Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: First of all, I don't think AI is going to take away work. Like, it might change the way work looks and feels, but there will be just a different kind of toil that comes in there.
And this idea that removing toil is good, I think is really a broken idea.
And I'm not saying work is good in relation to a capitalist value system. It's just our first command was to tend to the garden. We're made to work, and that's something good that God has given us.
[00:00:31] Speaker B: Hello and welcome back to Unfeigned Christianity, where we are on a journey of becoming a people who are theologically anchored in Jesus, emotionally and spiritually healthy, so we can love and disciple others. Well, I'm excited today to have my friend and coworker, Stuart Mollett on the podcast. We had a conversation about AI and how to handle AI. We use it. So coworker, I work for LIFX Marketing, marketing agency. We use it in our work every single day, different types of AI. And so we've, we. It's. It's forced us to contemplate the, the value of AI, how it helps, but then also some of the, the challenges and even ethical issues that bump into with this wild west that has evolved over the last couple years. So I really enjoyed my conversation. Stuart is, he's, he's also a teacher. He's got his degree in literature. I think he's taught literature. I'm not sure what his degr.
And specifically, but so a lot of our conversation is around writing and around discovering and knowledge and what does the role of actually writing things out ourselves play in learning and the learning process. And so I trust you guys. I'm confident you guys will enjoy it and find it relevant to our world today. So here's my conversation with Stuart.
All right, Stuart, welcome to Unfeigned Christianity.
[00:02:17] Speaker A: Thanks so much for having me on. I'm excited.
[00:02:20] Speaker B: It's good to have you on. I've been going around the ballpark having different co workers on and finally get to you.
[00:02:28] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I'm honored. And yeah, enjoy working with you. So excited about the discussion and see where it goes.
[00:02:37] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, me too. Looking forward to it.
I.
So yeah, we work together in marketing and neither of us have gone to school for marketing. Our school actually has to do with other stuff.
[00:02:54] Speaker A: Yeah, that's true.
[00:02:57] Speaker B: So what that indicates is maybe our interests are definitely, at the very least, our interests expand beyond marketing and business, even though that is a part of our vocation and our interests.
But I'm really interested in talking with you today about kind of building a healthy relationship with AI is kind of the title idea floating around.
But specifically you have a background in literature.
And so, yeah, to start us off with, why don't you.
Who is Stuart Mollet? Where have you come from?
What did you go to school for? What's your experience? Even in teaching literature? And then maybe from there we'll flow into the conversation around AI.
[00:03:52] Speaker A: Yeah, well, happy to dive in there. I grew up in northwestern pa, which is a beautiful area full of public land, and just had a really good childhood there. Exploring and good friendships and being outside a lot. And so that's something I memoriate. There's a childhood I appreciate and grew up around Faith Builders Technical Institute there. So kind of grew up in an environment of learning and learning from the context of Anabaptism, which shapes a lot of how I think today for sure. Went to college first for behavioral science, thinking, social work or something in that vein would be what I do and discovered very quickly that I'm not built for that kind of work and pivoted to English where I started doing more and more teaching and ultimately went to grad school for an English degree, got my master's and have been teaching taught in that context for years. Let me think. It would be for sure. I taught an adjunct part time from 2019 to 2024, but through that I taught full time high school as well for one year in 2021-2022.
And I've been sort of pivoting out of teaching just out of financial necessity to support my family.
In a lot of ways I feel like I was born to be a teacher. So there's things to process there for myself and some grief there in having teaching behind because it was just. It's a gift to be able to teach and engage with young people and I love doing that.
I primarily see myself as a husband and dad. I also am a marketer.
And so, yeah, just working at honing my craft as, as a marketer for clients. And I enjoy also reading and keeping up with reading in sort of the English and literary world.
Um, so yeah, that's, that's my context that I bring to this discussion.
[00:06:02] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. It's interesting how many of us on the team where we work for a marketing agency, but how many of us have a background in teaching?
Yeah, you're probably the most educated teacher of us all. Am I right as far as actually getting training for teaching a subject?
[00:06:21] Speaker A: It could be. It could be. I definitely don't think I'm the most experienced, but I, I would probably, I probably do have the highest degree level.
Whether or not that makes me better or not, I don't know,
[00:06:33] Speaker B: at least spent more time.
Yeah, kind of honing, honing in on that craft and so forth.
But yeah, a bunch of us have, I taught for three years and, and have been kind of on and off part time with the local school here.
Right now it's just P.E. so it's not.
Not, I was gonna say, not that difficult.
It doesn't require me to prep much. Let's just put it that way. Yeah, yeah. So kind of what got me you, you mentioned enjoying reading and so forth. We, we have a team. Cliff likes to joke that his biggest skill, and I'm not probably not quoting it verbatim, but is hiring people who are smarter than himself.
And I don't know if I fall in that category, but we have a lot of well read people on our team and have some good discussions around everything from politics to theology to marketing to whatever. But obviously in the last year and a half, well, I guess probably push in three years now, it's had a lot to do with AI and how we use AI in the marketplace in our work as a marketing agency.
And I remember last summer at a company retreat, we got into a discussion and you had thoughts of, about AI and particularly about its role in discovery or. And I, I was trying to remember exactly how you had worded it. I can't.
Maybe you remember better. But the, just the, the very, the way writing out and, and just the work of putting our thoughts onto paper is an act of discovery and knowing and so kind of. Yeah, I guess let me set, frame this a little bit for our audience and then I'll let you kind of explain more what you were talking about there. And we can flow from that. But the challenge, like AI is this massive tool. It's reshaped the marketplace similar to something like the Telegram or the Internet, period.
