Ronald L Barnett

December 13, 2022

Does Artificial Intelligence Care About Us?

Who Cares?:  We’re creating artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities that have and increasingly will accomplish many of the things humans now do and perhaps haven’t even imagined we could. Of course we anthropomorphize AI. Do they care about us? I wondered, so I asked one (ChatGPT) and it said: 

“As a large language model trained by OpenAI, I am not capable of experiencing emotions or forming personal connections with people. My primary function is to assist with a wide range of tasks by providing information and answering questions to the best of my ability based on the data I have been trained on. I exist only in a digital form and do not have the ability to care about anyone in the way that a human being can.’’

I responded “could this be dangerous” and it replied:

“As I mentioned earlier, I am not capable of experiencing emotions or forming personal connections with people, so the fact that I do not care about you should not be a cause for concern.”  - ChatGPT

About Ronald L Barnett

I moved to Substack and renamed to Contemplation Across the Lifespan on 2/2025. Hope to see you there. - Ron

Welcome to Hey World - a home for my writings, much of it autobiographically-inspired. My hope is that they entertain, educate, and inspire. I’m simpatico with Enid Sinclair who told Wednesday Addams, ‘’I write in my voice. It’s my truth!” I hope you enjoy them. And if you subscribe and have comments, I’d love to hear from you.

I received the Doctorate in Psychology (concentration in human cognition and learning) and after 5 years working as a community-based mental health clinician, I worked in medical research with the National Institutes of Health for the remainder of my career.

I served Contemplative Outreach, Ltd. (CO) as a teacher, group facilitator, retreat leader, Chapter Coordinator, Board Member and Trustee and taught with The Miksang Institute for Contemplative Photography.

As of 2020 I retired, hosted the podcast All Things Contemplative, and still volunteer with CO. I also facilitate Charis Circles with the Charis Foundation for the New Monasticism and Interspirituality - and enjoy information technologies, photography, nature, swimming, biking, and kayaking.

All photos © 2025 Ronald Barnett. Use with permission.

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/ronald.barnett
Miksang Contemplative Photography https://ronaldbarnett.smugmug.com
All Things Contemplative Podcast https://allthingscontemplative.buzzsprout.com/
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/rbarnett7/
Lifespring - early blog 2009-2020 https://lifespring.posthaven.com/