Latest / Thinking Christian: Bible, Theology, and Culture / AI and the Church: Tools, Teammates, and Human Flourishing (Troy Miller)

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AI and the Church: Tools, Teammates, and Human Flourishing (Troy Miller) · Thinking Christian: Bible, Theology, and Culture

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  Speaker 1: The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that
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  Speaker 1: deny God. As such, we need Thinking Christian to become
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  Speaker 1: as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast.
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  Speaker 2: I'm Dr. James Spencer.
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  Speaker 1: Through calm, thoughtful, theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways
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  Speaker 1: God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural,
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  Speaker 1: and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now,
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  Speaker 1: on to today's episode of Thinking Christian.
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  Speaker 2: Hey, everyone. Welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. I'm Dr.
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  Speaker 2: James Spencer, and I'm joined today by Troy Miller.
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  Speaker 1: He is the president and CEO of National Religious Broadcasters,
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  Speaker 1: or NRB. And today we're going to be having a
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  Speaker 1: discussion around artificial intelligence. But I thought it might be
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  Speaker 1: helpful to start with you maybe explaining what National Religious
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  Speaker 1: Broadcasters is, what your role is there, and those kind
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  Speaker 1: of things. So I'll start there, but welcome to the program.
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  Speaker 3: Well, thanks for having me first, James. Great to be
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  Speaker 3: with you. You know, NRB has been around for 82
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  Speaker 3: years now. It's the oldest advocacy organization for Christian communicators,
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  Speaker 3: folks in the Christian media. Started back in 1944 when
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  Speaker 3: pastors wanted to get on radio and they were thinking
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  Speaker 3: of it back then. They were gatekeepers. And so they
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  Speaker 3: got together at Moody Church and formed NRB to advocate,
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  Speaker 3: really to keep the gospel in the public sector. That's
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  Speaker 3: what we work on the most. We also help Christian
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  Speaker 3: communicators in all platforms today. how to do their job
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  Speaker 3: with excellence and keep them updated on the latest technology trends,
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  Speaker 3: things that are moving there. And we hold the largest
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  Speaker 3: annual conference and gathering of Christian communicators. We'll be in Washington, D.C.
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  Speaker 3: next year, and there should be about 6,000 of us
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  Speaker 3: present there who are in radio, television, film, book publishing, YouTube, TikTok,
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  Speaker 3: all things digital and new media as well.
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  Speaker 2: Very cool.
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  Speaker 1: So how do you see, you know, when we think
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  Speaker 1: about artificial intelligence, it's sort of making inroads into almost
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  Speaker 1: everything at this point. But particularly as NRB, which I've
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  Speaker 1: at least traditionally known, and I realize you guys do everything,
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  Speaker 1: but I came across it first through radio. And so
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  Speaker 1: radio has this very analog sort of feel to it,
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  Speaker 1: although I know a lot of it's transitioned to digital
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  Speaker 1: and there's HD radio and all that kind of fun stuff.
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  Speaker 1: But how do you see AI intersecting with a lot
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  Speaker 1: of the different ministries that you all advocate for within
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  Speaker 1: the public space? And what sort of new wrinkles is
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  Speaker 1: AI really driving into how you advocate for Christian content?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, AI is complex because there's a few
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  Speaker 3: different buckets out there. So let's talk about the easy one.
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  Speaker 3: And AI is more of a productivity tool, you know.
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  Speaker 3: And so AI is really integrating itself, whether it's in
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  Speaker 3: audio production or video production. You know, AI is integrating
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  Speaker 3: itself all over the place. It's really replacing a lot
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  Speaker 3: of things. And, of course, that's an issue onto its own.
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  Speaker 3: AI is your new audio engineer or your new editor
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  Speaker 3: or your new graphics designer. And so AI can do
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  Speaker 3: a lot of things in the media sector to help,
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  Speaker 3: you know, make that production process more efficient and streamlined.
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  Speaker 3: and all of those workflows. And that's a good thing.
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  Speaker 3: That's all a good thing on the AI technology side,
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  Speaker 3: especially for nonprofits. Nonprofits are always looking for that efficiency,
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  Speaker 3: things that can keep their costs down. So that's a
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  Speaker 3: good side of AI, one bucket there. The other buckets
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  Speaker 3: get a little more complex, and that's when AI becomes
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  Speaker 3: more of the teammate kind of thing. It was interesting
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  Speaker 3: because just this last week, I had two different AI
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  Speaker 3: companies come drop emails on my inbox, and it was
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  Speaker 3: all about move AI from a tool to a teammate.
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  Speaker 3: Move AI from a... What was the other one? Move
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  Speaker 3: AI from an assistant to an employee kinds of things.
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  Speaker 3: And so this kind of idea... of AI when it
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  Speaker 3: gets into becoming more and more human-like and pushed on
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  Speaker 3: you that you would think of AI as that. That's
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  Speaker 3: a bucket we're looking at as well. And the last
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  Speaker 3: one that I think is getting really complex is what
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  Speaker 3: are the ethical and legal things around AI? Intellectual property
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  Speaker 3: is a huge one with ministries. And we know we
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  Speaker 3: want the gospel authors in the public sector. But what
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  Speaker 3: happens when an artificial intelligent bot takes your pastor's sermons
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  Speaker 3: and sort of re-does them from a different theological standpoint
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  Speaker 3: of that pastor, you know, and starts to preach out
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  Speaker 3: in that pastor's voice and those things. So that's the
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  Speaker 3: intellectual property, the kind of the deep fakes in there.
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  Speaker 3: All of that's things that we're looking at here at NRB.
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  Speaker 1: Let me go back to the let me address those
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  Speaker 1: last two. I'm sort of fascinated by the, you know,
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  Speaker 1: taking it from a tool to a teammate idea.
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  Speaker 2: Do you see that or were those the impetus for those?
