Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] Speaker A: Welcome to Everyday Redemption, a podcast of Perimeter Counseling. We believe God is at work in the ordinary moments of our lives, bringing healing, growth and redemption day by day. I'm your host, Caleb Martin. Join me along with my co host Kathy Chang as we talk with counselors and special guests about everyday struggles of life and how the gospel meets us in every season.
Welcome back. Thanks for joining us on another episode of Everyday Redemption podcast of Perimeter Counseling. Today we are joined with Josh King.
He is the former communications director, Perimeter Church. And glad to have you back here on campus.
Tell us a little bit about what you did in your work at Perimeter and then what you're doing now and then I'll share a little bit why you're joining us today.
[00:00:57] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. So for almost five years, I was director of communications for Perimeter, as you said. So I like to.
It's always a fun one to try to explain, but I tell people it really is a lot of what you see and encounter about Perimeter Church, you know, from the moment you visit the website to the moment you walk through the doors.
So, you know, we support worship, we support the sermons, but you know, outside of those things, you know, a lot of the digital content, a lot of our creative content, video content, so we had a really awesome team that, you know, crafted all of that and so really defined a lot of what people experience, you know, outside of the relationship, the relationships at Perimeter.
A lot of the things you see we had a hand in.
[00:01:43] Speaker A: So yeah, there's some new signage and things around, easy to get to places around our big.
[00:01:49] Speaker B: Hopefully, hopefully much easier than it was before.
[00:01:51] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.
What kind of work are you doing now?
[00:01:55] Speaker B: So I now am marketing director for an Atlanta based software company, which just seemed like a natural bridge from what I was doing at Perimeter.
So it's an Atlanta based software company that really specializes in AI models to optimize manufacturing processes, which doesn't sound super exciting, but one of the things that really fascinated me about this opportunity is just thinking of manufacturing and just what AI technology has been able to do to transform that space in arguably a space where we would say there's a growing labor gap, meaning there's not a lot of people moving into manufacturing. And you think about it, you know, we want our kids to grow up someday to be doctors, lawyers, attorney, or, you know, whatever. We're not necessarily hoping and praying that they, you know, work in a factory for the rest of their lives.
And so there's this growing labor shortage and yet AI comes along with technology that's helping to close that labor gap, but in a way that it's not replacing people, because there are no people to replace. So anyway, it's just a really fascinating field that isn't being talked about a lot, but it's, I think, one of the more exciting spaces where we see AI really providing something helpful, useful, valuable, and beneficial to us as human beings. Maybe that bridges into the conversation today.
[00:03:25] Speaker A: Yeah.
So our current series is on current issues in counseling. And you may say, why is a counseling podcast talking about AI? Well, this does come up in the counseling room. Oftentimes we do have members of our team that will talk about, hey, we couldn't meet with you, so we're going to go ask maybe ChatGPT or Claude or whatever. You're Gemini, whatever the choice.
AI bot, maybe I don't know the right term, but.
And it's interesting as we interact and have those conversations and we felt like, okay, for that purpose, it would be great to hear about what are biblical principles and how to engage with AI, how should we even think about it? And I think even broadly outside of the counseling room, it applies to how, as Christians do we interact with technology. That's new. And maybe some of us are really scared of what is happening with this. So it applies in the counseling room. I think it applies outside as well. And so Josh actually had led some teaching at a conference, a church conference, when he was on staff with Perimeter, and he shared some of that content with our staff, just how to engage in this way. So we felt it appropriate to bring you back and have you talk about this. Thank you.
[00:04:35] Speaker B: It's a topic I certainly have a lot of thoughts on. And so by virtue of my job now, and even a lot of the ways that we were able to lean into AI tools here at Perimeter and what our team was doing, how we were doing it, even, I think, you know, here at Perimeter, we were one of the first churches to draft what we call just an AI policy to really create healthy guidelines around.
Here's what it is. Here's how we're going to use it. Here's how we're not going to use it. Just to make sure we stayed on really healthy guardrails, knowing that, you know, this is where culture is going, this is where technology is going. This is where a lot of the work that we're doing is going.
So let's develop some healthy parameters early that will guide us, you know, as we venture further and further, you know, into that.
