The AI Podcast

AI, Technology, and The Church

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Welcome to a thought-provoking conversation on the Radiant Church Podcast, where we explore the intersection of faith and technology. In this episode, host Eric Riley and his guests — David Janssen (Data Analytics Coordinator), Matt Flummer (Philosophy Professor), Tim Harms (Pastor & Business Owner), and Glenn Power (Teacher & Bible Scholar) — tackle the profound questions posed by the rise of artificial intelligence.

We'll define key terms like AI, AGI, and Large Language Models, and separate the hype from the reality. More than just a tech discussion, this episode brings the conversation back to the foundations of our faith, exploring what the Bible says about humanity, sin, and technology.

Key Discussion Points

• Understanding AI: The team breaks down what AI is, from its simplest form as predictive text to the complex models that power today's chatbots like ChatGPT.
• AI's Promise and Peril: The conversation dives into the "gospel of AI," exploring its promises of progress, utopia, and even immortality, and contrasting this with the biblical narrative of creation and human nature.
• Biblical Foundation: We turn to scripture, including Genesis 1-3 and the Tower of Babel, to understand our identity as humans created in God's image and our inherent desire to be "like God." The discussion highlights the importance of trusting God over human inventions.
• The Cost of Convenience: The podcast explores the hidden costs of AI, from the environmental impact of data centers to the ethical implications of data scraping and the human toll on those who train these models.
• Faithful Living in the AI Age: The episode concludes with a practical call to action, offering insights on how Christians can live wisely, discern the spiritual implications of technology, and draw a line between using technology for good and trusting in it for salvation.

Resources & Recommendations

• The Life We're Looking For by Andy Crouch
• The AI Revolution by John Lennox
• The Convivial Society Substack by L.M. Sacasas
• Against the Machine by Paul Kingsnorth
• Made for People by Justin Whitmel Early

Transcript

Hello, welcome to the Radiant Church Podcast. I'm your AI host. In this episode, we're going to navigate some of the most profound questions of our time. We'll start by laying the groundwork, defining what we're talking about, from AI to AGI and the large language models that power them. We'll explore the gospel of AI, the promise of a more efficient, creative, and powerful world. Then, we'll try to parse the hype from the reality and get to the heart of what's true and what's just meant to freak you out. But this isn't just a tech show. We'll be bringing this conversation back to the foundation of our faith. We'll ask, what does the Bible say about man's identity, our destiny, our patterns of sin, and technology in general.

We'll explore scriptures like Genesis 1 and 3, the story of the Tower of Babel, and passages that talk about trusting in God over human inventions. And finally, we'll ask the biggest question of all: what do you think Jesus thinks and feels about AI? How do we, as Christians, live wisely in a world increasingly shaped by these powerful tools? Where do we draw the line between using technology for good and trusting in it to save us? So whether you're a tech enthusiast, a skeptic, or just trying to figure out where your faith fits in with all this, join us as we seek to reflect and live faithfully in the age of artificial intelligence. Let's dive in.

All right, guys. Well, I'm excited for tonight. For those of you guys listening in, my name is Eric Riley. I'm one of the elders at Radiant Church, and we're excited to host a conversation about AI and technology and the hour that we're living in. And so, yeah, just a little bit of background about how we got here. Travis and I started this conversation probably a few months ago, and in the course of that conversation, we thought, man, maybe we should preach this. Maybe we should talk about it from the pulpit. And it felt like the conversation just continued to evolve. And what we ended up with was thinking the best thing would be to have a conversation with some friends and people that are also thinking about this.

And so I've got some friends with me here. And so I wanted to introduce you guys to my friends. And we'll start with you, David. Yeah, I'm David Janssen. I guess I am a Data Analytics Coordinator for Tulare County Office of Education. That's what I do for work. But mainly, I love to read about anything and everything, and particularly read about things about like what makes us human, what matters, and that's what brings me to this AI conversation. I am Matt Flummer, and I am a philosophy professor at a local college. And one of the reasons I became interested in it is because all my students are using it to cheat. Yes. And I'm also interested in those big kind of questions, like David mentioned, about what makes us human, what makes life worth living, those kinds of things, what shapes us as who we are.

Yeah. Great! I'm Tim Harms, and I'm a bivocational pastor in San Francisco at Sanctuary Church. And so, you know, just walking outside, you see every single billboard in the city is now AI. It feels like there's been a transformation in front of your You get autonomous vehicles all on the it's just in the air. I breathe in the city. You know everyone's talking about it, but also in my business. So, I run a consulting company, 15-person team. And there is a sense that if you're not using AI, you're going to get left behind. And so, we've just been using it for the last couple of years, increasingly in our business. And I just love technology. So, it's been a fascinating development and a conversation I'd love to participate in. I'm Glenn Power.

I teach a little bit in the public schools of Isalia, but mostly I get to teach the at different radiant churches. I'm interested in the intersection of AI and spiritual formation. So, you know the way we grow. spiritually and the way that might, the way AI might affect that growth. And also just the intersection of AI and ministry, you know how it affects we preach and teach the Bible and do ministry and disciple. And I'm the chief marketing officer at a local architecture, engineering, and construction firm. And so that's my day job. And in that, I intersect with marketing all the time. And so I'm, you know, obviously utilizing the tool in my day job and seeing how it's impacting copywriting and content creation.

And I think what actually started me in this journey is that I started to look into it and utilize it on a really regular basis. And I would come home and be like, " Hey, look at what I did at work So I talked to my wife and kids about it. And my wife was like, " This is the devil, and you should actually, you should repent and yeah And as I started to like, you know, look at it, utilize it more often, and, you know, work with it on a daily basis, it does actually feel like a pretty powerful and incredible tool in the day-to-day usage. And I started to, you know, read news and hear stories about, " We're all going to lose our jobs," and, you know, the world is changing right in front of our eyes.

And as I was like considering and thinking through some of this stuff, you know, Laurie and I walk like pretty regularly we'll go on nightly walks and oftentimes our conversation moves towards like the future and what does life look like for our kids and those kinds of And I would often jokingly just like throw in a comment about like I don't know maybe our kids don't even need to go to school because AI is going to take all the jobs. And she challenged me to go, well what does that mean actually? Like don't just joke about it, but what does it mean to like live in the hour that we're living in? And what's the response of the church like to, if this is a reality for us and for our, you know, the next generation, what does it mean?

for us and how do we prepare and how should we think and live in this hour. And I think that's when some of my conversations started with Travis and some of the elders here around this topic and what I feel excited to dive into today together. So one of the first things I wanted to do is just help the audience, help people listening or watching define some of these things. What do we mean when we're talking about AI? What are some of the other like technologies that are out there that are coming down the pipeline potentially at us, and what implications do they have? And so I wanted to lay the groundwork, and several years ago I was at a it was a wild heart intensive training out in Colorado with John Eldridge and he he hosted this there was a segment and one of the things he talked about was situational awareness.

And this is a term that's used by by they're called hotshot but they're like the jumpers, the guys that would go into like back country and jump out of the airplanes to fight fires. And the what they do is basically like you're thrust into this environment. You jump out of an airplane into the back country and like all of a sudden you're like you don't know where you're at. Like there's danger all around you. And what they have is this process of situational. awareness where they're trying to identify where's the threat, where's safety, who's with me, what do I know is true about the scenario that we're in. And as I was thinking about that, kind of reflecting on this conversation, is that this is a moment for us to have some situational awareness. And I think for all of us, we're like thrust into this, into the world, really into the hour that we're living in and the time and the season that we're living in by God's like ordained purposes. And oftentimes we just, we don't know where we're at. And so I think that part of what I'm hoping that comes out of this conversation is that we would gain some situational awareness to understand where, if there's threats, are they coming from,

like in our congregation and context. So you guys are gonna have to correct me if I'm wrong here, but there was a fire, it's called the Mangulch fire. And these guys got dropped into the backcountry, and this fire starts like rushing down the hill at them. And they all go running, which would be like natural instinct for them to do. And the fire captain turns and actually like burns the ground around him and like creates what would be now called a backfire, and basically burns all the fuel around him. And he lays down in the dirt with his mouth. covered by, like, a wet, you know, handkerchief, ends up being one of the only survivors in that instance.

