Latest / Thinking Christian: Bible, Theology, and Culture / Who Pays for the Data Center? AI, Politics, and Faith: Politics and Faith #14

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Who Pays for the Data Center? AI, Politics, and Faith: Politics and Faith #14 · 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 1: I'm Dr. James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful, theological discussions, Thinking
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  Speaker 1: Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world
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  Speaker 1: and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that
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  Speaker 1: hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now, on to
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  Speaker 1: today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey, everyone. Welcome to this
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: episode of Thinking Christian. I'm Dr. James Spencer, and I'm
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  Speaker 1: joined by Dr. Ashish Varma. And today we're going to
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  Speaker 1: talk a little bit about artificial intelligence as it relates
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  Speaker 1: to politics. So we've been doing our political series here
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  Speaker 1: on Thinking Christian for a while now, and we're kind
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  Speaker 1: of in the midst of it. And so instead of
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  Speaker 1: having another guest on or doing one of our reaction shows,
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  Speaker 1: we're going to deal with artificial intelligence and its role
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  Speaker 1: in politics. And we could start with something that's very specific.
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  Speaker 1: Right now, there are several articles out. I wrote one
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  Speaker 1: for Christianity.com, but there are other pieces out there. If
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  Speaker 1: you check to Google News and just maybe got on
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  Speaker 1: there and said like data warehouses and politics, you would
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  Speaker 1: pull up a lot of news pieces where people are
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  Speaker 1: frustrated about the sort of data centers that have to
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  Speaker 1: be built. to handle all of the energy needs to
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  Speaker 1: train and deploy artificial intelligence. And these are becoming bigger
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  Speaker 1: deals because they do take up an awful lot of space.
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  Speaker 1: They take up an awful lot of natural resources. But
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  Speaker 1: on some level, more telling, they also don't add a
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  Speaker 1: lot of jobs to the places where they're put. And
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  Speaker 1: so this isn't like putting in, you know, in the
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  Speaker 1: old days, we might've had like a car factory where,
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  Speaker 1: you know, there would have been a lot of people
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  Speaker 1: employed by that car factory or a steel mill or
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  Speaker 1: something like that. Those also took up natural resources. Those
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  Speaker 1: also took a toll on the environment, but there was
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  Speaker 1: a sense in which the economic life of a community
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  Speaker 1: could be bettered by providing jobs within these spaces. And
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  Speaker 1: AI data warehouses simply don't seem to be doing that.
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  Speaker 1: And so we'll dig into that a little bit more.
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  Speaker 1: But just as a preface, that's what we're going to
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  Speaker 1: be talking about today. That's the general direction of this.
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  Speaker 1: And really wrestling with the tech lobby and where we
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  Speaker 1: need to go to be thinking about and really deeply
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  Speaker 1: considering the sort of regulations that maybe should be put
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  Speaker 1: around tech and ultimately the way we respond to it,
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  Speaker 1: use it, all those kind of pieces. So I'll leave
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  Speaker 1: it there. Ashish, if you want to kind of riff
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  Speaker 1: off that, feel free. But otherwise, let's just dive in.
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  Speaker 2: I do. I want to riff, but I also want
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  Speaker 2: to maybe supplement. There are a lot of issues at
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  Speaker 2: stake in this conversation, right? You mentioned some of them,
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  Speaker 2: job creation, use of resources, Arguably, even the question of
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  Speaker 2: how we understand the world, do we understand it as
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  Speaker 2: a set of resources, is a deep theological question that
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  Speaker 2: puts something, I think, of a wedge between if we're
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  Speaker 2: really thinking through the biblical narrative and theological being and
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  Speaker 2: the ways that our current forms of politics, government, social order,
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  Speaker 2: think about land resources use. And that's something maybe we
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  Speaker 2: can get into as well. Kind of on a meta level,
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  Speaker 2: I want to introduce what might seem like an inane topic,
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  Speaker 2: but you and I have both heard plenty of times.
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  Speaker 2: You know, we've read our Bible, we've heard the pastor preach,
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  Speaker 2: we've heard this doctrine, this, that, or the other, and
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  Speaker 2: it sounds really important and we accept that, but we
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  Speaker 2: don't really get how it matters for everyday life. And
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  Speaker 2: I think to some degree what we've done, both in
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  Speaker 2: talking to Kevin Flatt and in the ways that we've
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  Speaker 2: tried to bring that into a variety of discourses is
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  Speaker 2: to show that the ways in which we're approaching the
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  Speaker 2: faith are themselves already a bit skewed when we just
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  Speaker 2: think in terms of the content of our faith are
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  Speaker 2: these dogmatic claims. And don't hear me as saying these
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  Speaker 2: dogmatic claims don't matter. They do matter, but they are
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  Speaker 2: second order. And what we've said about this before is
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  Speaker 2: that Second order is always an attempt to make sense
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  Speaker 2: of a way of being, right? To make sense of
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  Speaker 2: a biblical narrative, to make sense of theological posturing, to
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  Speaker 2: make sense of a way of being. They are not
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  Speaker 2: meant to be themselves replacing of those other things. And
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  Speaker 2: when we replace them, we get the sort of things
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  Speaker 2: that Kevin Flatt talked about, which is an idea of
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  Speaker 2: religion as a set of practices and beliefs that often
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  Speaker 2: seem set apart from the everyday life. And so the
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  Speaker 2: questions make sense. But I think what we're getting in
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  Speaker 2: a topic like this is that theological being, biblical being,
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  Speaker 2: whatever one wants to call it, is a question of
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  Speaker 2: what does it mean to faithfully inhabit the world as
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  Speaker 2: the people that God has made to be caretakers of
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  Speaker 2: the world, to be part of creation, to be drawing
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  Speaker 2: from creation, to have that creation drawn into us, even
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  Speaker 2: as we represent in some sense, as image bearers, the
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  Speaker 2: presence of God to it, to cultivate it. to bring
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  Speaker 2: it into its fullest sense of thriving on its own terms,
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  Speaker 2: how does that mandate and that sense of creational being
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  Speaker 2: sit alongside the idea of what technology is trying to
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  Speaker 2: do and what technology is trying to serve? Something like
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  Speaker 2: AI is trying to serve, something that you yourself have
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  Speaker 2: hinted at both on the podcast and in your writing
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  Speaker 2: of all the ways in which we use AI to
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  Speaker 2: create nothing to do, to do utterly nothing other than
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  Speaker 2: just to say, we made this silly video, right? Or
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  Speaker 2: we made this deep fake of fill in the celebrity, right? Um,
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  Speaker 2: there is a wedge here between what we're trying to
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  Speaker 2: articulate as a way of being in the world and
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  Speaker 2: what these programs are after. And that's going to come
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  Speaker 2: to a head then and how we understand all these
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  Speaker 2: other issues, right? Like the toll on the environment, um,
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  Speaker 2: The use of space, the communities that are most affected
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  Speaker 2: by the space, the use of energy, and the powering
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  Speaker 2: of these sorts of things. What sorts of goals are
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  Speaker 2: we after? And it seems to me that big tech,
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  Speaker 2: if we can use that term, or coin that term
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  Speaker 2: if it doesn't exist, has particular goals that might not
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  Speaker 2: align with what we see as theological or biblical being
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  Speaker 2: in the world. So I want to kind of set
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  Speaker 2: that up as a supplement to what you're saying. as
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  Speaker 2: the ways in which we're trying to approach this topic.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's really helpful because I would argue
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  Speaker 1: that even when the goals of technology are stated, they
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  Speaker 1: tend to run afoul with what we normally would think
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  Speaker 1: of as a biblical or theological lifestyle. And so let's
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  Speaker 1: just take one. Let's say one of the goals that
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  Speaker 1: you often hear with any technological tool, any technological system
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  Speaker 1: that's put out is it's going to make us more efficient.
