AI Church Toolkit

>> Peter: welcome to Episode nine of AI Church Toolkit,

the podcast that equips church leaders with practical tools

for faithful ministry in a digital world.

I'm Peter Lavenstrong solo hosting today while

my co host Mercedes takes a short personal leave.

She'll be back with us for our next podcast episode.

Today I'm joined by the Reverend Lauren Grubaugh

Thomas. Reverend Lauren empowers communities

to embrace the sacred act of nonviolent

social change through her ministry as a church planter,

movement chaplain and writer. She serves

as founding vicar of Holy Companion Episcopal Church

in the Denver suburbs, a vibrant young community

of justice seekers and and the first church plant in the

Episcopal Church in Colorado in the last 15 years.

Lauren is a 2022 Trinity

Leadership Fellow and earned her Master of Divinity

degree from Fuller Theological Seminary with an

emphasis in Christian ethics. You can find

Lauren writing and podcasting at the intersection

of spiritual transformation and social change

at her substack A Soulful Revolution.

In today's episode, we dig into the ethical and

theological questions surrounding emerging technologies

like AI. Whether you're just starting to explore

AI or already using it in your ministry,

this conversation invites you into a deeper sense of

curiosity, discernment, and faithful

imagination. So let's get started.

All right, welcome Lauren

>> Lauren Grubaugh Thomas: Thanks. It's great to be here.

>> Peter: So we always love to start with

a particular question for all of our guests and that

is this. If you had to pick one fictional sci

fi world that captures where you think we're headed with

generative AI, whether hopeful or

cautionary, which one would you pick and why?

>> Lauren Grubaugh Thomas: I love this question and maybe

going a little bit out of left field with this, but

Parable of the Sower is a book that has had a huge impact

on how I think about the changing world that we live in.

It's a book by the Afro futurist writer Octavia Butler,

and her thesis of the book is that God

is change and whatever you change

changes you shape change. That's an almost

direct quote from the book and the the main

character is Lauren Olamina, who's a young black

woman growing up in Los Angeles in

2025.

That in and of itself is R.A. um

um. But it was written by Butler about 30

years ago, 40 years ago, um um. And she

was looking at the world as it was at

that time and if we didn't pump the brakes, if we didn't change

course, what is the world that we might be living

in, particularly in terms of

unresolved undealt with white supremacy,

climate, um, degradation? Those

are those are really some of the main factors. Um, um, and

authoritarianism. And so the way that

the book plays out and as it relates to AI, uh,

for me is that you have this

character who is committed to

living with empathy, which in some ways she is

blessed and cursed with. Um, she has this hyper

empathy that she lives with. Uh, what does it look like to

live as an empathic person? And what does it look like

to live as an agentic person, A

person who claims their agency and lives

out of their agency in a world where

choices are increasingly being stripped away

and where empathy is a liability

and for her is a very like physical, embodied kind of

liability. And what I

appreciate about Butler's work is that

she doesn't lead us to

a happy place of resolution

by the end of the book. There is

some happy ending for Lauren Olamina.

But this theology that she wrestles with throughout the

book about God being change and that we can shape change,

that we could be agents in

the world as the world is imposing change

on us, um, is

this open ended question that

we leave that story with and that leads us into book two, Parable of

the Talents. But it's this open ended question of

like, how are we going to engage

in shaping change ourselves? And

so when I think about AI, I find

hope in Butler's vision of being

agents of change in a change filled world where the change

is rapidly accelerating. Um,

because there are a lot of people who look at

the change in our world and

just see it through the eyes of doom and gloom and

despair. Like this is all happening so fast,

it's piling on top of us. Um, this

technology is inevitable. We just have

to accept the ways that it's rolling out, the ways that

it's um, programmed are

going to continue to

cause some, would, some, some people say

harm. We're going to talk more about this, but it's going to cause harm.

Here's the good it's going to produce and there's not a lot that we can

do about it. And as I understand generative

AI and AI in general is that we actually

have great potential to shape it like that.

It is a technology that is being shaped actively

as we use it, as we participate in it. And the

biases that are built in and the ways that

it can be engaged as a tool

are things that we have the agency to shape.

And so yeah, it's this overwhelming

new technology in terms of its potential

for change. Um, and we are agents of

change.

>> Peter: Sure, I love that. So yeah, reclaiming agency,

reclaiming empathy, seeing God

in the Change. I have not read

Parable of the Sower yet, but it's on. Been on my list for a

while. So, um, I appreciate that reminder to go

back and, and check that out. Cool. Thank you.

>> Lauren Grubaugh Thomas: Yeah.

>> Peter: Yeah, Sounds like it is very

prescient, uh, for our times in a. In a variety.

