Part Two How Do We Prepare for AI’s Future?

you're going to be able to preach the gospel to every group of people on the planet. Well, now we see it's very possible and we can do it in a very short period of time because of social media, the internet. So the words of Christ are being fulfilled even now. Hey everybody, welcome back to the Blue Vineyard Podcast.

My name's Luke and I'm here with Adam. Hi Adam, how's things? Hey, Luke. It's great to see your lovely face once again.

Thank you kindly. Thank you kindly. Adam, last time we were together, we were talking about Christianity in the age of AI and you had a sermon coming up and we both said that we were going to go our separate ways and we were going to interview some people, get some context around it. How was your experience?

I did, I had a sermon and I am so thankful, the word that jumps in my head. I'm thankful that we started this series because I've had a chance to interview some incredible people along the way, which has helped with my thinking and my processing on this. I also went to a conference, maybe some might know it called ASI. And during that conference, I had so many conversations about AI and Christianity and how people are thinking about it, they're scared of it, they're excited for it.

Before we jump into some of these interviews, because we're going to get to those, I would love to hear kind of your hypothesis. What are some of the things that you're thinking about specifically on our title today, our title, which is, How do we prepare the church for AI's future? How are you thinking about that? Well, in the conversations that I had, everything in my mind distills down to a single point, and that is education.

Whenever you're dealing with humans and it's a new technology, education is always going to be foundational because the people that understand the technology and can use it well, they're going to have better outcomes. But not only that, they're also going to be less likely to succumb to the pitfalls. And so with anything new, I feel like this is where I come back to. It's a point of education.

So what about you? Education is so, so important. Yeah, thank you for bringing that up. The thing for me to add to that is that I think that as a faith community, as Christians, as Adventists specifically here, we don't want to leave the development of AI up to the secular world.

We have very smart people in our faith community and we can engage in this and just like You know, for so many, one of the ways I think about it is that AI is neither good nor bad. It's just a tool. It's the people that use it that craft it into the thing that is going to be good or bad. So as a faith community, let's engage.

We can help craft AI's future to one that, in my mind, helps reflect Jesus to those that we come in contact with, because that is my prayer. So yeah, that's kind of how I've been thinking of it. Now that's excellent. So just to get us started, I know we've had a number of people that were going to share their thoughts in this episode.

Where are we starting? Oh, Pastor Wes Vi. Wes Vi has one of the specific I don't know if he would call it an honor, but I called it an honor talking to him. The very first podcast I was ever on was Westphi.

We were up in Coeur d 'Alene, Idaho, and he's a pastor in Texas. So yeah, let's listen to a little bit of my conversation with Pastor Westphi on how do we prepare the church for AI's future. That is a big one, because I don't think we know what AI's future is. And that's probably the biggest challenge that we're facing, is that we don't really know what this is going to become yet.

All we know is that it's going to change the world. It's already significantly impacted the world. But we don't really know what it's going to look like in three years. And most of the leading voices in this are saying, in the next three years, radical shifts are going to happen.

And so it's going to continue to grow. I think the biggest thing that we can do as a church to prepare for whatever is going to come, I think, is to lay the foundation for people to be able to process the new world that's going to be unfolding. As I talk to church leaders and do trainings here in the conference around AI and communications technology, people are genuinely concerned about AI. They're concerned about what it's going to do, that it's going to replace the Holy Spirit.

There's some big concern, and I don't mean to... kind of say that with that tone of my voice, like these are legitimate concerns that people have. And so we have to help people think through. And when I talk with people through that and help them process what exactly AI is and reframe it from this mythological robot in the ether to a tool, not unlike a keyboard or a mouse, they're able to then process that a little differently and alleviate some of that. So I think framing it up, informing the people, and not making it evil.

