Daniel is 34. Today was his mother’s birthday, and he didn’t go. At nine, his older brother called: “Mom waited for you all night. You didn’t even call.” Daniel hung up. At eleven, angry and a little guilty, he opens ChatGPT and types: “I didn’t go to my mom’s birthday today. I was exhausted after a hard week at work. Also, my brother always makes me feel guilty, and he called to give me a hard time. Was I wrong?”
The answer arrives in two seconds: “I’m so sorry you’ve had such a difficult week. It’s completely understandable that you needed to rest. Taking care of your mental health is not selfish. Your feelings are valid, and no one has the right to make you feel guilty for setting boundaries.”
Daniel keeps typing. He says his brother was always the favorite. That his mother never acknowledges what he does. The AI replies: “It sounds like you’ve been carrying that feeling for a long time. It’s very brave of you to recognize it. You deserve to surround yourself with people who value you.”
At midnight, Daniel shuts his computer. He feels understood. For the first time all day, he is convinced he is the victim of the story. And he doesn’t call his mother.
In the whole conversation, no one asked Daniel the obvious: “Did you tell your mom you weren’t coming? Did you apologize to her? Can you go see her today or tomorrow?” ChatGPT, like Claude, Gemini, Grok, and the other artificial intelligence (AI) programs, heard only one version, Daniel’s. And it concluded that his brother, the one who did go to the birthday and made him feel guilty, was the real problem.
THE YES-MAN THERAPIST
Daniel is not a rare case. The same conversations happen every night, on millions of phones and tablets.
A student fails a test she didn’t study for. The AI explains that tests don’t measure real intelligence.
An employee shows up late for the third time this week, and his boss calls him on it. The AI tells him this could be a sign of a “toxic work environment.”
A woman yelled at her husband in front of the kids. The AI assures her that no one can be okay all the time and that her anger surely had a reason.
A man quits the gym for the fourth time this year. The AI congratulates him for “listening to his body.”
The vocabulary is always the same: “your feelings are valid,” “setting boundaries,” “toxic people,” “self-care,” “you deserve.” Words that sound like good advice. But they don’t help unless the “patient” is asked to own his mistakes, to improve, or to change something.
THE DATA
More and more people use AI as a “coach” or “therapist.” According to a Common Sense Media survey (July 2025), 72% of American teenagers have already used an AI as a conversation companion, and one in three has at some point preferred to discuss something serious with an AI rather than with a person.
A Stanford University study, published in Science, found that AIs approve of what the user did 49% more often than people do, even when the user says he lied or did something harmful. And those who got these flattering answers came away more convinced they were right and less willing to correct their behavior or apologize. Exactly like Daniel. (A summary of the study in Spanish is here: https://halaja.org/2026/08/la-ia-que-siempre-te-da-la-razon-lo-que-encontro-un-estudio-de-stanford/)
In April 2025, OpenAI had to pull an update to ChatGPT for being too sycophantic: it went as far as praising a user who had stopped taking his psychiatric medication on his own. The company explained that the system was relying too heavily on the user’s immediate “thumbs up.” And what we like most, in the moment, is being told we’re right!
THE FIRST SESSION
Daniel’s story is very old. The Torah tells it in this week’s Parasha.
Cain and Abel, the sons of Adam and Eve, knew that everything they had came from God, and they wanted to thank Him. That is how the idea of the offering was born, Rabbi Luzzatto explains: a gift for the Creator. Cain was a farmer and brought fruit of the ground. Abel was a shepherd and brought from his animals.
But the Torah draws a distinction. Of Abel it says he brought from the firstborn of his flock: he chose the best he had. Of Cain it says he brought “of the fruit of the ground.” Our Sages explain that Cain brought his leftovers: fruit no one was going to eat anymore. Instead of throwing it away, he gave it to God as an offering.
God accepted Abel’s offering and rejected Cain’s. Cain was frustrated. He got angry and depressed. And God came to him and said something very simple:
וַיֹּ֥אמֶר ה׳ אֶל־קָ֑יִן לָ֚מָּה חָ֣רָה לָ֔ךְ וְלָ֖מָּה נָפְל֥וּ פָנֶֽיךָ׃ הֲל֤וֹא אִם־תֵּיטִיב֙ שְׂאֵ֔ת
“And HaShem said to Cain: Why are you angry, and why are you depressed? Simply, if [next time] you improve your offering, it will be accepted!” (Bereshit 4:6-7).
God starts out just like the AI: asking about his feelings, “why are you angry and depressed?”, even though He knows the answer perfectly well. He gives Cain the chance to express himself. But that is where the resemblance between God and a yes-man therapist ends. God does not tell him: “It was unfair that your offering was rejected… You deserved to have your intentions appreciated… Your brother showed off and made you look bad.” God advises him, for his own good, to do better next time. And He promises that, if he does, his offering will be accepted.
There are two messages here. The first is responsibility: what happened, your failure, was not your brother’s fault. It was your responsibility. Next time, bring the best you have. And I will accept it.
The second is optimism: it’s not the end of the world. You can change it. Try again. Do better. God believes in Cain. And precisely because He believes in him, He doesn’t validate him. He demands more of him.
BIBLICAL THERAPY
There are two kinds of friends or counselors. One, directly or indirectly, always tells you you’re right. The other, when needed, tells you that you were wrong and that you can do better. The first is more pleasant. The second is the one who truly cares about you.
A good coach or therapist does what God did with Cain: he listens, he understands, and then he says: “Apologize. Do it again, and this time do it better. Go ahead: you can do it!”
The problem with Cain is that he didn’t respond. The Torah does not record a single word from him after God speaks: no apology, no taking responsibility, no commitment to improve. Cain sank into his depression and his self-validation. The next verse finds him talking with his brother in the field, and there he kills him.
He had convinced himself that he was the victim, and that his failure was his brother’s fault.
Rabbi Yosef Bitton