Holy Joys Podcast
A discussion of theology and ministry practice, all for a holy, happy church. A ministry of holyjoys.org.
Holy Joys Podcast
Alex Fry on Christian Concerns About AI (Artificial Intelligence)
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Alex Fry joins Johnathan Arnold to discuss the need for deeper reflection about AI from a Christian perspective.
It's this idea that there are competing ideas, competing anthropologies between this tech world and what Christians have to offer. And the underlying question is: what is a human being?
SPEAKER_00The added danger is the fact that it's not a human source gives people the illusion of neutrality.
SPEAKER_02You're listening to the Holy Joys Podcast, co-hosted by David Fry, David Hartkoff, and Jonathan Arnold. Visit us at holyjoys.org and stay tuned for weekly discussions of theology and ministry practice. All for a holy, happy church.
SPEAKER_00Welcome back to the Holy Joys Podcast. David Fry is MIA. And so we have his wiser brother Alex on today. I don't know. That's for you, David. But Alex, great to have you with us. Alex is a friend and uh is interested in international relations, is currently in Mexico doing Peace Corps, uh, but has offered some great cultural commentary from a Christian perspective. I've valued um what he has to say. And I asked him to come on today and talk about AI. And he's gonna bring his expertise to bear on that question. I'll offer some theological commentary and reflection on AI. And our goal is that through this conversation, um, we would have a somewhat of a framework for thinking about AI as Christians, because Christians bring unique questions and concerns to that conversation. Uh, we're concerned not just, for example, with productivity, um, how much can we produce, how quickly? Uh, we're concerned with things like moral formation and being reformed into the image of God, and how does the use of AI affect that? Uh, we're concerned with the ethics, especially. I mean, others are concerned with the ethics as well, but we're especially concerned with the ethics of AI. We want to be people of integrity. We want to use AI in a way that glorifies God. We don't want to be Luddites, but we also don't want to jump on the bandwagon so fast and hard that we don't stop and pause to reflect on what are the implications of this. And so, um, Alex, thanks for coming on today to have this conversation.
SPEAKER_03Yes, thank you for having me. I'm excited to be on the podcast. And to be honest, this is my first time ever on a podcast. So a little nervous.
SPEAKER_00We'll see how it goes. That's the joy of not recording live. We can edit out whatever we need to edit out. So you we were talking a little bit um last several days, and you kind of presented three levels of reflection about AI, or I don't know how you frame that, maybe like three kind of uh levels of concern. So maybe start by sharing what those are and uh why you think that's a helpful framework for processing um you know this important issue.
SPEAKER_03Sure. Yeah. So I went through listening to lots of podcasts from um the Gospel Coalition, other Christian podcasts, reading a lot of articles, Christianity today. And um I was able to, I don't know if I really created this or if I just kind of pieced it together. I don't know. But kind of three layers of analysis that each one gets a little bit deeper than the one before. And so just to go right into it. Uh, layer one, um, this was talked about by uh Megan Sullivan, and she is a professor at Notre Dame, and she was a professor that was invited by Anthropic to an AI ethics summit, along with other uh ethicists, uh theologians. I'm not even entirely sure who all was included, but she was one of these that was included. And so she talked about what's called the ethical floor, which is kind of the absolute bare minimum that is needed to prevent real material harm to individuals. Uh so some examples of the ethical floor would be um in Congress right now, they are working on passing what's called the Defiance Act. It's not yet passed, it's still it's still held up for some reasons. But what this act addresses is things like uh deep fake pornography using the likeness of real people and um using it for purposes of fraud. And but this this ethical floor that Megan Sullivan calls it is really the bare minimum level of protections. And what's unfortunate is that when it comes to tech companies and a lot of the governance that follows behind, they're really stuck on just this bare minimum level of protection. And it's really like there's so much more to talk about with the ethics. Uh, but that's kind of the lowest level uh of having a conversation about the ethics of AI. And unfortunately, a lot of a lot of that discourse has not even escaped that level. The second level or layer of ethical analysis is really where a bulk of the ethical concerns are. Uh it deals with a lot of just ordinary morality, with um the huge one being intellectual honesty. Uh, but another conversation you hear is about you know fake emotional intimacy and you know, creating a chat bot boyfriend or a girlfriend, or also another emerging issue is mass surveillance. And so, and there's so obviously there's so much more in the broader ethical concerns, and there's a lot of conversation to be had there. And I'm glad to see some of the discourse is moving some to that level, just among Christians and you know, broader discourse um in society. But the third level is the most interesting to me, and I'm not sure it's really dealing with ethics per se, um, because layers one and two are mainly concerned with the immoral use of AI. Whereas layer three is dealing more with an amoral approach to AI. Because obviously there are many legitimate tasks that can be used for AI, but it's asking what kind of people is AI forming us to be. And so not so much dealing with the immoral ways that AI can be used, but assuming an amoral approach and uses of AI. But it's asking questions about what morally excellent things are being sacrificed, um, even with an amoral and perfectly acceptable use of AI. And this is where I think pastoral theology has something to say to Congress, to Silicon Valley, um, and even the conventional AI discourse that a lot of times we don't see. And so that's kind of the the quick and dirty of the three layers of analysis.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think that third level is in some ways it's the most important. Um, you know, we the others might be more foundational, um, but our goal as Christians, again, it's not just um, well, I can do these tasks faster or um, you know, I can pump out my sermons quicker. It's it's like, what's gonna happen if I become dependent on this? Um, you know, one area uh that I that I've kind of leaned into is sanctification is renewal in the image of God. Um and that means that our human nature, the way that God made and designed us, uh is conformed at every level to be more like Christ, right? We talk about entire sanctification or the sanctification of the total human being, uh, which includes you know body and soul, and then especially the faculties of mind or intellect, our affections, and our will. And so I think the most obvious um is is how does this affect our mind, our our rational faculties? And you know, as someone who I love to think, I love to write, I don't believe that knowledge um or intellect are are sufficient or enough, ever enough, to be godly and righteous, right? Um, you can be extremely intellectual and have all knowledge and lack love and um you know be spiritually cold. But it's so crucial to spiritual formation is this ability to think well, to develop discernment. And, you know, I've devoted the last 10 plus years of my life, as since I've been a Christian, writing and thinking about scripture and theology and every issue under the sun. Um, and it's taken me years of hard work to develop myself as a thinker. I'd like to think I'm a lot better thinker than I was five years ago. Um, I'm a lot better writer than I was five years ago. And that's that's just hard, grueling work. Um, you know, there's a quote that's attributed to Hemingway like, um, you know, writing is easy. You just sit down at a typewriter and bleed. You know, it's it's like it's it's gruesome because writing is thinking on the page. And one of my long-standing concerns is um, you know, pastors and just Christians in general, who it just seems like they struggle to write, they struggle to think, they their their analysis of issues seems to be really shallow, really immature. And um their their you know, their their inability to do those things becomes a problem living in an increasingly complex age. Now that process of thinking and writing has become outsourced even more than ever before to a, you know, an AI engine that can write my whole sermon for me, pump it out, I make a few tweaks, you know, or whatever. Every level of research, you know. Like I was concerned before about people just reading like internet articles, never getting into serious theology, never cutting their teeth on a you know, 500-page book of systematic theology or a 1500-page commentary, right? Now it's like people aren't even using reading articles or essays written by real people anymore. 90% of the research is just AI. What is that doing to us? You know, and and how is that harming our ability to be a well-reasoned voice and then a just a rational human being? So those are some of the things that that that third level resonates with me because that's one of the deepest felt concerns that I've had as I've seen more and more pastors becoming just so dependent on AI.