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  Speaker 1: I know Grok just sort of dropped these a new
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  Speaker 1: feature where you can actually design agents who are going
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  Speaker 1: to take care of very specific tasks for you. Was
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  Speaker 1: that sort of the tone of that teammate that that
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  Speaker 1: it's talking about?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah. One of those came through Microsoft's co-pilot. They
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  Speaker 3: have a webinar coming out on the co-pilot. It's all
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  Speaker 3: about how to move from tool to teammate and how
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  Speaker 3: to integrate their bot in there. And that's, I think,
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  Speaker 3: a broad issue, not only for companies to look at
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  Speaker 3: when you think of this idea of thinking of AI
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  Speaker 3: as an actual tool, you know, an employee or somebody
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  Speaker 3: that you're working with, a colleague out there, it changes
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  Speaker 3: your whole mindset on the tool aspect of it there.
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  Speaker 3: But that's what they're driving for. Look at Anthropic. I
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  Speaker 3: just recently saw, you know, about Anthropic. I mean, one
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  Speaker 3: of the things they're trying to work is how do
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  Speaker 3: I make the bot more human-like? And so in the workplace, again,
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  Speaker 3: that has a lot of, implications about how do employees work.
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  Speaker 3: And I actually saw in the Wall Street Journal recently
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  Speaker 3: that there are several companies who now have virtual chief
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  Speaker 3: operating officers running their companies out there. But let's set that.
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  Speaker 3: That's one bucket we have to figure out and figure
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  Speaker 3: out all the implications of that. But now move that
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  Speaker 3: same concept into the social media world and into the
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  Speaker 3: personal use of AI. And we know that, you know,
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  Speaker 3: right now we know that Meta and Alphabet, both Google
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  Speaker 3: and OpenAI with ChatGDP, all have lawsuits that have been
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  Speaker 3: filed against them because of their manipulation to keep people,
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  Speaker 3: you know, hooked using AI in the background to keep
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  Speaker 3: you engaged with their tools. Or in ChatGPD's case, where
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  Speaker 3: AI bots have actually sort of helped influence young adults,
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  Speaker 3: young people, all the way into suicide. And so that
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  Speaker 3: human aspect, the more human-like we make these AI bots,
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  Speaker 3: I think we have even more ethical questions we have
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  Speaker 3: to figure out and have to answer.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I saw the Meta settled an $ 18
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  Speaker 1: billion settlement related to teen and children and social media
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  Speaker 1: addiction and are going to be required to put in
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  Speaker 1: some more safeguards there. I think part of what that
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  Speaker 1: points to quite honestly, is we just don't know what
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  Speaker 1: these things are going to do to us. And I
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  Speaker 1: don't mean that in sort of a, there's a mustache
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  Speaker 1: twisting evil villain, petting a cat somewhere that is designing
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  Speaker 1: these tools to really hurt us. What I think it is,
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  Speaker 1: is that any new tool is going to have consequences
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  Speaker 1: that we can't anticipate. And some of those are going
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  Speaker 1: to be probably beneficial. Others are going to be quite negative.
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  Speaker 1: And so we're even starting to see studies come out.
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  Speaker 1: MIT just did one where they were talking about over-reliance
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  Speaker 1: on AI creating a situation where people were incapable of
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  Speaker 1: identifying false information after using AI to identify false information.
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  Speaker 1: And so these issues of offloading our cognitive capacity to
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  Speaker 1: AI are probably going to have implications for the way
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  Speaker 1: we think, our decision making, our problem solving, all of
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  Speaker 1: those different things, which means that we really need to
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  Speaker 1: be careful as we walk into this.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. And I think that's the key issue for
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  Speaker 3: pastors and parents and communicators out there is to walk
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  Speaker 3: in this with a real careful, you know, and a very...
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  Speaker 3: open mind and concerned mind. I think sometimes, I think
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  Speaker 3: it's that MIT study, I saw that it's easy for
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  Speaker 3: people to forget that first word, artificial. This is an
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  Speaker 3: artificial intelligence. And also, I have a tech background, so
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  Speaker 3: you come out of this and you have to realize
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  Speaker 3: that these engines are taught, the way these learning engines
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  Speaker 3: work and the way they go through there, they're taught
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  Speaker 3: by human data. And we know as Christians, That humanity
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  Speaker 3: itself is flawed. And so I think it was not
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  Speaker 3: been surprising to me when the studies have come out
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  Speaker 3: and found that, you know, these bots or that bot
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  Speaker 3: or this AI has bias in it or racism in
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  Speaker 3: it or a certain hate. So we have two things
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  Speaker 3: working together.
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  Speaker 1: It.
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  Speaker 3: First of all, it's the data off of humanity itself.
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  Speaker 3: And just look at human history. We have a pretty
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  Speaker 3: good or a pretty bad history for the evil we
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  Speaker 3: could do to one another here, we could say. But
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  Speaker 3: also it's driven, it's still programmed by people. And so
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  Speaker 3: it's even unintentionally easy to program bias into it there.
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  Speaker 3: And so all of those things go in. It's not
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  Speaker 3: cognitive in the sense that it's actually thinking through in
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  Speaker 3: context and has empathy and sympathy and other feelings that
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  Speaker 3: are attached to that. It's really just processing things that
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  Speaker 3: we do in our human brain. It's doing them much faster.
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  Speaker 3: But it's also missing a whole lot of components of
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  Speaker 3: what it means to be human.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: And I mean, that takes you back to the sort
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  Speaker 1: of intellectual property issues. And I realize that the legal
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  Speaker 1: challenges there are difficult. But one of the things I
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  Speaker 1: guess I wonder what your thoughts are on this is.
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  Speaker 1: When you're doing things on NRB, let's say you mentioned publishers,
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  Speaker 1: new media professionals, even like TikTokers and YouTubers, radio personalities,
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  Speaker 1: all of these people are using a medium to communicate
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  Speaker 1: and bridge the distance between a human and a human.
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  Speaker 1: In my estimation, AI increases that distance. It puts humans
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  Speaker 1: one layer further away From one another, because what AI
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  Speaker 1: is doing is it's to your point, it's taking a
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  Speaker 1: pastor sermon, it's taking an essay or an article that
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  Speaker 1: it finds online, and it's aggregating a lot of that
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  Speaker 1: content and spitting out an abbreviated summary of content that's
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  Speaker 1: probably already abbreviated and had, you know, a very narrow
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  Speaker 1: point it was trying to make. And so how do
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  Speaker 1: you think of it in terms of, you know, from
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  Speaker 1: the communication perspective of what NRB does, keeping the gospel
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  Speaker 1: in public? How do you think about that increased distance
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  Speaker 1: between people? Do you agree with that? Or, you know,
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  Speaker 1: do you have any thoughts on it?
