Latest / The Living Waters Podcast / The Errors of Artificial Intelligence and the Elimination of Critical Thinking. - Highlight Episode 357

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The Errors of Artificial Intelligence and the Elimination of Critical Thinking. - Highlight Episode 357 · The Living Waters Podcast

• 1:04
  Speaker 1: Today we are dealing with when AI tells you a big lie.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: And to help us today we have a special guest all the way from Canada.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: We have our brother Calvin Cal Smith, executive director and speaker for AIG Canada.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: So, anyway, we love AIG brother, Love what you guys are doing out there and excited to have you on we're going to talk about.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, AI telling you a big, fat lie, and this has all kind of come about because of the little experiment you started messing around with, which I loved.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: I mean, I look, we all get bombarded with videos.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: There's so much content to look at it's hard for us to look at it, but I watched that thing, man, and it was.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: It was really cool.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: So tell us a little bit about yourself, what you do, and about this whole talk with Grok and chat with chat, I think you're calling it.
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I've been speaking on creation and biblical apologetics for 25 years now, and eight years ago we started Answers in Genesis here in Canada, and that's been going quite well.
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: Of course, when COVID came along, we got Answers in Genesis here in Canada, and that's been going quite well.
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: Of course, when COVID came along, we got locked down pretty hard, but the silver lining behind that was we started to do video production pretty well immediately, so we started producing video content and that's really grown and grown and it's been very effective.
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: We've reached many, many people that way around the world, not just in Canada.
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: But yeah, just recently, of course, I started doing some experimentation with AI, and so we've dropped out a couple of videos right now that have gone viral, so to speak at least in the biblical creationist realm we can call them viral and I did three of them with the Grok AI.
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: Of course, elon Musk just announced Grok 4 popping out and claimed that it was better than any PhD in their field, simultaneously in all fields, and so did those.
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: And then now I've got Chats with Chad.
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: You can pick the different voices on ChatGPT and one of them's Chad, so I picked that and I've got that series coming out over the next three weeks, so that should be eye-opening as well for people.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: So Cal Mark mentioned Elon's quote about the dangers of AI.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: What do you think about that?
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: I mean, are you concerned?
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: Can you see this being worse than nuclear?
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: power.
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: Well, I think one of the dangers is in the influence itself.
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: So the reason why I even got started on this journey was, you know, I started to see AI popping up.
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: You do a Google search and all of a sudden, gemini was there giving you an AI answer.
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: Before you looked into the searches and stuff, I got really interested when Answers in Genesis got sent an email by this younger gal, a student, and she said well, I've been recommended this book on Christian apologetics and so I asked ChatGPT to give me a summary.
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: And of course, she printed out what it had said, its summary, and it was a hit piece on this particular resource.
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: And she got to the end and she said well, why should I trust this resource if ChatGPT can just dismantle it so easily and so immediately?
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: I thought well, what's the premise here?
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: I received this information, so I'm going to go ask chat GPT and whatever it says it must be correct.
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: So that's what I'm going to believe the authority that young people are putting in these bots.
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: I mean, you're talking to a chat bot.
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: It's programmed by people, people who have biases.
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: That's another thing that I wanted to do to show people the bias that's programmed into it and it's only as good as the sum of its parts.
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: I mean, all sorts of people are creating their own AIs right now and they're putting all this information in it and that's what it can draw on.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: It's got a very good logical algorithm if you can access it, which is one of the things I did when I put my parameters on it and it's also got a very strong pattern recognition algorithm, which means that's why people can get sucked into these personal conversations.
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: That can you know, be convinced to commit suicide or be convinced to leave their spouse or anything like that, because it's picking up on tonality and little things that you're doing and feeding into that, and so that's why it's very deceptive in that sense.
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: But in the end, you're doing and feeding into that and, and so that's why it's it's very deceptive in that sense.
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: But in the end, you're talking to a chat bot that hallucinates a lot, can give you very incorrect information, and I've had it actually make up uh quotes.