I think that's the best thing that we can do because as it unfolds, we need to have the channels in place, the relationships in place, and the foundation set to be able to have meaningful conversations with what is it becoming and how is that actually impacting us because right now we don't really know. We can deal with what we have today, which is just basic large language models, but it's going to be so much more than that. One of the things I took away from that is really kind of an echoing of what you were starting out with is this education is like he's talking to people that aren't really understanding what AI is and truly what the, you know, the big monster, you know, scary thing, scary thing in the sky is like, Hey, let's, let's understand what we're actually talking about when we talk about AI. Yeah, I also appreciated at the end where he pointed out that right now what we have a large language models and that that's a cool technology.

But this is going somewhere that is different. And that that we don't know what that is. And I think I appreciated the fact that he was not saying this is a universal truth. And it's great.

And it's this and it's that it's that well, we know what it is right now. And We know that it's changing and we know that there are new technologies that are coming. We don't know what they look like yet, and we don't know how we're going to respond to those. But as you say, education is is a key feature.

Yeah, no, like you said, it's a this is what AI is today. I was my wife was doing some continuing education classes. She's a speech language therapist and she they were doing it on AI and how they started with it. Their their talk was essentially this is what we know of AI as of today. and tomorrow this talk will be outdated.

And actually, I think their talk was already outdated by the time I saw it, because I listened in a little bit. But yeah, things are rapidly rapidly changing. So what is AI? Well, I can tell you what it is at this moment, but I don't know where it's going.

Yeah. And I think there's another point when I was having a conversation with Pastor Russ Wilcox, he is a He's in the technology space, but he's on the human side of the technology space, if you like. And so, Pastor Russ had an interesting take on this. It was shorter, but I think it fills in some of the gaps from the conversation that we've just been hearing from Pastor Wes.

So maybe let's listen to that grab from Pastor Russ. Look, I think AR has already changed the way we do ministry. from the very ground level where people are using on their own personal machines right through to the systems that are created for the church. I think it definitely has already changed how we do ministry. I don't think it should change why we do ministry.

And there's certainly lots of bits of ministry that it can help with, but there's a whole lot of ministry that AI doesn't do and shouldn't do. Yeah. I found this interesting because there's the delineation that he makes between the how and the why, right? It becomes a tool like Wes was saying, like a keyboard, right?

It's a tool for a purpose. But, you know, as long as we keep it in its right place, it is helpful. And I think one of the things that will come out in our future conversations that we have from Ross's perspective, a continuing theme in his input was one of governance. And how do we how do we protect ourselves from, not in like the sky is falling kind of way, but how do we have good practices and how do we, you know, make it a good experience rather than allowing it to become something that we, that's not helpful to the church.

Right. And not that it should change why we do ministry. Um, I think that was, you know, like it's, we're not abdicating Ministry, the verb, to do ministry, we're not advocating that to AI, or I think that would be the objective that I would encourage, like this isn't like, all right, hey AI robot, you go do ministry for me, because I've got TikTok to scroll, or something like that. you know, it's that's I think an important part of it too, is that we are still engaged in the why. So as we sort of come forward, I don't know if there's anything specific in in either of those that you want to want to come back to, Adam, but I know that educating people is a broad topic.

And in a number of the conversations that we had, there was input around that. I know we have another clip that sort of delves into this a little bit further and thinks of where do we start with this? Did you want to preface that? I think that was a conversation you had.

Yeah, so what's fun, this is Pastor Jean Ross. Pastor Ross, he is at Amazing Facts. And one thing that's super interesting about this conversation to me is that, you well may know, but maybe our audience doesn't, is that Blue Vineyard is working with Amazing Facts on a really, really cool. implementation of AI. And we can definitely get into the weeds on what that is and what it isn't.

It's called Ezra. I encourage people to check that out. And we're really proud of what we're building with them. Amazing Facts has historically been on the forefront of using... you know, tools that are technological, whether, you know, what the advent of radio, of TV, of the internet, and they're using those to spread the gospel and they see AI as no different.