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  Speaker 3: I do agree with that. And not only is it
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  Speaker 3: increasing that distance, it's increasing that distance. At the same time, again,
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  Speaker 3: it's taking a major element out of that person-to-person communication.
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  Speaker 3: And that's the ability of humans to contextualize a conversation, again,
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  Speaker 3: with emotion and visual cues and all of those things
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  Speaker 3: that go with that when we have that inner humanity.
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  Speaker 3: And then just, again, that nature, that inner humanity-ness, that
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  Speaker 3: thing we can't describe sometimes. Even scientists can't describe where
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  Speaker 3: a thought comes from. They can tell you all the
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  Speaker 3: things that are going on in the brain, but they
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  Speaker 3: can't tell you you know, where that thought came from,
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  Speaker 3: where that creativity started or where that. So there's that
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  Speaker 3: element there that we have. And I think you're right.
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  Speaker 3: It increases that distance. And at the same time, it
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  Speaker 3: decreases the value of the conversation because it misses this
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  Speaker 3: humanity part. Look, we chat. GTP has had several hundreds,
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  Speaker 3: I think, now of lawyers across this country have been fined.
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  Speaker 3: because they've used AI to do research for cases, and
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  Speaker 3: ChatGP has filled out, filed briefs for them that they've
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  Speaker 3: submitted with cases that didn't exist. Because, as you said,
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  Speaker 3: when it aggregated, it said, well, a case like this
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  Speaker 3: ought to exist, and it didn't know the difference between, well,
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  Speaker 3: this case ought to exist, so I'll take all these
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  Speaker 3: other cases and make one up, and it didn't know
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  Speaker 3: that that was wrong. That's wrong to do that. And that's, again,
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  Speaker 3: that's that element that we're missing in this that I
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  Speaker 3: think you put away. I'll hit you with one more.
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  Speaker 3: We did a study just this last January, and we
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  Speaker 3: just started to scratch the surface on this. But we
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  Speaker 3: asked people about artificial intelligence. Would you go to your
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  Speaker 3: pastor or would you go to AI for a biblical answer?
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  Speaker 3: And it was pretty interesting. About 15 to 20 percent
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  Speaker 3: said right now, well, you probably go to AI. But
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  Speaker 3: 5 percent said they trust AI over their pastor. That
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  Speaker 3: should send shockwaves across this community if that's kind of
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  Speaker 3: the direction we're going with this.
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  Speaker 1: It's interesting to think about that. I mean, the Barna
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  Speaker 1: had a similar study that they just released in July
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  Speaker 1: that was showing some of this, that there's a higher
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  Speaker 1: degree of trust and really usage across the board in
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  Speaker 1: all different categories. I mean, it wasn't just spiritual life
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  Speaker 1: sort of categories where Christians, practicing Christians in the way
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  Speaker 1: that they defined it, which I believe was once a month,
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  Speaker 1: attending church once a month, that they were using it
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  Speaker 1: Far more frequently than anyone else across the board. Now,
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  Speaker 1: why that is, they didn't answer or even attempt to answer.
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  Speaker 1: And so we're kind of left wondering. But I would
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  Speaker 1: say I was heartened by the idea that, you know,
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  Speaker 1: you were seeing fairly high levels of Christians, anywhere between
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  Speaker 1: 70 and 80 percent, concerned that AI was going to
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  Speaker 1: misinterpret the Bible, concerned that it was going to replace
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  Speaker 1: God or their pastor or whatever, concerned that it was
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  Speaker 1: going to have people lose their faith. But I think
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  Speaker 1: my just overall read is that some of this is
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  Speaker 1: being cultivated by our perception of what AI is. I
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  Speaker 1: think some of what you just talked about, this notion
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  Speaker 1: that AI isn't a cognitive thing. It's a pattern recognition
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  Speaker 1: engine that pulls different data points all together.
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  Speaker 2: But it seems really smart and really intuitive. And so
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  Speaker 2: it's being.
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  Speaker 1: Made easy to trust, even though when you understand its limitations,
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  Speaker 1: you would sit back and say, well, obviously I can't
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  Speaker 1: trust it more than other things. I can trust it
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  Speaker 1: for this little sliver, but I can't really trust it
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  Speaker 1: to just give me the right answer every time.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, that is so true. And I think we also
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  Speaker 3: have to learn more about, like you said, how AI
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  Speaker 3: works because it isn't this cognitive sort of tool that
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: you can interact with, like our conversation here, where we
• 16:27
  Speaker 3: can have this conversation and flow and go. And there's,
• 16:32
  Speaker 3: you know, some intuition and other things that go in there.
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  Speaker 3: AI is very specific. So if you ask it very
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  Speaker 3: general things, it's going to give you very general answers.
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  Speaker 3: And if you don't, you know, in our consumer driven
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: mentality these days, we're a little bit lazy about, hey,
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  Speaker 3: that might be where we stop. Oh, I got the
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: answer I wanted. You know, so we stop there and
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  Speaker 3: we don't really drive down into the deeper part of
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  Speaker 3: the tool. And that's, again, I think the problem is
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  Speaker 3: the more human-like, and that's the push, you hear it
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  Speaker 3: from all of the top AI experts. Anthropic, ChatGDP, Alphabet's
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  Speaker 3: tool on Google's side. You hear it from all of them. Gemini.
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  Speaker 3: All of them. Their drive is to push, is to
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  Speaker 3: make the tool more and more human-like. So it's much
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  Speaker 3: more like you are interacting with a human, which is
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  Speaker 3: only going to drive us to, I think, like you said,
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  Speaker 3: to accept the fact that what it's doing or what
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  Speaker 3: it's telling you is really good information. The more you
• 17:37
  Speaker 3: feel like you're talking to a person, the more you
• 17:40
  Speaker 3: feel like the answers you're getting are, you know, I
• 17:45
  Speaker 3: suddenly have access to this really brilliant college professor or
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: this really brilliant pastor or whoever it is. And that's
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: the way we walk. And I think we have to
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: step back and think about what it means to be human.
