Sunday 15 February 2026
I prefer not to think of AI, and how much I don’t like it. Or the internet, and how much time I spend on it. Because I depend on both more than I care to admit.
I’ve wrestled with my take and my opinion. And I can’t get further than this: However good an answer I get on ChatGPT, or indeed the internet, I would much much rather the reply came from a real person, face to face, even if imperfect.
So how do I tie this in with the Sermon on the Mount from the gospel reading today?
I suppose it’s this.
If I am to treat others as as I would like to be treated, I’d like whoever it is to listen to me, just as I would hope to listen to them.
My wife and I talked about this in a walk later in the day.
She is more favourable to Chat GPT than I am, but it might be more accurate to say she’s made her peace.
She mentioned a thread she’d seen on Reddit, which is not AI, but part of the popular modern consensus that the internet is where we should all be, rather than in the more disappointing real world.
On it people asked each other to mention a moment that had changed their life. One comment stood out. A man explained how seeing his cat looking at him stopped him from hanging himself. Gruesome stuff.
Comments below included “great cat”, as well as relief to hear the man had changed his mind.
I agreed with that part. It was great he had thought twice. But not everything.
Putting this detail on the internet seems to be part of the problem. That kind of thing, someone describing the moment they intended to hang themselves… that needs a person to talk it through with. In private, so the messy details that led to it can be heard.
But these days that’s not as easy as it ought to be.
Loneliness is on the up, so we all head to the internet for company. To share things that are a little too personal in the most impersonal of spaces.
Step forward AI and it’s relentless cheerful advice that soothes, and understands, even if cosmetically. It tells us what we want to hear, less so what we need.
So to circle back to the sermon on the mount the battle out here in the real world is getting people to listen. The internet, and AI, pretends to do something close to that, but not quite. It’s without sincerity or heart, without the eye contact or the hand on the shoulder. But to a lot of people that must seem better than nothing.