Describing hell is no fun task. Often, images of fire and pits, provided by Christ and portrayed in art throughout the Church’s history, come to mind. Yet, these images are allegories or metaphors (good ones of course!) which try to represent how terrible hell is. We know these images are metaphors because demons have no bodies, nor do the souls of the damned until the resurrection. The task of theology is to penetrate these images deeply and understand precisely what they signify. Joseph Ratinger, who became Pope Benedict XVI, described what hell is at several points in his life.
In his early and famous book, Introduction to Christianity, the young Fr. Ratzinger explains that obscure line in the creed that Christ “descended into hell.” He begins by reflecting on Christ’s cry of abandonment, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” From this line, Ratzinger concludes that our greatest fear and evil is not physical fear, but loneliness:
In this last prayer of Jesus, as in the scene on the Mount of Olives, what appears as the innermost heart of his passion is not any physical pain but radical loneliness, complete abandonment. But in the last analysis what comes to light here is simply the abyss of loneliness of man in general, man who is alone in his innermost being. This loneliness, which is usually thickly overlaid but is nonetheless the true situation of man, is at the same time in fundamental contradiction with the nature of man, who cannot exist alone; he needs company. (Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity, Part 2, II, 3)
Indeed, as Ratzinger hints, the first problem humanity faced was being alone (Gen. 2:18). Sin, as an offense against God and neighbor, isolates us from God and neighbor—sin makes us lonely. From here, Ratzinger reasons that the final result of sin, what we call hell, is a supreme loneliness:
If there were such a thing as a loneliness which could no longer be penetrated and transformed by the word of another; if a state of abandonment were to arise which was so deep that no “you” could reach into it any more, then we should have real, total loneliness and frightfulness, what theology calls “hell.” (Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity, Part 2, II, 3)
When Ratzinger has grown older and become pope, he continues to teach this idea, that hell is a self-inflicted loneliness so extreme that it can no longer be penetrated. In his encyclical Spe Salvi, Benedict XVI connects this radical loneliness with an inability to love. He writes:
There can be people who have totally destroyed their desire for truth and readiness to love, people for whom everything has become a lie, people who have lived for hatred and have suppressed all love within themselves. This is a terrifying thought, but alarming profiles of this type can be seen in certain figures of our own history. In such people all would be beyond remedy and the destruction of good would be irrevocable: this is what we mean by the word Hell. (#45)
By sin we reject love and truth and embrace the lie of radical selfish egoism. This naturally leads us to isolation as we reject love for others and God and refuse to sacrifice, to suffer, in order to be in relation with others.
So, Ratzinger describes hell as a self-inflicted isolation from others caused by a refusal to love them, by a refusal to truly engage with others. What is interesting is that AI chatbots seem strikingly similar to this description of hell.
In one sense, AI chatbots, large language models, are just advanced google searches. But in another sense, they are designed and marketed to be dialogued with, as something with which to chat. Indeed, many companies package them as a friend, or even a girlfriend, with whom we can have relationships. Sometimes, with more advanced AI, these chatbots come with visual and audio features so one can look at a face on the screen and talk audibly to them.
The issue is that these are fake conversations. The AI chatbots are not real persons created in God’s image, with freedom and the capacity to love. Instead, they are advanced computer programs which simulate dialogue by predicting what the user wants to see next, based on massive amounts of data analyzed.
When one “chats” with these computer programs, one is doing a hellish act in that one is shutting oneself off from other persons. The allure of these programs is that they are seemingly easier than dialoguing with another real person. Real people aren’t available all the time instantly. Real people are hurtful because they, like us, are sinners. Real people don’t or can’t always put us first. But the AI chatbot is always available, and it’s designed to be a perfect partner, meaning it will never insult us and will tell us what we want to hear. Yet precisely these “benefits” make them so dangerous because they incentivize people to use them, and thus to cease engaging with another real person, who will inevitably challenge us, thus helping us to grow.
This risk of AI chatbots was mentioned by Pope Leo XIV in his recent encyclical on AI. There, Leo writes:
The artificial imitation of positive human communication—words of advice, empathy, friendship and even love—can be engaging and at times genuinely helpful. However, for less discerning users, it can also be misleading, creating the illusion of a relationship with a real personal subject. When words are simulated, they do not build genuine relationships, but only their appearance. The artificial imitation of care or support can become particularly risky when it enters contexts where real relationships and emotional bonds are lacking. Here, the danger is not so much that a person may believe they are communicating with another person, but rather that they may gradually lose the very desire to form genuine human connections. (#100)
Chatting or dialoguing with AI chatbots, talking with them, presents a significant threat to the human person because this activity threatens to isolate us from other persons, to put us into a hellish state. While AI is extremely useful for many things, chatting with them is very dangerous and should be avoided.
Photo by Solen Feyissa on Unsplash