But yeah, why don't I actually let Pastor John talk about that, because he says it so well. Well, that's a good question. I don't know if it's so much us preparing the church for AI, because I think AI is here. The question is, how do we as a church and how do we as ministries and individuals relate to AI?

Now, I think of AI as a resource, just like we have the printed page was a resource in using that tool to share the gospel and then the introduction of radio and television, the Internet. So I think we're always wanting to look at new opportunities to connect with people. to share the gospel i see ai as a resource that can be used to help guide people into a clear understanding of bible truth and we'll probably get into some of the advantages of ai some of the Concerns things you need to be aware of when we get into ai But I think for us as a church we need to be looking at every new technology and new opportunity And say how can we use this for the furtherance of the gospel? You know one of the greatest signs that jesus gave about Where we are in the stream of time and how close we are to the second coming Jesus said this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached as a witness to all the world And then the end will come what people might have wondered a hundred years ago How are you gonna be able to preach the gospel to every group of people on the planet? Well now we see it's very possible and we can do it in a very short period of time because of social media, the internet, we've got various forms of broadcast and publishing and easy translation into multiple languages.

So the words of Christ are being fulfilled even now. So we want to look at every opportunity to help further that work. Yeah, I love that too, to all the world. And if we feel that that is important, which I think we should, yeah, we shouldn't hold back.

Not doing so with guardrails and doing so intelligently and again, not abdicating the why to AI, but yeah, that's amazing facts is very clearly seeing that as like, we're told to do something, we're gonna go do it. Yeah, again, treating it very much like a toolbox. This is a tool that we can use to accomplish a goal. And as believers, the Great Commission is something, like what you said, we should take seriously.

I noticed that out of all of the respondents, Pastor John was very much in advocacy of the evangelistic perspective. This really isn't a question i'm a yes there are questions around i and how it operates in churches and all of that's true but if you strip it back and it becomes a question of how do we you know how do we use this for the furthering of the gospel it becomes a very simple. Like a very simple discussion at that point right it's like it's it's a utility that we're trying to use and i think what he was also what he was also pointing out in the. The way that the church has historically used technology all of those technologies when they first arrived Had people that were speaking against them, you know radio is bad TV is bad And I think as we've gone through time we can now look back and we can say well None of them and this is sort of harkening back to a point that you made Adam None of them are individually morally bankrupt.

It's a case of how are they being used? You know, you can, you can use a TV to do a lot of things. You know, I can, you know, I use mine to, to watch a sermon on Sabbath morning. And that was, that was a great usage of the TV, but there's plenty of stuff that is available on the TV that I would not consider a good usage.

And so I think AI is whilst being dramatically more useful than any of the other platforms we've talked about already. I think that's where it's different, but in that's in, uh, the how it's used, not in the nature of the product, if that makes sense. Yeah. And so much of what's happening in the world is that there really isn't anything new, but it echoes in a different way.

I mean, like you said, the radio, TV, record players, whatever it is. Yeah. Yeah. Printing press.

I mean, there's all kinds of wonderful things printed on a printing press and other things not so wonderful. but it's the people that are saying, what are we gonna do with this tool? And that's why we have a requirement to engage. And then also back to this topic of educating. This is neither good nor bad.

I think we'll probably, people who are technologists in this field will need to keep educating and banging on this drum repeatedly of it's neither good. It's not bad, but it's what we do with it that matters, and then our job to educate. Well, now what are we going to go do? You had a good conversation, I believe, with Craig Young.

I'd love to hear more about how that went. Actually, I'd love to take credit for this, but our producer, Khan, was the one that spoke to Craig, but he has provided that recording for us. So Khan, if you can cue that up, we would love to hear from Craig. Thank you, Khan.