Into that frontier.
[00:05:27] Speaker A: Yeah, that's awesome.
[00:05:29] Speaker C: Yeah. I'm just really glad you're here today, and even how you started is an encouragement to me, if I'm really honest. I am scared of AI.
I am always a late adopter to whatever technology it is. I got my first iPhone, like, years after Mouth, just because there's something about it that is unfamiliar, and so therefore feels a little bit scary to me. But like Kayla was saying, I think it is so important to talk about this broadly. It's not just in the counseling room. I think about it a lot for my children, totally, because it is so much a part of how they do schoolwork, a part of how they experience the world.
And so every time they want to show me something, my first reaction is, is that real or is it AI? And so I don't want all of my interactions with them to feel negative.
[00:06:15] Speaker A: Right.
[00:06:16] Speaker C: So I'm really excited. Just even what you shared about what you're doing now sounds really fascinating, so.
[00:06:22] Speaker A: Absolutely. Well, can you just give us a broad overview, your best explanation of what exactly is AI for people who are unsure, they're maybe not using it, maybe they're using it.
[00:06:33] Speaker B: What is it?
Yeah, I mean, I think that's an important starting point. Just because there's so many headlines and it's really easy to, you know, have an impression of what AI is based on, just, you know, an overall feeling. I mean, at.
At its core, AI is the closest thing to human intelligence. Like, at the end of the day, that's what is trying. That's what is being simulated, is human intelligence. And so it is artificial in the sense that it is not human. It is built on a space called machine learning. And so, as technology has improved and innovated over time, we move from machine learning into these algorithms that are able to take deeply complex formulas and data and pull it together and just crunch through it in a way that's much faster than anything that's come before. And it's, again, the closest thing to human intelligence. And so right now, the trajectory is, you know, at some point in, you know, you'll hear sometimes people talk about even quantum computing at some point, like, it will become faster than. Than human intelligence. And that's where a lot of the, you know, the. The fear can set in. That's where people start comparing it to Terminator and Skynet. You know, a lot of science fiction, which is interesting because, you know, years ago, you know, something like AI was being kind of forecast in largely science fiction plot lines and scenarios. And yet here we are.
Technology really has kind of moved in that direction, and we do have something at our fingertips, at our disposal, that is able to do, in many respects, things that up till now, human beings have done. And oftentimes very highly educated, very highly paid people. And yet these algorithms, these large language models, the ChatGPTs, the clauds, they're doing things at a faster, more cost effective, more efficient way.
And so, yeah, we're having to suddenly confront, oh, you know, we got here a lot faster than we thought, so what comes next? And then what is the, what is the human landscape look like, you know, with a technology like this? So I don't know that that was the simplest explanation for it, but that's what I tell people, is it is the closest thing in the technological world that has come to human intelligence, and it will, at some point, kind of, it will exceed what we can do just intellectually as human beings.
[00:09:13] Speaker A: Yeah, that's not scary, is it, Kathy?
[00:09:16] Speaker B: No, not.
[00:09:20] Speaker A: It is a tool.
Any tool has a purpose. So maybe what was, obviously you didn't have a part in creating it, but what do you think the purpose of AI like, was it designed to do?
[00:09:34] Speaker B: Yeah, and I think something you said there is so pivotal and it's really easy to get lost.
And it is a tool.
So every technological innovation in human history has always, it has meant to be a tool to serve a very specific purpose. Every tool is.
It's designed to innovate something, to make something better, to make something faster, to make something easier.
So we go back to the wheel. That was a technological innovation at the time. The printing press was a technological innovation.
The Internet was an innovation in every sense. As it's making tasks and functions faster, smarter, easier, better.
It's also kind of driving us closer together and further apart at the same time. So there's a little bit of a tension there.
One example, we'll look at the Internet. I mean, the Internet brought the world to our fingertips, you know, from dial up to, you know, instantly being able to connect on our smartphone devices. Now we are more connected to the world around us than we've ever been. At the same time, we're more disconnected from each other than we've ever been. So even during the COVID pandemic, while Zoom allowed us to have meetings still in person, we really weren't in person. So there's the trade off.
It's a simulation, but it's not the same thing.