SPEAKER_03Sure. And I I think about uh you know, I studied at Indiana Wesleyan after I transferred from GBS. And I graduated, of course, I I crammed a four-year degree into about eight years. And so I I managed to get through it. But I kind of wear as a badge of honor that I finished my degree, you know, before AI came out. Or rather, I when I was first introduced to Chat GPT, was I was on my last course. And, you know, I kind of wear as a badge of honor that I finished my degree before AI chatbots were released. And, you know, there is real formation that happens when you when you wrestle through those sources. And so I have a little bit of a fear, you're just thinking about um, you know, people like me and you and so many other people who are in the ministry today, you know, we matured and found our voice before AI burst onto the scene. And I think we're probably better, more equipped to know how to use it to supplement the abilities we've already been able to develop. But I'm also a little bit afraid of whether we're gonna be able to create norms and governance to prevent future generations. You know, we talk about digital natives, um, you know, people who were born in the digital age. And so from the time they're born, that's that's the only thing they've ever known. And people who are born now, they will never know a world without AI. And so what is uh what is academia gonna look like then? You know, what is college, university gonna look like then? And a lot of that we still haven't figured out because the speed of the technological development is so far outpacing thinking through the governance and um and the ethics of it all. And yeah, the first thing you said there was about uh you were alluding to the idea of efficiency. And you know, efficiency is it's it's a good thing. It's it is an instrumental good. Sure. Uh, but it's not an it is not an ultimate good. Uh for example, uh, you know, I I don't know when washer and washing machines were invented, but you know uh when before they were invented, you know, people had to wash by hand. And you know, search models or search engines like Google are are not that old. And so, you know, I listened to an Andy Crouch uh podcast episode recently, and he was talking about how if he could bring his grandparents back from a hundred years ago and show them all the technology that we have today, but then ask, but are you happier? Are you happier as a person? And Andy Crouch was saying, you know, if I had to answer honestly, I would probably say no, I don't think we're happier. And so there's there's something to that struggle of working through problems on your own that is that is real formation as a person. And I'm a little bit afraid of what that might look like 20, 30, 40 years from now.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think another concern I have is the erosion of trust. So, you know, I have a friend who's a college professor who uh, you know, their university requires them to run every paper that's submitted through a software that tests it for AI use. And it's you know, pretty accurate. It can make mistakes, but it's pretty good at detecting whether or not this was written by AI, depending on AI. Um, and I think he said a third of his class, their papers came back as 100% or almost 100% AI generated. Wow. They wrote their entire papers on AI. And you might think, oh my word, well, they're you know immature college students, you know, whatever. I'll never forget um sitting in a in a church service, chapel service, and I heard a sermon. It was one of the best sermons I ever heard in chapel. And I I told the guy afterwards, I'm like, hey, that was really that was really well done. I mean, it was well thought out. I said, I'd love to have your manuscript. And he said to me, which this blows me away because he seemed to have no shame as he said this, he said, Well, I'll have to find where I got it online and send you the link. He had preached his entire sermon word for word from an online sermon he found and gave no attribution. And evidently thought that was okay because he just told a college student, I'll send you the link, like it was no big deal. So, I mean, I've been concerned about this for a while, and I I have I know somebody goes to a church who said, I have sat there on my phone in the service listening to this sermon, and I've been Googling things like quotes that my pastor is is making, like without attribution, and finding that he's basically reading his sermon 75% off Sermon Central. You know, like this has been going on for a long time. And and now with AI, it's in some ways it's easier to get away with it. Because uh, you know, you can't sit there and Google it unless you have an AI software to test it. You know, it's most people aren't even gonna be able to tell. And I think especially older generations can't tell. Um, you know, uh, I think younger generations like maybe like me, millennials and below, maybe because we're more native, tech you know, technological natives with some things, we're we're better able to identify that. Like there's some AI images, and I know immediately it's not AI. But I've had people, I've had, no offense, boomers send me these images and think they're real. And I'm like, you know that's AI, right? Like, no way. And it's like some politician doing something. I'm like, yeah, it's pretty clearly AI. Like, if you look carefully, they have six fingers on the left hand for one thing, but you know, often it's not that obvious. Often it's just you can just tell, you know? And and it's the same thing with a lot of stuff that's written by AI. Like, you know, I had another friend. I mean, I just it's crazy as as I started talking about this, like all these examples that are coming to mind, like just from the last couple of weeks. Like, I had another friend who was consulting a Christian leader, um, you know, sent something that they had shared. And I'm like, that's that's written almost completely by AI. Like it's it's so obvious to me. And I could almost circle the places where they made their own changes. Like that was mainly AI generated. But uh older generations can't even tell that. And and I think as we go on, there's just gonna be this erosion of trust. So, one of the things that I want to do is uh, you know, in our church manual, the next edition of our church manual, I'd like to write a statement on AI, how our pastors and preachers are allowed to use it. And any guest speaker that comes to our church has to sign that statement or at least read that statement to understand what level of AI usage. You know, holy joys, we need to have, we need to work on some kind of statement about AI. Like we will not publish an article that's you know highly dependent on AI or especially just AI generated. I mean, we could use AI and pump out a thousand articles next month, but you know, that's not what we're about. And that's we're trying to form people in community. So anyway, I'm sorry, I'm going on a long time, but I just think this is another thing that's gonna happen is just like, how do I know, you know, like can I really believe what I'm hearing that this is really your even your thoughts?