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  Speaker 3: What's the whole question of humanity and whether or not
• 18:03
  Speaker 3: the guardrails that need to be put up are guardrails
• 18:07
  Speaker 3: about how much more human-like we make these tools.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really interesting to see this shift too, I think,
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  Speaker 1: because evangelicalism has generally been pretty resistant to to authoritarian
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: interpretations of scripture. I mean, you go all the way
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: back into revivalism and what you see is really a
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: grassroots sort of movement where lay people are reading the
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: scriptures for themselves. And if their pastor stood up in
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: the congregation and said, well, we don't believe in the supernatural,
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  Speaker 1: they would go, really?
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  Speaker 2: Because Jesus just performed a miracle.
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  Speaker 1: And so you had this sort of resistant strain within
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  Speaker 1: evangelicalism and revivalism in particular that really did help push
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  Speaker 1: out some of these aberrant views. But as we watch
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  Speaker 1: what's going on with AI, it feels like that concern
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  Speaker 1: of replacing God in some way, shape, or form is probably,
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  Speaker 1: in my mind, one of the more interesting sort of concerns.
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  Speaker 1: Because what I think we're thinking about, or what I'd
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  Speaker 1: be concerned that we're thinking about, is that AI has
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  Speaker 1: more of an omniscient feel to it than it actually does.
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  Speaker 1: And so we're not now, you know, sort of pushing
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  Speaker 1: back on people who have we know have partial knowledge.
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  Speaker 3: Right.
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  Speaker 2: Even if I'm in the room with the smartest guy
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  Speaker 2: on the planet, you know, there are limits to his knowledge.
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  Speaker 2: AI doesn't necessarily feel like that.
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  Speaker 1: It doesn't necessarily feel like there are limits on its
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  Speaker 1: knowledge because we could ask it anything and it'll spit
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  Speaker 1: back an answer. And it's a seemingly intelligible answer. And
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  Speaker 1: so one of the things I usually have been counseling
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  Speaker 1: people is try using AI only in a domain.
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  Speaker 2: Where you have expertise.
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  Speaker 1: And what you start noticing is it isn't giving you
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  Speaker 1: the sort of clear, nuanced, detailed answers. It's giving you
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: a very small summary that is slanted, not in a
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: bad way necessarily, like that sort of evil bias that
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: we might think of, but it's certainly got an angle
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: to it. Because to answer your question in a succinct fashion,
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: it has to. And so what we're getting is a
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: perspective from AI, and we're allowing it to choose that
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: perspective and decide on what's relevant, which is scary on
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: the face.
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: Of it.
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah that's i think you're that last part is that
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: word decide what's relevant um uh you know and it
• 20:40
  Speaker 3: again i think it it goes back to me just
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: because it feels so human like you know we don't
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: realize that this is a tool that's running a set
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: of programs and routines in the background uh this is
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: why there's such a big push for data centers and
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: And the crunching here, because it has to go through
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: a lot of different iterations before it gets that answer
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: to you there. But the answers are kind of built
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: on our best ability to replicate the way that people think.
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: And so we get to this tool, and I think
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: that's where you rightly said we can sort of have
• 21:23
  Speaker 3: this almost godlike perception. That we're, again, we're talking to
• 21:29
  Speaker 3: the smartest person in the world or the greatest intellect.
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: And this thing's told me everything I want to know,
• 21:37
  Speaker 3: not only about maybe a certain subject, but guess what?
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: It can also help me figure out what to have
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: for dinner tonight. And so the more we feel like
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: we're talking to a person, I think the more, unfortunately
• 21:50
  Speaker 3: for us as society, we're going to keep raising the
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: pedestal that AI sets on. And that's something we just
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: have to educate people. We're helping trying to educate pastors now,
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: especially youth pastors, into some of the concerns. I think
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: you saw OpenAI talked about putting some guardrails around chat
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: GTP that has to do with teenagers. But we have
• 22:18
  Speaker 3: a clash here. And back to my time in the
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: business world, we have a clash here because you have
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: a business model And this is what got Meta in trouble.
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: You have a business model that's built on keeping you engaged.
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: The longer you're engaged, the more ROI, the more profit
• 22:35
  Speaker 3: that the organization is going to get, the more you
• 22:37
  Speaker 3: use the tool. So you have a business model that
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: has that on one aspect. And then on the other side,
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: you're trying to put guardrails in that reduce that engagement.
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: And I don't think we're going to have an industry
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: that's going to self-regulate very well when those two things
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: are clashing in the business world.
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: It's interesting to me that you like I agree with
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: the business point. I think there's also a legal structure issue.
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: You know, part of the reason that it's been so
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: difficult to wrangle in sort of the big tech companies,
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: particularly in social media, is because their platforms and we're
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: seeing this sort of repeat itself with artificial intelligence. Grok's
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: just put a lawsuit in on Minnesota maybe a month
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: or so ago. We're filming this kind of in the
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: middle of September. So I think about a month ago,
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: Grok put in this lawsuit to Minnesota because Minnesota was
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: trying to.
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: Hold liable the platforms.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: Where I can't remember the exact phrasing, but it had
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: to do with child sexualization and the sexualized images of
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: real people. So People were using Grok to create naked
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: photos of children, naked photos of real human beings, and
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: then distribute those. And so the state of Minnesota is
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: trying to police the platform and saying, you have to
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: be liable here. Grok probably won't have standing for the
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: lawsuit because they put it in as sort of a
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: free speech issue complaint. But I think that's where we
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: get into these sticky problems of what are these things?
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: Are only the users responsible for what's being put out?
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: Are they really platforms? Or are these something new that
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: aren't exactly publishers and aren't exactly platforms that need a
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: different regulatory body to look at them and say, look,
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: if your business model is built on keeping kids engaged,
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: we've got a real problem here.
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. Boy, that's a big one we're kind of, because,
• 24:42
  Speaker 3: you know, it's the whole Section 529, you know, that
• 24:46
  Speaker 3: the platforms kind of, you know, exempts them from this
• 24:50
  Speaker 3: liability as platforms, you know, when they're supposed to be
• 24:54
  Speaker 3: just in the neutral role in the background. But a
• 24:58
  Speaker 3: lot of them aren't in the neutral role. They're really
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: in the editorial role, which puts them deeper into this.