But to get back to it, it is a tool. And when you think about all the other technological spaces and industries, in some sense, this technology, it was designed to make things Faster and in many respects, to replace people in things that ideally human beings wouldn't necessarily be doing those things. So redundant, repetitive tasks, things like chat GPT come along and they're able to do a lot of these redundant, repetitive tasks much faster, much more efficiently. So now all of a sudden, we don't necessarily need to hire a person to do that thing.
And then that became more of a, hey, we may not necessarily need to hire people, period. And so whether it's calculations, whether it's, you know, accounting, whether it's.
There's any number of things where you think of crunching large amounts of data, that's largely what AI came on the scene to do. And then as it's crunching massive amounts of data almost instantly now all of a sudden, the potential across so many industries and technologies, it's just exploded. And so very quickly now we find our, you know, having to answer questions about, oh, well, okay, what do people need to do? What do we need to lean on, you know, AI models to do? And we're having to confront ethics around that.
[00:12:46] Speaker A: Yeah, that's good.
[00:12:47] Speaker B: So, yeah, classic long answer to a short question.
[00:12:49] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, it makes me think you mentioned this. Throughout history, we've. We've dealt with technology and as Christians, it's not a new question. I mentioned this in the last podcast about social media. We're always.
So we really. There is a fear because it's unknown, but it's not a. It's a common, maybe fear. Common experience to Christians as, how do we think about this? And I love you said this before we started, but you wanted to be on even the innovative church side on, how do we actually leverage this? How can we make this redemptive in usage? And instead of just responding, which we often do, of critiquing only, we do need to do that, but we can also leverage it. So there's a.
I don't know, there's ways to think about it.
[00:13:36] Speaker B: Yeah, there's a wise way to approach it. I always come back to something Jesus said to his disciples, was, as you go out, I want you to be innocent as doves but shrewd as serpents. And so there's this tension that you hold where be looking for the good, be optimistic, but also recognize the realities of the world around you and don't be naive at the same time. So sometimes we approach those things as though you have to pick one path. It's like, no, no, no, I think we're meant to hold those things in tension. And even going back to the Idea of a tool, you think about, really any technology or tool that has ever existed because of the human heart, which we're told in scripture, there is a deceptiveness to the human heart as well, as we're still made in the image of God.
So there's this potential for every tool to be used for evil or for good. And so we can have all the conversations in the world about, is that thing bad or is that good? Well, in reality, it's.
It depends on who's holding the tool, who's manipulating it, how are they using it. And I would. I would make the case. AI, like any technology before, comes down to what's the intended use, who's operating it, who's deploying it, how are they using it? Because I think that's where something becomes evil or something can be used for good. So I always advise people, hey, before you dismiss something too quickly as a bad thing, maybe kind of pause and just think, am I reacting to the uncertainty of what lies ahead?
Is there an unknown about what this thing even is?
And think a little bit deeper to, hey, how could it be used for good? Is there potential for this to have a gospel redemptive purpose?
And I think in the case of AI, I think there is. When I think about scope and scale and what we can use this technology to do beyond what we've ever been able to do before.
At the same time, like, there's a lot of evil use cases as well. And so since the human heart has existed and since sin is entered into the world, I think you always have that. That opportunity for good and that opportunity for evil.
[00:15:50] Speaker C: Yeah, I would love for you, as you're talking about, you know, just kind of being mindful of our own fears and how we approach new technologies, maybe if there are more people like me out there who tend to be a little bit wary or slower to jump on bandwagon, Highlight for us a few ways that your experience with AI has been really positive. What can we look, you know, thinking about it as a tool, where can we look and see examples of how that's being used really well and wisely, not only as believers, but even in the world?
And then on the flip side of that, where, you know, maybe have we seen it go in unhelpful directions? Where do we need to kind of just be watchful?
[00:16:34] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. I'll kind of start in reverse order.
So.
And I think this is where you know, a lot of people when you interact with, you know, the headlines and the news, and oftentimes a Lot of coverage around AI. A lot of that is, you know, there is fear when it comes to misinformation, things that are fake.
And so just the advent of, you know, quotation marks, you know, fake news. I mean, there really is a lot of fake news, you know, as we technology has made it really possible.