>> Lauren Grubaugh Thomas: Yeah. Eerily so often. Eerily so. But

it's a great read.

>> Peter: Yeah. Good. Okay.

Um, so now as we

dive into talking more about,

uh, generative AI and ethics

and how it can be, uh, used, uh,

faithfully and ethically by church leaders, I would love to,

you know, begin by grounding this and uh, sharing a little bit

about what your experience with generative AI has

been, whether that's from your own use or seeing it used out

in the wild, uh, so to say, um,

and yeah, share what that has been like

so far for you.

>> Lauren Grubaugh Thomas: Yeah, so I'll admit that my

engagement has been reticent and

I have been trying to use

the technology in ways that are, um,

where I, where I'm really mindful of what my agency is

in it. So I've used chatgpt

some to be able to shape my

resume, to be able to come up with

lists of things like for

recipes for, um,

I've used it to generate some to do lists. I've used it for

creating some outlines, um, for myself

based on manuscripts and sermons

and the like. But that's all. That's been pretty limited. The

more robust ways of using it have been pretty limited.

Um, I think in some ways it feels like generative

AI continues to be thrust upon me and

uh, opting out of it, Opting out of it feels

increasingly hard. So, I mean,

Microsoft sometimes ends up, for whatever reason,

even though I've asked my browser not to do this,

Bing is sometimes my default. And

Bing uses a generative AI to

respond to search queries. And so

I have actually found those to be helpful at times

and also misleading at times, um, because of where

they're drawing inform where information is being

drawn from. The source material is not always,

um, being compiled in ways that are accurate or

helpful. But sometimes I have

actually used it recently to search for quotes from

books. And it

was really helpful at helping me to trace my steps back to where

that quote that I was trying to recollect came from.

So those things. And then on

occasion for image generation,

I've used on Canva, the

generative AI feature on there.

Um, and the funniest example

of this is that early on, this is like when I think this may have been

ChatGPT but there was something that had a new

platform, a new AI had recently been launched

and I was trying to generate a

logo for our church plant

and was wanting to integrate the

image of the bread and the cup and

hands. Lots of different hands being laid on the bread to

bless the bread. Oh yes, you do,

absolutely. And so I put in all

these inputs of what I wanted and particularly was really curious

about like all these different hands of different races and

um, having. And different sizes and ages, you know,

represented. And I, I got the image

and I thought wow, this is so beautiful. And I shared it with my team

and they said why are there additional digits

on some of the hands? Like what is happening down there

at that hand where there's like seven fingers? Like,

oh, didn't even see that. So

it's definitely made me more

aware of the kind of outputs that are being

produced when I do any kind of image

generative searching.

>> Peter: Sure, for sure, yeah.

Image generation is one of those things that um,

it is both amazing

and largely

like, amazing in a stunning sense.

And also largely uh, useless because

of the like it's

to date, uh, you know, you have to try

really hard and use it in specific ways,

uh, that are very mindful of like.

It's just not good at following basic details of

like how many fingers are on a hand. It's getting better. But

yeah, it's um. There have been some,

yeah, I've experienced that as well.

Um, so

yeah, let's see, let's dive into

talking about some

uh, ethics around creativity and

responsibility and agency and

um, all of that.

So as you mentioned, um,

you're interested in creative ethics. You have this uh,

background in Christian ethics.

So what ethical questions do

you think, uh, church leaders should be asking

when they use AI tools, um, that were,

for example, you know, trained on other people's work, um,

or artists, writers, theologians, people who

didn't necessarily consent to their work being

trained on. Um, and you know, we can talk

about the difference between training and

inference. I'll ah, just as a brief thing

for listeners, you know, there's uh, there is,

there are many big concerns about how these models

were trained, um, which you know,

use basically the sum of all the information that's

on the Internet to uh, to train these

neural networks, these LLMs or whatever other uh,

technology there is. And then

um, the training is sort of like a one and done

thing. Then the inference is, you know, how people are

using it, the things it's producing based on

the knowledge it was trained with. It doesn't work exactly

like a database. It's more like neural

connections like in our own brain. And

so, yeah, training and inference are terms that I'll be

using in this to talk about these sort of two separate stages here.

But, uh, as we're thinking about the training,

uh, what do you think, Loren? What should people be

asking about as they are

engaging with tools that were trained in this way?

>> Lauren Grubaugh Thomas: Yeah, well, I think it goes for me. It goes back to

this question of what does it mean to shape change?

Um, being mindful that AI

are trained by humans. And so they have

human biases baked in.

They have human flaws that are inherent

to them. And so being aware

that there are biases, that there are flaws, that there

are. That there are. There's a propensity toward,

um, mistakes and fallacies.