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  Speaker 1: This is largely an argument of AI. It's going to
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  Speaker 1: make us more efficient, going to be able to do
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  Speaker 1: things more efficiently. We can do things faster. We can
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  Speaker 1: do things with greater ease. Now, all of that doesn't
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  Speaker 1: sound that bad, right? Efficiency on its own, applied to
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  Speaker 1: specific scenarios that probably any of us could think of
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  Speaker 1: in our head we're kind of sitting back going yeah
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  Speaker 1: it'd be great if that were more efficient that could
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  Speaker 1: be helpful i think the trouble is that as we've
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  Speaker 1: made things more efficient we haven't slowed anything else down
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  Speaker 1: and so there's a difference between saying uh yeah we
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  Speaker 1: can make this more efficient um We were just talking
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  Speaker 1: about working out before we got on the podcast. And
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: as I've gotten a little bit older and a little
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  Speaker 1: bit wiser, I don't spend three hours a day in
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  Speaker 1: the gym. My workouts have gotten more efficient. I've learned
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  Speaker 1: what's effective to produce strength, to build muscle, and to
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  Speaker 1: get a good workout in. And so I can get
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  Speaker 1: in and out of the gym in, let's say, an hour,
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  Speaker 1: as opposed to three. I've eliminated a lot of what's
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  Speaker 1: usually referred to as junk volume. That's a good sort
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  Speaker 1: of efficiency. I'm doing what's effective for me in the
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  Speaker 1: moment to accomplish a very particular goal of getting stronger,
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  Speaker 1: taking care of my body, being fit. And I'm not
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  Speaker 1: spending three hours in the gym doing things that are
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  Speaker 1: completely unnecessary to that. That's a good sort of efficiency
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  Speaker 1: in my mind. A lot of times what we get
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  Speaker 1: in technology, though, is we get the ability to be
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  Speaker 1: efficient for 12, 15, 20 hours a day. because part
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  Speaker 1: of the efficiency that occurs creates actually more work for us.
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  Speaker 1: And so I think we've used this example on the
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  Speaker 1: program before, but if we think about, you know, sort
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  Speaker 1: of how email or texting has created an ease, a
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  Speaker 1: more efficient way for us to communicate, that's true. It's,
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  Speaker 1: it's quicker than the snail mail that we used to use. It's,
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  Speaker 1: more reliable in some ways than the telephone because we
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  Speaker 1: know people are receiving it. You don't have to leave
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  Speaker 1: a voicemail or just miss someone altogether because they're not
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  Speaker 1: in the same place as a phone. And I'm thinking
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  Speaker 1: a physical wall phone like I had in my house, right?
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  Speaker 1: When I was growing up as a kid. If I
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  Speaker 1: wasn't home, I was missing those calls. And so there's
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  Speaker 1: a lapse in communication there. Well, when you text someone,
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  Speaker 1: the general understanding is that 100% of those are getting received.
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  Speaker 1: And the problem with that is that when we're receiving 100%
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  Speaker 1: of the messages that we're being sent, we feel like
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  Speaker 1: we need to respond to or read or be on
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  Speaker 1: alert for all of those messages. It becomes this sort
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  Speaker 1: of social expectation that now we have one other thing
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  Speaker 1: in our lives that we have to respond to. It's
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  Speaker 1: all these texts. Well, that's not terribly efficient. It just isn't.
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  Speaker 1: Because we've gone from maybe somebody thinking twice about a
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  Speaker 1: letter that they're going to write and send or a
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  Speaker 1: phone call that they're going to make, right? Because they
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  Speaker 1: know that they have to put some level of effort
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  Speaker 1: in to getting texts from companies, from getting random texts
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  Speaker 1: from friends, to getting all of these different sort of
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  Speaker 1: communications that because it's easier to send them, we get
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  Speaker 1: more of them. And as we get more of them,
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  Speaker 1: we either have to begin ignoring them which isn't terribly efficient,
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  Speaker 1: or we have to answer all of them, which isn't
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  Speaker 1: terribly efficient. And so what we've created in this efficiency, right?
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  Speaker 1: And I'm using air quotes for those of you who
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  Speaker 1: are just listening. This efficiency is really quite inefficient if
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  Speaker 1: you think about it in the right way. And then
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  Speaker 1: what that ends up doing as we think of it
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  Speaker 1: from a biblical and theological perspective in the ordering of time,
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  Speaker 1: We're very much collapsing time in ways that I don't
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  Speaker 1: think God ever really intended. For us to have that
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  Speaker 1: sort of instantaneous communication with people who are disembodied from us,
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  Speaker 1: if you just think about that for a moment, it's
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  Speaker 1: not a bad thing that we're able to communicate, but
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  Speaker 1: it isn't exactly natural either. And as we let more
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  Speaker 1: and more of this communication in, and it isn't just ads,
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  Speaker 1: it's everything else. As we let more and more of
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  Speaker 1: that communication in, our time becomes something other than our own.
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  Speaker 1: It becomes something other than something we could give to God.
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  Speaker 1: It becomes much more difficult for us to carve out
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  Speaker 1: space to just say, I'm not going to look, I'm
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  Speaker 1: not going to read, I'm not going to answer, I'm
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  Speaker 1: not going to do anything right now with my time.
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  Speaker 1: And if I want that time, I have to do
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  Speaker 1: something like put my phone on Do Not Disturb, which
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: I have it on for the podcast. Right. So we
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  Speaker 1: can have a good interaction and I'm not seeing messages
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  Speaker 1: pop up all over the place. Point is that what's
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  Speaker 1: promised is efficiency isn't always efficiency. It's almost always a
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  Speaker 1: you can do now more work over a longer period
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  Speaker 1: of time. And that expectation will build and build and
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  Speaker 1: build until you break. And I think we have to
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  Speaker 1: be cautious about that sort of, quote unquote, benefit or
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  Speaker 1: efficiency of technology because it isn't really benefiting us as humans.
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  Speaker 2: This is good. A lot of different angles to take
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  Speaker 2: from that. So maybe I'll just bullet point them and
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  Speaker 2: see which ones stick, which ones we want to work through.
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  Speaker 2: I appreciate the use of the conversation on efficiency because
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  Speaker 2: I think that it signals a bit of a tension point, right?
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  Speaker 2: On one level, what's efficient for one person seems like
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  Speaker 2: it may not be efficient for someone else, right? It's
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  Speaker 2: efficient for me to send you the text message, and
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  Speaker 2: it's efficient for 100 people to send you the text message,
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  Speaker 2: and there you are with 100 text messages or the email, right?