So we're needing to do our work in a new way because algorithms use AI and so forth. But then the question is, well, how do we incorporate it into our use as a company? Because it does help us do things massively more efficient in some ways. And we'll maybe get into that as well. But more specifically, as just individuals, how do we engage with AI? Because at first blush it seems like it could write a reasonable academic paper better than most students. So why should a student not use AI when they're needing to cram in a 3000 word paper with 4 days left till the deadline or whatever.
And this, this whole notion of writing, what resonated with me is I have experienced that to be true. And I'm guessing most anybody who's been through school has experienced that. But.
But whenever I've often told people the things I write about are not things I feel like an expert in, it's things I want to.
I want to learn more about. That's right. That's part of why I dive into it. So, yeah. Do you want to unpack it more and kind of. What. What were you saying with it?
[00:10:24] Speaker A: Yeah, that's exactly where a writing project starts, is what do you want to learn about? What are you curious about? And you never start a writing project in a school context. You never start a writing project because you know things about it or that you're an expert in it. You start because you're curious about it. You have questions, and so you formulate those questions, and then you do the research and you formulate potential answers, and then you argue for your answers to those questions. It's kind of that writing process. And so it is a learning process. And so when I say it's, I talk about writing as an act of discovery, which I think is what you're referring to. There's.
And so, you know, writing is not just transcribing your thoughts, it's actually developing your thoughts. It is a. I call it an epistemological mechanism. It's a way we know things deeply.
And, you know, so when you replace that process with AI, even if you're using AI in a more intentional way, you're sidestepping that. That discovery and that learning. It's. It's. It's a. It's a process of maturation, too. Like, if I want to know something deeply, not just shallowly, but deeply, so that I can actually talk about it confidently, engage with it, ask good questions, provide a productive contribution to the larger discussion around that subject. I actually have to go through that process. If I try to circumvent that process, AI is just going to regurgitate what other people have already said, largely. You know, you could. Again, you might give it a more complex prompt that may have some level of contribution, but you're depriving yourself of learning by turning to AI in that process rather than undergoing that process yourself.
And then the other way it's an act of discovery is actually for ourselves.
Flannery o' Connor has one of my favorite quotes about this, where she says, I write because what does she say? I write because I don't know what I think until I read what I say.
And that's, I think, really just totally true, is that we have all these thoughts. At least if you're like me, you have all these thoughts in your brain, and our brains aren't built to really be able to compartmentalize those and deal with those by itself. We have to give it certain mechanisms like writing to put those thoughts down so we can actually understand what's going on up here and then you can actually do something about it. Even if you're. And that's why journaling is a good discipline. But even if it's external knowledge about culture or politics or reading scriptures or whatever you're writing about, you still aren't going to get a good sense of what you think about a topic until you write it down and read what you've said. And then you can actually work with that and hone it, develop it, and strengthen that writing and those thoughts and grow in those things. And so again, when you deprive, you deprive yourself of learning, but you actually deprive yourself of growth intellectually and as a person when you skip that process.
[00:13:08] Speaker B: Yeah, that's interesting, hearing that quote and you've maybe said it before. I've heard it before, but I forget or I forgot it. And I tend to be a verbal processor. So when I'm in a deep writing project, I often. I have a standing desk. I love writing standing up. And I'll walk around my office talking and then I'll write it down.
And usually it's not until I write it down that I'm like, wait, do I actually agree with that? And when I see it on the paper, then it sounds different than when I was just like, talking it out loud.
[00:13:42] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Verbal processing can be good, but then the writing it down. There's another level of critical assessment that happens when you actually write something down and have to put it into a coherent sentence.
That discipline hones that and it can be challenging to do that too.
So, yeah, anyways, yeah, I think it's. It's important there.
[00:14:11] Speaker B: So what the. The temptation with AI is actually, I. I actually don't know my temptation with AI. I'm still wrapping up this semester, actually wrapping up my Bible college credits.
And the temptation is I'm actually doing gen EDS right now. And the online college that I'm doing it through allows for use of AI. There's very rigid guidelines of how you can use it. Not all assignments are you allowed to use it you have to cite what you used it for and how you used it and what portion of your paper or whatever is.
Has been influenced by AI for me, the temptation is like, man, I can produce, you know, if I just dump a lot of context. I've got notes.
I mean, even some books anymore have enough online presence that, that you can reference the book in the year or whatever and it'll pull from and. And pull together some quotes. And then for me, it's just like double checking and all that. The temptation is, well, that saves me time.
I can do it faster, whatever.
Is that the temptation within young people? And you've taught more recently young people writing and any subject where they have to do some writing, or is it just a temptation to not do the work? Like, is it.
Are we getting lazy or are we, you know, I think of. Of things like the toaster and other household tools, the microwave and stuff, Cereal, cold cereal, things that we're supposed to intend to make things more efficient. Getting your kids to school and so forth.
[00:16:10] Speaker A: Right, right.
[00:16:11] Speaker B: And so that's why they took off. But then it actually just kind of made us busier, which is kind of a fear perhaps, of what AI is doing. There's. I don't know if we'll get into. There's a lot of data kind of coming out about that. But what in academia, what are you observing? Is it people trying to do things faster or is it that they're not wanting to do the work of actually reading the source material to.
To have the quotes in hand and then actually thinking through the outline of like, how do I put together good argumentation and.
