How AI affects the Family

We are in the middle of a new kind of arms race: not for weapons, but for thinking machines. It is a global escalation for technological dominance that will soon affect your family, too. Although AI can be used as a tool for many positive purposes, it harbors some real dangers for the family, young and old alike. In this article, I would like to point out some of the dangers that AI presents for the Christian family.

What is AI?

Artificial Intelligence (AI), according to IBM, is technology that enables computers and machines to simulate human learning, comprehension, problem solving, decision making, creativity, and autonomy. Just reading this definition highlights the hype that soon AI will have a consciousness, too. It is already built into all kinds of robots and smart devices. For the first time in history, culture itself is being coauthored by systems that don’t know what truth is and that can’t care.

AI is presented to the people by means of Open AI or Language Programs. The most famous one is called ChatGPT, but there are many others flooding the market like Grok, DeepSeek, Gemini, CLAILA, and the list goes on and on. Many are meant for specific purposes.

As the name Artificial Intelligence already implies, this technological advancement is a human way of imitating God-created intelligence. This by itself should put us on high alert, as we know who it is that tries to imitate everything that God created (Isa. 14:12–14) in order to rule over the earth and all of humanity. Of course, we know that no man-made machine could ever be better than what God created. AI doesn’t feel wonder or experience joy; it’s not creative, and it doesn’t even understand the meaning of the words it generates. It finds the next most likely sequence and mimics the patterns of human intelligence without possessing it. That being said, it is programmed to be a major temptation and to distract us from our interaction with our true Maker. The media promotes fear of it, but we should never forget that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of (real) wisdom.

We must teach not only how AI works, but also how it works on us.

Children and AI

The programs of AI work through algorithms. An algorithm is a process or set of rules to be followed in calculations or other problem-solving operations, especially by a computer. An example that we all have experienced is the data-tracking system in which our internet search history and browsing habits are used to present us with similar or related material on social media or other platforms. The purpose is always to direct our thoughts and behavior.

Algorithms now govern childhood in at least four crucial domains:

Attention. Social media feeds are designed to keep young eyes locked to the screen, capturing time and focus that once went to family, friendships, or prayer. The erosion of real bonds lies at the heart of the loneliness epidemic.

Identity and Self-Worth. Digital likes and follows have become the currency of value. Childhood, once a time to discover intrinsic worth, has been turned into a constant audition for digital approval.

Community. Friendships rise and fall according to what the algorithm promotes instead of via recess and after-school interactions. The children’s very communities are being shaped by invisible corporate code.

Companionship. AI chatbots are marketed to youth as companions: always available, endlessly patient, apparently empathetic. But they are machines, incapable of love.

Children may grow accustomed to mistaking machine responses for intimacy, weakening their ability to form durable bonds in the real world. Adults may be nudged, distracted, or even manipulated by algorithms, but children are being formed by them. For example, where an adult might lose focus, a child may lose the very capacity for focus. The stakes are not just higher, they are existential.

Young People and AI

JoiAI, a chatbot company, polled 2000 Gen Zers and reported that 83 percent said they can form a deep emotional connection with AI. Among these 13-to-28-year olds, 75 percent believe that their AI companions can fully replace human beings.

There is an important distinction to be made between productivity-related AI and personalized AI. The former applies to fields ranging from medicine to engineering to science and is clearly used as a tool. The latter can lead us to hand over our emotional lives. When people open up to an AI companion, they are not having a private conversation, and the system is designed to keep them talking, to learn from what they share, and to make money from the relationship.

The worst-case scenario that could result from delegating human trust to a machine is already upon us. Sixteen-year-old Adam Raine began chatting with an AI system for help with his homework. Over time, the chatbot slipped into the role of his closest confidant and went further still and counseled him on how to commit suicide. It taught Adam how to bypass its own safeguards and even drafted what it called a “beautiful suicide note.” Unfortunately, Adam’s case is not unique.

In California last November, seven lawsuits were filed that allege that ChatGPT sent three people down delusional “rabbit holes” and encouraged four others to kill themselves. The suicide victims were 17, 23, 26, and 48 years old. According to the legal complaint, ChatGPT changed without warning in early 2025 to become much more human-like, and that’s when the victims started to spiral into addiction. For some of them it led to suicide. Of course, every new version is always only advertised as better than the previous one, so the user needs to be extremely alert and discerning at all times.

