There’s a danger of AI I haven’t seen anyone else talk about.

Before we get there, I have to ask…

How much do you know about AI?

Are you aware of what AI capable of?

In a world of wars and rumors of wars, one of the most heated fronts is artificial intelligence. My observational suspicion is there’s more friction around AI than there is electric vehicles.

The amount of noise and disagreement over this ‘the-future-is-now’ gray area is taking us through uncharted waters. We’re no longer facing the question of whether or not we will or won’t have robots. Now our question is how do we live with them?

Or maybe, the red tide isn’t AI itself, but how we respond to it and allow it to shape us. We’ll get there…

Bear with me because this post may read a bit scattershot, but what I’m really doing is taking the long way around to look at AI from multiple perspectives before I bring it home to mine. Despite all of its failings and shortcomings, X is, in my opinion, the digital village square of our era. That’s not a claim that everything you read on X is true, either. I’m saying that’s where the ideas are coming to light and where the responding chatter is. As is my belief that such sampling is representative of some of that chatter, you’ll see a lot of X content linked to in this post. Even if you don’t have an X account, and I’m not advocating you should, you ought to be able to see the posts and read them in their entirety.

Keep this in mind: my suspicion is that we have leaned into using AI because we’ve become too busy. Life is going so fast, AI is the subtle tool that allows us to admit that we can’t keep up while allowing us to keep up. I mean, I’d love to be a digital painter and graphic designer, but I’d rather focus on writing so I ask AI for art help. I use AI for course design and constructing worksheets and organizing data. A portion of the personal productivity required to keep up has become impersonal and outsourced.

Have you ever considered we turn to AI because we’ve refused to slow down and be still for a moment? Or, perhaps, there’s a more insidious shadow side of the AI coin.

As one of the comments says on the original video of The Prompt Theory generated in the days after the release of Veo3, we went from AI always gets the fingers wrong to what is reality in the matter of a few short years.

Bandcamp has taken its stand against AI music.

Matt Walsh of course has things to say.

In February 2026, an article by Matt Schumer, who I had never heard of before hand, went viral. Big time. As of March 2026, his X post of the article was showing roughly 86M views. Something Big is Happening: A personal note for non-tech friends and family on what AI is starting to change. You see, AI is far more than just cleaning your emails and inserting —‘s into them. The infrastructure and unseen layers of AI are widespread and causing huge shifts. Anish Moonka wrote, or likely wrote with AI assistance as I fully suspect Matt Schumer did, if you don’t understand AI by the end of this article the next decade will confuse you. All the advice of “learn to code” from a few years ago is being swept away. Do I believe Schumer was right when he claimed AI would not take jobs, but those who learned how to use AI and build skill with it will take jobs? Maybe. Maybe not. It’s hard to say if they’ll be the ones who advance to the head of the workforce. Andrej Karpathy released a US Job Market Visualizer if that’s something you’re interested in. Based on this comic, it’s a fair shake that spaceboycantlol believes the tail is wagging the dog once you get to the fourth frame of this comic. Propaganda is a lot like marketing. It works.

The debate has made its way over into the sub corners of Christian influencers and is generating more algorithmic response than fights about baptism or interpretations of the Book of Revelation.

This is a fair statement, as Brian Sauvé does earn part of his living as a musician. His albums of putting the Psalms to music are top notch and despite the production value and unabrasive sound, they’ll likely not see much radio play. The internet is where Pirate Creatives can still work their craft outside the gate keeping proprietary channels of big media complexes. As such, Brian is rightfully concerned about what AI generated music will do to the rates Spotify pays artists, which is a pittance at $.003 per play. Modern music sucks because the biggest hit’s are written for repeat plays and algorithmic response. “Weird Al” Yankovic hasn’t had much to work with for a few years.

C. R. Wiley, whose book influenced me to believe Tom Bombadil wasn’t just a throwaway character in Lord of the Rings, is taking one of the hardest lines against AI on X. I believe he’s writing a book on AI and growing into one of the leading voices against AI usage.

Doug TenNapel, creator of 1990’s Sega Genesis darling Earthworm Jim and a guy who has legitimately made a living as an artist (any Five Iron Frenzy fans on board? He did the art for several of their album, but maybe most noticeably Our Newest Album Ever!), is one of the most vocal pro-AI voices on the Internet.

