030: Is AI Sabotaging Your Ability to Make Decisions?
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Show Notes
AI is becoming a bigger part of how we make decisions — from choosing what we watch to making major financial decisions. But what happens when we rely on it too much? Could we be outsourcing our ability to think critically, seek God’s wisdom, and grow through the decision-making process?
In this episode, I’m breaking down how AI is already influencing our choices and why that’s not always a good thing. I’ll share the 6 reasons I hesitate to rely on AI for decision-making and what we might be sacrificing when we let technology take the lead.
You’ll learn practical ways to stay in control of your choices, why spiritual discernment is irreplaceable, and how to use AI wisely — without losing your God-given decision-making ability.
If you’ve ever felt tempted to let technology make choices for you, this episode is a must-listen.
Links From This Episode:
✨ Read My Full Thoughts on AI and Decision-Making: anchoreddecisions.com/chip
✨ Episode 29: What To Do If God Feels Silent: anchoreddecisions.com/29
✨ FREE Decision-Making Compass: www.anchoreddecisions.com/compass
✨ Show Notes & Links: www.anchoreddecisions.com/30
Key Points:
🔑 How AI is influencing our everyday decisions — and why that’s not always a good thing
🔑 The 6 reasons I’m hesitant to rely on AI for decision-making:
Loss of Spiritual Guidance
Legal and Moral Responsibility
Use It or Lose It (Weakening our decision-making skills)
Ignoring the Heart and Emotions
Lack of Context and Personal Insight
Disconnection from Community and Wise Counsel
🔑 Why critical thinking and spiritual discernment matter more than ever
🔑 How to use AI as a helpful tool without letting it control your choices
Bible Verses Mentioned:
📖 Proverbs 11:14 – “Where there is no guidance, a people falls, but in an abundance of counselors there is safety.”
📖 James 1:5 – “If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.”
📖 Isaiah 30:21 – “Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, ‘This is the way; walk in it.’”
Connect with me on social media:
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www.pinterest.com/anchoreddecisions
Check out my website and decision guide shop:
www.anchoreddecisions.com
www.anchoreddecisions.com/shop
Transcript
Hey friends, have you heard about the wild article from Tech Hunch talking about the new AI decision chip? Apparently it's supposed to help you make every decision instantly. No more debating what to wear, where to eat, or bigger decisions like where to live, who to marry. This is crazy. Well, today we're going to dive into my thoughts and feelings about this so-called innovation and how AI is actually impacting our choices in the real world.
So let's get into it.
Intro: Welcome to the Anchored Decisions Show. I'm your host, Lauren Black, the world's biggest overthinker turn decision coach, all by the grace of God. Now I'm on a mission to help you make easier decisions, discover God's will and live with purpose. Tune in weekly to hear real life decision stories, expert insights, and faith-based strategies to help you navigate your decisions with confidence, so ditch your pros and cons list and learn to make better decisions without asking your mom or losing another night sleep. Let's go.
All right, so let's break down the Tech Hunch article. It's about this AI decision chip that's implanted into your brain, reading your preferences, analyzing data, and giving you the perfect answer for any choice. Sounds like something out of a sci-fi movie… Maybe because it's an April Fools joke.
So if you saw my blog post and you read the article, you would notice about halfway down that yes, I made up the whole thing as an April Fools joke to lead into today's podcast episode, which really is about AI affecting our decision making.
Now, the article looks like it's real because I am also a graphic designer, so I was able to design an image that looks like a website page from a made up tech site that I actually just kind of took Tech Crunch and turned it into Tech Hunch and tweaked the logo to make it look like that.
But I wanted to bring this up and use this as an April Fool's joke because a few years ago I actually had it in my schedule, but never got around to it to make an April Fool's joke about AI making decisions for you. Not necessarily the whole like brain chip, but just using AI and an AI tool that would make decisions for you.
And I had that written down as an actual like April Fools joke, but now that AI has become so dominant and people do use it for decisions, I'm like that itself is not an April Fools joke. Like people really do use AI to make decisions for them.
And I even had the idea at some point to make a software that would help you make decisions and would kind of learn your preferences. You'd type in your values, your desires, your goals, things that you like and don't like, and then this software would help you make your decisions. And after praying over that, God pointed out to me that that was not a tool I should be making.