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  Speaker 2: I think about before that with the email, studies showed
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  Speaker 2: that whereas conventional logic might have thought that emails, because
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  Speaker 2: they're not using paper, reduced the need for paper, it
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  Speaker 2: turns out it actually increased the use of paper because
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  Speaker 2: now you send that mass email to everyone in the
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  Speaker 2: office and you call them to a meeting and everyone
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  Speaker 2: then prints it.
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  Speaker 1: Out, right?
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  Speaker 2: Whereas previously, perhaps they would have just gone and just
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  Speaker 2: presented points, right? So even the efficiency of an email
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  Speaker 2: created the inefficiency of the use of resources. Or we
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  Speaker 2: could speak the same about the text message, right? The
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  Speaker 2: fact that I can get it on my phone might
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  Speaker 2: mean that I have fewer things to print out now.
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  Speaker 2: But that also means that I'm more frequently charging my
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: phone and then charging my computer. And then everyone else
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: in my household is charging their stuff as well, right?
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  Speaker 2: And so perhaps we're actually drawn greater upon energy resources
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  Speaker 2: than before. So the efficiency thing is a bit... It
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  Speaker 2: hits at one of the key issues, right? That what's
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  Speaker 2: efficient for one may not be efficient for others. But
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  Speaker 2: I think on top of that, I also want to
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  Speaker 2: use efficient in scare quotes. Because what we think of
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  Speaker 2: as efficient may in fact not be what's best for us. Right?
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  Speaker 2: To do something efficiently, in one sense, might reduce the
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: reality of the building of character, let's say, or the
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: patience that's required to do something the long way. I
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: think about my middle schooler and the use of the calculator.
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  Speaker 2: Of course, when he's my age, I don't expect him
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: to sit down with a piece of paper and do
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: long-form math on everything that he needs to do. But
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: might there be a benefit to his development right now
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: to minimize the use of the calculator? There might be
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: times that he needs it. There are times that he
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: needs it. But to truly understand it, to understand the math,
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  Speaker 2: for instance, he has to do the work and go
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: through the process. And in that process, he might actually
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: learn that he's stretching his mind in ways that develop
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: it for ways that when he gets to other disciplines,
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: whether it be math or something else, he's built these
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: habits of mind into him. Or we think about the
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: efficiencies of the use of land, right? What might be
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: an efficient use of water by building a dam in
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: order to create electricity out of it also might be
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: deeply harmful to the other creatures of the earth that
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: depended upon water flowing in certain kinds of ways, right?
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  Speaker 2: It might actually be ecologically devastating, those sorts of things.
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  Speaker 2: And so the question of efficiency, not only is it relative,
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  Speaker 2: it also sometimes goes against what might be actually best
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  Speaker 2: for us right and i think that's a theological concern
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  Speaker 2: that has to be built into this as well right
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  Speaker 2: so so we think about ai and data centers ai
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  Speaker 2: does help us do some things really fast perhaps it
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: helps us write a report faster but does it do
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  Speaker 2: we lose something in the process the ability to actually
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: write reports or the process of learning that comes into
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: it when we're writing the report in which it's not
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: just the finished good but it's It's every step along
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: the way that's shaping us and building us. I've mentioned
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: this before on the podcast. I've long had in my
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: mind the great coach of the Chicago Bulls, Phil Jackson,
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: would always teach his teams that, of course, we have
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: a goal, and that goal is to win a championship.
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: And he did it at a higher clip than any
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: coach in NBA history, having won 11 as a coach.
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: But what really set him apart was the steps that
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: we go through It's a thousand mile journey, and it's
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: one step at a time. And he wanted to emphasize
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: that one step at a time. And one of the
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: ways that paid off for him that I thought was
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: really significant, and I don't see teams doing it very
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: often now, and I think it's to their detriment, is
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: often in late game situations, when everyone else calls for
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: a timeout to draw up a play, Phil would say, no,
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  Speaker 2: we're not calling a timeout. Because if I call a timeout,
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: the other team gets to set up a defense. I
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: have to trust that the steps that we've taken along
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: the way mean that my team knows what to do
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  Speaker 2: in this moment. And they've built those habits of practice
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: within them that they can take the next step. And,
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: you know, of course, they had his early team said
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: Michael Jordan, his later teams said Kobe and Shaq. Like,
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  Speaker 2: let's put that into perspective. But there was a remarkable
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: success of that, right? And I think there was something
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: to his philosophy that's instructive here, that efficiency is might
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: actually undermine a larger goal, which is to build character, right?
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: To build a fruit of the spirit, which is ultimately
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: what theological being is gearing us towards, to be certain
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: kinds of people. Does this make sense?
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: It does. I think I'm going to get this gentleman's
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: name wrong. I was struggling to remember what it was,
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: but I think it's Pincus wrote an article in the
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: 1960s or 70s He was an economist and he talks
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: about the tyranny of small decisions. And I think this
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  Speaker 1: is part of what we're struggling with when we're executing
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: on some of these technologies. Now, Phil Jackson, the way
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: you described him, he's got a bigger vision in mind
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: and he's going to architect back to the small decisions.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: Those every that very next step, right? Every step matters
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: in this thousand step journey. He's architecting backwards. He knows
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: where he wants to get to. He has a clear
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: vision of what he needs to do. And so now
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: he can sort of manufacture all of those steps along
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: the way to prepare his team to do what they
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: want to do. By contrast, what we often do is
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: we're presented with some new technology, some new ideology, some
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: new whatever it is. And we're given a choice. Do
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: you want it or do you not want it? Would
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: you like to use email?
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: Seems easy. Right. Would you like to use social media? Yeah,
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: that sounds great. Who wouldn't want to keep in touch
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: with their high school friends that they didn't really like
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: even when they were in high school? That sounds amazing. Right. Amazing. Right.
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: And so we pick these things up. And we just
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: start doing them. And we don't give any real thought
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: to where they're taking us. And so in this example,
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: we don't have a true end, a true telos that
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: we're aiming for. What we're doing is we're picking this
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: thing up and we're saying, yeah, I'd like to do that. Now,
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: what he describes in his article on these tyranny of
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: small decisions, he says, let's say an alien race comes
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: down and they present you with a car. And they say,
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: if you move away from your horse and buggy, we'll
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: give you these cars. And everybody said, you know, they'll
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: be able to get you to where you're going faster.