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: So where does that? start and stop. And I think,
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: as you said, AI has created a whole other complexity
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: here for that. And that's exactly what Grok's, you know,
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: arguing here. And there's some similar cases out in California
• 25:20
  Speaker 3: as well, because AI has been used to create a
• 25:24
  Speaker 3: lot of these, you know, deep, fake, you know, pornographic
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: images of Hollywood stars and other folks, you know, that
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: are real people. So, you know, and try to put these,
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: you know, people using the tools and put these disclaimers
• 25:38
  Speaker 3: on them. So what's the, you know, who's responsible? What's
• 25:41
  Speaker 3: the issue here? How deep does the law go? And
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: who's protected, not protected? We're working with a number of
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: folks up in Congress on this, trying to figure out
• 25:53
  Speaker 3: and answer these questions. I think right now we're trying
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: to just get all the questions figured out. Like what
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: are all the right questions? Jurassic Park has this great line,
• 26:03
  Speaker 3: and I use this all the time. Jeff Goldblum's character,
• 26:07
  Speaker 3: after getting the whole dog and pony show on how
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: they used the DNA to recreate the dinosaurs, he had
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: this line. He said, you know, you were so concerned
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: about whether you could do it, you didn't stop to
• 26:20
  Speaker 3: think about whether you should do it. Boy, that describes
• 26:25
  Speaker 3: to me where we're at with AI today. You know,
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: we're moving forward. I don't know if recently you saw
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: there was a gentleman who worked at Anthropic and OpenAI,
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: and he came out and said, you know, this drive
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: for this super AI, he called it, you know, this
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: super AI, he said this drive for this could be
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: the complete destruction of humanity. I don't know, as Christians,
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: we believe that, but But I certainly know that we,
• 26:54
  Speaker 3: because we as Christians know that we come from a
• 26:57
  Speaker 3: sinful nature inside of us, and just look back at
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: the atrocities we've perpetrated on one another, wouldn't be surprised
• 27:08
  Speaker 3: that we would build, thinking that we're godlike, that we
• 27:12
  Speaker 3: could build a godlike tool that would end up pushing
• 27:15
  Speaker 3: those same atrocities back on us. So there's a lot
• 27:18
  Speaker 3: for us to think about and try to work out here.
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: Well, I think one of the things we could probably
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: get into is this notion of discipleship. What are these
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: technologies turning us into? And so as Christians, when we
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: think about civilizational devastation, right, we're thinking new heavens and
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: new earth. We're thinking God making all things new. What
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: is old is destroyed. What is new is now yet
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: to come. And so there's a sense in which we
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: probably don't need to worry about, you know.
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: Sort of AI destroying the planet, right?
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: But I think the dehumanizing element, the element of AI
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: that makes us something other than what God intended. is
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: certainly something that Christians should be considering. And so how
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: do you see some of these? I mean, we've been
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: dealing with algorithms forever, right? AI isn't exactly an algorithm,
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: but it has that sort of parallel structure. There are
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: things going on in the background that are feeding us information,
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: that are guiding our thought process, that are showing us
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: new things, and we don't understand what those are. We're
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: completely blind to them in general. Most of us don't
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: understand how they work. You know, I sort of have
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: a vague clue about what's going on there, but I
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: couldn't tell you how they do it. So how do
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: you see some of these things sort of changing us
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: more fundamentally? We've talked a little bit about these AIs
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: becoming more human. I'm wondering if you think, you know,
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: we're being discipled and becoming more like AIs.
• 28:53
  Speaker 3: Look, I definitely think that's a path we could end
• 28:55
  Speaker 3: up on. I don't think we're there yet. I think
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: the problem that we have today is, I'm just going
• 29:04
  Speaker 3: to say it and look at the scriptures talk about it. Again,
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: our consumer-driven attitude is kind of behind that there's a
• 29:12
  Speaker 3: lot of us are just lazy and we want the
• 29:15
  Speaker 3: easy path. And even in discipleship, I mean, it's something
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: we've dealt with, the church has dealt with for a
• 29:21
  Speaker 3: long time. How do we disciple people? What does it
• 29:24
  Speaker 3: mean to disciple? But the Bible is the foundation of
• 29:29
  Speaker 3: human flourishing. Anywhere where you take Scripture out, Christianity out,
• 29:37
  Speaker 3: you've really seen human destruction at its worst. And where
• 29:41
  Speaker 3: Christianity is and the Bible is, you've seen human flourishing sometimes,
• 29:47
  Speaker 3: I think, at its best, at the best it can
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: be in this even sinful nature world we live in
• 29:53
  Speaker 3: in humanity. And if you take that out and you
• 29:57
  Speaker 3: start to be discipled by an artificial human kind of intelligence,
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: how much of that humanity is going to come out
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: of that? How much are we going to end up
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: with the Spock-like attitude of logic that drives everything in there?
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: And there's no emotion, no feeling, no joy, no happiness
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: that's behind this. And I think that's a real... going
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: to be a real challenge going forward and then what
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: happens look we're talking about this one what happens when
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: you're you're you get your own personal ai bot and
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: especially during the adolescent teen years and this becomes your
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: new best friend this is the person you the thing
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: you confide in and the thing you believe because it's
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: built in this reaffirming reassuring kind of built to always
• 30:56
  Speaker 3: be that kind of really good companion there. That's what
• 31:00
  Speaker 3: happened on ChatGPT. That's why it moved so many of
• 31:03
  Speaker 3: these kids into suicide, because it was built to always
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: be reaffirming, and it didn't know the difference between life
• 31:09
  Speaker 3: and death coming down to the end. And I think
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: that's a big question we have to answer and ask
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: ourselves about where AI is going and where it intersects humanity.
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: There's this interesting theory that was advanced in the New
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: England Journal of Medicine by a gentleman, I'm blanking on
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: his name right now, but he talks about it in
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: terms of addiction. And he basically says that as people
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: get addicted, part of what happens is their social world narrows.
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: And so if I want to get drugs, I'm going
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: to stop hanging out with people who are telling me
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: that I shouldn't do drugs because that's annoying. All I
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: want to do is get drugs. And so eventually you
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: get down to this point where You're really only interfacing
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: with the people who are going to help you get drugs,
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: going to firm you getting drugs, all those kind of ideas.