SPEAKER_03It reminds me of a, I don't remember how many months ago, there was there was a viral moment at the it was at the University of Central California. It was a uh a commencement speaker who came in and she was speaking, she she made a statement about, you know, AI is the next industrial revolution. And the whole crowd just booed her and was like not receptive to this at all. And you could tell it kind of caught her off guard, like she was not expecting that kind of reaction. And there's just there's a lot of fear and anxiety among young people, especially seeing, like you said, boomers who are really just adopting this. You know, it reminds me of a friend. Um, I could actually name more than one person, you wouldn't know them, um, who is always posting like these anti-data center uh memes on Facebook, uh, but they're AI generated photos. I see it's one particular person who I'm thinking of that I I doubt anyone listening to this podcast is gonna know. Um, but I see those posts almost every day. Yeah uh anti-data center using data centers to produce these memes. But anyways, to get back to this fear and anxiety among young people, um, because I I think a lot of tech companies thought young people would be the first adopters of this. You know, this is breaking edge, cutting edge technology. Young people are gonna be the first one to adopt it. Ironically enough, it's not. And young people are the most skeptical about it. And some of the reasons why I think are important that we really need to wrestle with as Christians. Um, because I and I'm kind of in this now as I'm finishing up my time in Mexico. You know, I attended a conference this week that was uh we had some sessions about uh post-Peace Corps opportunities and how to use our Peace Corps benefits to secure employment. And so both at this conference and young people who are graduating from college are entering a work market that is extremely competitive and that you know there's already an entry-level jobs crisis, but the worker displacement is is very concerning for young people. And when it comes to to AI technology and how it has and will continue to replace, especially lower level workers, that's something that's that's actually not super unprecedented. Um and I I remember there was a podcast I listened to. It was a NPR's fresh air, and it's it's been it's it's many years ago, this podcast episode released. But it was about um a factory in Indiana where I'm from actually. Um that this company was relocating their factory to another country. And they were interviewing workers at this factory. And these workers were saying that, you know, you have to train your replacements. We're bringing them in from Mexico. You have to train your replacements. And then we're closing up your factory and moving it to Mexico. And this factory was threatening, like, you're not going to receive your severance package if you don't train these workers. And so some people were like, no, we're not going to train our replacements. Some people had to because they needed their severance package. But, anyways, like a lot of those workers felt like they're digging their own grave because they are training other individuals to take their job from them and that their job is going to disappear. And so, you know, you see that with a lot of offshoring, jobs going overseas. Anyways, the whole the whole the whole reason I'm bringing this up is um worker displacement in the blue-collar work through offshoring, through technological um innovation, you know, robotics in the workplace has repl has um displaced those workers. And that's something that has happened for decades. But now with white-collar jobs, now it's AI that is coming in and saying, we can do these jobs. And a lot of people who went to college, you know, presumably they went to college because they were trying to move into a white-collar sector job. And now AI is coming in and taking those jobs. And I kind of have this conversation in my head, you know, a blue-collar worker telling a white-collar worker, now you know how it feels to be replaced by technological innovation. And so with AI, you have a lot of young people, especially trying to enter the work, enter the workforce, trying to make a living, that have a lot of anxiety because the way that AI technology affects the job market, the economics are not in their favor. And so I'm not so sure that you know, young people, as long as AI reshapes economics in a way that is against them, that they will be so fast to adopt AI. Um, and so I think hearing those concerns about you know worker protections and you know their ability to enter the market, like those concerns need to be heard to really understand why young people are much more skeptical than older people in the adoption of AI. And I I think that's that's really important to understand that a lot of people are they're not understanding that anxiety that young people have.