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: You know, you can take more people with you. They
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: don't need to be, you know, fed. They don't get tired,
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: you know, whatever it is, right? All of these benefits
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: of cars. And he says, most of us, and we
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: have as a society, we bought into cars. Yes, cars
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: sound great. They have these huge benefits and it's amazing. Now,
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: the way he phrases it, he's like, now let's say
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: that same Maryland race came down and said, in addition
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: to that, you're going to ruin your planet through carbon emissions. And,
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: you know, you're going to have less time together with
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: your family. You're going to have less community because you're
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: commuting and stuck in traffic jams constantly. You know, you're
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: going to have smog in L.A. You know, all these
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: negative benefits. Would we have thought twice about it? And
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: that's sort of his notion of these tyranny of small decisions.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: We're all making these small independent decisions about what we're
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: going to use without any context of a future negative
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: state where we sit back and say, oh, there was
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: a real downside to picking these things up, right? There
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: are downsides to cars. There are downsides to email. There
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: are downsides to AI. But if we're not clear on
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: where we're going, We can't gauge whether we're willing to
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: live with those downsides or whether we want to set
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: aside the technology and say, no, we don't really want
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: that world. That's not where we're headed. And so this analogy,
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: I think, that you've used with the Bulls and Phil
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: Jackson and all that, it's like because he knew where
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: he was going, he can understand the steps that it
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: would take to get there and then coach his team
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: toward that end. What we have is we have no
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: discernible telos other than some sort of amorphous, it'll make
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: life better. And then we're presented with tools that really
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: do have clear benefits in the near term at the
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: very least. But we have no idea where they're actually
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: leading us. And without that final telos, that goal, that
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: vision of what the future is going to be It's
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: very difficult for us to assess whether any given technology
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: is actually going to help us get there or whether
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: the downsides of that technology are ultimately going to hinder
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: us from getting there. Now, for Christians, we have sort
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: of that entelos. We just need to understand it. We
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: have a theological anthropology. We have an eschatology. We have
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: all these things. We understand where we're going and what
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: our aim is. Our aim is to pattern our lives
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: after Christ, to conform to his image. And so we
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: can ask ourselves, how are these technologies actually helping us
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: do some of that? Are they really helping me order time?
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: Are they really helping me order space? Are they really
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: helping me align and be that sort of, to gesture
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: back to Kevin Flatt's conversation in the sacred social order,
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: is my social order reflecting God's sacred order or is
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: it doing something else? We have the understanding of where
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: we're going that would allow us to ask those questions.
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: I'm just not always sure we always do. And I
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: would just throw in there that it's very difficult to
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: avoid all of the inconspicuous patterns that technology tends to
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: build into our lives. It's very difficult to avoid them.
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: And that's why I think the data centers are so
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: interesting because the data centers are not inconspicuous. They're an intrusion,
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: a big intrusion. They're noticeable. I mean, these are huge
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: multi-acre sites, right? They have to be built. They're physical.
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: They're staring you in the face if you have one
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: in your community. But I don't think data centers are
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: the only problem. They're an intrusive aspect of a bigger
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: problem that should prompt us to ask questions about six
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: or seven or eight or nine or 10 steps back
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: and say, If I don't want the data center, what
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: am I willing to give up not to have it?
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: This intrusive thing that I don't want, and intuitively I
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: know it's not good for my community, am I willing
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: to surrender Claude? Am I really willing to get rid
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: of a lot of these AI tools that are coming out?
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: What am I willing to get rid of so that
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: I don't even have to have the conversation about this
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: because this is not where I want the world to head?
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: And I think that it's the intrusive aspect of these
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: that's really crucial to grasp because everything else about these
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: technologies or most everything else about these technologies is very inconspicuous.
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: It trains us in ways that we don't really notice
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: most of the time.
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: This is key. We got here from several steps before, right?
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: We didn't just suddenly plop into this moment. it's a
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: bit of a natural progression, not in the sense that
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: we had to end up here, but it's not as
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: if there aren't already data centers that existed, right? They
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: existed before that for the cloud. We use Dropbox. We
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: use Box. We use Microsoft Drive, Amazon's version, whatever they
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: call it, Google Drive. I guess Microsoft's is OneDrive, whatever
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: it is. They all require these data centers, but they
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: could be more conspicuous. But now with the proliferation of AI,
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: They can't be hidden so much. And they very much
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: do connect to the issues of the physical that it
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: seems like that they've transcended above. They do not exist
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: without the physical, and that's the physicality of the places
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: in which you build them, the resources that they use,
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: the clean water that's being used to cool them. All
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: of these things matter. But to your point, it's the questions.
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: and the issues that came before them. So even if
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: we don't have a telos for what these things are,
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: they're given to us, we have been inscribed by our
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: very enculturation into a way of life in which someone
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: else's telos has been put upon us, right? Fill in
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: the name of whoever that is. The people that control
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: these things do have a telos. They do have a
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: goal that they're working towards. And that goal, there's a
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: variety of things. Some of it is influence, right? You
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: think about Just after 9-11, the way that Elon Musk
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: used the event and the legal system to ensure that
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: he would be forced into a contract with the government
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: for his Starlink process, he had a goal, and that
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: goal was to nestle himself into a place of influence
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: and a sense of dependency upon him. That's where he
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: knew his wealth would come from. His concern was less
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: about the companies that were being displaced. and I don't
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: have a lot of sympathy necessarily for the companies being displaced,
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: but his interests were also less with what this might
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: enable in terms of creation of jobs long-term. It was
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: his own influence. And that's what animated him, and that's
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: what animates a lot of these tech companies. How do
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: we sell this particular way of life in order to
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: trade for influence? And that influence comes in the form
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: of capital, comes in the form of proximity to those
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: who are policymakers. It comes in the form of the
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: ability to ultimately be able to dictate a way of
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: life that should be concerning to everybody, right? Not just
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: people of the Christian faith, but also to those of
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: the Christian faith, because it requires a series of micro-compromises, right?
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: So on one side, we want to talk about the
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: importance of recognizing the moment that we're in. That does matter.
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: We can't affect something that's outside the moment we're in.
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: It's not within the majority of our capacities to be
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: able to say, I think the right way of being
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: is fill in the blank, and I'm going to make
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: it happen. I can only make decisions within the moment
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: I'm in. But how do we get to these radical moments?
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: It has to be a series of micro-compromises, right? Well,
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: you know, that one thing is okay. I think about
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: this in the world of computing. I'm sitting in front
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: of you with my phone with its steady-state hard drive
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: and its sealed compartment so that you can't change the battery,
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: and my Microsoft Surface device with its steady-state hard drive
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: and its battery that I can't access, and its hard
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: drive that I can access nothing inside of. It is
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: a sealed device. I take that back to the days
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: in which I was in the computer world, in which
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: one of the coolest things for me was to buy
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: these shells so that I could build a computer. Now,
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: that's definitely a nerd moment. But one of the great
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: advantages of it was that the video card is no
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: longer sufficient. My motherboard can support something better. I pull
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: out the video card, I go down to the electronics shop,
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: and I buy a new video card and I put
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: it in. The degree of waste that's in there is
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: pretty minimal, right? And those cards could then be recycled
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: in some sense, right, to these companies. When my Surface
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: is done, it is done. I cannot open it and
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: still have it to be a functioning device. I cannot
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: go down to the store and find the products to
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: be able to hot swap things in and out. When
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: it's done, it's done. And I'm on, I think, my
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: fourth Surface device. If I'm counting correctly, I like the device.
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: But I can't upgrade it. I just have to be
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: done with it and move on, right? Why is that significant? Well,
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: it puts me in a position now where I've had
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: to make a series of compromises where the tech companies
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: made their wager that people will take the cool-looking factor
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: of these sealed devices and they could sell cool And
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: we could get away from the model that made them
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: less money, which was me going to the store and
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: just buying a new graphic card. Or buying a new
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: hard drive. And they were right. They wagered correctly. And
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: now we're in a position where I actually don't have
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: much of a choice unless I go and I build
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: my own clunky machine that's just not portable. I can't
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: take it anywhere. The advantage of this device is I
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: can take it wherever I go. Small thing, but a
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: big thing, right? Because it represents the larger landscape that
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: gets us to the present. in which we didn't just
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: plop here with data centers, a bunch of micro moves.