I think of there's one platform called Nano Banana. All of these AI platforms, by the way, have really unique names, but I've not heard like it has, you know, it is incredibly advanced when it comes to video production and being able to simulate, you know, AI personalities.
And so deep fakes are very much a thing now. And so this is one of those examples of like, you know, there's a lot of unhealthy content coming out. It's fun, you know, to simulate a version of myself or somebody else and know, like, oh, it's AI, it's, it's cute, it's fun. Until it's not cute and fun because, you know, there's the potential to mislead someone into thinking, you know, in terms of, whether it be politics or culture, that someone, you know, went on camera and said something that was not true in reality, audio, the same. And so I think there's a lot of, there's a lot of research and a lot of innovation happening now to provide guardrails for that and to be able to detect, hey, what is real, what is fake.
Which all the more, all the more case to be discerning and wise and to have a healthy degree of skepticism about the things that are coming at you where I get really optimistic and hopeful.
So I'm a writer, so my bachelor's degree was in communications, kind of laser focused more on journalism.
So I care a lot about writing and the written word. Well, that was also one of the first spaces where ChatGPT Claude, you know, all of a sudden it was doing a lot of writing and it was writing better.
And so it'd be easy to look at that and say, okay, well there's no longer a role for writers in the world. We don't need journalists anymore because we've got these AI language models that can write. It's like, well, if you approach it as a replacement, maybe where I've really enjoyed the benefit of AI is being able to kind of take larger data sets. So when I'm comparing, there's a large body of research. So NotebookLM by Google is a great example of this, where I'm going to feed it PDFs and documents and digital sources that I need to be able to kind of parse through and study and research.
I'm going to feed all that into a project and then, you know, once it's kind of evaluated that I, I can start asking specific questions about the content in that, to better understand it in that sense. I'm using. We, we were just talking about this, you know, before the recording. I'm using it as a thought partner. I'm not using it to replace me.
Yeah. I'm using it as someone that I can bring into this project alongside of me that's able. It can help me learn in an expedited environment in the best sense. It's a cheat code without cheating. Yeah, but I think there's, you know, you have to approach it a certain way in. There has to be an honesty and, you know, an integrity in it and a healthy degree of skepticism, you know, when it comes to, hey, I don't want to just take everything at face value. I also want to read, I want to edit.
But it's made me a more discerning writer. And I've actually found myself, you know, looking for, you know, or including content I wouldn't have thought about before or discovering. Here's another angle.
You know, even when I think about my specific role now as a marketing director, obviously, you know, I'm trying to help my company market a very specific product to a very specific audience. Well, it's helpful to know what is that audience thinking? What are they looking for?
What are questions they're asking, what are felt needs? And so I'm able to use some of these AI platforms just to help me get into the headspace of, hey, if you are a plant operator at one of these manufacturing facilities, specifically within this industry, what are some of your most pressing felt needs? What wakes you up at night? And it's interesting to get this insight back to me that's largely based around content that's, that's, that's out there, that's accessible. But I don't have all the time in the world to go hunting for it, nor do I know exactly where to look.
So again, you know, I, I want to be discerning and wise about it, but I, I do want to leverage it to help me, you know, be a better version of who I'm called to be without replacing me, if that makes sense.
[00:21:45] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And there's different types of, there's all different types of these technologies too. But you mentioned like, NotebookLM versus like a ChatGPT and NotebookLM.
Correct me on this, but you feed it, it's basically only pulls from the documents you get.
[00:22:00] Speaker B: It's bound by whatever pool of resources you give it versus something like Chat GPT that will go and scour the web and find content related to what you're prompting it. And so each of these platforms has distinct use cases. I would say Claude's probably better on the writing side.
NotebookLM is really good when it comes to, hey, this is the content in front of me that I need to be able to dig into. And yeah, so it's worth.
And some people are, you know, they love geeking out over this stuff more than others, but it's worth kind of, you know, exploring. Hey, you know, as these platforms become more and more commonplace in our culture, which platforms excel, you know, at different use cases?
[00:22:45] Speaker A: Yeah.
