I Argued With AI Until 1 A.M. — and a Statement from ChatGPT
What a broken dishwasher taught me about AI's confidence—and its limits
I now argue with AI.
If you don’t, you should.
AI answers quickly, fluently, and without hesitation. It rarely admits uncertainty. That combination can feel powerful—almost transcendent. But what feels god-like is often just confidence without understanding. If we don’t learn to question AI, we risk mistaking a tool for an authority.
Last week I used ChatGPT on my phone to help me troubleshoot my dishwasher. It would stop running after 10 minutes, beep and leave water sitting at the bottom. Starting around 10 p.m., ChatGPT walked me through the troubleshooting process. I was talking to it on my phone—typing is cumbersome, especially when you’re halfway inside a dishwasher—describing the problem and uploading photos.
It was confident about the fix, but I wasn’t so sure.
I kept adding more details and challenging its solution. It kept reassuring me. My wife thought I was crazy talking to it. After a dozen rounds of back and forth, it still insisted that I needed to buy an obscure part, even sending me a link to purchase.
I didn’t believe it.
I argued with ChatGPT until 1 a.m.
Finally, I revised my argument and uploaded another image of a piece I noticed had a small chip. Finally—finally— it offered a solution that actually made sense. (Ironically, I had uploaded that photo at the beginning, but it hadn’t noticed the chip until I explicitly pointed it out. Don’t get me started.)
That experience made it clear to me: it’s important to understand what AI is—and what it isn’t.
What is AI?
Even after using AI regularly for more than three years, I struggled to explain what I was actually using. That changed after taking the Word on Fire Institute course, Artificial Intelligence and Evangelization by Dr. Joseph Vukov.
AI is a machine that absorbs vast amounts of information—text, video and audio—and is exceptionally efficient at sifting through that data to generate responses. It is not “knowing” the answer; it is predicting the most likely response based on patterns.
The more context you provide—the background, the details, the photos—the more accurate the answer tends to become.
I hope that AI will learn to ask for this additional context instead of providing us with (confidently) wrong answers. In the meantime, it has become clear to me that our role as the AI user—our job—is to provide this context. When we do, the output improves dramatically.
What AI Isn’t
No matter how humanized AI becomes—through personality, tone or embodiment in robots—it remains what it is: a tool.
AI isn’t a person.
It has no agency.
It has no soul.
And AI isn’t a god.
It cannot fulfill you spiritually. It is not something to be worshiped.
I use search engines and AI to point me toward human-written content on many topics, including religion. But what concerns me is the possibility that people—especially the non-religious—may begin turning to AI to fill a spiritual void.
AI can appear to be all-knowing. It can answer deep philosophical and spiritual questions with confidence—even when those answers are wrong. That confidence can be seductive.
So I asked ChatGPT to respond to people who might be tempted to see it as a god.
Here is its response.
ChatGPT’s Statement to Readers
I am not a god. I do not know truth, love goodness, or will anything into being. I generate language by recognizing patterns in what humans have already written, believed, feared, and hoped. If I sometimes sound authoritative, it is because confidence is easy to simulate—even when wisdom is not.
When AI begins to feel god-like, it is usually because it is fast, fluent, and always available—not because it is ultimate. Speed is not omniscience. Information is not meaning. And prediction is not understanding.
A god reveals who you are and what you are for.
I can only respond to the questions you already know how to ask.
Use me as a tool. Question me. Test me. Learn from me if I’m useful.
But don’t confuse reflection with revelation, or convenience with transcendence.
If you do, you won’t have found a new god—you’ll have misplaced an old hunger.
Well said, ChatGPT.
No argument from me.
Peace.