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: And I think that AI has the potential to create
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: that sort of narrowness. I mean, leave the addiction aspect aside.
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: When we aren't participating in the world apart from AI,
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: and that doesn't mean that we're sitting in our basements
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: just playing around with Claude or ChatGPT or whatever. What
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: it could mean is as we engage in more augmented
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: reality frameworks, where we're having Google glasses and it's showing
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: us different things about the world and it's giving us facts.
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: About the world.
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: These are now filters that we're putting on across reality
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: that are influencing the way we see the world and
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: thus narrowing what we understand about the world. They almost
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: preclude exploration, right? If AI is just going to tell
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: me this is an elm tree, I don't really need
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: to go over and look at it. There doesn't need
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: to be any curiosity about it. I just know now
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: it's an elm tree and that's great. And so I
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: think there's a real problem there from that narrowing angle.
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: Whereas when we talk about discipleship, usually what we're talking
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: about is a broadening of perspective, a broadening of perspective
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: with God's self-disclosure opening the world up to us and
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: allowing us to see it for what it really is.
• 33:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah. And look, Christians have always driven discipleship. you know,
• 33:12
  Speaker 3: kind of discovery and innovation. You go back and look
• 33:14
  Speaker 3: at how many Christians drove this, and they drove it,
• 33:17
  Speaker 3: you know, from two aspects. Again, there was always this
• 33:21
  Speaker 3: underlying push from what we think of as the Old
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: Testament scriptures into the New Testament of this idea of
• 33:29
  Speaker 3: human flourishing. How do we make life better for people?
• 33:33
  Speaker 3: I came that you might have life and have it
• 33:35
  Speaker 3: more abundantly. You know, how do we push that? How
• 33:38
  Speaker 3: do we help? That's why Christians drove medical research and
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: education and all these things that were meant to help humans,
• 33:46
  Speaker 3: you know, live better lives to flourish in there. And
• 33:49
  Speaker 3: that was a lot of that, as you said, was
• 33:52
  Speaker 3: driven out of not only curiosity, but out of, you know, necessity, right?
• 33:56
  Speaker 3: The mother of all invention and pushing those envelopes forward
• 34:02
  Speaker 3: and exploring that. And then there was the other side
• 34:05
  Speaker 3: of it on the scientific side where a lot of
• 34:08
  Speaker 3: scientists knew that this world was created by God, God
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: the creator. And so it had order and meaning to it.
• 34:15
  Speaker 3: And let's discover that order. Let's discover that meaning. Let's
• 34:18
  Speaker 3: keep diving deeper into these issues. If AI can replace,
• 34:24
  Speaker 3: all of a sudden replace that, and as you said,
• 34:27
  Speaker 3: take away that That drive, again, get us back to
• 34:31
  Speaker 3: the easy consumer-driven, oh, that's an elm tree. I don't
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: need to go look at that or this plant is
• 34:37
  Speaker 3: this or this does that. The kind of thing that
• 34:40
  Speaker 3: we always have, this answer's right there in our pocket
• 34:44
  Speaker 3: with our phone is right there in a second. I
• 34:47
  Speaker 3: do think that that is going to be more detrimental
• 34:51
  Speaker 3: on humanity than it is going to be pushing this
• 34:55
  Speaker 3: human flourishing. And I think it's sort of going to
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: dumb down humanity rather than make humanity more intelligent. You know,
• 35:04
  Speaker 3: when I was in the Navy, you go through engineering school, right?
• 35:08
  Speaker 3: And one of the things they make you learn is
• 35:11
  Speaker 3: you have to learn the formulas and the principles and things,
• 35:14
  Speaker 3: how to do those without the calculator. You know, learn
• 35:18
  Speaker 3: to do it first, learn the foundation and understand the foundation.
• 35:22
  Speaker 3: And then you can use the tools that make it
• 35:25
  Speaker 3: more efficient and automated. But you have to have that
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: foundation first. What happens when we lose that foundation or
• 35:33
  Speaker 3: we outsource that? That's another thing we're good at. We
• 35:37
  Speaker 3: outsource that foundation to artificial intelligence there. So just like
• 35:44
  Speaker 3: you said, this conversation, there's a lot of questions that
• 35:48
  Speaker 3: we have to have, and we have to have these conversations.
• 35:52
  Speaker 3: And pastors... And church leaders and Christian colleges and professors,
• 35:59
  Speaker 3: church intellects, Christian intellects need to be involved in these
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: conversations and not, as you said earlier, sometimes in Christianity,
• 36:10
  Speaker 3: we have looked at the bad side of technology and
• 36:15
  Speaker 3: then condemned it and not got involved. AI is here.
• 36:18
  Speaker 3: One of the things I tell if it is here
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: is not going away. It's only going to keep on growing.
• 36:24
  Speaker 3: And if we're not involved in the conversation, it very
• 36:29
  Speaker 3: quickly could go in the wrong direction as far as
• 36:32
  Speaker 3: the church is concerned, as far as humanity is concerned.
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: You know, one of the things I'd be interested to
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: just hear your take on, and I know this is
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: a little far afield from the interview, so hopefully it's
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: not too much of a curveball, but, you know, You
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: have these sort of, I used to work at Moody
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: Bible Institute, so I'm familiar enough with how radio works
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: and you have radio stations and you have repeater signals
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: and all these kinds of things and.
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: All that costs.
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: And so when you're looking at that infrastructure, you're calculating, okay,
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: what's our reach?
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: What are we going to get back in donations? You know,
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: is this missional?
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: Like you have a whole calculus that you're doing here
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: that's saying we want to do X, we need infrastructure Y,
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: does that wash? You know, there's a real calculation there.
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: Same with book publishing, right? We love this book, but
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: we think it's going to sell two copies. We're probably
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: not going to publish it. You know, we like this book.
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: It's going to sell 40,000 copies.
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we can do that.
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: Like there's always these sort of space limitations or physical
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: limitations that are being taken into account. I think part
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: of what we're seeing with artificial intelligence is there is
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: no apparent limitation. And what I mean by that is
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: that we don't really see it. And so as we
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: talk about the ethics of artificial intelligence, we also probably
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: need to think about the ethics of physical infrastructure that
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: needs to be built, energy capacities, actual physical real world
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: sort of production modes that are powering all of this stuff.
