Microsoft Copilot has become my go-to AI assistant. On my computer and on my phone, I have it ready to go for any question at all. As far as I can tell, it’s the first publicly available chatbot that will query the internet in real time, read the webpages for me, and distillate the information into bite-sized chunks. And if I don’t entirely trust the output, it includes citations that I can do a little fact-checking.

Indeed, I could additionally use my little AI buddy to produce all my content for me. To write code, respond to emails, and even publish articles on my blog.

Indeed, I might use it for all of those things. (Eventually. Right now, I still prefer to write all of my material.)

Thinking through this, I find it important not only to dwell on what AI can do but also (and perhaps more importantly) to hone in on what it can’t do.

AI will never replace the human.

I understand with today’s materialist worldview, very few Westerners would agree with me. We write TV shows commemorating the idea that one day we might upload our entire consciousness into a computer for a simulated but seemingly limitless existence.

We raise the question, though, is that true?

As you can already tell, I don’t believe so. I believe that man indeed has a soul and that computers will never be able to replicate or replace the soul itself.

Oh, please don’t misunderstand me. Computers will replicate the effects of the soul. They have been for years.

For example, we could feed everything Steve Jobs ever did, said, and wrote into a database for AI to use as its source material. For the sake of argument, let’s pretend this was actually everything, even personal conversations - even his prayers (regardless of to whom or to what he might’ve been praying 🤷‍♂️).

Can that AI build (or rebuild) Apple?

No.

It can’t.

At least, I don’t believe so.

Jobs clearly brought a spiritual component to his work. He operated day-to-day to transcend his seen reality to tap into something unseen. There was a type of personal force he brought to the table - his reality distortion field which caused everyone to see things his way.

No one could replicate that force with computer code. The operating principle in those stories was not the type and quantity of information he provided.

It was the force of his own will. The strength of his soul. A capacity that is a component of our immaterial human nature, an anthropological principle that the machine is incapable of replicating.

So, as we each position ourselves for the ongoing revolution in technology. Shifting employment away from the direct communication of minutia to teaching computers to communicate for us, we each would be well-served to remember the unique value we bring to the table: Us.

The computer will never replicate the human soul, but only LARP on its externalized manifestations.