SPEAKER_00To be honest with you, I don't have a lot to add. I need to process that. That's that's interesting. Um, but another thing I'd like to get your your thoughts on uh with kind of this third level analysis, another concern that I've had is is confirmation bias. So I think people have presented AI as just a souped-up search engine, but it's it's much more complicated than that because it is artificial intelligence. It's uh it serves similar functions to a search engine, and search engines themselves, through cookies and everything else, can have a measure of bias in what information they filter to you, but AI is far more biased than any search engine I've ever used. Um, I saw a video where this famous uh Muslim apologist is a woman, she's a young woman, she's attractive, she's well spoken, uh, she's I think British. And it's like, you know, just kind of uh not your typical, but she's had this huge following among younger people, you know. And so she pulled out her phone, and I think it was Gemini or I don't know, Cloud or uh Claude, or it was one of the engines, right? And and was like, um, hey, uh, you know, what is the what is the most rational religion? Or or what is the religion that has the most evidence? Or if if you had to choose one religion that was the best supported, which one it would be? It's like, if I had to choose one religion, it would be Islam. Islam, it dah dah dah dah. She's like, whoa! And it's like, you know, millions of people are like, oh my word, like, and then there's this Christian apologist who's like, hey, Jat GBT, which religion is the most rational? If you had to choose one, which would you choose? Like, I would choose Christianity. Well, no kidding, because you are feeding this thing every day, you know, and it's it's tailoring its responses to you. And and I think um, you know, that's one of my huge concerns with as I think about like spiritual formation and discipleship. Um, like one of my goals as a pastor is not just to teach people what to think, it's to teach people how to think. And I I've recently done something that I've never done before in my ministry, which is I've dealt with a topic and shared multiple views. I shouldn't say I've never done this. I guess I have done this on a smaller scale, but this was a pretty in-depth project. I spent a lot of time laying out multiple views on a particular issue and not telling them which view I hold because I want them to feel the tension. And I said at the end, I said, raise your hand if you feel the tension and you say, you know what? Wow, I can see the arguments from both sides, or the arguments from the side that I wasn't inclined to believe are stronger than I think. Like that's part of my goal as a pastor. You know, I'm I'm preaching a sermon this Sunday, Lord willing, uh, in which I'm laying out a kind of rational case. I'm making, I mean, I don't not all my sermons are like that, but this is more of like a Pauline style, like this than this, then that. What about this objection? I mean, it's very systematic and rational because I want to model for my congregation how you think through an issue. And so, you know, now you've got people who are you know putting their questions into this chatbot 20, 30 times a day, you know, everything from how long can chicken be in the refrigerator until it spoils, to which view of the millennium is correct, you know, or whatever. And thinking, thinking that, you know, every answer it get it gives is gonna be unbiased. That just as it tells me my chicken can only sit in the refrigerator for this long because the FDA says that, that this answer about some theological question is gonna be just as objective. And it's not, it's not, and so um it's like just another echo chamber, right? We and we've been doing this, dealing with this for a long time. Um, you know, where you know, social media, who you follow, your algorithms, it creates an echo chamber. And I feel like AI is intensifying that. And I think the added danger is the fact that it's not a human source gives people the illusion of neutrality.
SPEAKER_03Sure. Yeah, and that self-discovery process is extremely important to developing yourself as a person. You know, as you were, as you were speaking, um, a particular class came to mind where, you know, if AI was around when I took that class, like me and I totally would have been using it because I remember this class was the class was histor historiography. It was really stretching me intellectually. And um the professor would present, you know, a reading and we would wrestle with it a couple days. And I remember coming back to class thinking, like, I understood the words he was saying, but it was way too dense. And I just I could not understand the argument he was making. And uh he asked me, you know, if I wanted to come to his class or to his office after class and we can talk through it. And so I did. And I started realizing through conversing with him and through his questions that, you know what, I I understand this a little bit better than I thought I did. But like I'm experiencing right now, in this very moment, intellectual growth and my ability to process these complex ideas. Whereas if I hadn't had that conversation with that professor, and if I had AI at my fingertips, you know, the temptation would have been there. Say, hey, I'm reading this by this particular person. I don't understand it. Can you explain it to me? But by not doing that and going to the professor, I was able to, he was able to help me stretch myself intellectually and to grow my ability to understand. And so there is a critical thinking element there that AI kind of it can be, it allows us to be lazy and to not have to think through the complexity and figure out, okay, what is this actually saying? Can I actually comprehend it without filtering it through AI to spoon feed me what is being said? Um, and that's just you know, I've said it before and I will keep saying it. It's extreme that struggle is very important to to developing intellectual rigor, critical thinking, and just our formation as a person. That's very important.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. And there there's there are some better ways to use AI that can minimize some of the concerns that we've raised so far, right? Um, but you know, that this spark and what you were saying there kind of sparked uh a related thought. Like it used to be that if you had some topic you really wanted to explore, you've got to go look for articles, essays, books, right? Or you've got to ask the smartest person I know, hey, what what sort of resources, right? Now I can go to Chat GPT and just, hey, lay out the views, lay out the arguments, right? But even that, you're losing something. Like there's tremendous value in even the process of sorting through the literature on a particular subject, understanding like the process of development. Like one of the most valuable things, I did a deep dive for about a month recently on a complicated subject. And, you know, one of the things that was so valuable walking away from that was not just understanding the arguments at the end of the day, but having a grasp on how this conversation has developed over the last hundred years. You know, uh you don't realize how valuable that is until you have to dig into it yourself. And you're like, oh wow. You know, like that this is this is this thing that I thought was so neutral or objective is actually very reactionary to this, and then that reaction, you know, like all of that, you're entering into a conversation, basically, right? It's like it's like this, okay? It's like um somebody who's been in a room with with 10 other people having a conversation that's gone on eight hours a day for 10 days. And then somebody walks in at you know, 10 days into the conversation, you know, and it's like, hey, summarize for me where this conversation is at. Okay. Yeah, that there's value. You might be able to enter into the conversation, but how much more valuable if you were actually there from the beginning? You know why we're here, you know why this person feels passionately about that, you know the chain of events, right? That's part of entering into real research with real people. And um, people who are no longer having to search out the literature and dig through it and just shortchanging that process, you don't realize how much value you're losing. And that's just one small example. So I do have a concern for the way in which the whole research process, all these shortcuts for the sake of efficiency, for the sake of productivity, are seriously eroding the development that happens through rigorous research. The kind of research, by the way, that every pastor should be doing. This is not just for the elite theologians in the academy. This is what it means to be a pastor, is to be a pastor theologian, as we've emphasized, you know, in our ministry here. Like that's part of what we do. And uh so we as pastors need to be really careful that we are not um, yeah, we're not uh underestimating how valuable that process is.