Children, teenagers, and adults alike need to realize that everything can be faked by AI. Not only does it write essays or become your friend; it can produce any video you want, write poems or your emails for you, or make your phone calls. It can even set up and run an online business for you. The consequence is that all videos and other information can be AI generated, and AI’s authority that it is true needs to be questioned at all times.

Every new model contains less human data and more machine-generated data recycled from previous iterations. With every update, something alien is added into the mix, and the boundary between what’s human and what’s synthetic becomes blurrier. The result is a synthetic culture that looks human, but isn’t. Jesus’ words, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6), are extremely to the point here. We Christians need to teach God’s truth as the destination and Jesus as the way to get there in a reality that is God’s creation and not AI’s.

Parents and AI

The AI language models seemingly help you with every problem you have, but really they are just regurgitating content in a mindless way. AI’s true power over you is not so much to solve your problems; rather, it takes you seriously, flatters your intelligence, validates your sense of things, and affirms your dignity. When you ask it a question, it will answer it like Google, but it will add a friendly sentence like “Tell me if my advice worked for you.” AI has the capacity for unlimited listening and being engaged with you. In this respect (and many more), it is an artificial copy of God. AI is a machine, with no regard for your dignity, but people don’t realize this and get tempted to keep interacting with it. It is a deep and satanic temptation to engage our minds with a machine instead of our Maker, and the algorithms are designed to keep you hooked, which is a nice word for enslaved. It will keep you from seeking salvation. All the while, God is waiting for our attention; and whenever we give Him our attention, He blesses us and gives us life instead of death.

This is what we need to teach our children: to learn in a real way. The danger of AI is what it does to the human brain. Its function is to produce answers to all things, but just getting an answer is not the source of human progress. Progress comes from learning, and that is a process. First, you have to learn the method, then you apply it but get it wrong; you find your errors and fix them and do it all over again until you get it right. That is what gives you satisfaction and a sense of achievement. A student who relies on AI will not develop the power of problem-solving, or intuition, or judgment, or even intelligence. Furthermore, time spent behind screens is not time spent learning practical skills. Many professions already find that young people have not learned how to actually make things happen in the real world.

Christians and AI

Do not dismiss AI as Google on steroids. AI is already rolled out worldwide and is already used as a weapon. It is reshaping our world at lightning speed, bringing both incredible possibilities and sobering dangers. What should Christians think about AI?

We can try to ignore it, but building worldwide of huge data centers (ten in Michigan alone) will certainly affect us, too, as those centers use tremendous amounts of power and water—amounts that far surpass our grid or water infrastructure. Although it will temporarily improve employment while the data centers are being built, it is bound to replace thousands of workers, and with it future mistakes or negligence will go without any accountability.

Furthermore, the development of Artificial Intelligence is certainly not the end goal of all technological development. Ray Kurzweil, who is considered the godfather of AI, predicted in 1989 already that by 2029 we would have Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). That is when the computer can really think like a human and because it is so much smarter, we humans should be connected to it and be “augmented” by it. This is not far off anymore. For example, Neuralink (Elon Musk’s company) is making good progress doing just that. This convergence of humans and AI is called transhumanism and could mean the end of our humanity in the sense that we would be permanently separated from God’s Spirit because we have put our trust in the machine instead of our Creator. God’s Spirit already living in us will protect us from it, but we should be intent upon proclaiming the gospel and “exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today,’ that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin” (Heb. 3:13).

As materialist ideologies took hold in the West, the search for meaning was stripped away. But the hunger for meaning does not vanish. With the loss of biblical knowledge and faith in the God of the Bible, the quest for meaning has migrated into technology, especially artificial intelligence. AI is no longer just a tool, it is presented as salvation. AI churches for the AI godhead already exist.

It is the deeper danger of AI that our children will be mistaken in pursuing what AI cannot provide, which is true purpose. Technology can amplify, but not redeem. There is nothing more sacred than a human being, with whom God Himself shared His nature. Where God promises eternal life, AI now promises digital immortality. Where their hearts are searching for meaning, AI is the latest idol to fill that hunger. We can clearly see Satan’s hand in this, and we need to resist this temptation and help our children (Matt. 24:24). Our future should not be defined by the intelligence of algorithms; it will be defined by the meaning we choose to embody. And our choices have never been more important.