AI and Formation: How does AI shape our loves? (with Michael Keller)

What happens when AI becomes good enough to simulate spiritual depth?

That question drives this episode with Michael Keller. Michael is lead pastor of Redeemer Lincoln Square in New York City, and he also brings a rare technical perspective to the conversation, having completed doctoral work in computational linguistics using early machine learning methods. In our discussion, he argues that AI can give us information, polish, and efficiency, but it cannot give us the one thing at the heart of Christian life: real relationship. It can help draft a prayer, but it cannot pray. It can mimic understanding, but it cannot know or love a person.

We talk about friction, formation, and the danger of outsourcing the very struggles through which God shapes us. Michael makes the striking point that AI offers the appearance of depth without the cost of it. That is true in ministry, in relationships, and even in our devotional lives. If prayer, preaching, and discipleship become frictionless, something essential is taken from us.

Again and again, Michael brings the conversation back to a richer Christian vision of the human person. We are more than our outputs. We are not defined by efficiency, performance, or the ability to process information. Michael joined me on Silicon Spiritualities to explore what AI can do for us, what it can never do, and why this cultural moment is forcing us to ask afresh what it really means to be human.

Resources Mentioned:

• Institutes of the Christian Religion by John Calvin

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