Yeah, what are kind of your thoughts around that?
[00:16:57] Speaker A: I have a couple different thoughts that are possibly disjointed, but I think that some of it is time saving. I'm really busy. I have a full credit load this semester or something like that. And this class maybe isn't as in part of my major, or maybe it is and you still just want to save time. And so I think that might be part of it. There's also another part of it is like, okay, I've hit this roadblock in my writing process and I could dig into that and try out a few articles, try a few books. But I also have this tool right here that in like 30 seconds I can type in my problem and it'll give me a bunch of resources. I think that that always have that accessibility of that kind of tool makes it.
Makes it a big temptation, which makes that sound like it's like this sin or something. But you know, that does, that does attract us toward it in that when we encounter challenges and then there's, I think there's. If you lack self confidence, the thought is right, like, oh, I probably can't write very good on my own. This is going to make my writing and my, my project look better.
Get a better grade sound correct.
And the reality is, especially in an academic context, for 99.9% of your assignments, the point isn't to get the good grade or have a good paper. The point is to hone how you think and hone the craft of thinking and writing. The classic line is, we're not here to teach you what to think, we're here to teach you how to think. And so you should be learning how to think. And so it's a different, when we turn AI, we're operating on a different value set there than trying to mature as thinkers and writers. We're trying to get the assignment, get the good grade. And there's motivations for that that are valid, like career motivations and awards opportunities that come your way when you have better grades and there's social pressures. There's things like that that all play a role in there.
But so yeah, anyways, that that would be, I think, a lot of what undergirds that turn and what makes it so attractive to students.
[00:19:12] Speaker B: So is it maybe I'm jumping ahead of our. Of you're good. Some of the points that I wanted to discuss with you, but I guess when I was listening to you talk, I'm thinking like, is the danger is there if someone is committed to learning because you could breeze through, get the good grade, get your degree, have your credentials and not actually be equipped to then be the doctor or whatever. I mean, I sure hope our doctors are not getting an AI education.
My point being is it's possible to get the degree and not actually have the experience or maturity to that the degree indicates you should have.
But if someone is committed to doing the learning and the work, Is AI as dangerous for them? Or I'm trying to think of a practical example. How do I if so, for instance, if I'm doing research with AI, I'm wanting to learn, so I ask AI give me X best sources on Y topic or whatever, is that an appropriate use of AI or is like, is there something valuable about the library pulling out the hard copy books, pacing through them a little bit to see does this have what I'm looking for?
Even reading a source, like to see if this looks like it's down My line, I'm thinking of my early days of college versus how, how I do research now. Like, I don't touch a hard copy book near like I used to, even just eight years ago.
[00:21:11] Speaker A: Right?
Yeah, I think that's a really good question.
And I think that's what people, I think a lot of people do use AI in that kind of research mode to kind of say, well, I'm just using it in the research phase, not really using it to actually write down words, but I'm using as a tool in that research phase. And I'm not here to say that that's wrong or right at all.
But I don't think, I think of this in terms of ownership, if you want to ownership of a project and that kind of deep learning in that process of writing. I do think there is something so important about connecting physically with the process, and that is walking to the library, combing through the books, searching on your academic library for keywords that are related to your field, and perusing articles, figuring out which articles are relevant, which aren't. You know, if you've ever done a research project, you start noticing author names that are similar. You start saying, oh, this person has written a lot in their field and they're actually quoted a lot. They must be important in that field. You're, you're getting to know a field at a level in that whole process that's not AI prompted. You're getting to know your field and your, your discourse community and your project in a much deeper way. And yeah, you'll find the, probably will find the top five scholars and resources in your project if you use AI. And again, I'm not here to say that that's right or wrong, but there's something about, I think there is a cost there to our ownership and the joy of that process.
Honestly, for me, anyways, it is a process of delight. When you find that author name appear a few times in their site. You're like, oh, this person is important, Let me see what else they do. Or you start rubbing against something you commonly see in a discourse and you're like, man, I just don't think that's right. And I want to talk about that. I want to enter into that discussion and contribute and argue about that with these other people and engage with it. With my Prof. With my cohort, that is just as an intellectual, that's what fuels me anyways. And I imagine that's what fuels lots of people and writers.
And there's discourse communities outside of academia where you can have similar experiences. And so I think there's just, there's something lost. There is a cost to circumventing even that part of the writing process, even though I understand it from a time constraint level like, yeah, anyways, which we can get into that more. But that, yeah, yeah. My answer there.
[00:23:55] Speaker B: Are you a small business owner or maybe an expert craftsman or creative who would love to scale your revenue so that it's sustainable? One of the things that I've found in working in marketing for the last number of years is that there's this kind of awkward group of businesses and people where they can't afford a marketing agency. They can't pay 2000amonth, month to get good SEO, good online marketing done, but they need marketing in order to scale. I experienced it when I worked as a handyman where, yeah, I, I made good money, but it was kind of this constant grind of making sure work was lined up and I knew I needed a good marketing system, but I didn't really know how to do it. That's why I've started the marketing machine coaching. There's two different tracks. One is where I walk with people who are ready to implement this into what they're doing. I call it the marketing machine for business. And you could be an expert where you're wanting to do coaching or kind of share your knowledge and information. You could be a craftsman where it's just you working and you're wanting to market your product to people so that it becomes a sustainable business. Or maybe you're a small business and you are ready to scale so it's, it's more sustainable and you're, you have more margin to pursue goals, whether that's in your business or personally. In that tract, I guide you through the seven layers of a healthy marketing system. Then I coach you in implementing that into your business. Specifically. Now there's another tract where it's for creatives or, or maybe startups. You're just kind of testing it out and you can get the course just by itself. There's not the coaching involved with it, but it's more of a DIY track. If that is something that sounds valuable to you, something you could really use. You don't have two grand to spend on hiring a marketing agency, but you need some marketing. You don't know where to start, then this is for you. I invite you to check it out through the link in the description below or just type in www.Wordsthatturn.com. that'll take you automatically to the main page for the marketing Machine coaching and you can learn more of the details there or you can always DM me and find out all the details from me personally. Now let's get back to the episode. Yeah, I resonate with that. There's, I think I've often told people since going through Bible college that like some of the best books in terms of theology. I don't, I don't know what it's like in other fields, but the, the covers were not very attractive. The titles weren't even that catchy. Right. I would not have read them if I wasn't forced. Either it was an assigned reading.