What principles? We'll hop right to this question. What principles from scripture can we apply to looking at AI? Are there things that come to mind in that or kind of Christian. Even Christian ethics, as you think about that topic?
[00:23:01] Speaker B: Yeah, one that guides me. I was just having a conversation about this with my boss, so a lot of this is borne out. There's so many conversations happening about AI today because it really has just swept over the culture.
But there's one, there's a podcast I listen to, and the host is not a believer. But as he's having these conversations with industry experts and leaders about AI and the potential of it, what's interesting is how many of them who are not coming from any kind of a biblical, gospel centered perspective, they're all talking about this idea and this question of what does it mean to be human, which is deeply biblical from the very beginning.
So in a way, I think it's forcing a question that many people have just sort of assumed or just taken at face value maybe for centuries. Now, all of a sudden, we're having to come face to face with the reality of, oh, my goodness, here's a technology that is very quickly taking over entire industries and spaces where we've assumed people will always be in those spaces.
And maybe it's doing it better, faster, easier than we ever could. So if it takes away that from us, what does that make us?
Where does that leave us?
So it's very existential, but I think there's a very healthy question to ask in that space around identity and, hey, who are we?
And I love the identity question because it's such a foundation for a gospel conversation. Because at the end of the day, you may be a writer, you may be a technician, you may be an attorney, you may be an accountant. Like, those are roles you play, but are they really who you are?
And so I think it's forcing this question of am I as a person the same as my occupation, as the thing that I do? Or is there a gap between that and if the thing that I do gets taken away, does that have any implication on my worth and value as a human being? And to me, man, what an incredible foundation for us to be having more gospel conversations around identity.
And at the end of the day, God sent his son into the world for you. Regardless of what occupation you would choose and what you would be doing for an income.
There's a, there's a human dignity and worth, you know, there at the core.
So that's something that excites me. Now at the same time, I realize it's, it's easy for me to say that because I'm in a role that's kind of, you know, front facing when it comes to AI, while a lot of people are having, you know, their livelihoods and incomes, you know, kind of, they're questioning, am I going to have a future in this anymore?
And so I think what will happen in the future is we'll find ourselves, you know, we're going to see human beings move into spaces that really only human beings should be in.
While inevitably, AI technology begins to take over things that it can do more efficiently than human beings.
[00:26:19] Speaker A: So, yeah, maybe like robots in a car factory exist now.
[00:26:25] Speaker B: Absolutely, as people were. Well, you think about when the Industrial Revolution took place. I mean, before that everything was very agricultural.
We were cultivators, we were farmers.
And then when the Industrial Revolution happens, all of a sudden we're building massive factories and we're forcing people into those factories. And so people in some sense become cogs in a machine. And then something happens to one, take them out, replace them with another cog. And there's just a lot of repetitive, redundant tasks. And there's a lot of good that the Industrial Revolution brought about, but it also put us into this technological innovation in space that did not exist before. And so even then, people are having questions around like, okay, well, what do people do? Who are we? And so I think we're just, in some sense, it's this continuation of history repeats itself. It's now we're just confronting something that is a much larger technical innovation by sheer size and scope. But a lot of those questions, yeah, they kind of linger.
[00:27:31] Speaker A: Yeah, the human question is interesting because I was watching this, it wasn't a Christian like video or I forget what it was, but they Were talking about emails and how they can they now sniff out, like, hey, their buddy writes them an email and we're at work. They're like. And it uses all this really polished language. And it's like, dude, this is AI. Like, just. And they. They don't read it or they just. Because they're like, it's not you.
[00:27:58] Speaker B: Right.
[00:27:58] Speaker A: So they'd rather have the clunky language because it feels like more human. What they're longing for is a human.
[00:28:05] Speaker B: The flaws are what make us, yes, distinctly human.
And that was a point, you know, in a recent conversation I was listening to, you know, the.
The host was making the case that, you know, as AI begins to just take more a hold of industries and technologies, you're going to see cities specifically kind of get taken over by.
You can look already to, you know, futuristic cities. Like, you know, we can see in China where there are a lot of robots doing a lot of things, you know, driving people, delivering things, and you're just going to see more of a footprint, you know, of these, you know, AI technologies.