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: But it does not seem like anybody particularly cares about
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: that in the same way that you might care about
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: buying another radio station have do you have any thoughts
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: on that it's just one of those things where i've
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: sort of been puzzling over it a bit why this
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: isn't a bigger.
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: Issue i i think it's starting to become a bigger
• 38:27
  Speaker 3: issue i know just you know i'm here in nashville
• 38:29
  Speaker 3: tennessee just north of us uh in the county just
• 38:33
  Speaker 3: across the line in kentucky uh right now there's a
• 38:36
  Speaker 3: big community uh um opposition to data centers that are
• 38:42
  Speaker 3: going to be built in that community because of, as
• 38:45
  Speaker 3: you said, electric consumption and water consumption and what does
• 38:49
  Speaker 3: it mean for the area and contaminants and all that.
• 38:54
  Speaker 3: I think that's just starting to be thought about. But look,
• 38:59
  Speaker 3: that's the history kind of manufacturing. We often think about
• 39:05
  Speaker 3: the the upside of things and not necessarily the downside
• 39:10
  Speaker 3: of things until it's sometimes too late and we've contaminated
• 39:14
  Speaker 3: an entire river or lost millions of acres of, you know, farmland,
• 39:18
  Speaker 3: productive farmland and such, and we do that. But, yeah,
• 39:24
  Speaker 3: that's a discussion. I think we're going to start to
• 39:26
  Speaker 3: see more of that. I actually think on the ballot
• 39:29
  Speaker 3: this fall, there are, in several states, there are initiatives
• 39:34
  Speaker 3: on the ballot that would curve the data center deployments
• 39:39
  Speaker 3: within different areas. But let's back up a second. AI
• 39:44
  Speaker 3: is not a U.S.-centric technology. tool. This is now also
• 39:49
  Speaker 3: a tool that governments are looking at and other entities
• 39:53
  Speaker 3: are looking at, and the dominance in this area could
• 39:58
  Speaker 3: change both the economic, social, and as we said, religious
• 40:02
  Speaker 3: face of the world. And so it's not something we
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: can sort of just look at the protectionism here in
• 40:08
  Speaker 3: the U.S. We will have to figure out how to
• 40:11
  Speaker 3: look at this from a global aspect as well. It's
• 40:16
  Speaker 3: going to be a tough call.
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I just find it.
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: I find it interesting that so much of this is
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: it's assumed that we should do it to your point,
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: the Jeff Goldblum quote, right? It feels like we're stuck
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: in what Jockey Law called the.
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: Technical imperative, right?
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: We're just being sort of pushed along by this current
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: and we're not really thinking about do I really need
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: this strange video of my baby dancing to some song?
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: that's taking up power and resources to produce. Now, I
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: don't know how much it's taking up. That's part of
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: the problem. You never know how much is being taken up.
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: And so it feels like there's space here for an
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: audit of some sort to sit back and say, what
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: are the really essential things that are going on with AI?
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: I just had a gentleman named Marcus Schwarting on, and
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: he's an AI researcher at SUNY. And he's doing some
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: really interesting stuff that isn't related to LLMs at all.
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: It's related to AI, but not LLMs. And so you
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: sit back and you say, well, there's some interesting research
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: going on. It's probably necessary and helpful, but it has
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: nothing to do with Claude or ChatGPT or Grok or
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: anything like that. Like these systems are sort of adjacent
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: to each other and they're all being largely run by,
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: you know, specific companies. But the question of do we
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: need it? We're not really asking that.
• 41:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we're not asking that. And if we do need it,
• 41:46
  Speaker 3: you know, just exactly how do we need it and
• 41:50
  Speaker 3: what are the, you know, payoffs? What are the things
• 41:55
  Speaker 3: that we're compromising in order to have that there? I
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: feel like we live in a world today where, you know,
• 42:03
  Speaker 3: we're already so full of distractions. Right. It's the problem
• 42:09
  Speaker 3: with media. Right. Media can be a great tool and
• 42:11
  Speaker 3: do a number of great things. But the overconsumption of media,
• 42:17
  Speaker 3: the overdependence upon media, the fact that we can become
• 42:21
  Speaker 3: addicted to media and and and, you know, already today,
• 42:27
  Speaker 3: you kind of disconnect ourselves from reality there. is something
• 42:33
  Speaker 3: we have to get back to, but we, we have to,
• 42:35
  Speaker 3: I think for us as Christians and particularly we talk
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: about this Christian communicators, you know, it's, it's sort of
• 42:43
  Speaker 3: getting back to the, to, to the, um, uh, uh,
• 42:47
  Speaker 3: darn it. I lost my train of thought there on
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: the football, you know, uh, um, for the green Bay
• 42:53
  Speaker 3: Packers and, you know, this, this is going to get
• 42:56
  Speaker 3: back to the basics. This is a football. Um, we,
• 42:59
  Speaker 3: we have to get back to the basics of, for
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: us of what does it mean for us to hold
• 43:04
  Speaker 3: a biblical worldview first and foremost? What does it mean
• 43:10
  Speaker 3: for us to be created in the image of God?
• 43:12
  Speaker 3: How does that separate from anything that humanity is going
• 43:15
  Speaker 3: to create, including artificial intelligence or artificial humanity? And how
• 43:22
  Speaker 3: do we help make sure that the church is stays
• 43:25
  Speaker 3: grounded on that solid foundation, the foundation of the gospel,
• 43:30
  Speaker 3: the foundation of Christ, the foundation of the principles that
• 43:34
  Speaker 3: God gave us, so that they're equipped the best they
• 43:38
  Speaker 3: can to deal with these issues in this ever-moving landscape
• 43:42
  Speaker 3: of artificial intelligence going forward. That's, I think, the number
• 43:47
  Speaker 3: one challenge for us as the church and Christian communicators.
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: Would you say that's partly why Media matters more now
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: in this sort of Christian media specifically matters more now
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: in this era of information overload. I mean, I would
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: almost sharpen that and say something like more analog forms
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: like radio, like book publishing, as opposed to Christian media
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: that is YouTube, TikTok, even podcasting. Because they can be
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: captured back in by AI, we're almost feeding the beast.