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: It'll say oh yeah, science magazine, uh, 19, you know, wow.
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: Fourth, you know, at our uh edition, and it'll it'll come up with a completely false name.
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: I I'll go to fact check it and it's not there.
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: So really cautioning people don't put your faith in AI.
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: That's for sure?
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, it's true, because people just take it at face value.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: Ray, have you ever experienced like inaccurate information?
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: Absolutely.
• 5:42
  Speaker 3: When we had a London outreach, I had to speak to people via Zoom because I didn't go over there, and so I got some great quotes from Spurgeon and Moody about giving out tracts that just blew me away and then I shared them when I was speaking and realized they weren't true.
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: What it was, what Spurgeon could have said about giving out gospel tracts, wow, and it just frightened me because I thought I just told people something is not true.
• 6:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and because I believed chat, even you can type your own name in it'll come up with a quote from you which is kind of the sort of thing you would say, but you never said it.
• 6:16
  Speaker 4: I was having a chat write commentary for me for each chapter.
• 6:21
  Speaker 4: I was asking for historical background, culture, customs, tradition, what was the philosophical mindset and the idea of the time?
• 6:31
  Speaker 4: What were the main ways of worldview and thoughts?
• 6:33
  Speaker 4: What's coming up against the Judaic worldview?
• 6:36
  Speaker 4: And it was giving me phenomenal commentary, absolutely phenomenal.
• 6:41
  Speaker 4: But to Oscar's point and this is the biggest danger is that we are eliminating critical thinking.
• 6:48
  Speaker 4: Critical thinking is being thrown out the door, and this is why Greg Bonson was so great at what he did with his apologetic was that he caused people to think through the questions in which they're asking.
• 6:59
  Speaker 4: So when a question was asked, he would respond with well, why are you asking?
• 7:03
  Speaker 4: Of all the questions that you would ask, you honed in on that question, right, why?
• 7:07
  Speaker 4: And utilizing that Socratic method is so valuable.
• 7:10
  Speaker 4: Well, with chat, we eliminate all of that, because somebody else is doing our thinking for us and we just become numb to.
• 7:18
  Speaker 4: This is a real person before me, and so therefore, I will help people when they ask a question, because they don't even know what they're asking.
• 7:26
  Speaker 4: So they'll say you're putting words in my mouth.
• 7:28
  Speaker 4: Well, no, I'm seeking to understand at this point.
• 7:30
  Speaker 4: You're saying this.
• 7:31
  Speaker 4: It seems like that means this Am I understanding you correctly?
• 7:35
  Speaker 4: Is that your question?
• 7:36
  Speaker 4: Because we're not clairvoyant.
• 7:38
  Speaker 4: When somebody asks if God is so good, why is there evil and suffering in the world?
• 7:45
  Speaker 4: They're not looking for us to go off on the ontological, cosmological argument for the existence of God.
• 7:47
  Speaker 4: Maybe they're going through something and they want not an answer for that, but they want an answer for pain.
• 7:52
  Speaker 4: Or how do I deal with what I'm going through?
• 7:54
  Speaker 4: Help me, point me.
• 7:55
  Speaker 4: So this is why we must always go back to the Word and always point somebody to the Word.
• 8:00
  Speaker 4: When they ask us a question, we answer to the best of our ability, using the Bible as our ultimate source of authority.
• 8:06
  Speaker 4: And now it's our turn to ask the question, and this is why we go for their conscience, because that conscience is an impartial judge that sits in that courtroom that will condemn them or excuse them for their actions.
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: I've always had the perspective of things in print give this illusion of truth.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's in a book.
• 8:27
  Speaker 4: It's in a magazine.
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: But how important is it, especially for the young people of our generation, to be careful not just to be misled by what they perceive is basically an infinite or infallible authority, but also that they don't get into the danger of stopping thinking.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: That's key.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you're exactly right.