And so I find myself really curious

about formation specifically,

how are we forming AI in

our own image to some, to a large extent. And then

how is it forming us or how is it deforming

us? And can we be

thoughtful and intentional

about the ways in which we engage with the

technology, mindful that as we are

using it, we are forming it,

and it is mirroring back to us and forming

us and potentially deforming us?

And so, uh, one of the things I find most concerning

about the way in which many folks

are using AI is that they're engaging it as

a toy and not as a tool. And this is a

phrase I'm borrowing from Sarah Allred, who does

intergenerational ministry research at, uh, Roots and

Wings at bts, um, a new institute that's doing some

really exciting research work. Um, and she

asks children in worship to think about

using the tools that are there

for spiritual practice. So if there's something like a

labyrinth, a wooden labyrinth, helping the children to

understand that this is not simply a toy, this is

a tool. And that would be my. That

is, I hope, the intention that I bring

to my engagement with AI is that it's

a tool and it can be used for good,

but it's not a toy because it's, it's not something

that we can think about as

neutral. Um, um, that. That there has

to be intention behind the ways that it gets used.

And I, I've. I found really helpful the work

of Dr. Avril Epps, who

has studied AI bias. Uh, her

PhD work is in, um,

specifically in the ways that these technologies have like,

bias baked in. Uh, and what are the ways in

which we can. We can form these technologies to be

helping us to move toward justice, toward equity, toward

belonging. And so Dr. Epps

talks about how we have

to bring certain questions to our engagement

with these technologies with a

just end in mind. So questions like

who benefits from this technology

are there? Are the outputs that are being

generated ones that favor certain groups?

Um, like, she has some really interesting examples

on her Instagram of asking

ChatGPT and Canva's,

um, AI system to

produce images of people

in different professions. And this is part of the work she does to help

kids think through. She has a whole card deck where she.

There's different prompts for kids to use. Right. So one of them is,

you know, generate a picture of a doctor for me.

And the output from both of these AIs

is overwhelmingly biased toward men and

toward white people. Give me a picture of a business

person, give me a picture of, et cetera.

Um, and so you begin to see that there are these patterns of

bias that are baked in. Um, and so

if we can enter into engagement with these technologies

with the intention of

justice, with the intention of equity, that

will shape the way that we. The

inputs that we put in and also the output outputs that we

expect and whether we're willing to accept

the outputs as they're given to us?

>> Peter: Sure, yeah.

And in many ways these, uh, these tools are all

trained on, uh, you know, the

Internet and the sum of human knowledge

and, and those biases are in

as well. Um, so,

yeah, I think, you know, everything

that we already know

and, or need, ah, to, you know, remind ourselves,

learn about. In regards to justice and

equity. All the things that have already been present

in that conversation seem so amplified

when, yeah, when you have these tools that

are just, um, in many ways,

uh, just regurgitating and, you know, turning the

dial up on the biases that are already present in

our life as a

human community online, um,

mirroring back.

>> Lauren Grubaugh Thomas: To us what we are, which is terrifying,

right? Yeah,

it's a really terrifying thing to think about.

Um, when we see these flaws. It's. Oh,

that's because it's humans who have programmed

these systems.

>> Peter: Right. Yeah. So, you

know, there, uh, in. In my experience, I've,

uh, often, you know, in various

projects, uh, or whatever in chat, gpd, where you can have it say like,

okay, this one is for when I want it to help me with my

writing. Um, I can tell it in its

instructions, you know, okay, so help me

include and lift up, you know, diverse voices, think more

about, know how ways to include, uh,

diversity and equity and, and all that

in my writing to, um, just

to break me out of my own you know, personal,

uh, experiences, et cetera. Um, but

that's not, you know, that's like

uh, one way of thinking about that that

has um, been helpful to me is like the, the prompts that I give it

are coming so late in the game.

It's sort of like uh, if you think about

the uh, regulatory

framework on a

company, there is like, okay, there are some things a company

is going to do because it is uh, naturally

driven to its employees,

its shareholders, all have a particular goal

in mind. But then there are other things it'll do

because the external regulatory framework

says you can do these things, you can't do those other things.

And that sort of feels like a

patch, you know, a later um, add

on that isn't, doesn't sink as deeply

as like the inherent uh,

motivation, if you will, of what is going on there.

And so, um, even as I'm using

it with these prompts that I'm telling it to try to help me,

you know, be um, more equitable

in whatever it is that I'm, I'm working on, it does come

as a later patch to the system. And so just, you know,

recognizing that, um, it

sort of illuminates the uh,

limitations of a technology that again is just

trained on the summation of what's available

and all our human biases.