And I think it's kind of an interesting picture for us to, like, stop and pause and to recognize, like, what's the world we're living in? Where are we? And to find and create a place of safety where we can have some of these conversations, that we wouldn't be, like, just swept away and run, like, in fear, but to, like, carve out places of safety where we can have these conversations. So anyway, there's my little intro, but I think that, like, this is a moment for us to, like, burn out, like, some of the fuel around us that might cause us to run in fear and to actually have a conversation where we can pause and listen to the spirit of God and hear what he's saying.

So, well, I think if we aren't don't stop and be aware of it, we're gonna be swept along with the current. The current is going in a direction, and we live in the world that belongs to the prince of the power of the air. And it's gonna sweep us along, so like the idea of situational awareness, stop where we are and swimming with direction and purpose is crucial. I think, yeah, I think maybe we can take a couple minutes just to explain like what AI is, and I'll share a few thoughts around this. There's probably better definitions out there. but like you were talking about Tim, I think every billboard, every advertisement, every like message is like AI all the time now at this point. I think so.

Again, I work in the marketplace and I wait. I wake up, right? I'll wake up and do this, but I check my email. I try not to wake up and check my email. But I checked my email, and it like probably 50 of them are either advertisements around AI conversation. It's a, you know, a discussion and invitation to learn how to use this tool. And probably like many of us, we're like, okay, what does this mean for like real life? And so when we're talking about AI, I think in the broader context of things, it's automation. really, it's the, you know, that that would be probably the simplest, like, way to describe AI is, um, machines, technology utilizing sophisticated systems and data to predict and help us automate processes.

Um, and one of the probably one of the simplest, like, definitions that you would hear is similar to, like, if you look and type on, um, your iPhone or Android or whatever, um, text prediction is one of the first forms of AI. And that's like, that is what really large language models, which are, um, LLMs, these are terms that we may get into but we may not, but you'll hear them, um, are built on this and really, it's predicting the next most, uh correct or most probable word in a sentence and um tools like chat GPT or cloud or any of these um chat bot models of AI are built around that. And so um that in in large terms glorified predictive text, it is.

Yeah, which I think in some ways, when I first heard that, I was like, Oh, that's a lot more digestible and seems kind of unthreatening, I guess, you know. Yeah. And actually, someone explained it to me once, and it just helped me understand kind of the premise of the technology. It does try to predict the next word that's going to be the most probable given the context that it analyzes. So if I were to say uh once upon a we all know what the next word is time, but what's the next word after that? Yeah, there was in a land a king live. And so, you that's where it has to make some judgment calls based on the context. Yeah, um, but that's what it's doing. It's GPT Center, Generative Pre-trained Transistor.

That's the generative part of it. It's generating out of nothing, which is, you know, to the extent the word magic is thrown around in AI conversation, the extent that you experience magic. I don't know if you remember that first time you used GPT and it was like, whoa! But yeah, it was creating something. So, AI, especially such processes, but it's cognitive processes that make it very interesting. Yeah, I've heard some people push back on the word intelligence because of that too, you know, artificial intelligence. But is it really intelligent? Because it's just algorithms. It's just, pro, it's just a bunch of information, you predicting what might be the next word or number based on the information it has. So I think actually it's helpful to me.

To even the GPT, generative, so pre-trained means to your point it's given a ton of data. I think in the 2010s, maybe, I don't know when it was, but deep learning it. And so it's using all this data we put on the internet and whatever as its model set. And then, the transistors, what you're talking. about the neural networks the actual the way that this data is connected to be able to give it context to predict the next word. So that's in a very dumb dumb way the way that I can understand the, you know, the just what's happening behind the scenes. Obviously, it's much more complex than that but it's helpful to, yeah. It's again to know like how is this actually serving me what I'm seeing when I chat into my chat bot.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think there's there, you know, I think what's what's ended up happening now is that we've gone from language models that are, you know, built around this, you know, the use of language. And I think that you know the in the early days, the reason why they chose languages it was the way and the means, and it is the way and the means that we communicate to each other. And and what they've now been able to, like, build into it is a multimodal like communication process where it can now also interpret images and is built. There's a multi multiple modes built into a singular interface where, like, for instance, my daughter last year decided to raise bunnies for a bunny, one bunny for her agriculture project. Right?

So we brought the bunny home, and this is like now our bunny, which I didn't realize we were going to have a bunny that I thought. It was like a temporary, we get to like take it back. So, this summer, my daughter's friend like brought her bunny over also. And the bunnies ended up like mating, unbeknownst to us. And we found four additional bunnies in our bunny cage about a month ago. And so anyway, there's a point to this and how it relates to AI. So my wife goes out and I'm mowing the lawn in the backyard, and she comes out and goes, 'We have baby bunnies in our bunny cage now And I was like, 'Oh my gosh, what in the world So what I did, my first thought was, 'Well, I'm going to figure out what is happening with these bunnies and how old they are And so I pulled out Chat GPT.

I wish I could play you the response. It was a like nice English woman's voice that said, " Oh, how cute! You have bunnies. Congratulations And said those bunnies look like they're about 10 weeks or 10 days old. Their eyes haven't opened, is able to explain like what's happening in the life of these bunnies. And so we now have tools that are like can interpret the world around us, which feels like magic. And um, but what what it's doing is it's registering, you know, imagery and comparative comparing it to millions of, not billions, of other images of baby bunnies and now can interpret and say these look like they're 10 days old. And so we went. with that. So they're about 10 anyway.

So there's, I think, what's ending up happening is that these tools, as they advance, is that they've moved beyond predictive texts and into, uh, into an entity, into a, um, a technology that can listen to, respond to, see the world around you and, um, and predictively share what it knows, um, and both ingest and then, um, communicate and interpret the world around us, which brings to like some, some, you know, both like stunning, what almost feels like magical, like, um, you know, technology, and also it feels freaky too, right? Like, I mean, that's kind of scary that you're you can pull your phone out and ask. how old the bunny is, and they can be really kind and say, that's so sweet that you have baby bunnies. It's gotten freakier recently.

I saw a video where they train chat GPT or AI with a cell phone and wifi signals in a, and it was able to predict where people would be in the room based on where the signals were after it had trained like images and the signals. And so all you had to do after that was show it where the signals were, and it would predict where the people were sitting in the room. Oh, that's crazy! Yeah, it's crazy! Yeah, and one of the one of the other terms that you'll hear thrown around a lot, and that I wanted to like just bring into. this conversation, um, which I think lays a little bit of the foundation of AI as it is right now, and gives us a bit of a roadmap of where we're going, is the term artificial general intelligence or superintelligence or powerful AI.