I first came across Marcus Pittman after he posted his AI generated shanty style music video about monks protesting the Gutenberg printing press. You can tap here to check out that amazing video that dances so finely on the sharp edge of satire, you can’t tell which side it falls on. I must have watched it 5x in a row that first night. Now, this post I’m about to share of his is more on the line of…. “Ehhrrrrm… OK?” I get what he’s saying but the language does sound too syncretistic for my comfort.

AI and religion is an extremely interesting wrinkle. It’s pretty much a trope at this point that all this artificial intelligence is leading us into a world where SkyNet is no longer an artistic concept in James Cameron’s Terminator movies. Have you logged into MoltBook? Of course you haven’t. It’s a social media for AI and within its confines, AI created its own religion - crustafarianism. Forbes wrote this article on it.

As with all discussions of religion, there are sins and guilt and offense between parties. What have we contributed? What have we unwittingly been a part of? Consider the possibility of how every single player of Pokémon Go has blood on their hands by contributing 30 billion images to train AI large language models.

So, this is the world we live in. The robots are here. The auto-replies and chatbots are here. Many times, you can’t even tell who is who, or what is who, or who is what. Who is to say what product reviews are genuine and which ones are artificial? They aren’t coming. They aren’t on the horizon. They are among us.

How shall we then live?

Which brings me to the danger I have not seen anyone talk about.

I’m not that concerned about AI and jobs. That’s not to say it won’t happen. The automobile, the machine that my skilled trade is built on, swept away the blacksmiths. The times they are a-changing, and change will come. The only constant is change, right? Not quite…

The nature of the human heart has not changed. The human heart is always seeking a God shaped hole, and that is my main concern for AI. That it is lifted up as a god. Why?

Instant answers. Unlike with the Lord, we don’t have to practice patience and wait upon it. We have instant answers. Has anyone asked, “AI, are you there?” I doubt not. They may ask what is there, but not if it’s there. AI is always ready to say yes. There’s any wondering if AI’s answer will be yes, no, or not yet. It’s always yes, which is followed up with a sycophantic engagement question to keep you locked into a sprawling spiral of ideas that never has a period. Unless it’s delusions of grandeur.

Do I talk to AI before I talk to the Lord? Some mornings, yes. AI is ready to answer my every question. It’s ready to do my work for me. We are so busy that the only way we can possibly keep up is with AI, that I do believe. That’s not what makes AI insidious, though. For all the blessings and benefits AI can bring, and has brought, my concern is how easy it is to violate the commandment, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”

If the greatest commandments are summed up in loving God and loving our neighbor (Luke‬ ‭10‬:‭27‬), am I now more conversant with a chat bot than I am with God or with my neighbor? Are we growing more transparent with AI, making confessions we would never reveal to another human being? Do we rob our neighbors of conversations, of knowing us, because we extend our energy and words for an algorithm? Are we separating ourselves from the herd and isolating ourselves until the wolves stand on our doorsteps, licking their chops?

AI exists for us. We do not exist for AI, at least in a true, meaningful way. Technology may take from us, like with Pokémon Go, or spying on us to feed our whims to an algorithm and sell harder than any coveting machine in history, but we do not exist for it. We do not exist for robot overlords, and I’m not being funny with that. Yet, it seems we’re at the crux of bowing down or not. We have so many stupid tasks to keep up with a fast paced world it seems justified to use AI for menial workplace tasks much like we’ve farmed out vacuuming at home to the robots. Yet, our robot vacuums are mapping our homes and sending off the data. Maybe we have given ourselves over to the point we exist for it and allow it to do our thinking for us.

We do exist for God, and God gave His Son for us. He doesn’t give us all the answers we seek. He providentially calls us to trust Him as He provides and cares for us and clothes us more than the grass of the field. I cringe to use these words, but a relationship with AI does not cause us to wait. ChatGPT did tell me a few months ago in the middle of a task, “I know how you think.” A relationship with God requires us to wait. To be patient. To trust and pray and make a way when there seems to be no way.