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: And those micro moves are things that we have to
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: have a certain sense of culpability for. But it also
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: means we have to at some point be willing to say,
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: let's thickly examine what's really at stake here. Thoughts on that?
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: I agree. I mean, I think that, you know, the
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: example of the computers, I was never much of a
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: tech guy, but I can remember buying additional hard drive
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: space from my computer and installing it myself on a laptop.
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: I mean, I can remember doing it and you can't
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: really do it anymore. And it's just a great example
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: of the way that we tend to get a little
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: bit squeezed in, right? If you think about right now,
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: and I actually think McLuhan has these four laws and
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: I won't go through all of them, but one of
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: them talks about sort of a, almost like a recursive
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: moment where, um, Technology is going to make certain things obsolete,
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: but then there's a tendency for it to bring back
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: things that had been made obsolete previously or bring back
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: things that were around previously. And my tendency is to
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: think that we're going to come into these recursive moments,
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: that we may not ever go back to writing letters
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: as our main source of communication. but I also don't
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: think that we're going to be driving into this completely
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: digital VR type world where, you know, you see in
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: things like the books, uh, ready player one and ready
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: player two, like a totally virtual environment or something like
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: the matrix where you're plugging in and you're interacting in
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: this totally virtual world, the metaverse that.
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: Um, we don't know it.
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Unless we're already in it. We don't know it. Um,
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: The metaverse that was proposed a few years ago, I
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: just don't know that I see that coming to fruition.
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: I think that is a radical step that probably won't
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: be taken. But I also, and so I say that
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: to say this, I think there is some hope that
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: we're seeing Generation Z sort of returning to the movie
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: theaters as opposed to watching things just on their phones.
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: But you have to be careful because it's not just
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: on their phone. I think what we're going to move
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: toward is a more hybrid future. And there's something in
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: that that is helpful because it shows us that we're
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: not caught 100% in this loop that you're describing. Yes,
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: I probably can't go and build my own laptop. That
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: is not something that I'm going to take the time
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: to do, nor is it something that I feel like
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: I have the technical ability to do. And if I
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: were to be able to do it, the way I
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: would be able to do it is I would go
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: on YouTube and watch a YouTube video and construct my
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: own laptop, which sort of defeats the point. You don't
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: exactly escape the loop at that moment. But I do
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: think that what these little sort of, like I said,
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: you know, Gen Z returning to the movies, right? This
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: sort of renaissance of vinyl, right? Albums and the coming
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: back of some of these, what we would consider to
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: be like vintage or analog sort of activities. I think
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: it's a really crucial sign that we don't want to lose, right?
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: We're not all just moving like zombies inexorably toward a
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: digital future. We are starting to step back and say, no,
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: I don't want this digital. I want this analog. I
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: want this physical. I want it different than you're giving
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: it to me. I think we saw a similar dynamic
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: with eBooks and print books. Print books should be dead
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: by now. They're not. People still like print books. And
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: so as much as we talk about, yes, I agree
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: with what you're saying. And like I said, I think
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: you have all these different inconspicuous patterns that are sort
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: of built in that are very difficult to avoid. It
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: isn't impossible for us to avoid all of them. And
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: I think that AI is probably the most inconspicuous of
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: all of these. It's easy to think that. especially with
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: the way AI interacts, that it's giving you good information,
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: that when you pull up a Google search and you
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: just hit AI mode, it's giving you the right information.
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: It's pulling from all the websites that you could possibly visit,
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: and it's giving you the best possible information. It's easy
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: to believe that. I'm not sure it's true, but it's
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: easy to believe.
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: It's definitely not true, but it's right.
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, we can subvert that by just saying, no,
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to use that AI mode. Or I'm
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: only going to use that AI mode for what's the
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: best restaurant in my area sort of queries, not deeper research,
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: certainly not biblical and theological information. Just don't use it.
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: And I think there are those little ways that we
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: can sort of step back from all of this and
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: start saying, I'm going to force myself back into what
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: would be considered an inefficient approach. I'm going to take
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: different steps because I'm heading toward a different goal. And
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: now I'm breaking out of these inconspicuous patterns where I'm
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: capable of doing so. And then accepting, to your point,
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: there are going to be those moments where I'm not
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: even sure you can buy a flip phone anymore.
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: You can't actually.
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: Can you? Okay, there you go.
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: To your point about vintage, they've come back because... Parents
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: don't want their kids to have the smartphones.
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: Parents don't want their kids to have the smartphones. And so,
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's a great thing. Like, get a flip
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: phone instead of a smartphone. I don't know how I'll
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: find my way places. I'll have to buy maps too
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: and just be lost most of the time. But it
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: is what it is, right? Like, now there are starting
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: to be these ways we can step out of it.
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: But there will always be, I think, ways that we're
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: going to get squeezed into that sort of bubble where
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: it's like, this is just part of our time. And
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: there really isn't another way to live, quote unquote, off
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: the grid in this moment. To do so is to
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: give up an awful lot of other things that most people,
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: myself included, would not be willing to give up.
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: This is good because I think it could be easy
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: to be lost in the criticism. And I've offered a
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: lot of criticism. And I think what you're showing us
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: is that the payoff is the small compromises don't have
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: to be the small compromises. It might be inefficient. But
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: maybe there's something built out of the inefficiency that's better, right?
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: So I can't turn off AI mode on my search engines.
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: The makers of them have not allowed us to. They
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: used to, and then they've gotten rid of that. But
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: what I can do is instead of going and being
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: satisfied with the AI overview that they give you and
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: then clicking the see more button, go to the webpage.
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: The webpage is actually what they're taking these materials from,
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: and the organizers of those webpages are the ones who
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: are actually losing when we just allow AI to aggregate
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: their information. Inefficient. But what we might learn is that
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: the aggregation left stuff out, because you have to leave
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: things out when you aggregate, right? Or even better, if
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: you want that recipe, go to the library, pick up
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: the recipe book, or go to your parent or your
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: friend or to your neighbor and say, hey, I know
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: I could get this online, but I really like how
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: you make that. You want to walk me through this
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: or you want to give me a recipe, right? Those
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: sorts of things. If it's the map, yes, it'll be
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: inefficient to get lost. I don't know about you. I
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: try not to use the maps function just simply because
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: historically I learn a place better when I get lost,
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: which is very inefficient. But when you learn a place better,
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: the ability to navigate and the ability to understand where
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: you are is so much more fulfilling, just to be blunt, right?
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: So there's little things like that that are training us.
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: If you're doing research, do real research. Don't be satisfied
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: with what AI is giving you. AI is aggregating again,
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: and then you have to ask the question of what
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: is it aggregating? Why is it aggregating the way that
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: it's aggregating? Why are some sources valued and others not?
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: Those are complicated questions to answer. Go find out for yourself.