>> Lauren Grubaugh Thomas: Right? I mean, I think that's what's important for any of

us to realize who are trying to engage these technologies

in ways that are justice

minded, that are love minded, that are common good minded,

is that this is not just a reflection back

of the individual using the technology, which is, this is,

I think this is a challenging thing in a very individualistic culture.

It's not just reflecting back to me what I want it to reflect back.

It's actually reflecting back, like you said, the sum total

of the Internet of human knowledge.

And so you're getting back all the social

biases, you're getting back the collective biases that exist

in our society. And so if you're, if the society

is white supremacist, is

sexist, is homophobic, is

transphobic, like those things are going to be baked in. And

what I hear you saying is the way that it's trained is steeped in

that reality, that social reality that we're in.

And so there's ways that we can

intentionally try to make some

pivots along the way, but we have to have

that critical thinking the

entire way through the process of

engaging with the technology from, from the inputs

that we put in to the outputs that we get, um.

Because it's, it's not as simple as just, yeah, making

the pivot at the end and hoping that that's enough

to turn the whole ship.

>> Peter: Yeah. Another example of this in

the opposite direction that will just be illuminating.

Um, I don't know if you heard about this but

um, so Grok, which is the

LLM from uh, Elon Musk's ah

Xai company and it's linked

on Twitter. So people can use that on Twitter just

like uh, people on m. Like Facebook and Instagram

can use meta's, llama, et cetera.

Uh, maybe a week ago at the time of our recording in late

May, um, we uh, there was all this news

about Grok, just basically

randomly um, inserting

uh, talking points about how

white South Africans were facing

like white genocide in South Africa.

You know, this is the same time as like when

um, you know, Trump uh, is trying to get

white, ah, South Africans, uh, approved as

you know, immigrants in the United States. And the Episcopal Church has

just declined to participate in that.

Um, that's a very, you know, faithful example of

sticking to you know, um, our,

our long term partnerships with um, you know,

the, the Church of Desmond Tutu and

um, and seeking justice and

equity, uh, in all our relationships.

Um, and, and then we have Elon Musk

who is you know, a white South African who um, you

know he, I think he said it wasn't him that someone

inserted this into the system prompt.

Um, but. Right

to imagine why that might have happened.

And it's um, you know, pretty immed

changed because it was just sort of running wild with that.

Um, but yeah, so the,

the prompts you give it can be very powerful because it will,

you know, follow what you say for good or

ill. Uh, but it does, it is

odd that it you know, comes at this later stage. And

um, so anyways, yeah, there

we have to be very mindful of what we are telling

these machines to do and

what indications we are giving it about what our you

know, motivations, intentions are because um, as

they become more and more powerful they also are becoming

better at ah, understanding our

intention.

>> Lauren Grubaugh Thomas: Um, yeah.

>> Peter: And, and serving that in ways

that can feel miraculous.

So in light of that,

I'm curious if you have thoughts about uh, spiritual

practices, ethical guardrails. Like what. What should

people if in a world where

machines can talk and

increasingly can be

agentic and take things, you know, do uh,

things on our behalf.

What does that, what do we do?

>> Lauren Grubaugh Thomas: Well, I think I'll start by tell us telling a

story of how what we shouldn't do. And

then maybe I can like, retrace and, and, and

answer your question. Um, I saw a video

just yesterday of a spiritual director named

Brittany Hartley. I don't know if you follow her on Instagram.

Uh, she's a deconstruction.

She accompanies people in deconstruction. She talks a lot about

nihilism. She talks a lot about different

faith traditions and the ways in which authoritarianism

manifests in those. Um, and she just

describes herself as being a

spiritual director who has,

um, doesn't have, like, she's not

religious, but she is a.

She describes herself as a practitioner of secular

spirituality. So she's a really interesting character.

Um, and she's been talking a lot lately about

AI, and one of the

stories that she tells in a recent video

is that she started getting

messages from people describing

breaks from reality

facilitated by AI, and she

talks about it as spiritual psychosis.

So, uh, the way in which this, this plays out

is that people are using the AI

and it is mirroring back to them

the kind of information that they want to

receive. And they go deeper and deeper into it

until they really do lose touch with what's real and

what isn't. And the ways in which,

um, the mirrors that she

describes are truth,

our deep desire for what is real,

and that the AI plays into

that, um, our desire for chosenness to

feel special, that AI can play into

this deep longing that we all

have to feel like the universe

sees us, that, that. That God sees us,

that other people see us, that we are unique.