That yes, there are AI programs out there that can already kind of do that for you, but I don't need to encourage it anymore, and I'll get into the reasons why AI can be dangerous for your decision making in this article.
The Appeal of Using AI In Your Decisions
But real quick, before we dive into that, let's dive into the appeal of AI driven decisions. So what would make this chip something that some scientists might actually want to create or some people might actually want to have?
I mean, it would be pretty nice to have AI decide the best outfit for you so you don't spend hours shopping or in your closet, or maybe tell me the perfect spot for a family vacation, which is something my husband and I have been back and forth on so much recently and maybe no more overthinking or endless Google searches, like that would be great.
You could save your brain power for other things and buy back so much time if you can give up having to make decisions. But what about big decisions, like what job to take, whether to buy a house and which house, or how to handle a tricky financial situation? It's one thing to let AI weigh in on what's for dinner, but handing over the reigns for something life changing, that's a whole different story.
Why an AI Chip Would Sabotage Your Decision-Making
So why do I think that an AI chip would be a disaster and even an AI software program would not be helpful, beneficial, or something we should create? I have six main reasons of why I think this chip would be a nightmare.
1. Loss of spiritual guidance.
So this is a Christian channel. For us as Christians decision making isn't just about facts and logic or desires. We rely on the Holy Spirit's leading. And God's guidance is often bizarre. It could be completely different from what anything in the world would say we should do.
And while AI may be able to analyze the past and predict patterns really well, it will never see the future like God does. God already knows what's ahead, and he has the most perfect plan for you if you just tune into that. So you have to step out in faith, and it builds your faith to put your trust in God and not to rely on something that feels a little more comfortable, like trusting AI.
For instance, God might lead you down a path that AI would never have chosen for you.
Like for me, becoming a decision coach when I was the world's biggest overthinker and like so horrible at making decisions, that is something that could only be powered by God. That is not something that, apart from God, I would've ever chosen as my path. AI would never have chosen that as my path because it was my weakness.
But God takes our weaknesses and shows his strength by empowering us to do things that we couldn't have otherwise done. And so that's why we can't, as Christians, depend on AI to give us direction, to choose for us, because God has so many bigger plans for us and things that are so different than the world and what data says we should do.
And you know, an AI chip deciding things for you, it wouldn't understand conviction from the spirit, forgiveness, service, taking leaps of faith. And if we're not careful, we could stop seeking God's wisdom altogether. If we become dependent on an AI program to direct us, we're not gonna be praying as much, we're not gonna be seeking wise counsel. God often speaks to us through those things, and so when we step away from God's direction, we're going to be out of line with his will. We are not going to be discovering what's best for us and the amazing things that God has in plan for us, and just being a part of his story, which is so much better than anything we could create or imagine for ourselves or anything that AI could decide for us.
Now quick PSA. If you are wondering how to hear from God and you want to be able to distinguish his voice to know his direction to you know, hear him in your decisions, then definitely go back to my last episode, episode 29, where I talk about what to do if God feels silent and how you can hear God's voice.
2. The legal and moral responsibility.
So if AI makes a bad call, maybe something financial that ends in a really bad investment or, you know, chooses a house that ends up being a lemon. I guess a house wouldn't be a lemon, but a house that has a bunch of problems that you then have to fix and it's causing all these extra finances and stress to fix those problems.
Or what if it's a decision that causes physical harm to somebody? I mean, if you're driving in a car and you are about to get hit by another vehicle, and you have the choice of swerving off the road, which will cause you to hit a mom pushing a stroller or get hit by the car or drive off into a ditch, those are decisions that really only humans can make. How would the AI calculate whose life is the most valuable in that situation and what the car should do? This is one of my concerns with self-driving cars. I mean, if you've got a self-driving car in that situation and it has sensors that it can tell that there's a person on the side and might not realize that it's pushing a baby in a stroller, and it might be able to detect that there's a drop off on the other side, but maybe that drop off is only three feet and it wouldn't be that horrible for you to swerve into a three foot ditch better than hitting a mom with a baby. But does the car know how to do that? Does it know how to make that decision? This is a scenario that could happen, and so when we let AI make these decisions, then who's responsible?
