Artificial intelligence is the shiny new tech toy everyone wants right now. It’s innovative; intuitive and smarter (allegedly) than your colleague at writing menial emails, creating social media posts, feedback reporting, and even giving advice about how to live your life.
As a Gen Z Catholic, I’m worried. Can relying on AI diminish my human capacity to rely on Christ? Will it help me to further find God in my work, or the contrary?
Changes are painful, even small changes. There are always those wanting to derail the train, but it does make sense to ask where the train is going. A bit of uncertainty is healthy. Being uncertain doesn’t mean being fearful or frightened; it means asking questions – hard questions. After all, the uptake of AI has been breathtakingly fast, perhaps too fast.
According to Claude, one of the best of the AI chatbots, more than 1 billion people were using standalone AI tools in July. Here are some of the reasons people give for embracing AI – It improves workflow; it helps you focus on more important tasks; it gives practical, helpful, reliable advice.
Yet there’s something missing with work powered by AI. I’d sum it up in the word diligent. We use it to describe a good worker. But it comes from the Latin word diligere, which means to love. AI cannot work with love. As Catholics, we are to work for “good fruit” and to “reap what we sow”; but how can we do this if we are not sowing mindfully and lovingly?
We may complete the task quicker; faster, and smarter, but that’s not all that work is about. Has it made me better as a person? Does it help me to love God and my neighbour? The understanding, giving of self and passion that is typical of the Catholic approach to work is essential. As St Therese of Lisieux puts into her “little way”; small acts of love and goodness often make the biggest impact.
This can be applied to our work and its relationship to AI. Artificial Intelligence can accurately dispose of quick little tasks and assist on the vital ones, but will it increase the sum of diligence in many work environments? Perhaps not.
What I fear is that we will end up doing small, trivial and menial tasks so effortlessly that we will not nurture the virtues of patience and persistence needed for problem-solving – both for ourselves and for our God. We are becoming ever more reliant on instant responses, the chaotic busyness, and constant chatter.
And I won’t rehearse the well-known negative impacts of AI due to its hallucinations, misrepresentation and inaccuracy.
Think about it this way. If we have a question now, we reach for Google, not God. And we’re tempted to resolve our personal issues with ChatGPT, not with the church.
Even worse, we may be diminishing our receptivity to our good God who speaks to us in stillness and peace in his timely divine providence.
So we need to make a conscious, intentional commitment to balance AI and the presence of God in our lives. We should not be scared of new technology, but mindful of its possible impacts on prayer, faith and the diligence God instilled in us.
Catholics are called to be courageous, and compassionate. Like anything, technology can be a tool used for good, and for faith. Think of what St Carlo Acutis, our heavenly patron for the internet has to say.
The young saint noted that we are each called to be originals, not photocopies. How much of our original selves is being poured into our work? And how much of ourselves is being outsourced?
It’s a question worth pondering in your own heart – and not typing into an AI search bar.
Isabelle Willams works at the Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney. Her reader’s reflection was prompted by The Catholic Weekly editorial of 26 July 2026. Share your story at catholicweekly.com.au/share-your-story/
