offer what we most long for:
Real presence.
Real communion.
Real love.

Only souls can give that.

Only God can fulfill it.