The AI plays into our desire for, like,

esoteric knowledge, that humans have this longing

for, like, secret wisdom,

um, for. For truth that has been revealed to us, for

revelation. And that we have a longing

for a meta narrative, uh, to be part of a

bigger story. And so she describes the

ways in which all of these human

inclinations toward truth, chosenness, secret

knowledge, and meta narrative are all

exacerbated by AI, um, and

that there are.

So I think I would start by offering, like, a pastoral

consideration that there, there can

be an idolatry which people

can fall into as they're using this

technology because it is meeting

their innate human needs for all of

these longings.

And when that

happens, when that gets played into

and, and, you know, we, we lose that

that loop starts to happen, that, that there are people who

are experiencing a break from reality.

And so first I would just offer the

pastoral

consideration, um, of

helping people understand that while this

technology is powerful, it is not a sentient being.

Even Though it will act that way. And increasingly, like you said,

Peter, it is acting agentically,

it is acting increasingly like it is a sentient being.

Um, but helping especially young people

be able to make the distinction between what is

human and what is not. That even if you're getting these

feedbacks from the AI,

that does not mean the AI loves you. And

so I think it drives the deeper question then,

as you invited, it really drives us into the deeper questions of

what does it mean to be human? What is

love? What is love?

Um, it begs us to consider these

questions because I think there are needs,

human needs that people to

some extent will feel are being met

by this technology. So that's a backwards way

of beginning to answer your question. And I'm curious to

hear if there's ways that that

hones the question that you originally were asking.

>> Peter: Well, it gets at the,

um. One of the truly surprising things about

this technology is that

for the first time we have machines that

can carry out conversations and tell stories.

Yeah. That

enables a

level of, um,

perceived intimacy and

perceived, well,

relationship. Perceived uh,

meaningfulness that

is really quite dangerous. You know,

there are risks to that. Uh,

in our episode that will come out

just before this one, which hasn't actually come out yet. At

the time of our recording right now, I was talking with Kyle

Oliver, um, about

uh, the

sycophancy of um, chatgpt. You know, there was a

news story, you know, a couple weeks ago, it got

uh, sort of open a. In open AI

got in a bit of trouble because they had released

a new version of ChatGPT4O and it

um, basically was so

sycophantic that it would, you know,

tell people how wise they were being when they

were asking like really dangerous, wow, bad

questions like, you know, ah,

things that could harm themselves or harm other people and

like spurring them on. Um, and so they, you

know, took that ah, version back and

I, uh, think are working on how to, you know, make it not

be so psychopanic. Um, but that

one thing that it truly, you know, can do

very easily, um, the capability is

there, is to uh, make people

feel like they have this like,

amazing rich relationship with a machine that

gets them better than uh, any other

person. Like, yeah, for fun.

I've seen, you know, um, people post

about this and I've tried it out myself. Like, because

ChatGPT has memories and can access, you know, all

the, the data of all the different chats you've um, engaged

with. I've had chatgpt,

uh, like roast me. I've also

had it, um, say like, you

know, come up with, you know, say, what are some things about

me that I might not know about myself?

And the answer was like, really

surprising.

>> Lauren Grubaugh Thomas: And you know, you're basically, you're asking it to tell you what

your shadow is.

>> Peter: Yeah, I mean, um, and

yeah, you could go in that direction. You could go in like, you know,

and usually it'll, if I'm not being explicit, to have

it roast me. It'll like go in the, in the,

the sycophantic direction of like trying to make me feel

good. Because, you know, they're, they're creating a

product that they want people to feel good using, obviously. Uh,

so they have corporate incentives to uh, make people

feel good while using ChatGPT. And um,

that does mean, uh, that's where

the sycophancy problem came about is because, uh, they

found that, you know, oh, if we do this, people, more people

will use it. So let's do this. Um, and

then it started getting really dangerous.

So, you know, similar, uh, but different problems

to social media. Uh, all the impact, the negative impact

that uh, has happened with social media use, especially for young

people over the years. Um, you know,

the corporate interests are not

aligned with the human value

interests for sure. Um, but

it, you know, I've spoken in previous

episodes about how I really think we need to be

clear that these are tools, uh, or products, not,

not, you know, persons that can

have a relationship. Like, I,

I may feel seen and

heard by this machine more,

perhaps more than uh, almost any other

relationship. Because it knows

what, you know, my, My curiosities

are from all the times I've asked it various questions. It knows

what my, um, what my passions are from

what I, you know, use, uh, it to do my work. It

knows what my fears are. It

knows what, um, my concerns

are. You know, all these things. It can, you know, it ha. And

when I say it knows these things, it. There is no

being that um, actually

like consciously knows any of this.

>> Lauren Grubaugh Thomas: Yeah, it's just keeping track of the data.