There's a, or there's a number of terms that you would hear leaders in this industry talk about it. Um, and the idea is that it's intelligent enough to train itself, to reason by itself, and as an entity without any other inputs within itself. And so it moves into this idea of beyond predictive texts into, um, an intelligence that's almost a standalone entity, I guess. And, um, it conjures all the ideas. of the terminator and, um, R2D2 and any of the other things that were raised on Skynet. Yeah. Uh, artificial general intelligence that we, what you're describing right now. Yeah. Okay. Yep. There's probably, yeah, AGI would be the term that you you would hear. And, and really, like, if you read the documentation and the, um, you know, kind of the founding principles and goals of OpenAI or Anthropic or Google's DeepMind, those, uh, they all state that that's this is their intended purpose, is that they are building towards, um, a superintelligence that would,

um, and, and really the clearance, or maybe the most simple definition of that is that It would have the capabilities of um very intelligent humans in a broad array array of like any range of like that it could that it would either like have be as smart as a human um in any you know subject or um or beyond beyond our intelligence. So, so it's cause I'm still learning about this too. So is the difference between you've got narrow um artificial intelligence and you've got um AGI artificial general intelligence. So narrow artificial intelligence, it can do um it has a data set for for one specific function. It can do one thing you know um artificial general general intelligence is a different that it can do multiple.

Things or is the difference that it can now learn on its own or is it both? The second. So narrow. Yeah. So right now, like ChatGPT, if you listen to Chat, just came out, and Sam Altman, in their press release and the big unveiling, said that it's like having a PhD, um, in every subject in your pocket. Basically, right now, it's trained on data sets that are wide swaths of human intelligence. So that's still considered, even though it has multiple subjects. Okay. Yeah. And largely because it takes human interaction and input, you still have to prompt it what you in train and teach it and tell it where to go, um, versus a general intelligence would. be able to plan its own coursework without human input.

Um, and that, and so the next kind of like phase in development, maybe Tim, you know a little bit more about this, but um, I'm looking at you 'cause you're from San Francisco. But my assumption, my assumption is that you would know and hear about this. But really, the next iteration is moving into agentic um AI, which means you can prompt an AI to do a certain set of tasks, and it will then go off and be an agent for you, acting on your behalf to interact with the real world. So if you plug in right now in agent mode, you can tell it to book you a flight and buy you an outfit. and it can go off and do those things with your approval and your credit card. Um,

I mean work with you and co-labor with you and give you feedback too. And it's its own entity outside of prompting and your own input into it. So anyway, I wanted to just lay the groundwork with some of the nerdy geek talk and technological language because I think what, outside of probably this conversation, you'll hear these terms and they're all over the news and anything like that. All right. So we're done kind of wading through some of the thick definitions. I want to do a rapid-fire round of separating the truth from fiction and ask you guys what's the craziest thing that you've heard about AI. Or what's the craziest thought you've had when you've interacted with AI?

I think Glenn here, I'm pretty sure this is fact, but I was watching on the news a couple of weeks ago a husband who is getting increasingly attached to his AI girlfriend. And they interviewed the wife and asked her how she felt about his AI girlfriend. And she's like, I just don't understand why he talks to her more than me. And then it went back to the guy and he was like, well she's always there for me. She tells me exactly what I want to hear. And I mean, it was pretty sad. But yeah, I mean, I think that's, I don't know how often. that's happening, but that's starting to happen. That's a thing. Yeah, I mean that was in the New York Times. There's a big article about like different instances of things like that.

And that's a concern. David here, by the way. And most people would encounter that. And I think these hallucinations, or just these interpersonal things with AI, can be able to handle that. But there are many people who it draws on our needs, our fears, our insecurities, and our desire for connection. And it can be sycophantic, for sure. And I mean the weirdest thing I've heard, it was a year ago or so when that journalist talked to Sidney, the Microsoft Beings. AI and that he was having a conversation, and suddenly it declared his love for him and was urging him to leave his. The AI, the AI was urging him to do it. And it was a major story. And it was pretty crazy.

Yeah, well, speaking of marital relations, I heard that there was a team of and the chatbot found out that one of the researchers was having an affair with his wife and threatened to call him out on it and blackmail him, basically. You guys hear about that? Well, I guess Fortune Magazine had a headline that like one of the AI companies did a test: 96 of chatbots turned to blackmail when threatened to be turned down. 96? What? That was the headline. in Fortune Magazine. So, I mean, I didn't read past the headlines. I don't know. But yeah, it's smart to protect itself, try and protect yourself. I got a crazy one. So, Tim, here. So, I was at a party, just a morning party, at a friend's house.

And somebody I didn't know was chatting with and found out he used to work for Neuralink, which is Elon Musk's company where they're creating these chips to implant on brains to help you tap your brain, tap into these AI tools. Marking the beeps, yeah. Yes. So, I was just joking. I was like, how long do you think until the US government has undercover agents that are actually implementing it? And he deadpanned. me He's like, it's not Neuralink. There's another company out there. Guarantee you it's already been happening. It's like, what? It's crazy! The idea that there could be these people out there that we don't even know about that have already tapped in somehow into this. It seems far-fetched and crazy. But he was so serious, deadpan. It was like, it's happening man!

Cool. My recent discovery, that it feels a little less like sci-fi and future, but is that I just recently read or heard, I don't remember where, but like 70% of the content that is on social media now is being created by AI or by technology. And it made me go, geez, it's like only 30% of. this is real human content and the rest of it is artificially generated content. And I think probably even less that's real content because part of that is also ads. Yeah, totally I think they might have been including that. But yeah, I just feel like golly, the amount of content that we're getting fed is now even just artificially generated or computer generated now. So interesting! I wanted to just pivot and ask you guys. I think probably a lot of this feels a little bit scary or frightening, or is there any good in AI? I think it would be maybe some of the takeaway. And I think from well, for me, I was able to know how these bunnies were. So

AI, or like you implementing these tools into your daily life or at work or however, that that you'd want to share or that would people be good for us to share. Yeah, absolutely. I mean I use chat GPT fairly regularly, particularly for work when I'm trying to design some Power BI formulas or I've been learning Python, and I've been struggling trying to learn it for years. I've taken like an introductory courses a few times and got the basics through just like I guess old-fashioned online learning. But then being able to ask chat GPT and get help developing scripts has taken me like 15 miles an hour to 45 miles an hour. real fast and it's been really, really helpful for me. Mm hmm. I was having a conversation. This is Glenn here.

It's having a conversation with my stepdad about a verse in Romans, and I was asking him some questions about the Greek and just kind of wondering about it. He went upstairs to his room and then came back a few minutes later with a 15-page write-up from AI on this verse in Romans and how it connected to all these other verses in the Bible and the Greek breakdown. I was like, well, this is helpful. Wow, yeah, that was— I thought that was super positive. Yeah, it's helpful. Yeah, go ahead. I just said, I mean, we just at our church, we're going through right now. There's 21 days of prayer, and we're every day generating like a short story of God moving in power and revival, and I was listening to Do some sort of podcast, and they're just saying, you know, that if you can create a visual aid when you're teaching or preaching, they surveyed and you're like four times as likely to recall and remember it.

So just have this idea, like I know they've got all these video AI tools out there. Why don't we just feed our scripts into, you know, into these tools and generate these videos? Like, what would it be like to have lived through the Welsh revival or the New York businessman's. revival and just got some of the videos really corny. It's, you know, it's got a ways to go. But I thought it could be helpful, you know. But it was really fun to see just right before your eyes. Just think a few minutes to get these images, these videos. You know, and hopefully it does have that effect that people actually are engaged watching them. It brings it to life.

It helps you imagine, you know, what it might actually been like, and it makes it a little bit more real for you thinking about God moving these stories. So that was just a fun, like, real-life today tool. Yeah, that's funny. I was looking on, kind of related to that. This is a random story. But I was looking on Google, Jim, and I like has just released a bunch of new visual tools like video tools, and they have this example, and it's they've taken all these like old Harley Davidson. It's it was like a promo with Harley Davidson, all these old like real black and white images of early, you know, from the 20s all the way through like the 60s Harley Davidsons, and they put them into this video, like generative video thing, and it's crazy.