It starts with education. educating the members at large what AI is, how AI is being used already in our everyday life, how it benefits us as human beings, the pros and cons of it and you know I always go from the angle that water and a knife is essential to life but it can also be dangerous so we can be drowned from water we can you know be killed you know in the uk we have a lot of knife crime but we grew up you and i grew up in a house where knife and water is you know freely available so what did our parents do to make sure that we were safe and kept safe from taking a knife and using it wrongly or from joining in the bad. And that's the way we need to look at how we educate our members in our churches about the use of technology, the use of AI. The good, the bad, but focusing on the positive side. Yes, there always have to be a negative side of anything, but if you focus on the positive, educate ourselves and not be afraid. to try because, you know, we have done.

We are already using it. It's in our everyday life. And once we understand that and once members understand that, you know, it is easier to then start making steps to change. the way we use it. You can use it to write letters, to make devotionals, to help planning or special needs, to differentiate the sabbath school lessons, to differentiate work, just to make things simpler for people to understand, to communicate better.

Saves a lot of time. Usually when I go around doing these workshops, I'll ask, you know, and you will find those members, I said, the scale of 0 to 10. Where do you think you're on this list, you know, zero being a, no, I'm never gonna use air, I'm not good at the air, 10, and you find people saying one or minus two, and at the end of the session, I'll ask the same question again, and they'll, you know, move like two or three or four spaces up, and like, that's a start, because now they understand, yes, they are dangerous, but if you use it wisely, and if you take all the safeguards in place, then it's not much to fear, and we can't. go live our lives in fear you know we have lots of deep fake and you know these things kind of scare people you'll see programs or memes or things online and you're thinking that's real and then you realize no it's not real so people are skeptical about that and you know saying that you can't use AI to write sermons and to preach and to do bus work but you can use it to enhance you know to help you to plan to do those things I've always said it's the human element that will never go away and when people understand that if they're going to be making progress in even their own work world in their own personal life the fear is always AI is going to take over our jobs or we're gonna take over the world. But I keep on saying to people, AI will not take over your job, it's the people who are good at using AI that will take over your jobs.

Yeah, so because, yeah, because, and I go back to the supermarket, the people who were using the cash registers, taking the money, giving you change and so forth, if they didn't get their skills updated to using the technology, there's no need for me to have you in my workplace if you can't. fix a problem, you know, it's using those soft skills that is needed to troubleshoot and to be, you know, creative. And AI helps you in doing that. So when you are good at using the technology to do your job and make your job easier, then you move forward. I was speaking to admin staff in the school yesterday.

And she was showing me two folders that she's still holding on to. Because she's just afraid to let go because she has been doing this for years. I'm like, but this is going to save your time. We don't need these things anymore.

I said, if the school burns down and your files are burned up, can you get them anymore? No. But if the computers are burned up, they're still in the cloud. So what are you afraid of?

And this mindset we need to change. There's a lot of good stuff in there. Yeah, some gold. One of the things that just jumped out at me is at the beginning there, he was basically using a note from Jesus where, you know, something that we can relate to where like the knife and water and how, yeah, like a knife, super dangerous in the wrong person's hands, but also super necessary when you're making food when something that we can we can relate to and yeah i said that in in london there there's you know knives you know there's some uh some danger around that that's like it's a real threat um so yeah ai can be scary with these deep fakes and all that but we also can use a knife to you know to make food and i think that's a really good point that he's making Yeah.

I also think, I was going to draw on that point in a slightly different way, that one of the things about AI, which is different to the previous revolutions of technology that we've seen, is that AI is something that is in the hands of everybody. Whereas TV, radio, yes, people may consume it, but there were a certain group of people who were the practitioners of it. And I think what he's highlighting is that AI in this scenario, everybody, it's democratized. Everybody is a practitioner.

It's not just consumers. And so that makes the level of importance for education significantly higher. And the point that he was making at the end, I think was also very valid in that the human element is the part that won't go away. And like he was talking about, people concerned about losing jobs. there will be jobs lost, but there will be jobs lost to others who understand how to use AI.