[00:26:51] Speaker A: Right.
[00:26:52] Speaker B: Or it was something I stumbled upon in the process of research and discovered, oh, this author is really good at.
And so I think about how that kind of discovery and learning and branching gets lost. Even context, like context for not only quotes from a book, but even authorial context of like what you were saying, he writes a lot from this group or the rise and fall of Christianity. I can't, can't think of the author's name right offhand, but he's not. He writes about church history, but not from a historian perspective, from a socio sociologist perspective. And so just using AI to get your research, to get even key data that he shares and so forth, which you can, which you can do on AI, it doesn't give you all of that context without actually physically engaging with. Yeah.
[00:28:01] Speaker A: A key tenet of writing well is understanding your audience and how your work is contributing to the larger writing that project. So whether you have like a substack newsletter or you're writing into, it's easy to talk about an academic because academic fields are kind of these, these discourse communities. And so you need to know what's been written in that discourse community so that you can actually contribute to that discussion and not say what's already been said.
And I think that we should always like, if we're writing, we should think about, okay, who's my audience? What are they reading? So what, what discourse community am I entering into here and what do I need to know about that community in order to contribute well to this audience and bring, bring what I have in a way that's really effective and productive.
And yeah, it takes a lot, it would take a lot of, it would take up much more attentionality, engaging AI on that kind of thing than it would just say, hey, give me some key resources here for this. It's not going to necessarily see or share all that context.
[00:29:00] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. So let's talk about time saving AI.
So we are recording this on Riverside, which is I think probably one of the leading softwares for podcasting.
[00:29:19] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:29:20] Speaker B: In the use of AI, I can do with two clicks what took me.
It might be three clicks what used to take me a time and a half the length of the podcast episode to comb through and find. So yeah, like, yeah, before, just in 2019 when I started my podcast, you know, I'd have to listen through again to find the extra long pauses or if I wanted to cut out.
[00:29:49] Speaker A: Right.
[00:29:50] Speaker B: A bunch of arms and stuff like that. Well, now there's two clicks on Riverside that we can do to chop that.
It doesn't sound like sometimes it might chop off the word, you know, the ending of the word right before it and so forth. It's not as artistic as if somebody took the time to go through and blend it together better, but.
Oh, I can also pull the transcript, dump that into Claude, spit out a thousand word blog article to provide context when I post it on my blog, create social media descriptions and so forth. Like so but.
And it's we in our conversation around this, this episode, you mentioned something that kind of stood out to me, that just the skepticism around whether it will actually save us time.
Something I've been a little frustrated since I'm posting now at the time of this recording, which this recording is going to come out a little bit later. But at the time of this recording I had a two week pause largely because of schedule and so forth. I just, I didn't get the. But I'm trying to post an episode a week and we have Riverside AI to help the editing go fast. We recently got high speed fiber optic Internet and So uploading to YouTube is like a tenth of the time as it used to be. Um, yeah, but I still, it's still it bothers me how long it actually takes me to get an episode prepped and uploaded and all of that. And to the point where I wonder, like, is once a week too much? Is it? Should I be pacing it out every other week?
[00:31:41] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:31:42] Speaker B: And I'm trying to figure out why that is. Maybe, maybe I'm doing more because I didn't used to try to create a blog post to go with it.
Now I do. I'll have Claude spit out one based on the context of the conversation and then I go down through and kind of edit it.
I guess my question is twofold. One is, am I contributing negatively? Because I don't like that blog post that Claude creates for my main focus is the episode. So that's what I spend my time on.
[00:32:20] Speaker A: Right.
[00:32:20] Speaker B: I don't necessarily resonate with the writing of that blog post. Sure. So should, should I be avoiding that since I don't have the time to go through and write, actually write one. So that's kind of one question. The other question is why doesn't AI save us more time or what?
What is your skepticism around? Its, its. Yeah, yeah, the advertising that it will save time.
Right.
Yeah.
[00:32:48] Speaker A: I think, I don't know how much I can speak to whether you should post a blog or not, but I think that might be an example of this concept. This is actually a really interesting facet of modernity in general. The more technology it advances, it seems like the more busy and fast paced our culture becomes.
And there's this term for this in sociology called social acceleration. And it just says, it's this theory that says a key facet of modernity is that that there's, there's speed up in all kinds of levels. So we think about this in, in terms of, in terms of like product, economic production, right. We have these, these machines.
We can think about it in terms of automobility, fossil fuel transportation. This is speed up in transportation. We can now visit places all over the globe and visit them than anyone was able to before.