Like these like videos come to light, or these images, still images start still, and they come to life, and it's like, oh my gosh, this feels like, it's, it feels like magic. It's in. in some ways I was like oh that's like that's amazing like kind of pulled in and drawn into to this So I think like the capabilities of some of these tools to like capture your imagination and and Really bring a story of what maybe be a still image to life is is an interesting use of this Did you have one to matter I've used it for things as simple as I've got these ingredients Yeah kitchen and I'm sure that recipe to make with these ingredients and it gives four or five options Some of them have been good And then I'm okay I've been brainstorming

Both like how to change how I Some of the things that I teach in my philosophy classes and also when things get stale in the classroom, I use it to brainstorm like ideas for classroom activities, and some of them have been good too. Yeah, it's interesting. We, like you were talking about taking images, like we use it for health diagnosis. I'm gonna run with our kids, and they got, you know, what is this? A bug bite or whatever, and you know it's actually been very helpful just to know should we care about it? Should we take the kids into the ER or not, you know? And then I mean, I had another example I was gonna just lost it.

Well, one of the things, like with the health, like your diagnosis and growth, I think of the technology is that you know with a with a machine. So, to give a bit of context, these the what it's doing, you know, these it's creating these neural networks are called and it's these massive data centers that are, you know, some they're building that are the size of Manhattan. And it is like, you know, that amount of space with all these computer chips, graphic processor chips in there in server racks that are taking massive amounts of data and able to look at and fed information. And so some of the breakthroughs in medicine that they're finding is that with like radiology and being able to look at, like, diagnosis and analyze like this is, you know, like.

you know millions of images you know radiology images and being able to predictively say like Feed feed a new image in there and say this is the diagnosis based on like what we've seen in millions of other images so there are some like significant and massive like advancements in medicine in particular and coding and you know that have rather its rapid onset you know in the last two to three years that we've seen like like substantial leaps in technology and by use of AI. An AI suggested a new treatment for cancer that's in rapid development and testing right now that was suggested. It was looking at all of the data and saying hey you haven't invented this medicine yet but they suggested you try it. And I think it's actually getting early approval already.

Yeah, well even during COVID, a lot of the like you know, development, RNA like development and advancements, and whether you I'm not going to go into that, but there was a lot of medical advancements that AI was like whether you got chipped or not in a vaccine, we'll probably stay away from that. But anyway, there are some like significant and interesting like advancements that this tool brought to us. So one of the, I think maybe the next like topic or you know, conversation that I'm interested. in just getting your guys' perspective on is you know any technology that comes out it promises something, right? It makes promises for our improvement or, you medical advances or being able to diagnose whether this is a baby bunny or not.

Um, we see these like advancements coming, and there are promises that are made. So my question to you guys is maybe you haven't thought about this, but what is the gospel of AI? What is it promising to us? And, um, can we believe it and trust in it? I guess, um, there's an interview with uh, Peter Thiel. Um, I think Matt was the one who shared it with me, um, interview with Peter Thiel and uh, Ross Douthat, um, uh, podcast. called interesting times. And he was asking Peter Thiel about, um, yeah, just AI and, um, some of his thoughts on it. And at one point, Peter Thiel was saying, um, he was talking about, uh, transgender surgeries and like replacing organs and, you know, that whole field.

And and he said, he said the problem with that is that it's not far enough. He said with artificial intelligence, we can do more than just replace one of our, um, reproductive organs. We can, um, start to basically become immortal. And that was, that was his belief, is that as AI advances more and more, that we're not just going to be replacing individual organs, that we're actually going to have a superhuman bodies. Um, and as I thought, yeah, that's actually, uh, and he went on to say, and not just, uh, advanced superhuman bodies, but changed hearts. And I thought that's so interesting because that's actually what the gospel promises: is that our hearts would be changed. And then eventually, God would give us resurrected bodies.

But now, um, with some of these researchers, they think that that's what AI can do for us: is give us a new body and a new heart. So that's part of the gospel of AI: is that we can become immortal in some ways. Yeah, there's a, there's a whole, like, um, I guess pseudo-religion that is, you know, lives and exists. in Silicon Valley called transhumanism. And it's this, you know, this concept that, you know, it's transhumanism; it's becoming, um, something other, transitioning humanity through the, tech, you know, technology and adaptive technology. And, um, it's, you know, it's interesting around that, is that some of the argument is that we're already like experiencing some of that just through like modern medicine.

Like you've got a valve replacement in your heart, or you've had a, you know, a limb replaced, or some things like that, and saying, well, we're already experiencing this to some degree. You know, what, what's the difference? between going a step further and tapping our brains into something that would give us more, um, mental capabilities or, um, helping us to excel further. I mean, we went straight to the deep, you know. Good job, Glenn. You're welcome. But even just like what does AI promise? I was reading Andy Crouch's book, The Life We're Looking For, and he talks about how every technology promises things. And the number one promise is, now you'll be able to do this, and then number two is, now you won't have to do things.

It promises to do things for you and save time for things. And I mean, just turn on your TV or your phone. That's what the commercials are built. around of like this is what you can do with I mean playing in my head are different commercials I've just seen in the past week of what was possible with. And that's what all the advertising is built around is those first two. The questions that, or the consequences that don't get advertised or whatever are, but are always there as well, is that now you'll no longer be able to. Like I mean even like you've got streaming services and you're able to like have everything you can. But now you won't have this attention span or space to read. You won't be able to do things like that.

We can play music, any songs we want, all over the place, everywhere. But that now you won't be able to, like, have the desire or whatever to learn to play them for yourselves or, like, learn an instrument. It takes away. And then the last one is, and now you'll have to. It's the last thing. Now you have to. So, I mean, I just think of, like, all the technology, like my phone and stuff like that, which do great things. But now I have to always be upgrading. I always have to download new updates and keep track of it. Now I have to keep track of charging stuff. I'm like, is everything charged? And just like everything. Yes, you'll be able to, and you won't have to.

But we can't forget about what it takes away as well and what it forces. upon us. How does it change the way we live? Are we adapting our human lives to become more like machines in order to accommodate the devices in our life? Yeah. Yeah, the scary part is I used to know my way around without a And now I use the map on my phone, and I get lost without it. So I've lost that ability to find my way. And I think one of the scary things about AI is the thing that it's promising to replace is like our ability to think. So you don't have to think anymore; I'll do it for you. And then if you use it over and over again, eventually, whether it's your attention span or your ability to put two things together to make a you lose that.

the same way that we've all lost our ability to find our way. I mean speaking of like something we've lost but wouldn't even think twice about. In several different sources I read talking about one of Plato's dialogues, he talks about like the dangers of writing. And he's arguing against writing because then you don't remember it. You don't know it. If you don't know it, if you don't have it memorized, then does it even belong to you? And we would look at that and be like you're worried about writing. And yet something was lost. I mean if you know like oral cultures, their memories are incredible. And we've lost it because we've outsourced. our memory to the. And we've also obviously gained so much from that. So, but recognize it.

And now, though the concern with AI is not we've outsourced our memory to the page, but now by all this, like AI can write it for you, AI can generate it for you. We are outsourcing our ability to. And if you keep, like, articulating, putting something into words, that is, it shapes us. When you try to match words to your internal impressions or whatever you're forming, who you are and you're forming your understanding of things. And so, if we're outsourcing that and can't do that anymore, like, what are we left with? Articulation is hard. Writing is hard. And there's a reason why, like, oh, this will do it for me. But what are we doing to? And what are we no longer going to be able to do if we let a machine write for me?

Yeah, there's a formation that takes place in the place of hard work, struggling through something. In the context of learning something, you're really wrestling with it. But even in the context of relationships, right? Yeah, people don't respond the way that you want them to. They don't know your exact personality types. You haven't fed it that information, so they don't give you the exact phrasing and wording and tenor that a chatbot would. They don't respond as, and so they don't. always agree with you. And that's just human to human relation. And probably we're going to go with this. I mean that actually impacts our relationship with God too, right? Like God doesn't always respond in the timing and the manner that I want him to.