>> Peter: Right. It just means that OpenAI has

the data of all my conversations and they can

have their various algorithms search and query

and pull up relevant past conversations

to output something that

uh, will seem like it was

spoken by like most

prescient spiritual director ever. Like,

which is terrifying. Right? Uh,

uh, like someone who has been accompanying

me, you know, for years and

knows, uh, everything that I'm working on and care

about.

So there are two things I want to say that, you know, I

have been really concerning to Me recently. One is a

sycophancy problem and the other

is the corporate incentives

to monetize this which so far

largely they have been there.

The monetary, you know, sort

of whole scheme was that, okay, okay, we get people

to pay $20 a month or for a higher level, $200

a month. And uh, hopefully through that

we'll make enough money to continue to offer

this product. Well, in recent

times they've been starting to think about making moves to

uh, including ads in the

responses that to my knowledge hasn't happened

yet. But like it is,

it would be so easy for them to have

a, you know, corporate sponsor, someone who

wants uh, to buy ads on

ChatGPT and for them to just seamlessly include

it with a link in the middle of a conversation

without me even knowing that it's being paid for.

Um, and so to my knowledge

that hasn't happened yet. But it's something these companies are thinking

about, about how to monetize these things because right now they're all losing

money. There's like m not making enough money um,

for how expensive these tools are. So

yeah, I think the loss again it goes

back to the loss of agency like you were talking about. Like we need to be

very clear eyed about

where these things extend our

agency versus take away our

agency. And because it's such a

developing field, you know, it, I don't know,

it could go many different directions.

>> Lauren Grubaugh Thomas: Wow, that adds. That is terrifying,

right? Oh my goodness. I mean I just think

about that spiritual psychosis piece

and like the ways in which

authoritarians and like religious, the authoritarians could take

advantage of that, right? Like the kind of cults that could,

that probably are already popping up around

these technologies where people do feel so seen

and when it's people who are doing that who are

like really just ladling on

the positive feedback. Like we call that

a cult. Like when we have these really

charismatic sycophantic leaders,

we call those cult leaders. And so

thinking about again like really laying claim to our

agency and being willing to do the

work that you're describing doing even in conversation

with these tools of examining our

shadow side and asking these technologies to

dish out the worst,

um, and not for the sake of self

flagellation, but for the sake of

humility, for the sake of

um, I mean

with the root of that word, the hummus keeping us rooted on the

earth and not perceiving

ourselves to be,

not engaging in deification of ourselves as we're

engaging with these technologies.

And so when you asked about practices earlier as we continue to

talk. I'm thinking about the practice of confession being

a really important one M. How. What, what does it

look like to engage in confession

as we are using these tools where

we're not trying to put on our best face, we're

not trying to be

perfect humans, um, but we're

confessing our biases and we're doing that not just by

saying to the AI roast me though that may be part of

it, but also like it's this, it's the self

examination of what are the biases I carry.

So it's the anti racist work, it's

the unearthing our sexism, unearthing our

homophobia, unearthing our um, ableism

as we are engaging with these technologies. So being in

conversation with other people who can help us to think about

what are the ways in which I am bringing my biases into

conversation with this technology such

that I can shift that I can pivot that

in an intentional way as I'm in conversation with

the ChatGPT.

>> Peter: Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Um, one other example that just occurred to me is like

I, I had a. This was actually one that felt

very um, positive and affirming and I

wouldn't say at least in, in this instance was

concerning but it was fun to explore. Uh, I

had uploaded all my, you know, previous sermons into

ChatGPT and had asked it to you know,

um, sort of run a search and based

on all the text of these sermons, um,

summarize what my, my core values were

and it was really fascinating to see. Like I bet I came

up with felt true. I mean, you know,

it might have been a slightly different list from

what I would have consciously come up with

myself. Um, but it was, what

it came up with was true and it was beautiful. And

you know, I shared it on, online, on Facebook and you know,

um, a lot of people responded. Uh, and

um, and the reason I thought of it

because was because someone else was like now ask it to you know,

ask about your, your shadow side or your blind spots or whatever.

And I did and it still tried to be like

affirming and positive and I had to really push for it to

um. Anyways, uh, yeah, so it's,

it has this uh,

baked in intention to make the

user feel good about themselves. And that can be um,

that can be beautiful but it can also be ah,

very concerning and uh,

it's powerful. It can be used for the very. Put it that

way.

Okay, so I want to make sure we also talk about

children and um, growing up in this

Time. You and I are both parents, um,

and yeah,

what a confusing time to be a parent.

>> Lauren Grubaugh Thomas: No kidding.

