On Being Known and Loved

It was a wonderful weekend. Speakers and participants spent two days in prayer, contemplation, and fellowship—three distinct marks of Benedictine life. Our speaker lineup was excellent, too. Matthew Crawford and Patrick Deneen gave keynote addresses on Friday and Saturday evening, respectively. Our panelist speakers included: Tara Isabella Burton (author of Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World); Leo Clarke (author of Man and the Economy: Understanding Capitalist Economics and Social Teaching); Carlos Eire of Yale University (author of They Flew and Reformations); Denis Hector of University of Miami; D.W. Pasulka of the University of North Carolina Wilmington (author of American Cosmic and Encounters); Jane Sloan Peters of the College of Mount Saint Vincent; Brett Robinson from the University of Notre Dame; and Joseph Vukov of Loyola University Chicago (author of The Perils of Perfection).

The talks and panels discussions were timely, for after all there is no shortage of anxiety over AI (artificial intelligence): how it will affect businesses, jobs, education, etc. Some AI experts have argued AI systems will grow sentient. (How, exactly, that will happen, they have not said.) But what is clear is it will increasingly become part of our everyday. It is already used in multiple industries, with businesses employing it as an everyday tool. Accountants use it. Marketing agencies collect analytics with AI-driven analytics. Logistics companies cut costs with AI-generated insights. AI is here, and it is ubiquitous—more ubiquitous than we think.

Anyone who has used ChatGPT or Gemini knows its capabilities. For example, for the sake of this newsletter, we inserted the following prompt into ChatGPT: “Write a poem about the Portsmouth Institute for Faith and Culture in the style of Seamus Heaney’s ‘Digging.’” Here are a few lines of what we received:

Through stained glass windows, sunbeams fall, / Like blessings on the written word, / In this great house, we heed the call, / Where silent hearts are deeply stirred.

“In this great house, we heed the call.” “Where silent hearts are deeply stirred.” Sure, by the lowest of standards it can be called poetry, but by no means is it good. We here at the Institute will stick with Heaney, Dante, and Shakespeare.

What to make of this AI?

A few observations:

One, AI does not replace the human desire to understand. Understanding is a type of knowing that extends beyond mere fact, a kind of knowing cause and effect. According to St. Thomas Aquinas, understanding is a deeper act of cognition whereby the knower possesses knowledge about causes. The knower knows that x causes y, and so on.

Second, AI cannot and will never be able to reciprocate being known by another person. This is perhaps the greatest fault of its widespread use, especially in a time where humans are more and more isolated and alone.

How wonderful it is when a close friend knows us intimately, or when a parent, for example, knows right away when their child, just home from school, is not right. There is a deeper knowing that informs the will to act in love towards another person. AI cannot replace that.

Another example that is relevant here is a kind of personal knowledge that recognizes the human person as person, not a mere data point or fact. A parent can tell a child, for instance, that they should become a lawyer because lawyers make good money. Yes, it is true that lawyers tend to make good money. But imagine that parent saying “You should consider a law career. You are intelligent and well spoken. I see you at your speech and debate tournaments. You’re terrific up there. And I’ve always said you have a desire to set things right, which I can see you doing professionally.” That is being known personally.

So God or the Machine?

God knows us more intimately than any parent or friend. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, has numbered every hair on our head. We are “beheld always by God in heaven and that whatsoever he does in any place is seen by the divine watchfulness and is at all times reported to God by the angels” (Rule of St. Benedict, chapter VII). God’s knowledge of us, and our knowledge of God, is not and never will be artificial.