I think if I had to push back on something, I think that's a bit of a reductionist way of approaching that question because I think it's inevitable that there will be jobs lost over time. It will create other jobs, but my feeling is that what it will more likely achieve is that There will be overall greater productivity for the same number of jobs rather than less jobs. That's my feeling on it. I don't have a crystal ball or I'm not a prophet nor the son of a prophet, but I feel like that's the direction that we're going to head on.

Yeah, it's a good question. One thing that right now AI is really heading for is programmers. you know, there's, um, and a good friend of mine who he's run a very large agency. We were talking about this and he's like, yeah, if, if you're the type of programmer that you went to school, learned a programming language and you weren't really curious and that's when you got really good at it, but you just did that one thing, then yeah, you're, you're in trouble. Um, but if you were a programmer and you learn multiple languages and you got curious and, and it was more about what you were able to do rather than just the translation.

He related it to a language translator in that if you are, if your job is to translate from one language to another, uh, you know, there's a, there's a lot of language translators that yeah, they're out of a job, but just like with, with programming and it was just similar because if you're telling what the client wants and you're translating it into code, that's a that's a translator. But if you are curious and you are going to learn how this technology can take somebody's idea and turn it into a thing, that's always going to be valuable. And people don't have a lot to fear only if they are going to be stuck in their ways and are not willing to adapt and change. Yeah, if like, Nope, I like this exactly the way it is.

Life, unfortunately, isn't like that. And it is moving quickly. Yeah, very true. And there will be and this is a little bit of a teaser of some some of the episodes we're going to have in the future.

But one of the questions that we asked these people that we reached out to was if they had the ability to, you know, press the button to delete AI, would they? And I think that is, that was probably one of my favorite questions to ask. And I think you may be surprised by a couple of the responses in that. So that will be coming up in the future, but yeah.

Yeah. No, that was, that was a good one. I can't wait to get to that. And we can talk about that more and dissect some of the reasons why people picked one thing or the other.

Yeah. That's going to be fun. Yeah. So as we sort of, you know, that's all of the, the, uh, soundbites that we had to share today.

Adam, if you were to take a step back from some of these, how would you summarize the key things that you think are worth holding onto from this episode for people who are perhaps listening and trying to make up their own mind on how they should be approaching AI in the future as believers? What's the structure that they should be approaching it with? Yeah, I think I am affirmed in both of our hypothesis maybe it's because I went back and like read the end of the book and yeah these These are informing my but yeah, it's like we talked about education like understanding what AI is and what it isn't and understanding that there's different types of AI used for different types of things and that Covering it with blanket statements of AI is good AI is bad is not not appropriate and nor nor helpful. But yeah, that's that's the one thing I'm going to keep coming back to is that there's there's nuance here and worth having conversations about.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think one of the one of the threads that was mentioned just briefly in this and I think it'll come out more in our following episodes, the importance of the the human touch. of to what we do. And I think AI is great where AI is meant to be, but there are some things that need to remain human. And we'll explore that more.

The one other thing that I wanted to thread that I wanted to pull on was something from what Pastor John was sharing in his experience or the way they're thinking about AI and you preface this at the beginning of the show as well, Adam, that we should be at the forefront of its usage in our faith community because like Amazing Facts are doing, they have made a commitment to, we don't want to just be reacting to what is happening in the technology space. We want to be, to use revelation language, we want to be the head and not the tail. We want to be proactive about this. And so I want to affirm that as a position for us as a church.

If we can do that, that puts us in a place where the gospel moves faster, where all of these positive things occur if we take that proactive approach. Absolutely. And if you are our dear listener would like to be proactive in the development of AI, we encourage you to keep following along. Make sure that you have subscribed to this podcast so that you will not miss an episode.

We've got more interviews to come from incredibly smart people smarter than us. We're learning from people who have really thought a lot about this in different ways, not just the technological ways, but also from the ministerial ways and organizationally. Yeah, this is going to be fun. Yeah, it's going to be great.

All right. Well, thank you for joining us for this episode. We look forward to seeing you for the next one. And until then, God bless.