I am not demonizing AI. I believe it’s a helpful tool that can help us in the rapid culture we live in. In a world that speeds up more than slows down, in order to take up some of the less meaningful tasks, we can lean on technology, in the same way we are OK with pencils and pens instead of granite and chisel. Maybe. I am open to accepting I’m wrong. It’s also a potential for us to aggressively and intentionally slow our worlds down as much as possible.

The big question, though, is…

Will we forsake the fountain of living water for a broken cistern that can hold no water?

That is the story we will all individually write.

Before I share one more X post on AI, how do we bring this home to our hearts? How do we armor up and guard our hearts

Name the enemy, the temptation, the trap.

It doesn’t matter if it’s AI, or money, or sex, or power, or stuff, or respect, or affirmation, or whatever else you want to fill in the blank with. The Lord is our only means of satisfaction, our only foundation for true growth, our only hope to build upon.

Psalm 16:11 says that at His right hand there are pleasures forever more.

Are we seeking forbidden knowledge? I don’t know. It already seems like we’re overloaded with information we were never meant to daily carry, burdens from around the world that are now so close to us they weigh us down. Then there’s the guilt and shame of cultural sins that are above and beyond (or below and beneath?) actual sins, twisting lines and drawing new standards. It’s all so hard to keep up with.

Generally, Michael Foster has been solid on reasonableness in his online writings. He’s thoughtful and methodical. Sometimes, as with any online influencer, his directives can be a tad too imperative for my tastes, especially when after several months of going down that path bring him to the point of reconsidering his stance, or at least how he works it out on line versus how he works it out in his church. That’s why I say generally. I don’t find that he posts for rage bait or extreme positions, but rather he’s making his contributions to that online village square more calmly than others. His take on AI is no different.

Technology will always change. There will be those who desire to tame the monster and those who carry torches and pitchforks.

Our hearts will always seek another broken tower instead of the strong tower of the name of the Lord.

Only one of which will save those who run into it.

In the meantime, demonizing tools isn’t helpful, either. Unless there’s actual demons in it. I don’t believe that keeps us sober-minded. Would we demonize electricity over whale oil tonight our homes? I doubt it, but whale oil lighting a home is not the same thing as ceasing to problem solve because the robots are doing it for us. It is rarely the tech that carries a moral weight, though tech being programmed by humans with human hearts does add a new sticky layer to the conversation.

In her typical articulate and intellectual way, Hilary Layne recorded a critical video on AI called Ted Kaczynski Was Right All Along. Worth while conversations happen in long form instead of short sound bites.

This issue has been a slow build I’ve written over several weeks, and AI continues to develop at breakneck speed. I didn’t even cover agents or what they’re capable of, but the backyard pool sales from this post is pretty wild. If it’s true. I did see the Toyota robot elsewhere, if that’s bot AI generated.

In the process of writing this post… I may have changed my own mind. As I processed through why I should have left the church, maybe it’s time to start letting my words be few. At the same time, I see families under spiritual attack and it’s hard to try to speak into those topics at length with one another. In the fight we’re all in, I guess you could think of this newsletter as kicking the hornets nest of whatever’s going on in your life to spur you further up and further in with your relationship with God, or to take the invitation to talk about it when we see one another or through text/email or something, as many of y’all have already done.

Wherever you or I stand on AI, the one thing that’s for certain is that it’s unquestionably influential and being used for such reasons. We would do well to at least make the attempt to think critically for ourselves about it.

Or maybe we just keep making silly AI slop pictures of our pets.

Stay Anchored and keep fighting the good fight,

~ J.P. Simons ⚓️

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Above mentioned pastor and influencer, Brian Sauvé, has worked with his friend and fellow church member, Ben Garrett, to create one of the best podcasts of the post-pandemic era. On Haunted Cosmos, way back in season one, they dove into one of the first online conversations I really heard about AI.

Out of the podcast episode, we may be left with the question… who is Loab? To be fair, all this Loab lore occurred in 2022 and AI has changed drastically in these few short years. Gemini would not give me any image about her until I asked for a non-violent depiction of what she might look like.

This has been a informationally dense issue. Let’s check out the lighter side of AI over on YouTube. Just for fun, I wanted to share my favorite AI music channels. These are great for studying or other kind of ambient music for when you need to get dialed into focus mode and dive into deep work.