In the world of artificial intelligence fiction, we experience a machine-made world that neither includes nor understands grace.

The stories are profoundly similar, whether set within ancient kingdoms, fantasy realms, mafia families or the business world. However, there is no grace.

Everything fits together within an action-reaction mechanism that resembles the cogs of a machine but not the soul interactions of a man or woman: Cruelty begets vengeance, anonymity begets importance, ignorance begets consequences and entitlement begets poverty — all with everyone overreacting visually in a literal depiction of emotional responses.

Loving the narrative tale and having studied film for a lifetime, my interest was piqued when AI began writing and depicting the human condition.

Though there are many sources, the fictional tales that most engaged me were those that came across my Facebook algorithms.

Using similar names and faces, these stories unite into a clear genre that are a depiction of a soul-less and graceless humanity, revealing a machine’s understanding of life.

Frequent Themes

Although AI learns from human-written literature and internet sources, I would suggest that AI has neither the ears to hear or the capacity to understand a human.

Sibling Rivalry

AI stories depict jealousy and manipulation of siblings. The intention of family being a supportive and safe place is replaced by rejecting the family, cutting them off and leaving them homeless and penniless.

The machines don’t recognize the power of love and see the solution only in removing siblings like defective cogs or an infecting virus.

Family Favoritism

The favoritism that Isaac has for Rebekah and their son, Jacob, sets up one of the most beautiful moments of reconciliation and forgiveness in all of Scripture.

Such resolution is not seen in an AI tale.

Abandoned Children

Similar to favoritism, there are many AI tales in which a child is abandoned at birth.

What is universal in these tales is that the abandoned child returns, wreaking havoc on those who conspired against them.

Unlike the real human understanding of justice, which includes mercy, the original action causes the child’s reaction and is therefore justified.

Hidden Identity, Power and Wealth

The human longing to be recognized as special is a very common theme. AI tales give repeated fulfillment of that longing but it is a story of scarcity and selfishness.

Rebirth Into a Second Chance

The longing to be able to go back and live our lives without making the mistake or mistakes we made, is a very common theme to AI.

However, the AI assumption that we are still the same and still suffer destruction is a clear indication of the AI limitation.

Entitlement Into Poverty

The fear that we are going to lose what we have is universal. AI takes that human condition and personifies it into characters with cruel entitlement.

The story would transform dramatically if gracious empowerment were extended.

Stolen Identity Into Humiliation

Pretending to be someone we are not is a deep transgression in both the human and the AI world.

In AI tales the vengeance and destruction of the pretender and those who supported their lies is total. There is no grace when confessions and apologies are given.

Power Into Humiliation

Perhaps the most uncomfortable of all the AI tales for me is the demand that a person humiliate themselves to a person with power, usually by kneeling and apologizing in the most public of settings.

This is perhaps the most obvious AI limitation. The use of power to bring honor to another person is the grace that fuels human relationships and organizations.

God Into Subservience or Destruction

In an AI tale the gods are capricious and cruel. There is no loving God in AI literature.

Missing Themes

AI tales lack grace — the undeserved love and favor from God and others. The world created and described by AI is a reflection of the machine’s existence that by definition is mechanistic and has no grace to extend and no love to give.

Instead, what is presented is a machine’s solution to the problems of the human condition that only leaves us as beings who devour one another.

Church as Community

There are churches and temples in the AI world, but they are also mechanistic: Marriages are legalized, magical rites are performed, the powers of this world are legitimized.

There is no sense in an AI tale that the church is a community of people who love God and are loved by God.

There is no God in whose image we are created and who sustains and saves us. There is no redeemer who pays the price for our redemption.

Forgiveness as Grace

There is no forgiveness. In the few tales in which a person “forgave” the actions of another, the tale goes on to show the “forgiven” person coming back and destroying the “forgiver.”

For the machine, forgiveness is misunderstood as an action that unnecessarily opens the way to being harmed again.

Loving God Who Empowers Love

Although in the AI world there are many mentors, masters, mages, there are no examples in which they are taught to love as God loves.

Having no mechanistic use for love, the machine has no categories for including such a thought in its stories.

Transformation Into New Life

Finally, in an AI tale even if rebirth occurs, the person tries to use the knowledge of their former life to avoid pain and to harm those who harmed them.

There is no sense within the machine-author that the character can become a loving and supportive and grace-filled human being.

In the final analysis this lack of a transcendent spiritual arc to the story is not only boring as fiction, but a fatal flaw as an explorer of the human condition.

Implications for Living with AI

Although this is only one way to see the reality of living with AI, the revelation is that there will be no grace in Ai decision-making.

A machine does not understand peace. A machine does not sense when a person needs forgiveness. A machine has no intuition about how to provide encouragement.

A machine has no architecture to recognize the transcendent love that comes from outside the action-reaction mechanism. A machine does not recognize the fatal step in reacting to evil with evil.

Such limitation defines a machine’s existence but does not even begin to describe a human.

Great literature has been an invaluable gift to us. But when that depiction is flawed at its core, then rather than a lifting insight, it provides empty, deceiving darkness.

It may speak to the primitive mind, but it does not speak to the soul that transcends the actions and reactions of this world.

Its narrative deceives and destroys us, just as are the characters in these AI tales experience.