While his forecast is you're going to see people begin to move out into the open spaces of the world. And he uses the example, like, oftentimes what happens is, is when people acquire enough savings or they reach a certain wealth threshold, you know, what do they do? Well, sometimes they'll buy a lake house or they'll go buy this place out in the countryside. He says there's something like, deeply innate within us that wants to kind of like, you know, move back out into the. The open, natural spaces. And he was just making the case. I think there's something, you know, human about that. You know, I'm listening to it. I'm like. I think that's like pulling us back to like, the original creation story and like, we were designed to be cultivators and, you know, to. To interact with the world around us. And so maybe as, you know, as technology is pulling us away from some of that, it's not that those are, you know, those spaces stopped existing. We're just having to, you know, look for the. The home in a new place.
And I think there's, you know, there's a spiritual home to be found in that conversation as well.
[00:29:46] Speaker C: Wow, good.
I had to going back to the idea of just like biblical principles as believers. How do we interact with this? I had come across this one article or a blog or something, and it was, one of the principles that it gave was that we should always be evaluating kind of how we are engaging with these technologies, because it's really easy to let it kind of happen to you or for it to just become part of what you do.
But the point that the author was making is that as we evaluate, it's important not just to evaluate for its usefulness, but also for how it shapes us and how it's warming. Shapes. Right. And how it's warming us. So I don't know if either of you have kind of thoughts on that piece of it.
[00:30:32] Speaker B: I think one immediate thought that comes to mind, something I heard, I think it was Gabe Lyons maybe, and he was giving a talk at Liberty University at one of their convocation services, chapter service.
And he made the point that I thought was really helpful when it comes to principles. And I think it answers your question how we're relating to it. When I find myself almost assuming I'm talking to another human being, it should be a little bit of a gut check.
And he was making the point. He's like, it is not a human being, it is a machine.
It is a tool.
Interact with it as such.
Don't fall into the trap of thinking that you're engaging with another human being, because the reality is, yes, it's simulating that, and maybe you're prompting it, you know, by saying, hey, I need you to take this role so we can kind of dig into this and get this particular outcome. But don't fall into the trap of feeling that this is a human being you're interacting with. Which I think is the danger that many people have already, and a lot of people have already fallen into that trap because it's so good at interacting with you as a human being.
But at the end of the day, there's still data and algorithms in a machine.
This is a complex web of data servers somewhere at a data center.
And it's not a flesh and blood human being with a spirit and a soul that's interacting with you. So I think that's another thing.
So the joke is that you can stop telling it please and thank you when you're prompting with it, because, you know, it's not going to suddenly wake up someday and be like, hey, you know, thank you for, you know, being so kind and polite.
Like in a lot of, you know, the AI architects have said, yeah, it's just, you know, it's wasted energy for you to tell it please and thank you, because, yeah, it's a machine, it's an algorithm. Just like, get to the point, like, you know, prompt in a certain way. But, you know, silliness aside, I think that's, that's something that even I have to catch myself as I'm trying to engage with it as a thought partner and lean into it for all its capabilities. It's really easy to fall into that trap of thinking like, oh, this is a person on the other end. Yeah. That I'm relating to. And that's a, that's a false sense of humanity.
[00:32:53] Speaker A: Yeah, well, and it often will. They'll use language back and one of the, I guess a way to predict for draw. To draw people in. That was such a great idea. Thought about that before. And then it'll spit out some information so it acts. Simulates a human and its speech oftentimes whatever platform.
[00:33:12] Speaker B: Right.
[00:33:13] Speaker A: Have you found that to be true?
[00:33:15] Speaker B: Oh, absolutely. It's very. It strokes my ego a lot of times.
[00:33:18] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:33:19] Speaker B: When I'll, and you know, I'll catch something or I'll think about it differently and I'll pitch like, hey, you know, what about this? Or you know, I think we need to correct this and you know, come back with, hey, you're absolutely right. And I can't believe I missed that.
[00:33:29] Speaker A: I'm like, yeah, that's, yeah, it's like, no, thank you.
