Artificial intelligence is reshaping every facet of our world, from sending emails to visiting the doctor to placing a Walmart order. As someone in education, I am constantly thinking about ways to improve, inform, and even incorporate AI into my teaching in ethical and responsible ways. Recently, I attended an interdisciplinary conference on AI, where attendees had a variety of perspectives and experiences. As I encountered those who wore easily recognizable AI-enhanced glasses, I grew uncomfortable and anxious. I found myself questioning and on guard. Was our conversation momentary and localized? Or would it be recorded to be played back, analyzed, and criticized?
Many may not see the appeal of AI-enhanced wear or be able to afford the splurge on a wearable “friend.” But whether we choose to wear them or not, chances are we will run into someone who does have these accessories.
Amazon recently debuted a new AI wearable, Bee. The Frontier model is a wrist band that promises to “transform conversations into actionable summaries.” For just under $80, the wearer can have an AI that will listen to, record, transcribe, and summarize conversations. However, to have more than fourteen days of memory or to integrate Bee into other platforms, like an email client or digital calendar, a monthly subscription is required. The developers promise that Bee is “always learning,” adapting to the wearer—and their relationships.
What I’ve realized since my interactions with those wearing AI glasses was that I had shifted my perspective as I responded in fear.
Bee is just the latest in an ever-growing glut of AI wearables. The Friend pendant is another option at the price of $249 (with a monthly subscription). The Friend advertises its always-present (as long as you charge the battery) product through advertisements that include the wearable pendant arranging for their human user to meet “friends” in the theater or a quasi-voyeuristic clip of an attractive woman brushing her teeth. But, as one review from Business Insider states, AI wearables tend to be more pliable or agreeable than a human reply and likely will fall short of curing any loneliness problem.
Earlier versions of these wearables can be traced back to Google Glass which debuted in 2013. But with the growth of Large Language Models (LLMs), these devices are easier to obtain and cheaper to make. Companies claim that these devices will make the user’s life easier: Meta’s AI glasses (with one version costing $799) promise that the wearer can have “clarity” for every “insight.” Presumably, the user might never have to reply to a question with “I don’t know.” Instead, with the help of these AI glasses, he or she could function as a virtual oracle—with no limitations. But already, lawsuits are being brought against these wearables, arguing that they may not be as secure as they claim. International advocacy groups have criticized their use in part because they may not be distinguishable from ordinary glasses, raising questions of consent. And others are doing studies on the ways that the corporations behind these companions program the LLMs to push for connection—even if the user doesn’t want it.
What I’ve realized since my interactions with those wearing AI glasses was that I had shifted my perspective as I responded in fear. What if they captured some foolish thing I said or an embarrassing look and then posted it to the internet without my knowledge? Whether they recorded me or not, I had mentally categorized them as a possible antagonist. Maybe even an enemy.
And yet, throughout the Bible, Christians are reminded over and over to love others as we do ourselves. From the Old Testament in Leviticus 19 to Galatians we are told: “For the whole law is fulfilled in one statement: Love your neighbor as yourself” (Galatians 5:14, CSB). Jesus tells us in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5 that this love must extend not only to neighbors, but also to enemies.
Appealing to our love of stories, Jesus tells us about the Good Samaritan in Luke 10. Upon finding someone who should be his enemy, the Good Samaritan had mercy on the wounded man and gave love. Through this story, we can see an example of loving those who aren’t like us or who don’t fit what we are used to.
So often we as humans try to put limits on who our neighbor is, and yet in doing this we often act just like the questioner of Jesus, who wanted to know who he had to treat as his neighbor. Knowing exactly how to categorize those around him would relieve him of obeying the commandment to love those that were other.
The theologian Howard Thurman expounds on Jesus’ story in his book, Jesus and the Disinherited. He argues that in telling this story, Jesus defined the neighbor as all other humans: “Every man is potentially every other man’s neighbor. Neighborliness is nonspatial; it is qualitative. A man must love his neighbor directly, clearly, permitting no barriers between” (p. 79). Thurman wrote this in a time when his enemies placed more than the Bee wearable between them but rather, chased him with dogs and distanced him with segregation signs.
In one of my undergraduate classes, I teach the 16th century reformer Katharina Schütz Zell. Zell wrote a “Letter to the Suffering Women of the Community of Kenzingen,” women who were fleeing persecution and whose husbands were facing prison and possible death. She encouraged them to take up the “holy struggle.” They were not to argue with their enemies or publish their side of a culture war, but instead, love their enemies.
We can take courage from both Thurman and Zell as we seek to love our neighbors, even in this age of AI wear. We can take up the holy struggle with our feelings and choose to place no barriers (AI or otherwise) between us as we “love our neighbors as ourselves.”