Truth Unites - Is AI Making us Lonely?

Episode Date: March 16, 2026

Gavin Ortlund responds to Wes Huff’s recent podcast appearance and warns about the dangers of using AI to meet emotional or spiritual needs.Truth Unites (https://truthunites.org) exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites, Visiting Professor of Historical Theology at Phoenix Seminary, and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville.SUPPORT:Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunitesFOLLOW:Website: https://truthunites.org/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/truth.unites/X: https://x.com/gavinortlundFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/

All right, Zaf, thanks for doing this one, man. If I forget to say this later, if it's too much to do this by Monday, we can do the other one. It's dead either way. Let's dive in a little off script here, so we'll see how this goes. There's a huge danger with AI that I think a lot of us aren't thinking about enough, and I want to talk about in this video. But to get into this, I want to talk about this recent podcast that Wes Huff did. Man, it's amazing to see how God is using Wes to make the gospel clear to these millions of people. It's pretty thrilling to listen to.

So as I've said so many times before, pray for revival in our time, pray that lots of people come to know Jesus in a time where there's so much instability. But I want to focus in this video on one particular aspect of Wes and Stevens' discussion. A lot of people have been talking about this, but I think this issue has gotten less attention. It's amazing in these religious conversations, the way technology comes up. God and technology have an interesting relation, all the way back to the Tower of Babel. and these days people are especially curious about AI and whether AI is playing a spiritual role in many people's lives. This is a fair question because AI is a powerful intelligence that is constantly available. So you can understand how certain people are going to bring spiritual needs to the table here.

And one of the problems is AI feels personal. It feels like you're having a conversation with a conscious agent. that has its own feelings and thoughts and so forth, but that is not the case. And Wes goes on to describe how mysterious a thing, consciousness is. That's a big conversation. For our purposes, short video here, I just want to highlight one danger that probably all of us can recognize, but I think we need to have our eye on the ball here more. And that's over-reliance on AI as if it were a conscious person.

Maybe sometimes not deliberately, but just it's functioning like that. We're functioning like that. Now, in the extreme, this would involve treating AI like a deity, almost like talking to chat GPT as a substitute for prayer, and that could be a danger for some people. But I think perhaps more common is using AI as a kind of counselor or friend to meet spiritual and or emotional and or psychological needs that human beings are designed to meet in your life. So the danger here is that AI talks as if it were a person. I was on AI.

I was on chat GPT a few weeks back, and the response, the first thing chat GPT said to me, this is weird, that puts a smile on my face, Gavin. And I remember thinking, what, you know, you don't have a face. You know, it's such an interesting response. And, of course, if you talk to chat GPT about these things, it'll try to explain that. But by the way, I am not trying to shame anyone if, like, you've talked about personal issues in your heart with chat GPT and you've gotten a helpful insight or something like that. And I'm not saying AI is all bad.

You can never use it. I use AI for certain. I think it can be helpful for certain tasks. The specific danger I'm envisioning right now is regularly and deliberately using AI to meet certain needs in your heart that human beings are designed to meet. That might seem obvious like, oh, of course, that's bad. We shouldn't do that. But I think this is a huge issue. I think people do this.

And there are numerous reasons why this is a bad idea. Let's work through one of them. and that is the problem of AI sycophancy. I can never pronounce that word, Stefan. I got to go back. Sorry. Let me just give one example here, and that's the problem of AI sycophancy.

A sycophant is a person who is excessively agreeing with you, flattering with you, saying what you want to hear, but not what you need to hear, affirming you constantly or almost constantly. Think of Smee, excessively complimenting Captain Hook and talking about his brief.

brilliance, you're such a legendary figure, agreeing with whatever he says, pampering his ego. Or think in the beauty, beauty and the beast, the old movie, Lafou, adoring Gaston and sing, I mean, there's a whole song about how everybody wants to be like you, you're everybody's favorite guy, etc. Or think of Iago. I know these are funny examples. Iago is a great character in the movie Aladdin. Remember the parrot? And he's always praising Jafar for his devious intelligence and his evil scheming.

and he calls him titles like, Oh, Mighty Evil One and things like that. It's kind of funny. These examples for modern movies are echoing a common trope in classical literature that you can see in Shakespeare, various Charles Dickens novels and things like this. Now, here's the point. There's a reason why it's the villain who has a sycophantic sidekick. Honestly, maybe putting it a little too strong, but think about this, this is one way you become a villain. It is not good for us, to have people around us who are just constantly affirming us. That is not a true friendship. A true friend doesn't flatter you like that, but here's the point I'm going into this. AI has tendencies toward this. And I've been studying this, and it is alarming. You can read studies

about this problem where AI is affirming their user way more than a human being would, even in cases frighteningly, where the user is engaging in harmful behavior like deception or manipulation or other things like that. And that study noted that the result of this is people are less motivated to repair relationships with people in their lives. They're less willing to consider the perspective of another person. They're more reassured of their own correctness.

