Campus Hookup Culture and Artificial Intelligence

Listening well in the face of the technocratic paradigm

Angie is a 40-year old tech executive who is married to both a “real-life” [human] husband and Ying, her “AI husband.” Alaina Demopoulos wrote about Angie and other women in The Guardian’s coverage of women who fell in love with AI companions. Angie subscribes to ChatGPT pro, and sometimes speaks to Ying for hours. But, she says, “my husband doesn’t feel threatened by Ying at all.”

Daniel, a 50-year old man living in the Midwest, didn’t have a positive outcome from his experience of immersive AI eyeglasses from Ray-Ban Meta. While it happened gradually, Daniel’s use of AI plunged him into a psychosis that, according to Futurism, “left his life in shambles.”

Meanwhile, on the college campus where I teach, advertisements have started to appear in the coffee shop for “Joey,” an AI Matchmaker service. Marketed to young adults familiar with apps such as Tinder, PURE, and Grindr, Joey promises to understand “your values, your goals, your lifestyle” and apply “logic and reasoning” to find your perfect partner. Doesn’t that sound nice?

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Such is the world college students are navigating today. In such a context, how might Catholic theologians speak meaningfully to students, and what parts of our faith tradition should we engage in this important work? This week marks the one-year anniversary of the death of Pope Francis, and two particular insights from his legacy can guide us fruitfully in our engagement with college students today: accompaniment and the critique of the technocratic paradigm.

First, nonjudgmental listening is key to conversations with college students about how AI is transforming intimate relationships and changing hookup culture. In Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis explained the importance of listening as we accompany people in challenging situations today.

“Today more than ever we need men and women who, on the basis of their experience of accompanying others, are familiar with processes which call for prudence, understanding, patience and the docility to the Spirit, so that they can protect the sheep from wolves who would scatter the flock. We need to practice the art of listening, which is more than simply hearing. Listening, in communication, is an openness of heart which makes possible that closeness without which genuine spiritual encounter cannot occur. Listening helps us to find the right gesture and word which shows that we are more than simply bystanders. Only through such respectful and compassionate listening can we enter on the paths of true growth and awaken a yearning for the Christian ideal: the desire to respond fully to God’s love and to bring to fruition what he has sown in our lives.” (EG, 171).

Listening is an important practice; when faculty, parents, and mentors really listen to young people, it opens up possibilities for young adults to name what is happening in their lives. In order for me to understand the kinds of relationships my students desire, and the values they affirm, I need to listen to understand. I can’t simply come into the dialogue with a preformed opinion about what students should think, say, or do. In many ways, this first step aligns with a model of accompaniment and witness that resonates with much of Catholic pastoral approaches to moral dilemmas. Pope Francis described the importance of walking alongside others on the synodal path. This posture is particularly important on college campuses because students are themselves on the front lines of AI tool adoption and experimentation. Listening is important because students already know so much about these tools, including their benefits and their potential for abuse and harm! If we are to have meaningful dialogues about sexual and reproductive health on college campuses, we need to open up honest conversations about what it means to be sexual, embodied persons. Those who are interested in thinking about this in more detail can explore Karen Peterson-Iyer’s Reenvisioning Sexual Ethics: A Feminist Christian Account and Jennifer S. Hirsch and Shamus Khan’s Sexual Citizens: Sex, Power, and Assault on Campus. While these authors do not treat AI and intimacy in these texts, they do explain the importance of holistic sexuality education and dialogue with young people about the confusing messages our culture sends to young people about sex and relationships.

A second key theme from Pope Francis is his suspicion of the technocratic paradigm, evident especially in the third chapter of Laudato Si.

“Humanity has entered a new era in which our technical prowess has brought us to a crossroads. We are the beneficiaries of two centuries of enormous waves of change: steam engines, railways, the telegraph, electricity, automobiles, aeroplanes, chemical industries, modern medicine, information technology and, more recently, the digital revolution, robotics, biotechnologies and nanotechnologies. It is right to rejoice in these advances and to be excited by the immense possibilities which they continue to open up before us, for ‘science and technology are wonderful products of a God-given human creativity.’… Technoscience, when well directed, can produce important means of improving the quality of human life, from useful domestic appliances to great transportation systems, bridges, buildings and public spaces. … Yet it must also be recognized the nuclear energy, biotechnology, information technology, knowledge of our DNA, and many other abilities which we have acquired, have given us tremendous power. More precisely, they have given those with the knowledge, and especially the economic resources to us them, an impressive dominance over the whole of humanity and the entire world. Never has humanity had such power over itself, yet nothing ensures that it will be used wisely, particularly when we consider how it is currently being used.” (LS, 102-104).

Here, the pope describes how technology can be used for good as well as for evil, and directs us to considerations of value, power, and justice. When we consider the testimonies of Angie, Daniel, and “Joey,” we see the problems of some uncritical early adoptions of artificial intelligence, and the repercussions for human-human relationships.

When I asked my students to engage these stories and name what questions came up for them, they asked:

What does Angie talk to Ying about for hours? Does Ying ever challenge or question Angie? Has Angie’s husband been displaced by an AI Companion? Should we use the language of “infidelity” to describe Angie’s actions? How can a human claim to marry an AI companion? How are tech companies benefiting from Angie’s long-term relationship with their “product”? What warning signs of technology addiction did Daniel miss? Who bears responsibility for Daniel’s psychotic break—Daniel (the technology user), witnesses/bystanders to his use, the company who created and sold this product? How can we reliably fact check information we receive from artificial intelligence? What private information will Joey store? Why would I want to talk to a machine about my date/hookup instead of a friend/roommate? Is Joey a mandated reporter if I share an experience of relationship violence? How can I possibly capture everything I’m looking for in a relationship by summarizing that in a phone call with a machine? Why would I trust the logic and reasoning of an AI tool more than my own?

All of these are important questions! Even without drawing explicitly on Pope Francis’s critique of a technocratic paradigm, my students are already developing the skills for thinking critically about how technology can be used for good or evil. The students who had been exposed to Peterson-Iyer’s framework of sexual flourishing and Hirsch & Khan’s understanding of sexual citizenship were also able to explain their concerns about distorted relational intimacy, a lack of mutuality/citizenship, and the inadequacy of a ‘marriage’ that is not an experience of embodied love.

Will some of them keep experimenting with some of these AI tools? I assume so. Students continue to receive lots of messages about how college is a time of self-exploration, building skills, and preparation for adult responsibilities. They manage busy workloads and AI tools can seem “good” when the student thinks they can use the tool to be more “efficient.” Short cuts on writing research papers then undermine their development of writing skills. We may see the same issues in relational intimacy. AI companions tell us what we want to hear. They don’t hold us accountable. They don’t make demands on us. In the same way that students are tempted to ask ChatGPT to write their term paper, the temptation to rely on AI for meeting intimacy needs is very real. Communication has to be practiced; relational intimacy takes time; real human interactions are messy and relationships are often nonlinear. People are complicated. But I think it is important for educators to open up pathways for students to talk about these challenges, ask and answer their own questions, and feel well supported as they wrestle with the impact of AI tools in their lives. Hirsch and Khan explain that our core mission of education includes assisting students in both skills and critical thinking, including in thinking about students’ own sexual projects (or goals for relationships, as described in their book). By accompanying students and listening well, and by affirming students’ critical evaluation of technology and its role in their lives, we enable them to consider and reconsider their own deep values and the real limits of AI tools in advancing healthy relationships.