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: What's going on in these particular sources? What's being done?
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: What is the aggregation? And I'll even say just anecdotally
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: that I've had plenty of conversations where we've allowed just
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: as a test for Zoom's function or Google's functions to say,
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: let AI take notes for you. And there's just enough
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: right there that if you're not paying attention, you could say, wow,
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: it took great notes. But it's actually quite bad. It
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: misses antecedents that change dynamics altogether. Don't trust it. That
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: doesn't mean it's not useful again. But there are bigger
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: things at play here than just simply buying into the system.
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: And it's those little compromises again that puts us in
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: the situation now where we have to ask the question,
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: can they build this data center here? Well, the answer
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: is yes, they will build the data center. Even if
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: we fight it being built at point X, it'll be
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: built at point Y because we've made the small compromises
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: and allowed that way of life to really undermine our
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: ability to navigate the world in other ways, ways that
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: are considerate ecologically, ways that are considerate of our neighbors
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: who have to deal with all the realities that go
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: with these data centers, ways that are inconsiderate to maybe
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: even my own children's future and finding jobs, and ultimately
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: ceding them to the few that have the most to
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: gain by these, right? The few in the tech industry
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: that are making these things, that are pushing them forward,
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: that are bringing them before us and dangling them as
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: really temptations in front of us, what they have to
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: gain is They don't have to pay your health insurance now.
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: Maybe do the research of why that's the way that
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: we even think about health insurance. It goes back to
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: the civil rights era. It's really interesting. Maybe that's for
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: another time. All of these little things are real opportunities
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: in front of us, but it's when we don't take
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: them seriously. And I think this is why we're doing
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: it as part of a politics and faith part of
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: that series is that No, there are opportunities in front
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: of us to actually exercise a voice that aren't just
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: merely subservient to the politicians who get their money from
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: the tech people. But our ability to exercise our concerns
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: and say, you know, here's what we really care about.
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: Here's what we really value, not just what you told
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: us we need to care about or the flashiness that
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: you've dangled in front of us to make us think
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: this is the right thing to care about, right? That
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: 10 steps down the line we'll regret.
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think about some of the conversations we've had,
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: which probably haven't aired as we're recording this one, but
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: we've talked a little bit about, you know, sort of
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: local engagement and political process and what you can do
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: in your local community as part of your political engagement
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: as a Christian. And I would say this ratchets it
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: down another level, right? If there's a coordinated effort of
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: Christians to sit back and say, hey, we're leery of
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: using AI for this. okay, just stop completely, right? That
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: would be an interesting political move. It probably wouldn't be
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: sufficient enough to sort of cut into anybody's profits or
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: even as a usage notice, but I think as a community,
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: it would be a very interesting thing to try. These
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: sort of concerted efforts to sit back and say, yeah,
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: as a community, we're just not interested in that. Stanley
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: Hauerwas wrote an article way back when about Christians participating
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: in the military. Now, he's a pacifist and he's got
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: his own bent on this. But I think the kernel
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: that I want to sort of draw out of that
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: article is just this, is that it's strange that Christians
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: are embraced into the military. From his perspective as a pacifist,
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: he's sitting back and saying, isn't it odd that Christians
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: would be such great fighters? And And what I think
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: he's sort of hinting at is we tend to get
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: assimilated into these ideas and embrace them in ways that
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: then keep us from really resisting where we should. And
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: I think it's just an important thing for us to
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: think about that sort of local aspect of this. When
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: we are making personal decisions, when we're making local and
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: community decisions, about technology use and where we're going to
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: execute and use technology in things like worship, in giving,
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: in any sort of form and function, we need to
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: be having these sort of deeper theological conversations and trying
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: to understand where this is taking us. So I'd say
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: that for one. The second thing I want to bring
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: out is an insight that I love from George Carlin.
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: He was a comedian back in the day. If you're
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: familiar with Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, he's the guy
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: who sort of shepherds Bill and Ted on their adventure.
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: And he was on Bill Maher's old show. Bill Maher
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: had a show before the one that he has, I
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: think it was called Politically Incorrect, if I'm remembering right.
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the PBS one, I think, wasn't it?
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. Or no, ABC, I think it was. Yeah,
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: one of those. And- Carlin makes this point. He says,
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: you don't have to have a conspiracy where interests are aligned.
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: And so what I want to be careful of at
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: this point in the program is saying that we don't
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: want to run the risk of feeling like conspiracy theorists.
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: What I would say is happening is there are interests
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: converging that not only political players' interests and tech players' interests,
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: but our interests. These are things that we're all interested
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: in and that we believe will benefit our lives. And
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: so as this is all coming together, we have to
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: really rethink what our interests are. We need to ask ourselves,
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: if I can sort of misappropriate Augustine language, whether we
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: have misdirected interests. Augustine would have talked about sins in
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: the terms of misdirected desires. And so misdirected interests. What
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: is it that we're trying to do and be in
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: the moment that may be hindering us from conforming to
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: Christ later down the road? What's going to become an
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: obstacle even as it helps us in this near term?
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: And I think that we've got to wrestle with that
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: a little bit because it isn't just the big tech
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: guys and the political guys colluding in a back room
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: somewhere where, you know, somebody's sitting petting a cat and
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: twisting their mustache. Like, It's not, I don't think, a conspiracy.
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: I think what it is, is it's a wired in
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: set of interests that are not taking the theological reality,
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: the theological fabric of the world into account. And Christians
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: have a, we're the only ones with a unique perspective
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: to really disrupt that. And I think that we need
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: to take a step back and really think through how
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: we would go about disrupting that.
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: Agreed. I don't want to sound like I'm peddling conspiracy theories.
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: I'm not sure I would agree on the non-theological part
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: of it. It may not be overtly or intentionally theological,
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: but I think it's deeply theological in the ways that
• 48:43
  Speaker 2: the use of the word pseudo-theological, the way that J.
• 48:46
  Speaker 2: Cameron Carter at USC would talk about it, that there
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: is a theology at place, there's an elevation at place,
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: there's a sense of supervening upon creation that's deliberately at
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: work to say this is the imagination that's being put
• 49:01
  Speaker 2: forth and there's an elevation a deification that is the
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: kind of deification that we get out of genesis 3.
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: Right and would you agree that that's oh sorry i
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: was just gonna clear would you agree that's often implicit
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: yeah i think that's yeah so i with you on
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: the pseudo-theological point. I would revise mine to use that
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: term and then say it's often implicit. I don't think
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: people know they're doing it. They wouldn't identify that they're
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: doing it, but they are doing it. Correct. Thank you
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: for that clarification. Go ahead.
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: No, that's kind of where I wanted to go, to
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: say that I don't know that you have the CEOs
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: of a tech company thinking, I am God. Though, you know,
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: I've been surprised before. I read a pretty long-form article
• 49:50
  Speaker 2: on Michael Jordan long after he'd retired by an ESPN
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: reporter that was really, really good. And he drew out
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: that Michael Jordan's codename for his security detail is Yahweh,
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: which That doesn't sound like an accident. It sounds like,
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: at the very least, his security team is trying to
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: say something. And this is a lifelong Michael Jordan fan,
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: by the way, and me. But that's troubling, right? Does
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: Michael know that's what they call him? Presumably he does.