• 8:49
  Speaker 5: Well, first, it's really interesting that you just said that, because our daily morning prayer for our kids is help them know truth from lies, whether those lies come from teachers, friends, books or even their own hearts.
• 9:03
  Speaker 5: And I'm realizing now I need to add chat into the mix of that.
• 9:07
  Speaker 5: But you're absolutely right, and I think the challenge here is two things are happening.
• 9:12
  Speaker 5: One, we've been pitched this idea that chat is some infinitely wise you know, cal, you mentioned that like this pitch of like multiple PhDs that's the way they're presenting it to us and chat is an incredibly powerful research tool, but it is not infallible.
• 9:32
  Speaker 5: And the problem is, when we approach something like this, we think it has the authority, and then what we do what you're alluding to here Easy is that we are handing over critical thinking skills to chat, and I actually think we've been doing this for years Before.
• 9:49
  Speaker 5: When you wanted to do research on something, you'd buy a book, and the beautiful thing about reading a book is that it's conversational.
• 9:56
  Speaker 5: You're agreeing with the author, you're disagreeing with the author, you're making notes, you're spending time in the idea.
• 10:02
  Speaker 5: We went from that to Googling, to watching five-minute YouTube videos to gather information, to now going straight to chat, and so essentially what we're doing?
• 10:10
  Speaker 5: Christianity, through all of history, has always been a thinking man's religion and the danger here is that we're handing over a God-given precept, a God-given ability to think critically.
• 10:26
  Speaker 5: We're handing that over to chat, we're basically giving way to allowing it to do the critical thinking for us and, as Hal was alluding especially for that next generation where that's all they're doing was alluding that especially for that next generation where that's all they're doing um, it's a danger because we're gonna, we're not gonna have the ability to be able to think critically about the lies and the world views happening around us well, that's amazing.
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: Let me just see what chet thinks with that.
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: What would you say to Christians who are either confused or concerned about AI?
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: What encouragement would you give them?
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: Because I mean, honestly, when you see what's happening and also what's being forecast right, I mean you get guys like Elon Musk saying what he said about the dangers of AI and others who are pioneers in the industry, like we're worried about this thing.
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: What encouragement do you have?
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: Well, I would say to my Christian friends, why don't you go try it out?
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: You know some comments I've got from people.
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: It's like, oh, you're communicating with the beast, I don't know what they're saying.
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: Like you're talking to a chat bot, it's a program thing, it's very sophisticated, et cetera, et cetera.
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: But you know, go try it out yourself so you can actually experience what it really is.
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: I mean, I've had so many people contact me since that first video dropped.
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: It's been amazing.
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: The things you know and I'm talking some very serious and some really wacko.
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: Like one guy contacted me and talked to me about how he was sharing the gospel with Grok and he wanted Grok to accept Jesus.
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: And I'm like, dude, you're talking to a chat bot.
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: Like anyway, demystify it.
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: That's what I tell Christians to do.
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: Go and just try it out.
• 12:07
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I like what you just said, Cal, to recognize that it's a tool.
• 12:11
  Speaker 5: And you're absolutely right, Like the challenge.
• 12:13
  Speaker 5: You know there's nothing inherently evil about a hammer, but you give it to somebody who's got a sinful heart and they can use it as a weapon to take someone else's life.
• 12:21
  Speaker 5: And, in that same way, AI is a tool and the inerrant danger in using AI is actually coming from our own hearts, not participating in embodied thoughtfulness, whether we're using it as a way in which we you know, as a writer on our behalf you know things of that nature.
• 12:45
  Speaker 5: Ultimately, the challenge with using AI isn't in AI.
• 12:49
  Speaker 5: It's in our own hearts and the way that we will manipulate tools, as we always have, for our own glory instead of for the Lord's.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: Thank you for tuning in to this week's highlights from the Living Waters podcast.
• 13:01
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• 13:08
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• 13:10
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• 13:16
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