If you are facing a legal battle over some sort of financial disaster decision or one of these physical harm decisions, if you were in a self-driving car and the car made the decision then.
Is the car manufacturer responsible? I mean, if we had an actual AI chip in your head and it made that poor decision, is the chip manufacturer responsible? I mean, ultimately you were the one supposed to be in control and in charge.
The accountability there gets murky real fast, and so we have to watch that even as we use AI programs without a chip, if we are still using AI to help us, we can't dodge that responsibility.
3. Use it or lose it.
So the more we outsource our decisions, the weaker our decision making muscles become.
So I mention this to people all the time when I'm encouraging them of how to become a better decision maker and faster and more confident decision maker is sometimes it takes just making decisions and starting to get comfortable with making them on your own independently of relying on things like AI or relying on other people to help make the decisions for you. 'Cause a lot of times we try to outsource to our spouse, to our loved ones, and that takes away from our ability to make good decisions. So if we start becoming dependent on AI, then we lose our ability to trust ourselves, to feel confident in our choices, and to be able to make those easy decisions. We start needing to, let me pop on Chat GPT and see what it says before we can make a decision. But then what happens in a medical emergency? Or if you're driving and you need to make an instant decision, or if you're in a tough conversation with someone and you can't just pull up your phone and ask AI, you have to be able to think critically in the spot, make decisions yourself, or you lose that ability.
Growth doesn't come from perfect decisions. It comes from the struggle of making them. That's when we stretch those muscles. Every choice we wrestle with starts to strengthen our discernment. It builds our resilience. We learn from things even if they don't turn out right and we don't like the outcome, we can learn from that.
And this deepens our understanding of who we are, what we want in life, what we value. And so if we start to outsource that growth to ai, then we're going to get mushy. Our decision muscles are going to lose their strength, and we lose part of our humanity in the process.
4. Ignoring the heart.
AI pulls data, mostly all data. But not every best decision is made by numbers.
Some of the best decisions are not the most logical ones. They are the ones that make your heart sing. AI can calculate the quote unquote smartest move, but it will never understand the joy of choosing something simply because it makes you feel good, because it satisfies that longing in your heart and just lights you up.
And maybe the house that is right across the street from your work seems like the logical sense, but perhaps it's not the one with the big yard where your kids can run around and you just feel at home at.
Maybe it makes financial sense to skip a family reunion, but what about the emotional value of those relationships and the memories that you'll make with your kids and your family, and all of your loved ones in one place?
Or maybe it suggests moving to take a higher paying job, but then you're leaving behind your community or your relationships, or maybe your elderly parents that you care for.
So AI can't calculate the value of that human connection and the joy or your desires, and your passions. Because a lot of times you could have something that's been a desire of your heart for so long that you're willing to overcome any financial or any other obstacles in your way, that you're willing to deal with those in order to get the joy that you will out of this desire of yours, even if it doesn't make sense on paper.
So we don't want to ignore the heart or you'll end up miserable and having lots of regrets.
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5. A lack of context.
AI only knows what we tell it, and it gathers data from the internet. But not everything is out there on the internet, and not every circumstance is aligned with your circumstance.
So if you're debating putting in a pool, it might only consider your budget and what the resale value is, what the current costs are. It might not know that you have a special needs child that could benefit from water therapy or swimming.
And so there's these layers involved in your specific circumstance that AI just can't know. And as much as you can input the data and let AI know, okay, here's my circumstance, here's my neighborhood, here's, you know, this and that, it just will never fully get the whole picture that us as humans can put thought into that.
6. Disconnection from community.
AI eliminates the need to start talking with other people, to connect with other people. This kind of goes back to number one of the spiritual disconnection where we stop talking to pastors for their advice because you know, if you have AI instead.
This reminds me of Proverbs 11:14 that says, "where there is no guidance of people falls, but in abundance of counselors there is safety". So there is wisdom that we can find from talking with our parents and our relatives, our family, friends, pastors. This is biblical, but also just logical, like it strengthens our relationships and allows us to then pass on wisdom to other generations.
So some of this AI and keeping ourselves from being consumed by it is so that we can teach our kids how to make wise decisions, how to think on their own and independently and connect with them in that way relationally.
