Alexa, Do You Love Me?

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I got an Amazon Alexa for Christmas.

She’s a small voice-controlled smart speaker programmed to respond to questions and perform commands. She’s good at playing music, answering random trivia, or telling me the weather. 

The other morning, she was playing jazzy music as I cooked breakfast for me and my wife, and I wanted to see how well Alexa really knew me.

“Alexa, do you love me?” I asked her.

A pause, then Alexa said, “I haven’t quite figured out human love yet.”

“Me either, Alexa,” I said.

Who has? The band The Hawk in Paris sings:

Why can’t the heart be a simpler machine? / Why does love remain a mystery?

I would wager the answer is because the heart is not, in fact, a machine. Machines, by design, are built and programmed to figure things out and get things done. Human hearts work differently. They feel, intuit, retreat, and open.

Alexa is a machine. That’s why she hasn’t figured out human love. Her language is digital ones and zeroes. She’s artificial intelligence. As clever as she is, she doesn’t speak the human language of intuition, chemistry, biology, emotion, and spirituality. Only a human can do that. 

I want my computer to do what I tell it. I give it commands and I expect it to serve me. Human beings are different.

They are not subject to algorithms. They are messy and difficult and perplexing, bright and beautiful and spirited. Humans are many things, but they are not artificial.

Wouldn’t it be great if we had someone we could program to love and respond to us in all the ways we needed? Maybe. But it wouldn’t be real.

Even if we could make a person do exactly what we wanted, would we really want that? Then they wouldn’t be a person anymore. They’d be a slave. We must always allow people to be free. Jesus understood this.

He encountered a rich young man who asked what he must do to have eternal life (Mark 10:17-22). Jesus told him, “Go, sell what you have, and give to [the] poor and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” The young man went away sad, unwilling to give up his possessions. 

Jesus was God almighty. He could have “programmed” the man to give up his riches and follow him. But then the man would have been a robot following commands, not a free-willed human being making his own choice. So Jesus let him go. It made Jesus sad, but he understood the man had free will and he respected his dignity as a human being.

Jesus doesn’t want an army of robots.

He desires followers who seek and obey him because they choose to do so, even if they don’t have it all figured out. 

He calls us to treat people the same way. We have to let them love. Sometimes we have to let them go. But we must never try to control them

This can be frustrating sometimes. But you’ll never solve the mystery of another person. You’ll never crack the code. That’s not the point anyway. People aren't puzzles to solve or computer circuit boards to rewire. They’re treasures to try to cherish.

There is debate about how developed artificial intelligence can get. I don’t believe a machine or computer program will ever be able to “feel” the way a person does. It may be able to mimic emotion or “understand” on some level why a human behaves or responds the way he does. 

But God created humans as unique beings who image his divine nature. And God is not a machine. God is spirit (John 4:24). Thus, so are we.

From Alexa to social media to online banking, many people have come to rely on technology to help navigate life. Using machines has become an afterthought. We get on dating sites that use computer algorithms to narrow down the possibilities for potential future mates. 

And why not? This is a good service. Sites like CatholicMatch can do that initial work for you.

But eventually you’re going to have to meet someone in person.

And that someone is not going to be a piece of software. 

What they will be is someone capable of actually loving you. Of choosing you of their own free will. Of frustrating you and making you feel angry and making you feel wonderful. 

Alexa can tell me the weather, but she can’t tell me she loves me. Alexa is convenient and helpful. Love is something different altogether. 

So, after cooking breakfast the other day, I unplugged Alexa, sat down and enjoyed a meal with my wife. 

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