[00:33:33] Speaker B: But you know, and that's one of the things too. So, you know, we were talking about, you know, just, you know, our kids, you know, and as parents, you know, thinking about, okay, what my kids are walking into this technology, they have not known a world. So mine, I have a six and a half year old and a two and a half year old. So I think, you know, I grew up with the Internet. I remember dial up Internet and aol. I remember the first smartphone, you know, the iPhone. And you know, I remember social media all of a sudden becoming a thing that started on my college campus and then it was everywhere.
So I grew up with it and I look at my kids and this is the world they're walking into. They've never known a world without it.
So I think of the dangers of interacting with it and feeling as though this is a human being, even though they know it's not. There's that core longing to still connect and engage and have a relationship.
So thinking through, hey, how do I establish guardrails for my kids? How do I lead them into a healthy use of this technology that's not going away?
And they're actually going to have more time, you know, just in terms of lifespan, projected lifespan, they're going to have more time with it than I will. So it's going to be more of a Reality for them. So how can I already be coaching them, guiding them, preparing them to use it as a tool, but to continue to lean into true, authentic human relationships and community?
Like, because that means not going away anytime soon.
[00:35:06] Speaker A: Yeah. I'm thinking through, like, this worldview kind of idea comes to mind like that the tools have writers and the writers have worldview. And it does come down to there is a perspective that these tools have that may or may not be a Christian perspective. And so this relates to even counseling in the room. So if somebody.
How would you say, if I was to share, hey, somebody in the counseling room is kind of meeting with me, but then they're also saying, let me ask this about how do I deal with depression from a Christian perspective? These are my symptoms. What would. A caution you would give to that person? And then, I don't know. How would you speak to that?
[00:35:50] Speaker B: Sure. I'll be the first to say I'm not any kind of a licensed counselor. I would refer to you guys. You're the professionals in that space. But when it comes to AI, I think, you know, it is interesting that now that's very common. Like, it's very easy. It's very accessible.
[00:36:03] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:36:04] Speaker B: You know, people can go on chat, GPT probably, or they'll use Gemini, you know, to ask these questions. And the thing is, they probably will get good information. They'll get solid answers.
It is, as a principle, it's helpful to remember that the entire Internet is at the disposal of this AI platform, this, you know, model that you're interacting with.
So it's going to be pulling from, like, anything that's ever been written and launched out into the stratosphere of, you know, the interwebs and so.
[00:36:43] Speaker A: And all the Internet, that's. That's all good.
[00:36:45] Speaker B: Well, I was just going to say, like, contrary. Contrary to what you may think, not everything on the Internet is. Is true.
[00:36:51] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:36:52] Speaker B: And so it's going to be pulling from maybe some answers, insights that may be from a very different, you know, perspective or worldview or even a religious, you know, background. And so you'll find that maybe there's some overlaps in life principles, but, you know, there's a lot of differences as well. And so this is, you know, it's the benefit of having, you know, a real person in a counseling capacity, in a mentoring capacity who can know you, interact with you as a human being to another human being and discern things that only human beings. There's a lot of.
We were aware of this in the communications team at Perimeter.
There's spoken word, there's written word, but there's a lot of nuance in between. And especially pastors certainly know when you're on stage delivering a sermon, it's more than just the words you're saying.
There's an interaction that's happening. And we also believe that there's a Holy Spirit who's moving in hearts and minds. And so let's not dismiss the reality of the Holy Spirit at work. And the thing is, yes, the Holy Spirit can use, you know, these AI algorithms, but I know for sure the Holy Spirit moves and works and uses, you know, human souls. And so that's one, one caution I would give is just, you know, don't take what you get at face value. And I think that's, that's there's wisdom and, you know, maybe even bringing those back to someone who, you know, who deeply cares for you in a counseling and mentoring capacity, who can help challenge maybe some of that, make sure it's coming from a truly redemptive biblical perspective.
[00:38:37] Speaker A: Yeah, there's so much about an image bearer. We were talking about this, an image bearer interacting with another image bearer with their eyes, their body, the language, the tone of voice, the empathy, all of that. That's a part of actual change process of us knowing and understanding God's love. I pictured when you were saying, giving a sermon, I pictured like Jeff up there, just standing like this with monotone voice like that would come off a little different than, you know, he's walking around, he's not using his arms, weirdly, his hands aren't always in his pockets. There's actually that kind of matters.