SPEAKER_03Sure, yeah. And and there is value, and I think you were alluding to that also, in you know, people who do walk in the conversation, you know, hours or days after it started. Yeah. There's valuable value in bringing those people up to speed and allowing them to enter the conversation who otherwise might not have been able to. So I, you know, I think me and you, we both, you know, we have our niche interests that we we spent a lot of time in, spent years studying. And sometimes I wish I had more people to talk to about these things. Um so there there is value in that. Um, but at the same time, and if I can go back to another Andy Crouch point, he makes a point that if intelligence is made more the word he used was cheap, but I'm gonna use a different word. If intelligence is made more abundant, then which that's those things kind of go together. The more abundant something is, you know, the lesser in value it is. Uh but if intelligence inflation, right?
SPEAKER_00So just pause for those who don't know. My seven-year-old asked me for some unknown reason, hey dad, why were things so much cheaper when you were a kid? And I'm like, let me Marco Polo, my friend Alex, uh Alex AI, for anybody who's interested. Uh let me Marco Polo, my friend Alex, like, Alex, please ex uh explain inflation to a seven-year-old. No. And he did, and he did a great job. So anyway, proceed.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so that that was this is a little bit what I was explaining. The more abundant something is, the cheaper in value it is. The more rare something is, the more valuable it is. And so intelligence, if it is more abundant or more cheap, then something else should be becoming more valuable in its place. And this is the point that Andy Crouch made. And he said, if if intelligence, even if it's artificial, quote unquote, artificial intelligence, some of the things that become more invaluable, valuable that you might lose are things like wisdom and discernment and embodiment, and there's so many other things that we could think of. And then I mentioned previously at the beginning, Megan Sullivan, uh, the Notre Dame professor who uh went to the Anthropotic Conference, she created this acronym, uh Delta, to describe some of these things. Uh so Delta, D-E-L-T-A, dignity, embodiment, love, and agency. And that's and so this gets to that third layer of analysis that I laid out where, yes, you may be using AI in perfectly acceptable ways. You're not using it in immoral ways, but that doesn't mean that you're not sacrificing other things that are morally excellent. Um, and I think that's something that we really have to keep in mind as we adopt AI.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and that's so helpful because uh I don't want to come across, you know, as saying I'm like I'm anti-AI. When I was saying that earlier, you're exactly right. Like, there is value in going to AI and be like, hey, lay out for me like the five major views on this topic, or whatever the major views are. I mentioned the millennium, right? Like, just give me a quick summary. Like, AI is usually pretty accurate at like big picture summaries of stuff. Like, they can kind of orient you. Like, I do stuff like that. I'm not opposed to that. I'm saying there's always been a problem with people not digging in like they should, taking shortcuts. And my concern is that AI makes that so much easier that what I'm afraid of is we're gonna see an unparalleled level of intellectual laziness and and even less and less serious intellectual and moral formation. You mentioned wisdom. Man, that's such a great word to to uh to think about. Like, wisdom is not just knowledge, wisdom is forged. It's it's you know, you you wrestle towards wisdom. Um, AI cannot impart to you the that virtue of wisdom. That has to be forged on your character, you know, and so um, yeah, anyway, great point. Keep going. Sure.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, no, and I I don't particularly want Christians to be known as the earliest adopters of every AI tool. I I want Christians to be known for being unusually good at protecting those delta values that Megan Sullivan mentioned: dignity, embodiment, love, transcendence, and human agency, especially in an era when we're saturated with AI, that we have to safeguard those values. And that is what I really want Christians to be known as, to be prophetic in this voice or in this realm, uh, rather than just being known as the first adopters of AI.
SPEAKER_00Excellent point. Uh, I, you know, that's been a big concern of mine is this pressure, like, hey, AI is here and it's not going away. It's like, well, no kidding. Everybody knows that. That doesn't mean that the best virtue you can have is to not be a Luddite and just jump in there right away and be a trailblazer. And, you know, like, uh, no, I actually think the Christian posture might be the more mature, wise Christian posture might be like AI is here and it's not going away. It's going to be around a long time, which means it requires really serious reflection. Let's slow down, let's be patient. We don't have to be the first one to put out a blog post on it. We don't have to, you know, like I thought about writing something on AI for Holy Joys weeks ago, months ago. I haven't yet because I'm still processing some things. That's the nice thing about a podcast, right? It gives us a little more freedom to kind of process out loud. Um, but but it's like these are serious issues. Yeah, let's provide some, we can provide some guidance right away. Like there's some basic, especially that first and second level, right? There's some things that we should, we need to get out there, right? I get that. I'm not saying there's no value in that. I'm just saying that's also what I long for, is to see more Christian leaders and pastors, and just in general, Christians, you know, taking that kind of more mature, uh reflective approach to like that third-level analysis and the things that we hold especially dear as image bearers.
SPEAKER_03So if you if you bear with me, I want to introduce another political science-y uh concept or or idea, and that is this idea of homo economicus. And the technical definition is a little bit wordy, and I'm not gonna bog down with that. But it's basically the idea that humans are are are productive beings and that we maximize our decisions for the greatest output. Um, but this idea of homo economicus sometimes treats humans as you are what you can accomplish. Um and if a machine can produce more economic value than I can, then does that make AI or this whatever technology you're talking about more valuable than me? Because it again, without I'm I'm I know I'm oversimplifying a little bit, but this idea that you are what you can accomplish, what you can do, and that really strips the humanity away and places it on an altar of efficiency and productivity.