The means of production is much more efficient than it ever has been. And at least in terms of the volume of production.
Washing machines, able to wash clothes faster and with more ease. Computers, email, these are all elements of speed up. We can now speed up long distance communication.
And there's also other dimensions of it too. In this theory, like on average people have more romantic partners than they would have had generations ago.
Political change, it seems to happen faster. Think about the swings from left kind of having power and then right having, having power. And, and just maybe the questions around, you know, what is democracy's fate in this kind of environment. And so whereas in pre modern times you might have had a line of kings that seemed like they had lasted, have been going forever and will last forever. You had social structures that had been in place for hundreds of years and you thought would be in place for hundreds of years. And now we see all of those changing social revolutions through the, you know, late 1800, today is this speed up of change. It's this social acceleration.
And one of the paradoxes of that social acceleration in this theory is that when you have a mechanism that speeds something up, that makes something more efficient, it seems like it should save us time, that we should now have more leisure. And yet every time it seems that we end up being more Busy. And so the way they kind of graph this out is they say, well, when you have this, this machine like AI that saves us this much time, but what that machine also does is it creates a different set of factors and a different kind of volume of work that makes up for, and maybe even then some adds to the amount of work we have to do with that time saving mechanism. So like at lifx, I think it's fair to say that we use AI more than we ever have and we feel busier than we've ever felt.
And there are numerous and complex factors around that.
But I think a lot of it is just because AI is shifting the way marketing tactics work. And so this time saving technology is also creating a significant change in volume of work that the time saving elements of this technology cannot make up for.
And so it's like we're using AI to save us time on the extensive volume of work that AI has now created for us and the change that it's bringing in the marketing landscape. And so with your, with your situation, it's like you didn't do a blog before, but you thought, hey, I'm saving this time. I'm going to now do a blog with my podcast. You're adding to that volume of work.
And is that time saving mechanism actually making up for it if you're adding to that volume of work rather than staying focused on what you. I don't know if you did a blog before or not, but on what you originally did, you know. Yeah. Anyways, so it's an interesting theory.
[00:36:40] Speaker B: And yeah, I just dumped the. I, I think I put the transcript on. But part of it, part of it was, you know, I could generate a blog post that taps into keywords and stuff. So like, it's, it's me trying to get more visibility of that one particular episode that, yeah, but it, but it is like takes it. Ultimately I timed myself a couple weeks ago and was just discouraged by like, man, I'm spending it on something different now, but it still takes about as long as it did a few years ago. And so maybe the question is either I pace it out farther or just stop with the blog post or whatever. Yeah. Pieces that are.
Why.
So what is because we, you know, at LIFX Marketing, probably one of the biggest ways I have and you and I work in different departments. You're, you're the head of paid media.
I am one of the account managers. I guess you are also an account manager.
But I help with support, even a level of coaching sometimes for different of our clients as well as strategy.
And one of the things that I've experienced, a tremendous benefit of AI in our use is in the strategy department.
AI helps us actually think, think of things that go beyond our experience or education in the realm of marketing.
And so that, to me, is a tangible way. AI adds value and even saves time in the sense that, I mean, on one hand it adds time because now we have all these things to look into and have conversations about and new tools to.
To learn and get trained with. But it definitely adds value, helps us add value to our clients.
But like you also said, we're feeling busier, some of us a little burned out.
I've observed, whether that's with work at lifex or just my own writing work, like brainstorming is fun because AI helps me think of all kinds of stuff, but then it's super disorganized and that can clog my, my brain just knowing, like, okay, where was that piece that I.
And the flow of stuff. So I guess, what is the line? What is the tangible value of AI in society?
And where is the line between healthy use and the kind of use that then starts to cost us something or burn us out?
[00:39:46] Speaker A: Yeah, it's such a good question. I think that I do think the technology has real capabilities like you're saying, and I think it's fun at lifx because we all, I think, engage it fairly critically.
We have, I think, some strong opinions around the team around AI, some more optimistic, some more pessimistic, and I just actually love that engagement and that we're really engaging with AI really intentionally and critically and seeing think the value of the technology and the possibility of it take shape. So I, I really do love that. And I think what's most important in that, so using it in ways that doesn't cost us, I think it's just we have to keep our val. Our core values centered. So in a company context, yeah, we talk about core values, those have to remain central. So, you know, if, if using AI helps us better support clients on a strategy level, great. That's awesome. And even if it doesn't save us time, it doesn't matter if it saves us time at that level. Right. Because it's adding value to the client.
And so we always need to be asking, is AI supporting our core values? And we need to be really critical about what supports them and what doesn't. Because it's so easy to say, wow, I saved this time on this project that took me hours. Now it takes me minutes or I did this really cool thing that I would have never been able to do.
And those are great moments. But.
And they're neither. I don't think they're neither. It's not black and white, whether those are right or wrong, but they don't necessarily support our core values. So I think there's definitely reason to say like, yeah, I can save a ton of time writing messaging for a webpage by using AI, but is it serving my client? We have this value of being profit minded on behalf of our clients. We use their investment as we would use our own.
And so from that level, if I can save time and add more value because of that time saving to the client, great. But if I'm saving time and the quality is not there, it's not a good investment of their, of their budget, then I'm following the values of AI and I'm not following the values of our company. And I think the same goes with our individual values. What do you value as a person and does AI support that? And where does AI start costing you in that?