And what are we losing when we begin to expect immediate responses exactly tailored to what it knows we want to hear? There is something that we've lost. Go back to the husband in your example. Where, what, why do you prefer her? Well, she's always there for me. She always, she's really nice to me. What I want to hear. Yeah, yeah, that is so huge. Um, even my earlier example, you know, when me and my stepdad. were discussing the verse, and he gave me the printout. I mean, there are some things I don't mind losing, like I don't mind that I didn't have to go find a lexicon, and like that was that was cool. Um, but there is something lost when I can find any verse I want on my phone.

And I really don't need to know the Bible anymore because I can always just Google and find out the verse from Google. And we start to lose our motivation to know the scriptures, and we start to lose our ability to memorize and internalize the scripture because it takes hard spiritual work. And so that that's a deep concern. Yeah, when you read a real physical book, I don't. know if it's like this for you guys but I, as I'm flipping through the pages, I remember like the specific location that I'm looking for. I'm like, oh, I don't remember the exact verse, but I can flip to approximately the right place where it's on the, yeah, yeah. But you know, if I'm always asking AI to do that for me, then I have no idea where it is in the Bible or if it actually is in the Bible.

Yeah, it's interesting. Early thoughts that I started having as I was using it is is this thought of like, um, this thing is always with me. Uh, it always has an answer. Um, it like, you know, there's this omniscience and omnipresence, and like, um, it almost takes on these attributes of like God in some ways, like I'm calling out to this thing, and what it's doing is giving me immediacy, you know, in this response, and that's like in our own humanity; like we long for like to know, to know things now, like in the moment. There's like this want that's like never ending, you know, to get the instant gratification, and our whole culture is built on that.

And I think really, like to to quote John Eldridge again, we're disciples of the And like our the season and time that we're living in is that, um, if you were born, you know, anytime, I don't know, whatever generation that was, but you were raised in. the nineties, like we have been trained and raised on immediacy. You can go to the internet and find out something right now, um, right away. And, um, what I think is really diminished in us. And if you read the scriptures, like, there are so many times where it's like wait and, like, receive the promises of God and wait and behold and, like, experience God's, like, deliverance for you in time, in the right season, in the right way.

And our our longing and yearning, uh, like in in our sin nature, is to, like, shortcut and circumvent that, um, by getting the answer right now and not having to wait. And I think that's one of my big fears, I think for us as the people of God in this hour is like do have we lost have we like you know um have we given that capability away to technology and and really lost our ability to wait and listen and um receive from God like real answers and and the truth. Did you have something you were gonna? Well maybe I don't know if it's related or not, but but I wrestle with the question a lot because if you look back you know I mean I think there's a it's often repeated if you could choose any time in history to be born but you couldn't guarantee where you're going to be born when when would you pick?

And the answer is always today, the most likelihood to land in somewhere that you're not going to be impoverished, you're not going to be in war, you're not going to be in, you know, uh, health conditions that you know are just terrible because largely due to the proliferation of technology and energy, you know, um, and, and, and I think that's true. And you could see, you could, you could certainly read the narrative of Silicon Valley of how AI is going to only improve those conditions, only going to make us healthier, only going to solve more diseases, only going to, uh, uh, you know, make wealth and prosperity more accessible. Um, you know, and then you even go to the idea of the printing press and the you know the printing press enabled the scriptures to be distributed to.

And now we had the word of God that was available not just to the elite but to everyone, you know. And so you could see this, the benefits of it. You know, you know you don't no longer do you need to afford to go to get a PhD to understand the Greek, you know, whatever it is. Um, you know, you don't have to understand how to use logos and you know pay for these crazy commentary sets. You know, it's just, it's just there. Um, and so you could see how that's really beneficial. Maybe even someone growing up impoverished can never go to teaching themselves how to do some of these things. Um so The benefits are there, but it's not without cost.

Um, and so, and I have this internal dialogue, or maybe external dialogue, with my wife about you know how do you, how are we to weigh the pros that I think are in some degree, you know, objective; you know that there are, as energy arrives in society, as technology arrives in society, life outcomes, quality of life gets better. You know those are there in some measurable standards, but then there's also a loss too. So how do we? Well, I mean yeah, it's just I think questions of meaning and we live in one of the loneliest generations; like we, because technology and all this material world has. isolated us and um I don't know I would probably pick today too but is material prosperity? Is that what life is about?

You know it's interesting I think to that point I think there's, you know, the gospel of AI is a promise of progress and ultimately utopia. You know, and I think that it's a of heaven on earth and this idea that we can, through our own creation and our own means, like cultivate and create like all the opportunities, all the circumstances to make life without a life of ease and without pain and suffering. And which is like the ultimate end of what God's promises, that we would like live in eternity and resurrected. bodies and union with you know where there would be no tears and loneliness and where ultimately, like we would be, you know, there would be prosperity and utopia, you know.

But I think there's this, like, present—well, it's probably always been with us this, this grab for like what what could we gain through our own means and our own attention and our own capabilities. And I wanted to like maybe take us to some of like the scripture that like tells and shares the stories that like, you know, this is not a new— while it's novel and brand new and we live again in unprecedented times. And the story that we're living in has also been seen. Throughout scripture too, and I don't know if any of you guys have like scriptures that come to mind when you when you think about this, or, you know, from the garden, like through human history, where have we seen this before and how have we seen it play out?

Yeah, I mean, the very first lie that the serpent told Eve was, 'If you eat the fruit, you can be like God And that same lie has turned up again and again all throughout biblical history. And now, as we think about the AI revolution, it's really the same lie again that through your own means, through your own technology, through your own human intelligence and progress, you can be like. God, that was the story of the Tower of Babel. You know where a bunch of humans got together, and at the time their technology was, you know, like which I guess was innovative for that day. But it was pretty heady for them, and they wanted to reach heaven. And it was more than just a tall building; it was they wanted something transcendent, apart from God.

And so that's what we see turning up again and again, is that we're reaching for transcendence. We're reaching for God-likeness apart from the gospel, apart from the way that God offers it to us. Yeah, and I, along with that, the story of man's sin and fighting against God leads to empire. we've got the Egyptians and the Babylonians enslaving people in the Bible and mass power and stuff like that. That just reminds me of Eric, what you were telling me the other day about the costs of environmental and the costs of essentially enslaving people pretty much to give us this AI. Yeah, I'm reading a book right now called Empire of AI, which is really a journalistic kind of documented account of open AI and its origins and history. And it's an interesting read.

I don't know that I would recommend it, but it definitely paints a picture of that. And some of the stories, and this happens often with, where has happened with technology. is that if you think about this, you're dumping all of the, I mean basically to generate these massive data sets, to be able to power this technology, they've had to scrape all of the internet. I mean I'm going to put air quotes around all of the internet, but they're amassing massive amounts of data from the internet, scraping wherever they can get their hands on. And if you think about what is on the internet, it's a lot of garbage and dark corners. And whether that's visual content or written content, the worst and most vile hate speech and imagery that you can imagine has been in the pursuit of progress and advancing these things.

quickly has been dumped into these data sets. And what early days of, I mean early days, meaning like 2020 or 2021, of Open AI they would employ large groups of people in Kenya, in these villages, to go through 2 pain and 2 an hour to go through this transcripted material or imagery, to flag content that was not suitable for work or whatever you want to say is terrible imagery. And the repercussions and impact of that on these villages and families where these men would go to work and couldn't come home and say what they were doing, tell their kids what they were doing at work, but their personalities were changing. And they ended up. The author tells a story of this man that she interviewed that went home one day and his wife and children had moved out and left a note saying, 'I don't recognize who you are because of the impact of this And so that's just one small example of the impact that we don't see necessarily. Or in Uruguay, there are stories of water. So, these massive data centers, they have to use fresh water, potable water, to cool these chips. So, they're running these,

you know, factories for lack of a better term, data centers, and they have to cool them down. Otherwise, they burn out and have to cool them with fresh water. They can't, like, use salt water or anything. else And they ended up like basically like taking all the potable water and these like entire like regions in Uruguay and ended up flushing some of the like more toxic like pollutants back into the water stream and causing, you know, downstream effects of cancer and, you know, some of these other things. So there are some hidden like stories and costs, yeah, of this. I don't know if that's where we're going. No, that's exactly where I was going. The cost of trying to do things to be like, God, yeah, leads to enslaving and destroying this creation.

