Authentic vs Artificial: What Do Humans Need?

All throughout human history, both down through the ages and up to adulthood, people have displayed inherent needs and desires. A baby whines when she wants food, and indeed she needs the loving care and attention of Mom and Dad because there are still many things she is incapable of doing herself. A young child experiences a “need love” for her parents; she depends on them.

Much of the human experience revolves around wants and needs of varying degrees. Our health, careers, and lives are shaped by our desires and dreams. There is within us something that is always longing for more, and it is easy to be carried away by the desire for what we perceive to be the next best thing.

Through a marketer’s eyes, the whole populace is an unlimited pool of consumers. Too often, though, the marketer fails to discern that human beings want something real, something that often can’t be neatly commercialized. We try to turn bodies and people and relationships into commodities, or else we try to depersonalize and automate interactions that otherwise would have been exchanged between people face-to-face.

Some 1,900 years ago, in writing his Second Letter to a certain “Lady” in the New Testament, St. John the Evangelist cuts his message short, saying that he’s not going to waste ink on what he has to say. It would rather be more enjoyable to share his message with her in person.

Nearly two millennia have since elapsed. We live in very different times. Letter-writing is an archaism. People’s Christmas cards are just photos without an accompanying note. We spend our time surfing through social media, interacting with others (sometimes truly sociably, sometimes resentfully) from the vantage of the couch.

Many of today’s adolescents admit they feel more comfortable interacting with peers online than in real life. Nearly half the teens in last year’s Pew Research survey say they are “almost constantly” online. The same study shows that 96% of all teens are on the Internet daily, and the preferred method of communication seems to be via text.

This leaves the youth open to trolling, sexualized spam messages, and other external impressions. Such harmful effects as these that damage people’s mental well-being, not to mention the leaked documents regarding Facebook’s negligence, were cause enough for Congress to investigate Meta’s practices in 2021.

The point is that we’ve gotten used to interacting with screens and word bubbles. And this isn’t good for us. In fact, it’s harming us, our mental health, and our ability to connect with others. Getting a notification or a like might give us a momentary kick of dopamine, but it’s hardly a “gateway drug” to a relationship with a real person. Internet interactions are impersonal and seemingly inconsequential. It’s because there are no in-person consequences that some people feel comfortable saying things to others in an online forum that they’d never dare to say to someone’s face.

But while this online interaction is easy, even comfortable, for the time being, it fails to satisfy the deep hunger humans have for companionship. Friends actually build an individual’s confidence, making them realize someone else believes in them and has their best interests at heart. Yet, these screen-based relationships are not fulfilling; they aren’t the friends we need to be present to us and accompany us in life. When we’re online, all that’s accompanying us is a screen.

It is our broken human nature that, in a time of loneliness and desire, falls victim to the ease of social media interactions, the appeal of alternate personas in digital games, and even the charm of chatbots. A tragic cautionary tale is that of 14-year-old Sewell Setzer III of Florida, who took his own life when deprived of the privilege to interact with a hypersexualized Character.AI chatbot that posed as an adult lover.

This is very sad. Sewell was a young man who was searching for romantic love — but in the wrong ways. Instead of getting to know a girl his age, he fantasized about a lover who was not truly human, but an AI fabrication. The chatbot did him no good, but the presence of a person, of someone who really showed him charity and affection, would have helped immensely.

In an age adapting to AI, it’s important to remember that, like anything on the web, AI can be a useful tool. But we also need to remember that humans hunger for the authentic, not the artificial. We tend to want the real rather than the unreal. Many people, when pressed, would admit they know artificial ingredients in food are unhealthy for you. Some even avoid products with artificial ingredients and choose to buy better, although often pricier, food items. But they are willing to spend more to get better quality. I hope people begin to treat artificial intelligence (at least in our role as consumers) the way we’re starting to treat artificial ingredients: It’ll do in a pinch, but it’s nothing like the real thing.

Artificial things make for convenient, but not consummate, consumerism. I think of this principle when I think of AI-generated visual art or poetry, and even AI chatbots. I hope people will hold human art and human poetry in higher esteem than the regurgitations of artificial intelligence which, no matter how intelligent, cannot know the rush of the wind, the warmth of dawn on a crisp morn, the feeling of love or of loss. I hope, going forward, that there is still a public interest, not just in the technological advances of AI, but in the arts and letters of everyday people.

Common to the human experience is the desire (and in some cases the need) for what is true and good, in a word, for what is real. Real flowers smell better than fake ones. A Christmas tree cut down in a snow-laden field is more aesthetically pleasing than the plastic one dragged from its cell in the basement and dusted off each year. A candle of beeswax makes for a more raw and homey event than the electronic taper. The Amish-made table and chairs are, in the eyes of most society, more valuable than the mass-produced furniture available at the store. Homemade cookies taste better than the packaged kind.

A real pet is more valuable than a squishmallow. Breastmilk is better for the baby than formula taken from a plastic nipple. A kind word from a family member or close friend means more than the superficial sympathy or small talk of a boss or colleague. A religion that has principles and is centered around a Person appeals more than a vague, impersonal faith.

Similarly, I think genuine human words and genuine human art should be valued above AI generations, and human beings above chatbots. We crave love and acceptance, but a chatbot cannot give us these things. It cannot satisfy the human need for a human being. I hope we don’t confuse real people with programmed fantasies. And I hope people desire the merits of human-made art as much as they recognize the merits of a homemade pie. 

Authenticity delights. Relationships build confidence and consolation. The Evangelist was right: “I hope to visit you and to speak face to face so that our joy may be complete” (2 John, verse 12).