SPEAKER_00This actually dovetails on something else I've been reflecting on, which is you know, pastors feeling like, man, I I'm not that great of a sermon writer. You know, like I'm not great at putting my thoughts together in a neat little outline. Like AI can write a better sermon than me. And and so, you know, that's my that's what I'm here for. I'm just here to produce the best sermon that I can. So I'll just use AI and give them something better than what I could do on my own, right? That's kind of the idea. Um, but that's not all that a pastor does. Now, yes, a pastor must be able to teach, able to give instruction and sound doctrine, refute those over contrary way. Pastors should strive to be good sermon writers. All those things are true, right? We need to raise the bar, frankly. Um, but at the end of the day, you're Imperfect sermon that you know, as long as it's solid, as long as it's biblically and theologically solid, your imperfect sermon communicated in a very human way from the heart, from one person to another, from one image bearer to another, to a flock that you love and know is a better sermon in God's eyes and for the sake of his church than a super polished sermon, you know, that AI generated in the style of John Chrysostom Goldenmouth, you know, that you just read. Like sermon, it's truth through personality. We we need that raw relational that that's why you can't replace sitting in a congregation with a man that you know preaching to you, a man that loves you. You can't replace that with um a a sermon that you watch online from David Jeremiah or some person you don't even know personally, but it's really polished because maybe he had five research assistants. I don't know. And and so I think pastors need to embrace their weakness, accept that, yeah, I may never be able to say it quite as well as AI does. Maybe I'm not as gifted as I want to be in that area. I'm gonna keep working at it. Um, but I'm I'm a real human being, called to serve real human beings, and so I need to just to do my best before God. And AI is a tool, but it cannot do that work for me. Uh, I'm not just a producer, you know, I'm a shepherd. So we're just about out of time, uh, but I want you to to spend just a moment uh talking about this other concept that that we discussed uh prior to this episode in our own conversations about transhumanism, right? It's this idea that uh humanity through technology will develop uh so much that we will transcend human limitations. We you know, it's not just that we will stop diseases that will shorten human life, will alter humanity to live beyond what was ever even considered, you know, fathomable for human beings. We will alter maybe uh the brain or whatever to be transhuman, some kind of almost like uh technologically altered, it's like humanoid. I mean, to kind of put it in simplistic terms, but but right, I mean, there's a lot of people that that's what they're working towards. Am I understanding that correctly? Yeah, no, and it how does this fit into that broader discussion, which is very real right now?
SPEAKER_03Sure. Yeah, and it sounds like this, you know, real sci-fi Star Wars kind of stuff, but the the reason why I think it's important is because this this idea of transhumanism is something that is very present in the tech development world. And when you when you listen to some of these guys like Sam Altman or Peter Thiel, they are appealing to this type of worldview and this this particular type of anthropology that is kind of undergirding the motivations of the people who are developing this technology. And so for me and you as Christians who are thinking through the ethics, you know, it it's I know it might be a little bit hard to see why this is irrelevant to us, but the people who are developing this technology, this type of worldview is very front of mind for them. And I think it's important to understand, to understand where this technology is coming from and a lot of the philosophies that are that are undergirding a lot of it, to know how we can address it as Christians and to have that kind of awareness of more of the intellectual tradition and ideas that are that are feeding into the develop development of this technology. So, for example, I meant I mentioned Peter Thiel. Uh Peter Thiel leads he leads a company called Palantir Technologies. And, you know, he's a huge name in politics, in the tech world. Um Palantir Technology.
SPEAKER_00You said, right?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, he's a mentor to JD Vance, he's a venture capitalist, he's a huge political donor. And he was asked in an interview one time if he wants to see humanity to continue. And he hesitated at that question. And he went into this monologue about transhumanism, which you you already described a little bit about, about improving the physical and mental capabilities through advanced technology. Um and uh and to to talk about this, I want to go to uh another person from the Gospel Coalition who has talked about this. Uh his name's Clayton Chansey. I think I'm saying his name right, Chansey Chansey. Um, but he creates this this um, he articulates a quasi-religion, religion that is coming from this kind of this tech bro world. And so I'm I'm I'm pulling from his article uh about this, but he he describes that um kind of a secular quasi-religion that has its own eschatology, its own soteriology, apocalypticism. This this idea of a quasi-eschatology is what he calls the technological singularity. And I know that's a big term, but what he means by that is that at some hypothetical point, machine intelligence surpasses human intelligence and begins improving so rapidly that the world beyond that threshold is just so radically different that we cannot, we can't predict it, we can't understand it because technology it's kind of the ultimate fear that technology is gonna take over the world. You know, robots are gonna take over the world. And so, you know, that sounds very sci-fi to us, and you know, I don't really have huge fears of that kind of thing happening. Um but it is the people who are investing and developing this technology that they create these types of beliefs. And so, you know, their own type of soteriology that Chansey talks about, that technology saves us, saves humanity from suffering and scarcity and ignorance, and who knows, maybe even death itself. Uh a superintelligence may save humanity or destroy it. So it could be like the ultimate savior of humanity, or it could destroy humanity. Um, and that, you know, artificial intelligence is a providence, he also talks about a benevolent, a benevolent superintelligence that manages human affairs better than what we can. And so, again, I know this sounds like real sci-fi stuff, but this is the world that these guys live in, who are the ones really developing the governance and the regulation around this technology and the kind of the anthropology that they have that is kind of developed into this kind of a secular quasi-religion.