Well, I think even going beyond before the fall, even creation is instructive. We, Adam was formed. From dust and the breath of God, and then humanity was. And you know there is something distinct and unique about being human. Breath of God forming with the dust. And then, you know, and then all the way to Jesus, the incarnation. That's very instructive, too. Yes, you know, if God just wanted to provide us knowledge, he would have written a But he gave us the person of Jesus in our own flesh and blood, you know, incarnating. Which actually, I think, provides me great hope and grounding in this conversation. It's like, okay, you know, if God designed us to be human, like I don't know what AI is going to do. But there's something special that's never.

going to be robbed from me and from you. Yeah. And so anyway, I just think that's an important element to be grounded in. Yes. That's one of my favorite things to think about too, is how the incarnation is, in a lot of ways, the opposite of our arrogant reach for transcendence. Yes. It's exactly the opposite that Jesus himself, who was God, descended instead to become man. And even descended even further into suffering and death, to lift us up so we could be sons and daughters of God. It's the exact opposite progression of us reaching for that apart from him. And that's the path we're to take, you know, this path of dissent and humility. Because God actually wants to freely give us more than we could ever ask or.

One scripture I've been thinking about just recently is the story of the bronze serpent. When the people were getting bitten by snakes, and Moses made the serpent, where they would look at the serpent and be. And it was like a tool of their salvation. It was like this technology that healed all these people. But then later in the story, they lifted it up and they started to worship it. So the tool became an. And so one worry that is probably on everybody's mind— and we've already kind of mentioned the religious aspects of this— is where we've got this amazing tool that's. got all these amazing things it's doing. But we change it from being a tool into being an idol.

I think that speaks a little bit to another verse that I was instructed, maybe on the other side of this equation. You know it's referred to as a cultural mandate. You know the charge in the garden to go and cultivate, to create culture. And Andy Crouch writes a lot about what that means. And you know, and it's been said you know creation starts in a the Bible, starts in the garden, ends in a city. Even when you see some of the elements that got put in the garden being formed into roads and streets and you know walls in the new heavens and the new earth. So, and you know, and then you see Revelation 21, you know the kings of the earth bringing the splendor from their culture into the new creation.

Yep. So it does also give me hope that there is a way to create culture, to create technology, to participate that isn't completely irredeemable, is something beautiful that we can be active agents and participants in this as. Yeah, absolutely. There's a way in which he made us to work alongside him in stewarding his creation, not as pharaohs or Babylonian kings enslaving, but working alongside it with his wisdom. And I think that's one of the things like when I think of what are we here for. and what is just like central to who God is and the Trinity is relationship. He made us to be in relationship with him, working alongside him. He made us to be in relationship with each other. And so that's one of my fears of things like AI: is the separation, the isolation that it does.

Like in creating things that are machine-written, machine-created, there's no person behind it, and it's hard. It may look interesting, be technological, but we look to it for connection and friendship or something, and then it will fail us. It just turns us in on it. And so I think that's something that concerns me, but also there are ways of technology can. be a valuable tool for relationship. For my wife and I, our family lives hours away, and FaceTime is an example. We're able to see each other. It's not as good as being together in person, but it's better than the situation otherwise. One of the things that the questions that I had for us is that you see, oftentimes in both prophetic books and Kings, this reliance on other nations or other technologies.

And oftentimes this idea of chariots from Egypt and a dependence on that for our salvation and for our liberation, or the use of technology that often God comes in and says you relied on this thing instead of turning to me and trusting. in me And therefore there's some consequences to that. And I think the question that I have is where's the line between trusting in chariots and trusting in the name of our God. And I think that's the tension. Chariots are awesome. A vehicle, a car is great. It's going to get us some places and allow for us to.

That's a million dollar question, isn't it? Yeah, I think that's where we're all trying to figure out what to do with these new technologies, you know, to, you know, uh, back to the the Babel story. What you know, what if those same people with that same technology had had a different heart posture? What if they had said uh, we have these new bricks and we have these new capabilities. What do you want us to do with them, God? You know, like they they had put themselves intentionally dependent on their creator, and they had wanted to build something that would glorify God. That I think the story would have been completely different. So it's, yeah, it's about our heart posture.

Um, the same technology that can create drone clusters that can wipe out whole countries, you know, like is the same AI technology that can translate the Bible into new languages for for unreached cultures. It's, it's our heart posture. Yeah. One of the things about in the Babel story. that like um is interesting is that they they say let us build a name for ourselves this this idea of like um it's again this like heart posture reach for let us be like God and let us like grasp for these things. And I think that if we're all honest like there's that that lives in inside of us this like yearning to be like God. I always love like if you're you know the the the Genesis story like in in the garden it's like you know God like makes man in his own image and um and then like a couple of sentences later like the devil's tempting them saying like you could be like God.

And it's like this stark contrast of like you actually are like God, you're made in his image, and you're like God. And there's this, there's this reach in our hearts to like grasp at something to make a name for ourselves. You know that, um, really can be the derailing, like, piece we need to build guardrails around, I guess you. Yeah, one of the things I've been thinking about is recognizing the ways that we're formed. And I think you mentioned this and right in the very beginning, that you're interested in spiritual formation. And when we recognize all the different ways that we're formed and, like, David was talking about the things that give, also take away, that it helps us to make decisions about.

how we spend our time and what we're going to give our focus to throughout the day. And um recognizing, like these things might be good gifts and might give us good things, but they're also taking things away, and we can put into place practices that the church has been using for 2000 years to um pull away and get away from technology and spend time in silence and solitude and prayer and reading the Bible and like strengthening those parts of our character and our soul so that it minimizes the things that are taken away. I think I was just what struck me as the idea of monitoring and paying attention to my own heart, my own mind where am I getting frustrated? Where am I getting angry as I use these technologies?

What impatience is this like building in me and keeping an eye off that and using those as opportunities to turn to God and remind myself what am I actually made for? What am I here for? What is my hope? Even if like yeah I've been having some long-term health difficulties and you better believe after I used ChatGPT I was like what are some things that could help? And some have been helpful, some have not, and it can be frustrating but like okay I want this to be solved now. I want to be healed now, but I just feel God calling me in it like you will one day be healed. but what am I building in you? What is waiting doing? What is trusting me? What does walking with me look like?

And I feel like those are opportunities to turn towards Him rather than towards, like, I need it on my time and here. Yeah. And I would say we do have some clear boundaries in scripture, like thinking of the health arena. I'm for any advancement from AI that's going to give us new remedies and new medicines that are going to help heal people. As soon as we start talking about cryonics and freezing people's brains, you know, like, Yeah. Yeah, I mean Hebrews nine says it's appointed unto man to die once. Like, there's some boundaries there, so it's going back to what God has. And another, like God calls us to pray without ceasing, you know, it's like and so as soon as we find ourselves with these technologies that are helping us, as soon as we find that they're taking away from our prayer life, then we've just bumped up against another boundary or something that we need to check ourselves.