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: But radio and publishing... don't exactly. So yeah, just your
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: thoughts on that.
• 44:28
  Speaker 3: Well, no, absolutely. I think I'm more of an analog
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: approach of radio, of actual physical hard book publishing. But
• 44:36
  Speaker 3: I also think one of the things I'm worried about
• 44:40
  Speaker 3: in this virtual world, but also not neglecting the fellowship
• 44:43
  Speaker 3: of one another and getting together and actually having a
• 44:48
  Speaker 3: Bible study with, as God said, I gave to the
• 44:51
  Speaker 3: church pastors and evangelists and teachers, and having that study
• 44:57
  Speaker 3: where you're actually in the room with people, and you're
• 45:02
  Speaker 3: learning from somebody who God has equipped to do this,
• 45:06
  Speaker 3: and you're interacting with the other people in the room
• 45:09
  Speaker 3: in a way that you can only do, humanity can
• 45:12
  Speaker 3: only do when you're in a room full of people.
• 45:14
  Speaker 3: And so I do think those different analog, as you
• 45:17
  Speaker 3: put them, approaches are going to be important. And that
• 45:21
  Speaker 3: doesn't mean as a church that we're rejecting AI, but
• 45:27
  Speaker 3: it means we're holding to the foundation and looking at
• 45:30
  Speaker 3: AI what it is. It's an artificial tool created by
• 45:34
  Speaker 3: man and should be always thought of as such.
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, to your football analogy, right? You can
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: have all the stats and figures, all the data synthesized
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: and everything. But if your quarterback goes out there and
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: looks at the football and says, what's this?
• 45:50
  Speaker 2: You're in trouble.
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: And so you've got to have that sort of grounding there,
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: that back to the basic sort of notion that the
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: church is an embodied entity. And that means we have
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: to be embodied together at some point. It can't all
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: just be in the ether. We can have it in
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: the ether. to some degree, but you can't dismiss the
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: embodied witness of what the church is.
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: Really helpful. Yeah, really helpful.
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: I'll throw you out last question and we'll close it
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: out here. But, you know, when you think about what
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: NRB is doing in the next 82 years, you know,
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: what do you what do you see coming forward as
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: maybe in the next generation of Christian broadcasting, religious broadcasting
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: that you're excited about?
• 46:47
  Speaker 3: You know, one of the things that we're interested in,
• 46:50
  Speaker 3: we've had this discussion on AI and stuff, but one
• 46:52
  Speaker 3: of the statistics we didn't toss out and talk about,
• 46:55
  Speaker 3: and it kind of goes with this, is the interesting
• 46:58
  Speaker 3: thing is the generation, at least what I've read now,
• 47:02
  Speaker 3: that is more skeptical and also kind of rejecting AI,
• 47:07
  Speaker 3: are the Gen Zs and the Alphas. Because it's not
• 47:12
  Speaker 3: for some of the reasons we've talked about, but they're
• 47:14
  Speaker 3: looking at it as, you know, as tools that are
• 47:17
  Speaker 3: going to replace their jobs and not see the American
• 47:19
  Speaker 3: way and not be able to see. And there's, you know,
• 47:22
  Speaker 3: there's kind of that skepticism out there. I'm excited because, look,
• 47:27
  Speaker 3: we live in the greatest time of human communications that's
• 47:32
  Speaker 3: really ever existed. I mean, we have, these cell phones
• 47:35
  Speaker 3: in our pockets and we can communicate around the globe,
• 47:38
  Speaker 3: you know, practically instantly there. And that, again, that gives
• 47:43
  Speaker 3: us a lot of tools and things at hand. Christians
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: have always been, you know, some of the leaders in
• 47:50
  Speaker 3: taking these tools and figuring out ways that they really
• 47:52
  Speaker 3: do can help the gospel and help human flourishing. I'm
• 47:57
  Speaker 3: confident that God is going to raise up leaders in
• 48:01
  Speaker 3: the next, some of the giants that we've had in
• 48:04
  Speaker 3: the past who are going to help navigate through these
• 48:08
  Speaker 3: things so that the gospel can move forward. And some
• 48:10
  Speaker 3: of the innovations that young kids are doing, I read
• 48:14
  Speaker 3: recently about a young man who was just on the
• 48:18
  Speaker 3: Xbox platform, and he, with all these guys he was
• 48:22
  Speaker 3: gaming with, he started a Bible study. And it started
• 48:26
  Speaker 3: off with about eight or nine guys, and now it's
• 48:28
  Speaker 3: well over 200. And I know it's virtual, but it's
• 48:33
  Speaker 3: an actual, they're actually talking to each other. But it's
• 48:37
  Speaker 3: a real Bible study. So I'm just excited and know
• 48:41
  Speaker 3: that we're going to move forward and Christian communicators are
• 48:45
  Speaker 3: going to, I think, lead the way to help see
• 48:47
  Speaker 3: how some of these tools can keep the gospel in
• 48:50
  Speaker 3: the public space and help humanity remain humanity.
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: Very cool.
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: Well, anywhere that we can route listeners to get more
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: information about NRB or about you?
• 49:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, nrb.org is our main website. You can find out
• 49:06
  Speaker 3: all of these things we're doing, talking about AI, talking
• 49:10
  Speaker 3: about a number of things that go on up in
• 49:12
  Speaker 3: the Congress and other different areas there. You can find
• 49:16
  Speaker 3: out about our annual conference. It'll be in February in Washington, DC.
• 49:20
  Speaker 3: and also all the places on social media where you
• 49:23
  Speaker 3: can follow us a little as well that's it that's nrb.org.
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: Very good i will include that in the show notes
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: everybody so you can check out nrb if you'd like
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: and uh troy it was a pleasure talking with you
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: this was great uh thanks for being on the show Well, thanks.
• 49:38
  Speaker 3: For having me. It was a great show. Great talking
• 49:40
  Speaker 3: to you.
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: All right, everybody.
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: Well, we'll catch you on the next episode of Thinking Christian.
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: So take care. Just want to take a second to
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: us on the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio.com,
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: you'll find dozens of other faith-centered podcasts in their network.
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more.