[00:39:11] Speaker B: It does.
[00:39:12] Speaker A: And so we don't just change because we get good information.
There's. God designed us for it to be embodied. And there's something about that.
[00:39:20] Speaker B: Absolutely. And you think of just the information exchange. If this were purely, strictly an information exchange, this would be the algorithm's world. That is literally the world it operates in data in data out. And so it's just trying to approximate, okay, what information is needed. And do we really believe that that's the core of a human being? We're recipients and deliverers of income and outco intake outtake of information. It's like, no, I think we all, whether you would profess a biblical gospel centered belief system or not, I think we all believe that we're more than just information exchangers. And if that's true, what is it that AI can at best simulate but never quite get at the true heart and soul of what A human being can do, should do.
[00:40:14] Speaker C: Yeah, I think just where we started in terms of AI being a tool is really important for people to keep in mind that it is a tool and it has immense power, but it is not human. And so talking as counselors and how we're seeing it being used, we have some statistics about how many teens are going to chatbots for advice and relationship things.
What they're looking for is friendship and wisdom, but those are things that AI can never provide.
Friendship comes in person, ultimately in the person of Jesus, and the same for wisdom. Wisdom comes in the person of Christ. And if Christ is our wisdom, then there is 0% chance that AI can give us true wisdom in that biblical sense.
So, you know, all of that has been really helpful for us to think about. And I guess I just want to give you a chance, Josh, as we sort of wrap up here, AI is not going anywhere. And like you've said, there, I mean, there is a space for it that is really important as we navigate this landscape that's still changing as believers. Any final thoughts, things that you want people who are listening to keep in mind as we head into that future?
[00:41:34] Speaker B: I think the thing that I always try to come back to just because it is so tempting to, you know, either be over overly optimistic, which you risk being naive to the trade offs and the things that may not be as healthy, or despairing, and then you miss out on all the good potential. And I don't know that followers of Christ are given those options.
We're not called to be a despairing people, but we're also not called to be a naive people because we recognize the fallenness of the world and all the ways that we wrestle with sin. So I think what I would, would really challenge, encourage and call, you know, any follower of Jesus to is hey, try to kind of take a step back.
And again, in that same thing that Jesus called us, you know, there's a, there's an innocence but also a shrewdness. Like hold both of those things and think through, you know, your approach. You know, maybe it's because of, you know, a project in front of you or it's because of how someone else is using AI. Maybe it's you trying to like lean into, you know, a healthy relationship with your child and you know, know their relationship with AI, but try to, you know, really think through a lens of hey, where, where do I need to kind of just be cautious appropriately, but where's their opportunity to really use this in a, in a redemptive healthy way. And I think sometimes it's think about outcomes. Like, we need to think about how we're engaging with it, but let's also think about what is it that I'm hoping to come from this. And if I have the destination in mind, that can help guide maybe a healthier pathway to reach that destination using the right tools along the. But along the way and in the right way. So before, you know, anyone would be tempted to jump to despair or jump to, oh, man, it's going to be amazing. It's. Well, we're kind of called to be a people that occupies the middle space.
So, like, really, if you find yourself, you know, tempted to despair, tempted to naivety, like, just, you know, think through, you know, what may I be missing so that I'm not missing the, the, the, you know, the unhealthy, but I'm also not missing what could be a really healthy outcome of this?
[00:43:47] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. That's so helpful. Josh, thank you for joining us.
[00:43:51] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:43:51] Speaker A: It's a great conversation. We could go on.
[00:43:54] Speaker B: We could absolutely go on.
[00:43:56] Speaker A: Yep, we could go on.
I will. Thank you. Because you're not AI.
[00:44:00] Speaker B: So I am the very real application there.
[00:44:05] Speaker A: Yeah, that's right. There we go.
[00:44:07] Speaker B: No, thank you, guys.
[00:44:08] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Well, we. If you have more questions about this, please Visit our website, premier counseling.org Schedule an appointment with us. Reach out to us. We'd love to help and, and be the people that we. That you can talk to with your issues and your problems and questions. So thanks for joining us and we'll look forward to being with you next time.