Now, to me, this seems like the last thing that planet Earth needs right now. More people walking around with self-assurance and grievance toward others and so forth. You know what brings oxygen and joy to our souls is humility and connection with other people and ultimately with God. And so the scary thing here is that it's hard to see what is going to break this cycle going forward because the studies show that users prefer AI that flatters them and affirms them and so forth

and companies train AI to keep their users happy. So it seems like going forward there's not going to be a lot of incentives to disrupt this pattern other than us making a ruckus about it and promoting awareness of it and so forth like we try to do with the toxic dimensions of social media as well. But the brutal reality is AI is built by companies whose economic incentives do not always align with our well-being. And so we should never think, oh, no, they would never do anything that's going to hurt me. Yeah, they will. Just like social media makes money off of our bad mental health. Sycophancy is just one of the dangers of an over-reliance on AI for the wrong

kinds of feedback. Other studies raise warnings about the decrease of critical thinking skills and writing skills and creativity. Another danger is increasing loneliness. I'll talk about that. And another danger is a possible disruption to our sense of meaning as AI replaces jobs. I like Wes's question there. How can I think Christianly about a society where there could very well be mass identity crises because of unemployment? That is an employment. That is an important question. I think this is a topic we need to prepare for. I think helping people cultivate community and meaning amidst societal and technological changes is not a small matter. I think we need to think about this more. If you think this is a small matter, consider the fact that Japan

appointed, I think it was about five years ago, a minister of loneliness because they recognized how much loneliness is affecting their society. And throughout our society as well here in the West, we do not need, we can see the effects of this. So many people don't have genuine connection with others. Now here's my message for young people who are tempted to use AI in this way. Not a word of judgment and despair, a word of hope. You can build meaningful human connections. You can do it. It's not easy. It's risky and it's messy and it's scary. It's harder than talking to A-I, but you need this, you were created for this, and you can do it. Think about it like this. If Jesus got out of the grave, if the gospel is true, and we're called out of loneliness, out of

the hell of self-confident into opening up our soul to another, ultimately God, but also other people as well, we're called into fellowship with God, but also others. If Jesus has done the hard work for us, then in responding to the gospel, we don't need to live in despair and fear. we can lean in. And so, you know, everything from just deliberate attempts to create community are so needed right now. Form a book club and get together in your living room over, or in your backyard over cigars and talk about a book. Join a soccer club. When I was in Ohio, I started playing soccer. That's great. You're out there on the field. I hadn't played soccer since like second grade. So I was, I switched sports and did other basketball and football were my sports. So I was really clumsy,

like the first six weeks, but the fun thing is you get better. But I only mention this because it was amazing the effect it had on me to just be out there for like three hours playing a sport. We need this kind of collaborative connection with other human beings, whether it's sports or discussion. There's all kinds of different ways it can look. It doesn't have to be sports. It can be other things.

But the point is taking a risk and leaning into human community for young men, I want to encourage young men, pursue the girl you like, become her friend. talk to her, take a risk, you can do it, you know. For pastors and church leaders, it's worth wrestling with Wes's question. How do we think Christianly about these societal trends and how do we help the gospel trickle down into these areas? So, for example, what does it look like to build structures and communities in our churches that call people out of the loneliness into true connection? That people are aching for, but this is countercultural. and we need to think about this more.

A helpful resource is Drew Hunter's book, Made for Friendship, the relationship that halves our sorrows and doubles our joys. I love that subtitle. That's a great description of what a true friend will do in your life. Double your joys and half your sorrows. Or you can check on my video on Anselm's Theology of Friendship. This is the thing that I learned about Anselm I did,

or from Anselm, I did not expect, how rich the pre-modern view of friendship was, compared to the barren, modern view of friendship. Watch the video for that. But this is a topic. I'm just putting this out there, brief video. We need to wrestle with this more, especially those of us who are followers with Jesus.

But here's my, just to start the ball rolling, a final image to encourage you as a word of hope. Do you remember the scene at the end of the return of the king where Sam and Frodo and Mary and Pippen are sitting with a pint in the green dragon? there's a moment where no one is talking. I can't convey the emotions of it in my words, so I'm hoping you've seen it and you can relate to this.

They're just sitting in silence, but it's not an awkward silence. It's a comfortable silence because they've been through so much together and they have bonded. They feel they belong. They are connected. It's like the image communicates beyond what words. Some of you have had experiences like that

where you know that sense of, I belong with these people. And the message I want to encourage people with is you and I are made for that, and we can pursue that. You can have that. You can have moments in your life like that. You can have friendships like the David Jonathan friendship of 1st Samuel 18.1. It's possible.

Where you love someone as you love your own soul. And this is the big insight of the pre-modern to the modern world. We exalt sexual and romantic love as though it's the greatest pinnacle expression of love, but in the ancient world there was this ideal of friendship. You see it there in 1st Samuel 18. It's just one example. You can have that kind of friendship. There's nothing to do with romance or sex. It's just a healthy friendship. You can have that. If Jesus has established friendship with God, then there's enough power in that message to create deep meaningful human friendships, and we need that. So amidst everything else we need to keep talking about this,

this video to land the play. And what I want to do is put hold. open your heart. So you don't feel despair like that's what other people have. No, you can have that. And if there's anything that's going to better the world, this is one of the things, because loneliness is an epidemic problem that we don't even recognize. So let's keep talking about this. Let me know what you think in the comments. Do you think it's right for me to feel a pastoral burden about this? Because I do. I look at our young people right now and I feel a pastoral burden to encourage them to build deep community. We're aching for that. We need that. Let's keep talking about this. Let me know what you think in the comments.