And we have to be really critical about that and have intentional kind of conversations and engagement. It's because I slip into it so easily, oh, I saved this time. I did this really cool thing. But I'm not asking is that actually in. In service of, of my values, does it, does it help my team? Does it help my client?
Those are the questions I think that are. Should be absolutely core and fundamental as we, as we engage it.
[00:42:27] Speaker B: Yeah. And even just the. So it does this really cool thing, saves you some time. But it was so cool you ended up spending another 30 minutes like messing around with other stuff.
[00:42:38] Speaker A: Yeah, Guilty of that myself. Yep.
[00:42:40] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:42:44] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:42:44] Speaker B: So what, what is the.
It's a.
The leadership team of the company was recently at an agency conference, I guess is what it's called. Agency. Yeah, weekend retreat, whatever. And there was a lot of conversation around the use of AI and the year before.
I do not go to these. So remember, you can help correct me or whatever from what they talked about. But the year before, and I have felt this myself, even how we talk about it as a company, but even my own level of interest.
A year ago I was, I was a year into trying to train ChatGPT. Maybe it wasn't quite a year, it was more like 6 months. Train chatgpt to sound like me, like to. So I was feeding it old blog posts and testing stuff out. Like I wanted to see if I could get it to be efficient, like I could produce a blog post that I feel good about in a significantly smaller amount. And the push was like, if you're not using AI, you're already falling behind, kind of that sort of thing. Well now this year, for me personally, I've come back to like you mentioned it earlier, a little bit more the joy. Like I really enjoy writing and like getting my thoughts out and feeling at the very least feeling good about how it looks on my computer.
Yeah. When I actually show somebody else that it may, it may not land the same way. But sure, sure.
But even the, just the slowing down the pace and thinking more critically as I'm writing anyways, that's kind of what I heard from the feedback of the, of the agency conference as well, was like, there's this level of maturation in the use of AI and just like, yeah, AI is here to stay. It's not going to go away. It's changed the marketplace and we need to learn how to use it. But there's also a lot of data showing, showing that, you know, the average person can spot or even if they can't spot it, they just don't engage. Like with AI created content, there needs to be a human touch, something that differentiates all that to say my question is, I think you used a phrase, I think you talked about like not falling for hook, line and sinker. The rhetoric around AI advertising, what is there expound on that more and is there a place for the to be okay with being skeptical about AI?
I don't, I don't know if that makes sense.
[00:46:01] Speaker A: In the skeptical in, in what way you say more about that?
[00:46:06] Speaker B: Well, I was going to say more and then I was like, I'm talking too much already.
[00:46:09] Speaker A: So. Oh, you're good, you're good.
[00:46:12] Speaker B: Yes, I, when I first started using AI, I had some people in my life who like were really skeptical of it and when I would hear them talk about felt to me, which I think was true, that they, they didn't even understand like it. Some of it was kind of conspiratorial, like didn't even understand how AI works.
Right. And so to me it was like I wanted to hear from people who actually use AI.
[00:46:46] Speaker A: Right.
[00:46:47] Speaker B: Well now those of us who use AI every day are finding the limitations and maybe even problems dark side of AI.
And so in some way coming to the a level of skepticism that some of some of at least the friends that I'm thinking of were at the very beginning, maybe for a different reason.
But in our space there's kind of, particularly in the marketing field, there's this real big push to get into AI. Like, you have to be implementing and using AI. And so I guess my question is, is it okay to be skeptical? And you alluded to it earlier, we have different members on our team who are quite strongly skeptical about AI. Even though we, we use it, they learn how to use it.
And I appreciate also the pushback and the back and forth that we have on the team where we can sharpen each other in that way. But what is, is it okay to just not buy into all the hype around using AI? Like, is there any point in feeling FOMO about not. Well, I'm not on AI yet, or I don't know how to use it yet?
[00:48:11] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's a real feeling that we have in using AI. I think that's one of the symptoms I have when I'm not saving time. Like when I feel that frustration, like I'm not saving any time. This is still taking a long time. It's like, I must not be leveraging it in the same way as these other people who are just like, this is saving you all this kinds of time. It's.
[00:48:28] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:48:29] Speaker A: And so I think that can be. If there's that feeling, I tend by default to be fairly skeptical.
I do get weary of more kind of conspiratorial narratives around AI development, although I think there are real concerns environmentally, politically, et cetera.
But there's some, there's. There's a few people in my, in my world on substack who, who write about AI in ways that I'm like, okay, like, saying things like imessage will be obsolete in three months. You know, it's just like, I, you know, I don't think so, but like, I'm just. And it's been three months since they wrote that, you know.
[00:49:02] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:49:02] Speaker A: So I just, I think there's a level of unhelpful, like, this is terrible. The world is crashing down.
While we can also be sober about the, yeah, fossil fuel dependencies of it. The energy costs, I mean, cost of living is already high and potential of data centers rising, raising those costs even further for various communities where they, where those data centers are built.
So, like, I think there's lots of reasons to be skeptical.
And I think that the rhetoric of AI is, it's, it's, it runs on a value system that is, I think, counter to being fully human, especially in a Christian sense. So, you know, time saving, for instance, solving your problems really quickly, instant gratification. Right.
[00:49:53] Speaker B: Is.
[00:49:54] Speaker A: Is in that mix.
And so I. I don't know how. How if this is answering your question, but I do have a lot of thoughts on like, the spiritual dimensions of it too. Like that. I think there's lots of room for concern there.
But I have more to say about the rhetoric around advertising. Like, there's. I think the one thing I mentioned in that one meeting was, was an a. Claude ad on removing toil from our lives, which I just think is a load of bull, but we can talk about that too.