SPEAKER_00That's what it sounds like, right? It's the deification of technology. Right. And and the point, you know, as Christians, we have an eschatology. It's not that we're afraid of any of this, right? So the point of talking about this is not to say we're scared that this is gonna happen or you know, we should try to stop it, you know, like as if we could. You know, the the point is to say this framework helps us understand why and how some of these tools are being developed, which alerts us then to certain ways in which this technology might have negative effects, especially at that third level, which then helps us to focus our attention as Christians on what things we need to be positively, constructively be involved in building, right? So if you understand, like there is a strong awareness among developers of AI that this is gonna undermine certain human functions and faculties and relationships and whatever, when we as Christians say, but those things are so valuable, we need then as Christians to be not just jumping into the AI conversation to say, hey, but this could help you produce your sermon in half the time, right? It should be jumping in to say, okay, in this AI age, we need to be leaning into community and relationships and authentic thinking and and you know, all of these things more than ever before, because they are being compromised and threatened more than ever before. Um, so it's it's about alerting us to some of the ways in which we need to be intentional to maintain a healthy, holistic vision of humanity. That that summary what you're saying?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, no, that that was that was beautiful. That was more eloquently than I could put it. But but yeah, it's it's this idea that there are competing ideas, competing anthropologies uh between this tech world and what Christians have to offer. And the underlying question is what is a human being? And uh AI ethics depends on what you think a human being is and what you think human flourishing consists of. And so why are we talking about a quasi-religion of transhumanism? Um and you know, I hear this idea sometimes that technology is just a moral. It depends how you use it. I'm not so sure that it is always a moral, uh, because sometimes as creators have a particular moral philosophy that they have in mind in the way that it is developed and in the way that that it is presented to us to be able to use. That does not mean that it cannot be redeemed. Um, but I think so Christian ethicists can't evaluate AI only by asking, is this tool benign and can be used, you know, in a sinless way? But to also understand the vision of humanity and progress and how that shapes the ways that AI is developed and adopted.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00Good. Let's let's close here. We've been alerting people to some concerns, some areas that we need to do some deeper reflection. Let's just end with something positive about AI because I use AI. I use AI in the research process. Now I'm very intentional about how I do that, or I try to be, I should say. I try to be very intentional about how I do that. I do want to point out a few ways, uh, just some practical ways in which I do I do find it quite useful. And um, maybe for somebody who's listening, um, you know, this this may help them to engage with AI just a little bit more carefully as they continue to reflect on some of these deeper issues. So, number one, to point me to sources that I will actually look up. So I do this all the time. Um, I've I've read enough patristics to have a pretty good idea where to find something on most topics that I'm studying. Um, but man, patristics, it's a massive body of literature. And I don't know of any really good topical index of, you know, the million plus pages, you know, in the church fathers. So recently I'm studying some topic and I want to know what Christians have said about this topic. So I asked ChatGPT, I'm like, can you give me citations for every place that you can find me where the church fathers address this topic? And they gave me like maybe a dozen sources. Then I go look all of those up and read them in context. Some of them they get wrong. The citations aren't right, the content isn't, it's they're confusing it with something else. But I discovered a few sources that I would have probably never found on my own or by using a Google search that were really informative. And I went from reading a sentence that they cited to reading a paragraph to like, man, I'm gonna read this whole chapter, and I walked away better for it, right? So ChatGPT can point you to sources. Another thing is like, okay, I want to study some topic. I'm gonna say, hey, you know, my friend David Fry, Andrew Graham, John Earl, Travis Johnson, Alex Fry, right? Hey, I'm studying this topic. What books do you know that you would recommend? Sometimes, I'll be honest though, I do that and I don't get a lot of recommendations. Or I'll supplement those recommendations by going to ChatGPT and saying, hey, give me a list of um the top 10 most highly regarded, reputable scholarly works on this topic and categorize them based on the general view that they take. And I'll say, okay, I'm gonna buy one book from each of that category. And then I might say, oh, there's that book David recommended. You know?
unknownSure.
SPEAKER_00That that that's a help. So pointing me to other sources. Well, let me stop there, okay? That might be my number one use of AI. What would be like your you see as like one of the most valuable uses of AI?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so personally, the way I find AI absolutely invaluable is I follow tons of sources already, uh, whether it be news organizations or podcasts or think takes, and I cannot digest all of it. And I know I miss out on so much. And so I use it probably, I would guess, more than 80% to summarize feeds that I'm already receiving, but I otherwise would not have time to consume everything. And so, you know, articles that are converted into podcast form with an AI voice, you know, these are articles I would otherwise never have time to consume. And if it really gets my interest, I can actually go look it up and read the physical article. And so like you said, there are valuable ways of using it for research. And that's kind of how I use it also, but with sources that I already follow.
SPEAKER_00And that's not all you're doing. This is in addition to your own reading and research, and you're already familiar enough, you're already familiar enough with the sources you're summarizing to have a pretty good sense of whether or not that yes, this is consistent with what these people are typically saying. Right. Because I'm I'm just I'm just adding that qualifier because I've done stuff like that and I've caught AI in errors. And then you you run this risk of thinking you know what another human being believes and realizing AI just oversimplified that. And we wouldn't want somebody doing that to us, right? So so I I do stuff like that too sometimes, but but there's gotta be some qualifiers because I see some risk even there. Anyway, sorry I interrupted you, but yeah, go ahead.
SPEAKER_03You're exactly right. But I another another thing I pretty recently started using it for is it will send me an automatic digest every Friday. I think I have it set for like 6 a.m. Wow. And it's like six to twelve articles from uh a think tank or you know, some organization that you might have missed this week. And it's automatic. I get a notification on my phone, I click on it, I open it, and it's it's AI developed, but it has links so I can actually go and read those articles. Um and I've I found that very helpful. So it's not my primary source. I use it to supplement what I'm already doing and to be able to consume more that I otherwise I would never have time to go listen to that podcast or to go read that article. Um, and so it it does expand my horizons in that sense. And that's probably my favorite thing to use it for is just to be able to consume more.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Uh, another thing that I would use it, probably my number two uh usage would be as a, I want to say it this way, as a light writing aid. So um I I'm a big believer in don't ever outsource your writing chat beat GPT. Don't ever pass off so much as a single sentence that you did not write as your own without attribution. I mean, don't do that, right? So so it's not not that kind of writing aid, but for example, from time to time, uh I'm reading a sentence and I'm like, you know, out of maybe 30 sentences I've written, and it just feels a little bit clunky. And I'm like, it's like I just can't quite like what what what is wrong here, right? There's something here, it's a little clunky. And I'll I'll type in grammar check colon and I'll copy paste that, and I'll look at the suggested revisions, and I won't just copy paste one of them, but I'll ask myself, what is different between what I wrote and this, which actually sounds better. Oh, yeah, okay, so that was redundant, or or like I'm I'm heaping up too many phrases, or my sub my subject and my verb are too far apart, or whatever, right? And and then I'll on my own read write that sentence. Or I will uh I'll use it for tone evaluation. Does this sound snarky? Sure, sure.
