Understanding, Not Fear: A Personal Reflection on Artificial Intelligence

I have been noticing how differently people respond to artificial intelligence. For some, AI is a threat to human knowledge, to education, or even to our humanity itself. For others, it is a philosophical puzzle or a moral hazard. I think that these might be legitimate concerns, and they deserve thoughtful discussion.

But my own experience with AI has been far more ordinary, far more personal, and (ironically, I would say) far more human.

I do not approach AI as a theologian, a philosopher, or a technologist. I approach it, in one particular instance, as a patient trying to understand what is happening to his own body, and in others as someone who has spent a lifetime in practical work where I think that clarity matters more than abstraction.

A Tool for Understanding

When I receive medical test results, I am confronted with a wall of terminology that is not written for me. It is written for specialists who have spent decades in training. The gap between their knowledge and mine is huge, and the stakes are very personal.

In the past, I simply had to take their word for it, regarding the meaning of these results.

AI changed that—not by replacing my doctor, but by helping me understand him. When I ask an AI tool to explain a procedure or translate a lab report into plain English, I am not seeking a second opinion. I am seeking comprehension. I am trying to reduce my own uncertainty by replacing mystery with clarity.

My urologist encourages this. He tells me that AI has empowered many of his patients. It has certainly empowered me. It is a very different experience than hunting through the web for articles that might have some relevance, then trying to piece them together in to some coherent explanation.

This is not a rebellion against expertise. It is a way of participating more fully in my own care.

Authority and Interpretation

A friend recently reminded me that the democratization of knowledge is not the same as the democratization of expertise. He is right. My doctor still knows more than I do. AI does not make me a urologist.

But it does make me less intimidated.

It allows me to ask better questions. It allows me to understand what is being recommended. It allows me to be a partner in my own treatment rather than a passive recipient.

For some, especially those who have spent their lives in roles built around interpretation—clergy, professors, scholars—AI feels like a challenge to the traditional flow of knowledge. I understand that. But for me, AI has not displaced human authority; it has made that authority more accessible.

On Moral Concerns

The Pope has released a long encyclical on artificial intelligence. As I would expect, it frames AI in moral and theological terms. It warns against treating human beings as optimization projects, and against allowing technology to redefine what it means to be human.

These are important cautions. They belong in the conversation.

But they are not the whole conversation.

For me, AI has not diminished my humanity. It has helped me navigate it. It has clarified my fears, steadied my thinking, and made difficult moments less overwhelming. Those are profoundly human needs, and AI has met them in a very human way.

I do not dismiss the Pope’s view; I simply place it alongside many others. His perspective is one voice in a larger dialogue, not a final word.

The Quiet Middle Ground

I am not afraid of AI.

I am also not evangelizing it/

I am simply using it.

And in using it, I have found something that the loudest voices—both the fearful and the utopian—often overlook: AI can be a tool for understanding, for clarity, and for reducing the distance between experts and the rest of us.

It has not made me less human. It has helped me be a more informed, more confident, and more engaged human.

That, to me, is worth saying out loud.