‘What I do really worry about is does it mean that there are millions of American teenagers talking to chatbots who don’t have their best interests at heart?’

Yesterday, the vice president sat down at the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See for an hour-long interview about the Vatican, the White House, and Silicon Valley.

Ross Douthat, the resident conservative columnist at the New York Times — and a contributing editor at National Review — interviewed JD Vance about the administration’s most controversial moves from the last few months. Seemingly random tariffs, illegitimate deportations, and defunded programs were all on the list. Vance had well-formed and fluent answers to the thematic questions presented to him, but less to say on the specifics. (When pressed, for example, on the administration’s fraught use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport illegal immigrants, Vance said in his reply, “I think I have to be careful here because some of this information is classified.”)

The heart of their conversation, however, mirrored their venue, as they gathered under the auspices of the Holy See. Ultimately, Douthat was more “interested in what politics does to your soul” than any specific policy dispute.

I found Vance especially persuasive when he discussed the impending impacts of artificial intelligence. I have included an excerpt of their conversation below:

Douthat: How much do you worry about the potential downsides of A.I.? Not even on the apocalyptic scale, but on the scale of the way human beings respond to a sense of their own obsolescence? These kinds of things.

Vance: So, one, on the obsolescence point, I think the history of tech and innovation is that while it does cause job disruptions, it more often facilitates human productivity as opposed to replacing human workers. . . .

Where I really worry about this is in pretty much everything noneconomic? . . . If you look at basic dating behavior among young people — and I think a lot of this is that the dating apps are probably more destructive than we fully appreciate. I think part of it is technology has just for some reason made it harder for young men and young women to communicate with each other in the same way. Our young men and women just aren’t dating, and if they’re not dating, they’re not getting married, they’re not starting families.

There’s a level of isolation, I think, mediated through technology, that technology can be a bit of a salve. It can be a bit of a Band-Aid. Maybe it makes you feel less lonely, even when you are lonely. But this is where I think A.I. could be profoundly dark and negative. I don’t think it’ll mean three million truck drivers are out of a job. I certainly hope it doesn’t mean that. But what I do really worry about is does it mean that there are millions of American teenagers talking to chatbots who don’t have their best interests at heart? Or even if they do have their best interests at heart, they start to develop a relationship, they start to expect a chatbot that’s trying to give a dopamine rush, and, you know, compared to a chatbot, a normal human interaction is not going to be as satisfying, because human beings have wants and needs.

Most know that kids and teens spend hours and hours of every day on screens. According to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, children ages eight to twelve spend, on average, four to six hours a day watching or using screens, while teens spend up to nine hours on screens. Rates of anxiety and depression among young people are directly correlated with screen use. The epidemic of loneliness and isolation grows.

Fewer readers may know, however, that approximately 10 percent of children aged five through eight, who use generative AI, treat the chatbot as a friend. Over half of the teenagers who use generative AI carry out conversations with the software. According to the Institute for Family Studies, “With well over 50 percent of children under the age of four now having their own tablet, we should expect to see a sharp rise in the rates of digital imaginary friends over the coming years.”

Generative AI poses grave dangers to human development, i.e., the development of your children. Tech companies have already invested in building out AI “friends.” Silicon Valley leaders such as Mark Zuckerberg have planned for a future where swaths of the American population have more virtual friends than real ones.

And even worse, AI pornography thrives in an underworld that is just beginning to surface. While many advocate for AI to replace “human” porn because there is no “victim,” we have not yet experienced the full-scale horrors of AI dominance in porn, which can turn any woman or girl into a victim.

Gen Z adults are, on average, being exposed to pornographic content well before they ever go on a date. The average age of Gen Z’s first exposure to pornography is around 14. Among the Gen Z adults who have ever gone out on a date, the average age of their first date is around 17. According to the Survey Center on American Life, “Three in 10 Gen Z adults, including one in three (33 percent) Gen Z men, report they have never gone out on a romantic date.”

As with any technological revolution, the landscape of work shifts and changes. From farm, to factory, to cubicle, there are real losses and gains with each cycle. But the threats that AI presents to human relationships are unprecedented.

The digital revolution (set to warp speed by AI) is primarily taking place — not in Silicon Valley — but within us. This is the argument of an important book, A Web of Our Own Making, by philosopher Antón Barba-Kay. Without our noticing, the very ways we think, speak, interact, imagine, and bestow value have been remade in the image of digital technology.

Pope Leo XIV declared his concerns about this revolution in the very name he chose, “Leo,” modeled after Leo XIII who addressed the social ills of the Industrial Revolution in his papacy. All who believe in human dignity must launch a counterrevolution that stresses the irreplaceability of embodied human relationship — at home, at school, at the bar, etc.

Friendships and marriages, neighborhood parties and church potlucks, book clubs and bowling leagues — relationships of all kinds — are actively forged, not passively materialized. As our culture hungers for real relationship, I hope conservatives will model the way.