The paranoia and confusion fostered by the internet in March 2020 led me to double down on physical reality. I went outside a lot in the early days of COVID-19. For a few months, I doubted most things digital and defaulted to what I could experience first-hand.

Six years later, in these nascent days of the AI revolution, I’m feeling the same way. What is real? In a world where so much of what we encounter is digitally mediated to us, how can we discern the artificial from the human?

I reflect on these questions at length in my latest TGC article: AI Can’t Beat What We Learn in the School of Our Senses. I argue that, in an overmediated world, we ought to remember that the immediate is more trustworthy than what’s mediated. God gives us physical senses and puts us in physical places for a reason. We aren’t meant to exist in disembodied digital space where everything is known secondhand and experienced virtually rather than tangibly.

I acknowledge the irony of me making this argument in a digital media format. It would surely be better if I could have this conversation with you face to face over coffee (my treat)! But to add a bit more trustworthy human texture to my article, I recorded myself reading it—so you can listen to my reflections on audio if you prefer! We hope to do this more and more with TGC articles. It gives you the option to listen rather than read; but it also brings more human authenticity to the words.

And trust me: the voice you hear reading the article isn’t an AI simulation of Brett McCracken’s voice. It’s actually me. Recorded in my Santa Ana, California bedroom with imperfect audio and my own God-given vocal chords.