• 50:20
  Speaker 2: There's something less implicit, let's say, in something like that.
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: And I wouldn't put it out of reach to say
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: that a.
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: Very.
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: a very wealthy person who's in control and has very
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: strong desires to continue the influence that he or she
• 50:36
  Speaker 2: might have, might have such lofty claims about themselves as well.
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: But I also recognize that the presence of that in
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: the Michael Jordan narrative doesn't necessarily mean that the president
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: of Microsoft or Cisco is doing that same sort of thing.
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: And so implicitly, Implicit is probably better if what we
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: mean by that is that even in the case of
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: Michael Jordan, does he really fully get the theological ramifications
• 51:08
  Speaker 2: of the kind of claim being made when that's his codename?
• 51:10
  Speaker 2: Probably not. Actually, I hope probably not. But nevertheless, pseudo-theological
• 51:19
  Speaker 2: claim it is. And pseudo, of course, not meaning quasi
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: or approaching. It's a theological claim that's false.
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: I think one of my theories here is that we
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: have what I would call a soft transhumanist philosophy that's
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: becoming more and more pervasive. Transhumanism is this idea that
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: we should use technology to overcome our biological limitations, even
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: the biological limitation of death. And so what you find
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: is sort of an interesting theological moment where the eschatology
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: for transhumanism is post-humanity or post-humans, right? These are things
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: that become something other than human. And so there's, and
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: they are in many ways, they have overcome the biological limitations.
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: And so we could say that they are better than humans.
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: There's an elevation or an escalation sort of aspect to this.
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: I don't think that everyone is a transhumanist, right? In
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: a hard sense, right?
• 52:36
  Speaker 2: Most of them probably aren't in a hard sense.
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: I would say most, yes, 100%. But I do think
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: that that mentality of there can be progress here. We
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: can overcome this through, you name it, medicine. We can
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: overcome this through whatever the next technology is. I think
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: that is becoming more and more pervasive in our culture.
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: And I think it's because it's often applied narrowly and
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: because we do have evidence, for instance, in medicine, right,
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: that these things are going to work eventually. We've solved
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: a lot of disease problems, and that's a great thing.
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: but that they're going to work eventually, that people sort
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: of hold out hopes like, oh, I've got a problem
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: with my neck right now. It's like, I can't believe
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: they don't have a fake disc that they can just
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: throw back in there and fix it. But they don't.
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: But I would say secretly, I'm sitting back going, probably
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: will at some point, right? And why wouldn't they? And
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: I think that we begin to sort of allow that
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: sort of understanding and philosophy to drive the way we
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: think about a lot of what's going on. But the
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: reality is that as we do these things technologically, there
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: are aspects of our reality we just can't get back.
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: We still have finite resources. We still have a finite world.
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: And so there has to be some cognizance about not
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: only When we talk about data centers, how much water
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: are they using? Where is all this power coming from?
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: What happens to the land underneath? Those are important questions.
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: But on our everyday level, we need to be asking ourselves,
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: where did all the time go? Right? What's happening to, like,
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: why didn't I go outside today? If I become a
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: hermit that's living in my house and just having groceries delivered,
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: You know, like we have to begin thinking about some
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: of those things as well because it isn't trivial. And ultimately,
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: I think we're seeing that progress in one area doesn't
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: necessarily mean human flourishing overall.
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: And that, I think, is a real crucial aspect of
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: this conversation.
• 55:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, agreed. And maybe the operative idea here is that
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: we're not talking about necessarily even explicit expectations or desires, right?
• 55:20
  Speaker 2: And that's why I want to emphasize with you the
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: implicit element. But it's more the notion that there's stuff
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: baked into the cake. And the cake represents the notion
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: of civility, of maturity, of what we tend to think
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: of We've used this trifecta a lot of what's good
• 55:38
  Speaker 2: and true and beautiful. And the questions that we should
• 55:43
  Speaker 2: be asking is why is that what's true and good
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: and beautiful? Is that what's true and good and beautiful?
• 55:49
  Speaker 2: And maybe even the beginning point is in the middle
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: of all that is the beautiful, right? Because sometimes it's
• 55:53
  Speaker 2: easier to recognize what's just in fact ugly. It may
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: in fact be quite ugly. Once we start to recognize
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: what the building of these data centers might mean for
• 56:05
  Speaker 2: the creatures of the earth that we were not only
• 56:07
  Speaker 2: to share the land with, but according to Genesis 2,
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: to care for. When we start to recognize what it
• 56:14
  Speaker 2: might mean in terms of the loss of good, clean
• 56:19
  Speaker 2: drinking water, and for whom is it a loss, right?
• 56:22
  Speaker 2: Which communities are especially going to be affected by this?
• 56:25
  Speaker 2: And my hint is it's not the gated communities. When
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: we start to consider the effects that it's going to
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: have on the power grid, Again, which power grids are
• 56:38
  Speaker 2: going to be affected? And my guess is it's not
• 56:41
  Speaker 2: the gated communities again. When we begin to think about
• 56:45
  Speaker 2: all these sorts of dynamics and what we've taken for
• 56:48
  Speaker 2: granted within that, and part of that is, why haven't
• 56:51
  Speaker 2: we gone outside today? Why don't we recognize that I
• 56:55
  Speaker 2: cannot live inside? I really can't. There's all this incredible
• 57:01
  Speaker 2: realization that's coming to play even in the medical community today,
• 57:04
  Speaker 2: what people have known for a long time. when you
• 57:06
  Speaker 2: get onto that airplane, a lot of people sit down
• 57:11
  Speaker 2: and fall asleep pretty quickly. The reason for that is
• 57:15
  Speaker 2: because we're entering into a lockbox of carbon dioxide. We
• 57:21
  Speaker 2: have a whole bunch of people piling onto this closed
• 57:23
  Speaker 2: environment in which the engines are not yet running, and
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: so the circulation of clean air from outside is not
• 57:29
  Speaker 2: coming in. We're in an environment that's heavily carbon dioxide.
• 57:34
  Speaker 2: That's why we get tired and fall asleep right i
• 57:37
  Speaker 2: got new windows put on my house in which the
• 57:40
  Speaker 2: company said these are a lot better energy efficiency and
• 57:43
  Speaker 2: sealing the place off the trap you could run into
• 57:46
  Speaker 2: is you don't open the windows and you end up
• 57:49
  Speaker 2: with stale air well the reason of this that stale
• 57:52
  Speaker 2: air matters is because again the fresheners of the air
• 57:55
  Speaker 2: the hepa filters that god made for us are the
• 57:57
  Speaker 2: trees outside but we're cutting down trees we have far
• 58:02
  Speaker 2: less forest reserves than we used to have and that's
• 58:05
  Speaker 2: just decreasing all the time right i think of vancouver
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: island off the coast of bc that's incredibly natural and
• 58:10
  Speaker 2: beautiful and yet a mere 10 percent of its old
• 58:15
  Speaker 2: growth forests remain and this is where we get the
• 58:18
  Speaker 2: majority of oxygen right that wind currents and all that
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: bring to the rest of us these forests never mind
• 58:25
  Speaker 2: rainwater and clean water and how that works through forests
• 58:28
  Speaker 2: and things like all these things are implicated within it
• 58:31
  Speaker 2: And so we've got to be able to ask the
• 58:33
  Speaker 2: question of what is actually lost so that I can
• 58:39
  Speaker 2: have a data center that lets me make a cute
• 58:43
  Speaker 2: birthday card or whatever.
