AI Chatbots Are Evil ~ The Imaginative Conservative The conservative Catholic case against AI
This was interesting because, while I am in no way a conservative catholic, pretty opposite in fact – some of these arguments make sense! They get at the feeling of unease I have with LLMs – that they are insidiously infiltrating my being and sapping my spirit.
Conversation is for communion. The ability to speak and to listen, to discuss, to reveal our hidden, intellectual life by articulating ourselves in a public, common language with the hope of receiving a response—all this has as its natural correlate in another intelligence, one who receives our meaning, understands it (or misunderstands it), and has the power to respond in kind, revealing the hidden reality of his or her own subjectivity.
The use of AI chatbots deliberately frustrates the act of conversation from attaining its natural end (communion with another intelligence) by wasting it on a non-intelligence. Of course, the development and sale and marketing of robots that appear to listen, understand, and converse is not the only sin against the act of conversation.
Now this is all predicated on the usual stupid Natural Law philosophy that says things have only one purpose and to use them for other purposes is a sin – so masturbation is a sin, contraception is a sin, etc. I'm a good modern liberal and I don't believe in that – putting things to new purposes is perfectly fine. That's how evolution works, both biological and cultural.
And yet...the unease remains.