The Benefits of Using AI
So now I'm not going to fully bash AI because guess what? AI helped me create this campaign, this April Fools joke. I fed it some ideas and what I wanted to do, and then it wrote my fake article for me and it helped outline my blog post. And I do a lot of tweaking. I do not rely solely on AI. I use it for a lot of things with my graphic design and marketing business where I am helping market a medical office. I don't know medical stuff. I'm not a doctor. I don't have a degree in it, but I'm able to use that as a starting point, and then I run it by the staff there and I'm able to tweak it to make it sound more on brand with that office that has a very warm, welcoming culture. And so I don't want it to sound like a robot, so I do have to go in and tweak things.
But I do rely on AI for a lot of things. And you know what? It is making me rely on it for writing to the point where I've become lazy and don't want to write on my own fully anymore. I kind of feed AI bullet points and say, make it sound good. So that's just showing that once we become dependent on it we start losing our own abilities.
But what are some positives of AI in decision making? Since it's not all bad? It can be a fantastic tool when used wisely, but as I said, it's a tool. It's not the thing. It's a support, it's a piece that helps us, so it can help us with narrowing our options. If you feel overwhelmed by choices, it helps you filter through the noise and provide some options.
It can help you do some research if you need data fast. Now, I would always fact check it because I've even, I've fed AI questions before where I say, pull a quote from this article. And it writes something that's kind of a paraphrase, but not word for word. I'm like, no, I wanted a quote. Do you not understand what a quote is? Like exact words. And I've even said like pull word for word. And it didn't give me word for word. And yes, it made it sound better, but I asked for word for word and it didn't give me that.
I've asked for quotes from people about decision making that I could use on my social media, and it just like made up people. I'm like, no, no, no. I was looking for real people. Like what did Teddy Roosevelt say about making decisions? Like I want quotes from famous people. I don't want made up quotes. So always fact check.
But it can also help with brainstorming and learning from patterns because it can pick up on your habits and your decision making patterns and provide some insight there.
So overall, I would never want an AI chip making decisions for me at all. I don't even want a software that makes the decision making faster because I don't want to become reliant on it. But using AI as an assistant, that is something that I do use and I do encourage others to use because it can save you a lot of time and energy.
If you're interested in learning how to use AI in order to assist you with your decisions, not make them for you, but assist you, next week's episode is all about the do's and don'ts of using AI in your decisions.
Hit subscribe right now so you don't miss it.
So if you're questioning, how can I use it without it affecting me in these negative ways we mentioned here today, then definitely tune in. Hit subscribe right now so you don't miss the episode, and I can't wait to help you to make better decisions using AI with caution in the right way.
Send me a dm, go find me on Instagram and let me know if you would ever use an AI chip or an AI software to help you make decisions.
Action Step
Now I close out every podcast episode with an action step. Today's action step of the day, is to any time that you are tempted to go use AI to make your decisions, I want you to pray the decision first. Pause. Do not turn to AI. Do not turn to Google. When you type into Google search, it gives you an AI answer first before anything else. So before you turn to technology, I want you to pray. That's your action step.
Closing Prayer
And so now let me pray us out.
Father God, I thank you so much that there are tools out there that can support us in our decision making. But God, I thank you that you are the ultimate guide in our decisions, that you lead us down the best paths, that when we are aligned with you and we know your voice, that you do direct us. And even if it's things that we would never have chosen or AI would never have chosen, we know that you have the best in mind for your kingdom. So help us to stay grounded in decisions that are made with faith and decisions that are aligned with you, God. Help us to pray first, to hear from you, to listen to your voice, and so that we're able to make wise decisions and pass that decision making ability down to the next generation, even as AI takes over so much of the world.
So, God, we just pray that the technology would not advance too quick. We pray for your protection over our minds, and we hand this all over to you God, in Jesus' name. Amen.
Outro: Thank you so much for listening. I hope that my April Fools joke didn't lead you astray, but led you to have a better understanding of AI and how it impacts our decisions. Make sure to hit subscribe so you can tune into my next episode on the dos and don'ts of using AI in your decisions, because I do think that it is a tool that we can make use of as long as you use it the right way. See you then.