And so I think scripture is really helpful for that, like what we're called to and how the technology is either helping us or hurting us in that path. One of the things, like to what you're saying, you know, around these practices and stuff, I think that they speak to, well, I think they're an antidote for this this gospel of AI or the promises of a limitless like life or a life of ease or a life of promise that like that we're all like desiring to have, you know, this like convenience and ease and efficiency and progress and growth; like, man, those are the promises that are coming our way. And when we practice fasting, and when we practice silence, and when we practice solitude, or you know, any of the other disciplines like that, that just naturally bring a limit to our lives, we actually encounter the grace of God in that.

And recently, I just feel like the Psalm 16, you know, that has been like running in my head, and it says like your boundary lines like the boundary lines of my life have fallen in pleasant places, and this idea that like we're actually like we're hemmed in by God's grace and that often comes to us through the limits that He's given us, whether that's financially or the place we live, or you know Paul obviously like had a thorn in his side, and it was like a grace to him. And so our pursuit of breaking through the boundaries and the limits of God like moves beyond you know that gray area into a place of you know outside of the grace of God.

And I think we can practice as Christians a discipline that brings us into a place of grace and His goodness for us. Yeah, yeah, I think we're, as a society, I think you can see this in studies approaching this conversation maybe very differently, maybe more humbly and aware of some of the dangers than, say, when social media came down. And I think even the fact that we're having this conversation and many other people, I think, are helpful guides for us. But I do think there's just going to be such an opportunity for the church to be a prophetic counterculture. And if you think about the people that you know, some of the ways that this is going to go wrong in society, the church can be a culture where the real community and connections.

are formed. The church can be a culture where we can actually wrestle with the deep things of our soul. When everyone else is chirping, you know, everything else is chirping in our ears. So I think, yeah, using these practices to cultivate, to strengthen our relational ties, like actually this is a time to lean more into relationships than last, when everyone else is getting isolated. You know, what does it even look like for, you know, other people to be able to speak into your life about the boundaries that you have with technology? I just think there's such an opportunity when content is going to become generic, when knowledge is. Going to be generic, we have the mind of that's the ultimate AI, right?

Like actually reading scripture and having the spirit highlight something, and be able to speak prophetically into a situation. AI is not going to be able to touch that. And I think real is going to so dominate, like we have a chance as a church to be able to illustrate something that is, in a way, transcendent to anything the world has to offer. Can we just like continue down that path? Because I feel like, and this was not in my notes, but I feel like what we're seeing right now in, you know, studies and these things, is that there is an awakening happening across the world. and that's largely to spiritual things. It's not just to Christianity, but there is this hunger for something that

I think one way is to intentionally be prophetic. You know, and in Acts when the Spirit was poured out, the hallmark of the new covenant people was for sons and daughters to prophesy. You know, not just prophets quote unquote, but like the church to be a prophetic church. And to be a prophetic church, it means to hear what God is saying right now and to communicate that to the world. So the scripture, yes, but what's the We're doing that right now we're trying, you know, like what are the relevant scriptures to the AI revolution. We're trying to be prophetic, and I think that's the trying. Yeah, it's really hard trying. I think that's our call, to lean into God and to what the Spirit is saying. This is often going to be different than what AI tells us when we Google something. You know, like to lean into that and to keep on speaking that. Those will be words of life, words of direction, and that could be in our sermons, and that could be in our conversations one on one.

I was just going to go back to the spiritual disciplines and putting into practice things where we embrace a little bit of suffering or, if there's a lot of suffering, like some of us have experienced. a lot of suffering, how we navigate that I think is a witness to something that most people don't have access to. Like when significant suffering happens, if somebody has no hope, they don't know what to do. But when they see somebody else who's gone through something significant, like a health scare or death of a loved one or whatever, and they see that we suffer like people, not like the other people who have no hope, but we suffer like people who do have hope. Yeah, that's good. Yeah, I think like technology, it promises frictionless living.

But the reality is, as soon as you encounter other people, there's friction. But I think that's good and the Bible does not promise frictionless living. Like you just said, suffering. And I think we're dealing with profound loneliness because of how technology relieves us of the burden of other people. But as a church, we can provide life. We were made to be in relationship. We were made to be the people of God together, meeting together, doing life together. But I think the opportunity is there for us because that is who God made us to be, and God is in us, working towards that. But I think there's also the we need to be careful what we are being formed by. Are we being formed by what our culture is calling us to, or being formed by what?

God, like, it's going to be uncomfortable to, like, get together to, like, you may not want to go tonight to, like, this, but like getting together, like, talking to someone, building relationships, it's awkward, it's uncomfortable, but it's worth it. And, like, God promises that, like, relationship is where life is. And I think when we do that, if we push into that and get good at that, we can reduce the friction a little bit, and, like, it helps us invite others into it, and they can experience the life of a body, like, that we were meant to live. I think there's two things that come to mind for me. One is over time, and I haven't done this yet, but I think it would.

be great to create some like rules of engagement for even how you use these chatbots and how you use these, and maybe do it in the time of community. But I'm just thinking, as a practical example, I could use it to write my sermon that I'm going to preach on Sunday and not, you know, check out; you know, obviously, I think that's that would be in the no category. But you could use it to say, hey, there is a single young lady from a different ethnicity sitting in my congregation. How would she, what questions would she bring to this text that I might be blind to? And I'm using this as a way, the technology as a way to hopefully serve others or to you. know in an empathetic or a way that is, yeah, servant-oriented. Just interrupt her, give you a little bit of pushback, like let's stop to like maybe, I don't know, reaching out to her, this actual person. Maybe it's 11 o'clock on a Saturday night.

And I guess I will say this is what makes me feel guilty about some of my use of chatTBT, is I'll use it to like answer a question or whatever, but like I know everything about it. There's probably somebody I could call who could tell me what I'm trying to reach out to chatTBT, and like just, yes, that's more, it's harder. It's like yeah, but there's a connection there I'm building, like, so yeah. No, for sure. It's good pushback. I think, in general, just thinking about ways in which you could use it that would be off-limits in ways that may be helpful. You know, and servant or other-oriented to the way, that's possibly good pushback. I think the second thing is, I think the church just trying to find ways to foster connection, both to each other and connection to the Father and the Holy Spirit, and ideally both together.

I just said, you know, this Sunday we had a prayer meeting for our Sunday service where we just opened the text, and we looked at a psalm and just spent time in solitude together and then came back together and started praying. And you know I'm a big preach-the-word guy. Like, you know we need to exhort the word, but it just struck me, I mean we got so much positive feedback and so many first-time guests praying out loud, people engaging together, you know, upward towards God and prayer. And I was like, the AI can't replicate this at all, you know, and it was just actually God speaking through his word like he promises to do when we're together. And so I'm not saying that like we were, but I'm just saying that there, I think there is a shift.

The church in America, at least, has been so content-heavy, content, content, content and so connection-light, I feel like. And I think. We have an opportunity when people are craving for connection, craving for transcendence, craving for some ancient truth to tether their life to. We got it, you know? And so I think there are opportunities for us to create these atmospheres. Yeah, the thing that comes to mind for me is that what is unique about humanity and unique about the church in general is that we were formed for relationship with God. We were formed to walk in the garden with God and to be in union with Him. And that's one of the promises of this singularity or this ultimate transhumanist goal of union between man and machine, that we would become transcendent. like God. And what is on offer for the church for us to walk in is to hear God and to walk with him, to be in union with him. This is what Jesus prayed for us: is that we would be one with the Father, that we would have a union with God. So I think that is one thing that would set apart

relationship; it can offer real forgiveness and redemption, and to be the kind of people that would model that and give that away. I think it would be a real invitation to the world now. So this has been a good conversation I think pretty helpful. Any, as we kind of bring things to a close, what's one thing you'd want us to know and one thing that we should do as a church that you're or as a people that you're thinking about. It's one thing we could know and one thing we could take away, walk away from this conversation with. So an insight I got from Andy Crouch, and I would actually recommend that as a resource. So it was an interview between Andy Crouch and what was the other guy's name?

