Full Life is honored to partner with Dr. Brian Boyd and Joshua Hughes, both with Loyola’s Center for Ethics and Economic Justice.  For our second conversation in our Coffee Chat series, we'll be tackling to topic of emotional and artificial intelligence.

Ei>Ai: The Importance of Human Connection & Digital Discernment

ChatGPT Barbie and her friends are coming this Christmas. As the press release put it, “by using OpenAI’s technology, Mattel will bring the magic of AI to age-appropriate play experiences … their first product is expected to be announced later this year.”

As counselors, parents, and community leaders, we learned the hard way over the last 20 years that accepting smart phones and social media led to an anxious generation with skyrocketing rates of childhood depression, anxiety, and isolation. The Big Tech companies that caused this problem are now offering to fix it: Mark Zuckerberg has suggested that in part, “AI could fill that void” of people having far fewer friends than they desire.

It may be the easy solution, but is it the right one?

Let’s not pretend: it’s not their friend.

Our next Coffee Chat event will address this dilemma.  How much do we embrace technology versus how much do we let technology teach our kids?

Proverbs 22:6 tells us to “train up our children.”   This charge is given to the parent, to the caregiver.  While we appreciate the convenience of technology, we have to be careful when it becomes the teacher for life.  Do we want Ai to teach our kids how to interact well with other people, appreciate beauty, take responsibility, and persevere in challenging situations? Or, does wisdom come from the nuance of human connection? 

Emotional intelligence, artificial intelligence, digital discernment – we’ll explore questions related to these topics and more at our next Coffee Chats!