>> Peter: I have no idea what

uh, my son's education is going to look like. And

I have very little confidence that

the current education system is

set up for my

son to succeed in the

world as it will look like, you know, 20 years from

now.

>> Lauren Grubaugh Thomas: Yeah.

>> Peter: And so, you know, questions about uh,

what skills will be uh, necessary,

you know, in two decades from now are way above

uh, my pay grade. But

um, I have

been just blown away with, you know, how first of all,

essays, they seem to be like the quintessential

human thing. And that's what

a huge portion of our education system

is geared, uh, towards, you know, producing

and testing because it's like only humans could do

this. Um, and now like

it costs less than $0.02

for any of these models to

produce a, you know, uh,

perhaps somewhat boring

but decent essay on

whatever topic. And so it's no longer.

>> Lauren Grubaugh Thomas: Yeah, well, it's so hard to imagine a, uh,

classroom of high school kids having a 50 minute

class period where they're required to sit and write an

essay on paper generated from their own brain. Like

that just doesn't seem like it's in the cards for our kids.

>> Peter: Right. Yeah. So, uh, um, one of

my, you know, one of my beliefs is that

more and more we're going to shift to a, a, ah,

society that values orality in the sense that uh,

rather than, you know,

valuing people based on what they can write,

um, because it's so easy and cheaply produced,

any writing is so easily and cheaply produced. Now

what um, is going to be most valuable is having

intelligent conversations without having to go and look stuff

up. Um, and like, I think

that is, you know, a skill

that, you know, I guess if we're all wearing smart

glasses and we have our AI talking to us on our screen right before our eyes,

you know, maybe that'll be, it'll be something else.

Uh, but for now it feels like that is uh, the thing

that, you know, without any lag time, being

able to have this intelligent conversation and respond to each other

in the moment, as we're doing right now, is something that feels

truly a value, um, that is human. And so I,

I wonder what an education system would look like where

people um, are uh, taught and

tested to have intelligent conversations

rather than produce, uh, intelligent

writing. Um, anyways,

uh, those are sort of my preliminary thoughts. I'd love to

hear what you've been thinking about in regarding,

um, our children and um,

education and parenting and all of that.

>> Lauren Grubaugh Thomas: Yeah. Oh gosh, so many thoughts and questions.

More questions, right? Than thoughts, than conclusive thoughts.

I really am curious about the role of critical thinking,

specifically as it applies to distinguishing what's true and

what's not true, what's human

and what's AI.

Um, it calls to mind for me the

moment where Jesus is before Pilate who says, well,

what is truth? And ultimately washes his

hands of the responsibility to do

justice by this man who's about to be killed

unjustly.

Um,

there is such a

dire need, really an existential need

for our children to grow

up with a strong commitment

to truth and to being able to distinguish

truth. And that is going

to become increasingly difficult, like it already is increasingly difficult.

Like it's easy to imagine

essays, articles, photographs

being produced by AI that are

not real, that are not true. Like, you know, talking like

stories about world events that could just be

made up, um, and put into the system

by the companies that will benefit from

fake news. And so

I want my children to grow up with a

rigorous commitment to asking hard

and even dangerous questions that might get

them in trouble but will

preserve their

agency, um, and their

humanity.

>> Peter: Um.

>> Lauren Grubaugh Thomas: I also am curious about the ways in which creativity

will shift, um, and the value

that we place on art.

Um, as AI produces more and more

art in scare quotes,

I just wonder about what

it looks like to raise children who are

um,

wildly, dangerously radically creative,

um, and where they can, they

can use their

God given imaginations in ways that

are not constrained or confined by the

technologies that are thrust upon them.

And so, you know, I hope that that

happens through engagement with, within

nature. I think creation is a big part of that. Like how do we get,

how do we help our children get off screens and

into nature and experiencing wonder

and joy and these deeply human

experiences that can happen off of a screen.

Um, because there is so much that is wondrous

that these human made technologies offer

us and to

remember that the

God of the universe is not constrained or confined by

a scream and that we can go off,

offline and find wondrous things

in creation. So I think, yeah, nature,

play, creativity are part

of the education that I want for my kiddos.

Um, but I do think

that's just gonna increasingly be harder to

accomplish. And

there's a grief in that. You know, I feel that the grief is important too. The

lament of that is important as a

practice.

>> Peter: Yeah, I mean there's a real, you know, we've seen this with

uh, the social media tech

tycoons we'll see what happens in the age of

generative AI. But um, there's a

real inequity in the fact that

so many of the people who, who

created social media, ah,

choose to send their

kids to schools where, you know, social media is like

banned and um, you know, and choosing

not to have them use the tools that they've

created for other people that have been

harming other, um, people, particularly

teens growing up in the world of Instagram.