[00:50:23] Speaker B: Claude removes toil from our lives.
[00:50:25] Speaker A: Right, Right.
[00:50:26] Speaker B: And your issue with that is, comes back to the idea that toil is actually good. Am I remember correctly?
[00:50:33] Speaker A: Right. Yeah, exactly. I think toil is a part of our lives. Were made for work. And first of all, I don't think AI is going to take away work.
It might change the way work looks and feels, but there will be just a different kind of toil that. That. That comes in there. And, and so, and this idea that removing toil is good, I think is. Is really a broken idea.
And I'm not saying work is good in relation to, like a capitalist value system. It's. It's just what. It's. Our first command was to tend the garden. Like, we're made to work and.
And that's something good that God has given us. And so, yeah, like, I think about my day. Like, I get up in the morning, I usually have a slightly rushed devotions. I get my kids ready for school. I get them out the door and it's all so rushed. And then I get to work and work, a busy life. And then I come home and, you know, we get kids ready for supper, get them ready for bed. By the time they're ready for bed, I'm going to bed. You know, it's just this day that can feel like, full of toil. And like, what is my life right now? It doesn't feel very transcendent. And, and at the same time, you can reframe that and say, actually no. Like, my time getting the kids ready, they say the most hilarious things. They notice things about the world that I would never see if it wasn't for them. The connection with my wife through all those different things, the connection with people at work and building my craft at work, like, those are all good things. And AI, the value system that undergirds AI, that fuels a lot of it, is that. No, like, that's actually a bad thing. That day is not good.
Like, let me help you make that day less. Less characterized by work and movement. And I just, I Don't think that's their path to happiness. I think it's really being present in our work is the path.
Yeah.
[00:52:21] Speaker B: Anyways, if you are a leader who cares deeply about your people, but you're tired of guessing how your team is really doing until someone burns out or quits, check out Team Pulse. It's a simple, simple 60 second weekly check in that gives you an honest picture of morale, stress, workload and wins. So you can have better one on ones, catch issues earlier and build a workplace that heals, not hurts. Team Pulse is designed for small and mid sized organizations, schools and nonprofits that want real conversations, not just another corporate survey. Listeners of unfeigned Christianity get two months free. If you sign up before December 31, just use the link and promo code in the show description below that. That reminds me, this is totally random, but as you were talking, it brought up a movie my wife and I watched. I don't know if this rings a bell with you at all, where they, they removed work from. Is it. Have you, have you ever read or watched the Giveaway, the Giver series?
[00:53:29] Speaker A: I haven't. I have. I should, but I haven't read it.
[00:53:33] Speaker B: I can't remember if it's that series or not.
[00:53:35] Speaker A: Okay.
I mean, Wally would be right. Wouldn't Wally have a similar sort of.
[00:53:40] Speaker B: Yeah. Maybe futuristic. I was thinking of Wally. Yeah.
[00:53:44] Speaker A: Yeah. It might, it might engage this conversation.
[00:53:46] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:53:46] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:53:46] Speaker B: Yeah.
But just it was obviously it's. It wasn't coming at it from a Christian perspective necessarily or whatever, but.
Sure. Pardon me.
[00:53:55] Speaker A: You're good. You're good.
[00:53:57] Speaker B: Maybe just have her join me for a little bit.
[00:53:59] Speaker A: Hey, sounds good. Hi.
You join in the meeting, huh?
[00:54:08] Speaker B: I guess. I've got my headphones on.
[00:54:10] Speaker A: Oh, gotcha. So she can hear me. I'm just talking to you.
Yeah.
[00:54:20] Speaker B: So, yeah, I definitely resonate with the. This. I. I think it is a, A myth, a human myth.
Right. This notion that we need to remove toil from our lives.
We were designed to, from the very beginning, designed to work and have a sense of creative cultivation.
How does. You mentioned you have thoughts on the spiritual dynamics and I'd like to kind of.
Yeah. As we bring. Towards the end of our conversation here. How does this play out in.
Yeah. Ministry or pastoral work?
[00:55:10] Speaker A: Where.
[00:55:12] Speaker B: And obviously, obviously this. I, I use the word pastoral work, but there's. I mean, teaching is going to have a lot of that different where it's relational, formational. You're not just imparting content to people.
[00:55:31] Speaker A: Right.
[00:55:31] Speaker B: You're. You're you're shaping people or meeting with people in a. Yeah, exactly.
So what role does AI have in sermon prep, lesson prep, research? We've touched that a little bit. But even something I've.
Email is.
I hate email.
It's not the people.
As a writer, I just hate. Email is not the thing I want to spend time writing. So I've tested. I have yet to find a tool that I really like, but I've tested AI tools where it'll populate a response right within Gmail and it can be fairly good.
I've tested dumping an email in even ChatGPT or Claude and give me a response and then I kind of review it, stuff like that. I'm not sure that it actually saves me time because I then end up reviewing it and all that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I guess. What are your thoughts on when it comes to personal care, relational dynamics and kind of with that, the spiritual dimensions of being human and so forth? How.
[00:56:55] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I think that's a great question. I mean, I resonate with the frustration around email. It's a drag. There's no doubt about it.
I think there's always a cost to using AI in any form of communication, not necessarily meaning it's a bad thing that we trade off.
[00:57:16] Speaker B: Or
[00:57:18] Speaker A: I think there can be good reasons for using that. I've done it before too, where I have pounded out thoughts about an email and said, keep my wording, make this more concise in Claude or something.