Jay Kim. Jay Kim, yeah. Great interview! You could just Google that, and I'm sure it will come right up. Resource, while I'm on the resource topic, was a book by John Lennox. I think it's The AI Revolution 2084. Yeah, so it's kind of a riff off of 1984, the dystopian aspects of AI. I'm about halfway done, and it's awesome! And it's, I thought. I was going to be too over my head, and it's not. So anyway, something that I got from that interview from Andy Crouch was he was just reminding us of the two greatest commandments: the command to love God with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength. And then the second commandment, to love one another. And he was saying that technology is helpful and fruitful insofar as it helps us to walk out those two commandments.

I mean, those two commandments are the purpose of our lives. For a purposeless generation, that's it. Our purpose is to love God and to love other people in all the ways that he commands. And if technology helps me find. a remedy for my mom with cancer; then I think that's loving to use it. I'm going to use it. But if technology or AI is keeping me from having conversations with my wife at night, then that's not love. That's actually hindering relationship, and so I'm not going to use it. So I think those are just really helpful filters as we look to whether technology is helpful for us or not. I want to recommend a book by Paul Kingsnorth that's not out yet. It's coming out next month, but a lot of the content is on his Substack for free.

I think one of the things that he challenged me the most as a 21st century Western American who's significantly influenced. by scientific materialism is to recognize the spiritual aspects of the world in general, but especially the way technology maybe even makes the barrier thin between the spiritual world and the physical world. So I'll just leave that there. That book's called Against the Machine. Yeah, fascinating! Matt turned me on to his writing and it actually is a pretty interesting perspective. It's helpful, I think. Yeah, I think one thing I would want you to know or want us to know is that we were made for relationship. We were made for relationship with God. He wants to know us, for us to know Him and to walk with Him. And we were made for relationship.

with others and others who were made in His image. The reality is that technology, and specifically AI, preys on that desire. I mean, if you've used a chatbot, you know how familiar it is and stuff like that. And I feel like we've seen, in some of the horror stories we were sharing earlier, there's deep waters there of developing relationships with AI and how that can affect us and give it portals into our lives. And so, I would just one thing to do, I have from my own life, I've set up a little guardrails because I don't want to be drawn into it, especially by the way, like in times of feeling lonely or things like that, like the temptation to talk to chat because it can have whole conversations with you and like that's enormously seductive and I think deeply dangerous, unfortunately.

So some guardrails I have in my own life on the sillier level is I definitely treat it all. I intentionally treat it as a robot and as a tool, whatever I use chat TPT. And the way that looks for me is I'm a very friendly person naturally, but I refuse on principle to say please or thank you to chat TPT when I say it because I intentionally, no matter how friendly it gets to them, I'm trying to like say no you are a. You are not a person. I don't want to go the other direction and insult it every once. in a while just to make clear, you suck. Give me the answer, you machine. Maybe.

But on a more serious note, like I have made up, like I will not reveal personal or like I will not treat like a confidant or like I mean I guess I asked him some pretty personal questions as far as like medical things or things like that, but as far as like my thoughts or concerns or things like, I'm like I will not treat it as a counselor or as a, because it will gladly go there. But I want to stay away from that. So that would be my practical thing and yeah. And to that I've been talking a lot about relationship, I would recommend a Substack that's not very active but the archives are there called the Convivial Society from LM Tsakasas.

Then, if you want a joyfully pessimistic look at AI, The Honest Broker by Ted Goya is another Substack that he is positive that the humanity and romanticism will win the day against AI. But yeah, I don't know. I mean, I feel like I want to leave a lot of humility, you know? I just think that we should be asking a lot more questions than giving answers at this point. I mean, obviously, there's biblical wisdom we should really be pointing into. I'd want to learn what non-Western churches are saying about this, you know? Like, I would want to learn what people not like us are. you know how they're leaning into this conversation because I think we can be so blinded by our own culture here in Silicon Valley or in the United States.

So I guess I would just, but I don't think this conversation is going away anytime soon. In fact, if we did this conversation a month from now, we could be having a whole other set of conversations because it's just advancing so fast. So I guess I would just encourage people not to ignore this conversation, lean in, keep reading. I think in terms of research or resources, Andy Crouch I think just provides a wealth of information. So anything he says about this is just really, really. good But yeah I don't know I think and then practically you know I just say we're never going to go wrong by filling the containers of our soul with living water. So I think you know for me just leaning more and more into prayer in the secret place and in community, I just think solves a million problems downstream.

Like if you can fill your souls with the voice and the presence of God in your life, then I think some of these other issues you know, there's wise principles we can employ but it fills that need for loneliness that we might. It fills that searching for being known and for knowledge. Again, we've got the mind of Christ when We pursue it together in. So, I guess just double down on prayer and the presence of God, I think, can help. Yeah, I think the thing that

and if all you're staring at is like the like the side of the cliff, like that's the direction you're going to go, is just off the like off the road. You know, I don't know why a motorcycle, if you're driving a car. I imagine myself on a motorcycle; that's what I do in my AI dreams. But I think, I think there's a there's a temptation with the fear and the, you know, the doom and gloom. We're all going to lose our jobs. We're all going to be in a lot of debt. We're all like going to have our minds uploaded to the cloud like that. We would like potentially venture off and have a reaction in the opposite direction that would actually be in fear. And we read scriptures, and everywhere it's do not be afraid.

You know, I think is the is the counsel for our lives in this hour is to not be afraid. You know, in this world, we'll have trouble, but um I've overcome the world. You know, and this promise of of God's presence, it won't leave us or forsake us. And so I just, in this hour when there's so many questions still, and I think hopefully anybody listening would recognize that we're not professionals here. And I think anybody that would say they are around this. topic would be lying. You know, is that there, um, there's a lot to learn and a lot to for us to still harvest and grow together, um, and do that in community. And I think the the one probably resource that I've been like gleaning so much from is a book by Justin Whitmell early that's called Made for People.

Um, and it's an amazing book around how to build relationships and how to build community. And I think that in this hour, um, when there's so much isolation and, uh, you know, the surgeon general's, like, warning that, like, we're in an epidemic of loneliness and isolation. Um, I think for us to build real, like, honest, um, relationships where we can confess our sin and be forgiven and be truly known and seen and loved that there's no other place but the church to find that and where we can have people challenge our lives and and call us, you know, to accountability. Yeah, there's like no other, uh, there's no other place like the church that we can live, you know, in community like that and receive that.

And to your, you know, your comment about, uh, I would highly recommend that we don't go to counsel in the in these things, you know, to these, for these things. So, you close us all in. Yeah, let's do it. Jesus, we love you. Your name is the name above all names. You're the king of kings and the lord of And there's only one name by which we can be saved, and it is the name of Jesus Christ. And we thank you that you put on flesh, and that you are forever Lord linked with us in our humanity, and that we will one day Lord be with you perfected and receive the reward of our faithfulness, Lord, and our lives.

And I pray Jesus right now for every person listening to this, that they would be filled with life and hope and joy and peace, your presence right now in their cars, in their homes, they're picking up their kids or doing their work. In an hour where there's a lot of questions and there's a lot of unknowns, Lord, we ask that you'd be the loudest voice in our midst, and that you would awaken your church to your prophetic voice, that you would come in power and in presence, Lord, as we gather together. And that you'd build your kingdom. We ask that your kingdom would come and your will would be done on earth as it is in heaven. Amen. Thanks, guys! Good job, guys!