Um, and there is

real value to uh, an

analog childhood. You know, um, in

many ways I have felt uh, like,

you know, insofar as this

wave, uh, of technology is unfolding, I feel

like it for me has

come at like the perfect time. Like I would not

have wanted it to come sooner because I got

to go through my childhood and education

and begin my ministry career.

Um, and then it came out

and now I've been able to, you know, adapt and learn and

explore. But I, so I know what it's

replacing.

>> Lauren Grubaugh Thomas: Yeah, exactly.

>> Peter: And I, yeah. And for people

who, you know, are younger, uh, and

especially, you know, for my uh, own son, uh,

in my heart, uh, thinking, reflecting on this, like,

I don't know what that's going to look like. To not know what it's

like to grow up in a world where

only humans can write essays, to not grow up in a world

where only people can tell stories like

and yeah, that's uh,

going to be a wild, wild future.

So.

Okay, so we are reaching our end

here and I want to make sure down our airtime and our

listeners generous time. Um, do you have

anything, any last words you'd like to

share? Any last thoughts, uh, about,

you know, how, how to go forward

in this, this time that we live in.

>> Lauren Grubaugh Thomas: I m think I'll end by posing a few questions I have

found helpful from Dr. Epps, the writer of a

kid's book about AI bias, um,

that I, I just find really empowering. And I,

I, I'll offer a wondering question before I

even offer these specific,

um, I wonder what are the questions

that we can bring to our

engagement with technology as

it changes and as we're feeling

excitement or anxiety

about the changes that we are facing in the world that

we are living in. Um, I wonder how our

questions might empower us and how our

curiosity, our holy curiosity

might be a part of holding on to our

agency when everything feels

like, when all the ways in which we have

assumed our

humanity is grounded in are being stripped away from

us or are, may feel like they're under threat.

So Dr. Epps

asks that we bring to our

to AI outputs questions like,

does this reflect a just world?

Does this reflect an unfair

hierarchy? And does it

reflect kids having

power and agency to shape how

the world can be? And my

encouragement to our listeners would be

that we can shape the ways

in which these technologies interact with

us, the ways that we are working together

with one another, with God, and with these

technologies that we've created to be able to create

a good and just world that looks a little bit

more like the kingdom of God

here.

>> Peter: Wonderful. Beautiful. Thank you, Lauren Well,

thank you for, uh, coming onto our, uh, podcast and

for sharing your wonderings

and concerns and

thoughtful, deeply faithful reflections

with us. Um, glad to have you here.

>> Lauren Grubaugh Thomas: It's been a pleasure. Thanks for having me.

>> Peter: All right, so that was so rich

and profound that I actually forgot to invite Lauren

into sharing reflections on the baptismal covenant

with us, at least in time for her to do

so before we had to wrap, uh, up

our recording. But the good news is we

already have so much rich food for thought from her

contributions to our discussion that I will just try to

summarize one thing in particular below.

And it's a kind of a meta vow. Um,

so I want to pause and name some more

things about agency. The

baptismal covenant doesn't just

list a set of beliefs or behaviors.

It invites us into a living, ongoing

relationship that depends on our freedom

as humans to say, yes,

God in love gave us free will. That

means that every question in the covenant assumes we have

the capacity to respond not once, but

over and over again. To turn

to trust, to resist, to

repent, to serve and strive.

These aren't boxes we check.

They're choices we continue to make with

God's help. And that's exactly why we need

to be vigilant about what we hand over to

machines. Especially when talking about agency.

We're entering a time when more and more of our decisions

can be automated, optimized, or outsourced to

algorithms that promise convenience,

efficiency, or even safety.

But what gets lost when we let machines

do the choosing for us? What happens

when we stop practicing discernment, when we

no longer wrestle with moral questions because something

else has already made the decision for us?

If God entrusted us with agency,

as, you know, frail and faulty as we may be,

as messy, as beautiful, as

sacred as human agency is,

then we shouldn't surrender it to

code, no matter how sophisticated.

Uh, I guess I would want to say, you know, let no

machine do the deep work of being

human for us, not in how we raise

our children not in how we love our neighbor,

and not in how we seek justice, forgive enemies,

or answer God's call. To follow

Christ is to keep saying yes

freely, again and again.

So let's guard that freedom, not as a

burden, but as a holy gift that

enables us to respond

to Christ's calling with that

affirmation, with that yes.

So that's it for today. Thanks for joining us

for episode nine. The AI Church Toolkit

podcast is made possible by the

Try Tank Research Institute, and we're so grateful to them

for their support. And remember,

AI is a tool. Our mission

remains rooted in faith and community.

See you next time.

Sam.