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I think just to underscore this point, and then
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: maybe we can close out, but there's this study that
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: was done not too, too long ago. It was called
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: Body Electric. What Body Electric looked at was how much
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: movement do people who are working relatively sedentary jobs like
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: I do. right? I sit in front of a computer
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: an awful lot doing stuff on the computer, writing things,
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: what have you. So how much movement do I actually
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: need in a day? Well, I would have thought, you know,
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: I work out, I go to the gym or whatever,
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: and that would be enough. But what the study shows
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: is that our bodies are not designed to sit in
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: for prolonged periods of time. And so their guidelines and
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: recommendations were five minutes out of every half hour, you're
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: up and moving. Now you don't have to do anything strenuous.
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: Like they talk about just taking a stroll, right? Walking
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: around a little bit. They relax some of those, as
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: I recall them, you know, they do like 10 minutes
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: in an hour or something like that. But the goal
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: is it's pretty frequent and it's frequent throughout the day.
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: It's not just one exercise session for an hour during
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: the whole day. And what they saw was improvements in mood.
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: They saw improvement in various physiological categories. I don't have
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: to regurgitate the whole study here. People can go out
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: and look for body electric. They'll find it. But it's
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: an interesting case, I think, for us that hits home
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: in a very micro level of that the things we've
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: decided with regard to technology and the sorts of jobs
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: we're going to work, that wasn't all technology. I mean,
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: people worked office jobs all the time, right? But I
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: think particularly nowadays where a lot of our lives are
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: structured around devices, that is not how our bodies were
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: intended to be. The easier life gets, the more intentional
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: we're going to have to be about moving our body
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: simply because our body needs to move Whereas in the past,
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: we would have been moving our body because there were
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: tasks that needed to be accomplished that required us to
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: move our bodies. And we've passed sort of into a
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: different age. And I think it's sort of a microcosm,
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: an interesting microcosm of what we see with some of
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: these data centers. That we're assuming that the physical world
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: can sustain these data centers. But I don't know that
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: we're really sure of that. not really sure that we
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: can sit back and say, no, all of creation was
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: designed to have this much energy taken out of it
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: for no real production coming back into creation.
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: That's key. And that is, I think a really crucial
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: part of this. Like we have to recognize that these
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: things tend not to just stay at one level. Like,
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: oh yeah, my body needs to move, but a data
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: center should be fine. Right. Like, The same logic tends
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: to pull up because we're part of God's creation and
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: God's creation has a design and an order to it.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: It has certain limitations and it's supposed to function in
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: a very similar way. And so when we ignore those dynamics,
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: we are going to tend, I think, to feel more
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: tension than we need to. There's going to be more
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: friction that creates the sort of heat that could burn
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: us than we really want. And I think it's just
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: crucial for us to think through it in those different ways.
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: So last comments, man, and then we'll, we'll close out
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: this episode.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 2: No, I think that's a, that's a good ending point.
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: I think.
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 2: You've taken what could sound like a very critical tone
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 2: and you've, you've drawn us back to the stakes, right?
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 2: That the stakes are personal. The stakes are communal. The
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 2: stakes are theological. They're cosmic in the sense of the
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 2: entirety of creation. Um, And in some ways, maybe the
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 2: closing thing is the stakes are imaginative, right? Maybe our
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 2: problems are that we have so truncated an idea of
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 2: what life ought to look like, right? I think about
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 2: the reality of my kids when I told them that,
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 2: you know, you guys watch more TV than I'm comfortable with.
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 2: And they never watched so much that if I compared
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 2: it to some other households, I'd say, well, it was
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 2: always less, but I still wasn't comfortable with it. I
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 2: finally told them, you know, you ask a lot to
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 2: turn on the TV, and yet when the TV's not on,
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 2: I watch you guys. And the way that you guys
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 2: play is so incredibly creative. And it terrifies me to
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 2: think of that creativity lost because now you're just sitting
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 2: there and watching fill-in-the-blank show. Of course, occasionally we'll turn
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 2: on the TV, but how about we exercise that muscle, right?
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: And I wonder if there's an atrophy. That we see
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 2: our lives so tied to some of these things that
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 2: are technological that we've atrophied the muscle of going outside
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 2: and just taking enjoyment, walking among the trees, sticking our
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 2: hands in the soil in the garden, or even things
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 2: that are the result of lower levels of technology, right?
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 2: Hopping on that bike and taking a ride. And in
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 2: some ways, the continued atrophy is what's at stake, every
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 2: bit as much as for my son and the calculator.
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 2: atrophy of the mind and the ability to do complex
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 2: things not because he'll one day need to know how
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 2: to do like i've never i haven't used calculus since
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 2: college and that's okay but i think it was important
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 2: to learn to do it and to exercise the mind
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 2: in ways to develop thought patterns that have actually been
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 2: productive for me right i don't think without developing those
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 2: things then that going on and doing doctoral work in
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 2: theology could have happened right or whatever so the ability
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 2: to have problem-solving capacities is actually at stake as well
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 2: within all of this, the imaginative capacity to be able
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 2: to do things and to see things in different ways
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 2: and to problem-solve, to take the can of Coca-Cola and
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 2: instead of seeing it as a drink that gives us diabetes,
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 2: to see it as something that can help prevent corrosion
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 2: or take away corrosion on a battery terminal in a car, right?
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 2: That's an imaginative use of things that gets truncated in
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 2: the process.
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Agreed. No, that's a good ending, man. And hopefully, folks,
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: you'll kind of understand how this relates into politics. I
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: think a lot of politicians are weighing in on data centers.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: But more importantly, there is a local aspect to what
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: we need to do as we're evaluating technologies. And a
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: lot of that's going to be left up to our
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: own discernment. I'm not anti-AI. I don't think Ashish is either.
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: I use AI a good bit. Even in the production
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: of this podcast, our transcripts are created via AI. A
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: lot of the website I manage has an AI component
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: to it. I'm not afraid of AI and I'm not anti-AI,
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: but I do think that there are implications. I think
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: we need to have a judicious use of it if
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: we're going to move into the future in a way
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: that respects God's creation, that allows us to conform more
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: closely to the image of Christ. And if we keep
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: those things in mind, I think there's a whole range
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: of activities that we can engage in that will involve technology,
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: but there's a whole range of activities that we won't
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: be able to engage in. And, uh, and I think
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: that's up to moment to moment individual discernments. It's not
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: an anti-technology stance a hundred percent, but it's a call to,
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: for us to be digitally discerning as we move into
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: the future. So I'll leave it there. Um, Thanks for
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: the conversation, Ashish. Thanks, everybody, for listening. We'll catch you
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: on the next episode of Thinking Christian. Take care. Just
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: want to take a second to thank the team at
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: Life Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio.com, you'll find dozens
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: of other faith-centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows
• 1:06:57
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