SPEAKER_03And that's not that's not entirely different than the what like like Grammarly, which Grammarly has been around for years, and it does that kind of thing. You know, it gives you syntax suggestions, so it's not just strictly a spell check, but it's kind of an advanced spell check.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And so something I have done for years is when I write something, I will run it through different spell checkers that catch some do better jobs at catching some things than other things. And I always run things through it at least two, usually three different spell checkers that catch so that's kind of what you're talking about there, is just an advanced spell checker that can check things like syntax, or maybe I'm misunderstanding what this word actually means, and I have to go make sure I'm using it correctly, you know, that type of thing.
SPEAKER_00But and again, I'm like you, uh only in a different sense. I'm using it supplementally as a supplement, right? Do not make AI your primary writing trainer. You need to go read great books and observe what they do that's effective. Go read out, go read C.S. Lewis and don't just read what he says. Think about how he says it and why it's so effective. Go read uh Strunk and White's Elements of Style. Go read a writing book, right? And then do the hard work of grinding out an article. You know, I uh I sent uh like maybe four or five paragraphs to a friend of mine recently, and I was like, hey, I'd love your feedback on this. They're like, man, that's so helpful. Like, that's so, man, you just said so much in such a short space. And I'm thinking to myself, yeah, I literally spent 20 hours on those five paragraphs. I don't always do that, but this is a particularly complex subject, and every word is chosen carefully, and my inter and intra-paragraph flow is chosen carefully. And like, there's so much happening here that like it's really hard work. You cannot shortchange that by making AI your primary writing uh teacher. You've you've gotta you've gotta develop through hard work. Um so so but there's but there's things you can do to supplement to help. Another thing I do is evaluation of uh is this age appropriate? So so I'll write something and I'll be like, is this an appropriate appropriate for a seven-year-old? So so I'm I'm working on, you know, we have the kids' catechism, we have the adult catechism, we're coming out with one more. It's it's the the uh young disciples catechism, ages six to twelve. So I'll ask, you know, is this in the six to twelve age range? And it might say, that's probably like an eight to nine year old age range. I'm like, that's good, right? That's that's about where I want to be, you know, um, because it's it's okay if if you know, coming into the use of that, you're not understanding it all yet. You're you're memorizing it, you're being formed by some, right? So uh, and then another thing is like a dictionary or thesaurus. Now, I prefer to actually use, I go to Merriam-Webster all the time online, but sometimes I'll use Chat GPT for a quick check like, um, am I using this word correctly? Or is there another word I could use instead of this one here, you know? Um, checking idiomatic usages. Am I using this idiom correctly? Um, you know, so things like that can be valuable. And then probably the only other thing that I do regularly is to confirm something that I'm already confident, pretty confident I know. And I'm like, I think Wesley was born in 1703, right? So, hey, ChatGPT, um, am I am I remembering correctly, Wesley was born in in in 1703? But even there, okay, I'm cautious because it would be better in those kind of cases, nine times out of 10, to just Google what year was Wesley born because it's gonna bring up, like Encyclopedia Britannica, a source I know I can trust. And then because Chat GPT has given me wrong dates. It's given me wrong names, it's given me wrong towns. Like so, even there I'm cautious. But I think those that's about it. Is there anything else you would say that you've used AI for that you think is is a valuable, legitimate use?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I use it for work a lot for um helping with um creating. English plans for my students and also for myself. I'm, you know, I'm still learning Spanish. And sometimes I have it create worksheets and kind of creating homework for myself. And I found it very valuable for that type of thing also.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So, and we're not saying this is an exhaustive list, but you know, this is some examples of legitimate usage. We've touched on a lot of illegitimate usage uh uses or just general concerns. Um, uh obviously using AI to produce pornographic images or text. I think there's this illusion that, well, it's not a real person, so it's not as bad, but it's using images of real people, right? And it's still harmful to the soul. Uh using an AI chatbot as a replacement for human relationships, right? That's not gonna cure real loneliness. We need real people to be, we need a real community around us of other struggling humans like us. Uh, we've touched on that. We've touched on thinking in community, right? Needing to surround our people, ourselves with people who challenge us, stimulate us, encourage us. Another idea here, and I know we gotta wrap this up, but uh another idea is that AI can't replace thinking in community or just community in general because AI doesn't offend us enough. Uh AI may challenge our thinking at some level, but it won't offend us. It won't grind on us like iron. It won't sin against us. We need that, right? Believe it or not. We need people who, in a heated conversation, are gonna say something they regret and have to come back and apologize to us and force us to receive that apology and and then go to a level of depth in that relationship we've never gone before. We need that to develop wisdom and and to develop as as thinkers and as speakers. Um, I've talked about illegitimacy of just copy-pasting anything, even if we edit it some and passing it off as our own, um, compromising our development as a writer and thinker, um helping, you know, helping us so much that it affects the tone, style, or humanness of our writing. Um, AI is getting better than you know at this, but there's still something cold and stilted about a lot of AI output. And and you know, just as each human being has a unique speaking voice, I hear your voice and I know it, and it's it's it matters to me, right? The voice of a loved one is valuable to me as a fellow human being. AI has its own voice and it's not human, and we should not allow it to displace our speaking or writing voice. Um Yeah, and then I would just say the only other illegitimate use off the top of my head here uh that I've come up with so far is is to ask questions about things you don't know, and then just accepting what AI says as fact without verifying it by reputable sources. Um I know that was just kind of a shotgun approach, but and any other illegitimate usage uh uses of AI, and and some of this is more at that second level reflection, right? So we're kind of ending on some second level reflection because as people think more deeply about the third level, they need some help uh beginning to use AI more responsibly. Anything you would add there as we as we close?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, no, not particularly. It just I'm concerned about the potential intellectual laziness that uh that we will have, especially as you know, younger generations become natives to this technology. And that's what I'm really interested in 20, 30 years from now. How culture will have been affected by then and what we can do now to try to shape that future.
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