And that can be helpful when it comes to ministry and pastoral work, being with people in their space, ministering to people.
I think that's such a core role that a pastor plays and is, for lack of a better word, shepherding the flock. So if there are ways AI can save you time in order to do that kind of work, I think that's a good trade off.
Where I, where I get less inclined to think it's a good idea, is in communication.
Again, I'm curious to hear from you on how you use AI in things like sermon prep. But again, I tend to think that what is our value in a sermon?
What is the point of a sermon? If we took a really reformed approach, we might say John Piper would probably say the point of a sermon is to glorify God.
And, you know, a sermon doesn't have to be tapping into really good hermeneutics or resources in order to glorify God. Right. It doesn't have to be this neat and tidy sermon.
And I think. And that's where I think that actually like embracing our limitations as creatives, even like in a sermon is really important. Obviously we should interpret the scriptures really responsibly. We should use good hermeneutics and be honest. And you know, but I think that AI can, that AI tempts us into thinking we need to have a really good product that emerges from the process rather than.
No, what I'm doing here is using my giftings and my calling to present the Word. And so. And then there's like administrative tasks in church. Like, yeah, leverage AI for your admin tasks so that you can do more ministry, more prayer, more for discipleship. Like, like that. That's. That seems good to me. I get a little bit allergic to using it outside of that, but I don't know that. I mean, I also, I feel very, very much for bivocational pastors like yourself, who you. And a lot of these bivocational pastors are parents too. So you have parenting responsibilities, home responsibilities, church responsibilities, and work responsibilities. And any two of those would make anyone busy. And you're doing all those different things. And so, So I think again, you have to weigh the cost of what you do there.
But again, I get a little bit allergic to using it in that kind of creative sermon prep process. And I'd love to hear more about that.
Yeah, go for it.
[01:00:19] Speaker B: I've got a young lady here who will probably be podcasting one day,
[01:00:27] Speaker A: So
[01:00:27] Speaker B: I have yet to, I have tested every, just like I said, testing writing, I think so in full transparency. If there's a podcast on my blog post 2024 for sure, then it probably has a highly AI generated blog post with it.
I think there's maybe two or three blog posts that I used AI heavily to generate content.
Wasn't totally impressed with them. And I, and I, I, I published a few of them just somewhat experientially to see how people would react to them. I use AI a lot on social media descriptions, but all of that is always like, here's the transcript.
Create a description for Facebook that focuses on, you know, that is publicizing this episode or blog post or whatever.
So, so when sharing a link on social media, that's probably where I use it the most.
So I haven't been fully satisfied with AI writing in my voice unless it's for, like with lifx, we, we use AI for quite a bit of blog content and so forth and that. Right.
But I, I find myself, when it's my own writing, I find myself doing heavy editing anyways, where it doesn't even feel like it's saving Time.
[01:02:11] Speaker A: Right.
[01:02:11] Speaker B: So I use AI oh. With that, I tested scripting messages for sermons, and that was horrible. Like, I.
I have never.
AI does not produce. Like, it would sound so cheesy, so hollow.
[01:02:35] Speaker A: Right.
[01:02:36] Speaker B: And I'm not sure why. Like, maybe because I. Like, I thought it. I thought sermon. Scripted sermons sounded worse, even worse than writing of mine using AI and so I'm not sure what is different if I just communicate different over some. But I do use it some in research and primarily for maybe there's resources that I am familiar with and I can't remember where I'm. I'm thinking of a quote or I know it talked about this certain study or whatever, and I'm trying to find it. I use AI a lot with that.
Sometimes I'll use AI to help me brainstorm an outline, prepping for that.
But as far as sermons, I.
I am not satisfied with the actual note preparation and what I would actually say. Plus going back to values. I really believe. And this is not original with me. I can't remember who all different communicators have talked about that. Is the paper noise coming through quite a bit?
[01:03:51] Speaker A: It is a little bit, yeah.
[01:03:53] Speaker B: Here, do you want to play with it down there?
Huh? No, let's just sit quietly.
[01:04:03] Speaker A: My kids would also not want to play with it down there. I've asked questions like that before.
[01:04:10] Speaker B: You want to sit on daddy's lap, don't you?
Oh, what was I saying? What were we talking about using?
[01:04:18] Speaker A: You've never been satisfied with this, the
[01:04:21] Speaker B: script and sermons, the value of. I think if the sermon is not within me, something that I could stand up and give right now, then I'm not adequately adequate, adequately prepped for the sermon period.
And so if it's. If me trying to create an AI script is shortcutting my process of actually studying the passage and actually sitting in some of the books that I'm reading and so forth. Then like, I think that's more valuable than actually getting a clean slate of notes that.
[01:04:54] Speaker A: Exactly.
[01:04:55] Speaker B: And I also think we live in a time.
Two things. One is people. People can tell when you've used AI to create something.
They want it in your voice, even if it's not very eloquent. And we also. I think there's a skepticism rising around, like, really clean, spectacular communication, maybe even showy presentations.
They just want a human to share wisdom and like, what they're learning about.
[01:05:23] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:05:24] Speaker B: I'm not downplaying the art of rhetoric and using that in presentation.
[01:05:33] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:05:34] Speaker B: That I've. I continue to Read and watch videos, learn, grow in that regard as well. But, but there's. Yeah, I have not at all been satisfied with AI as far as the final product that, that, that would actually lead to presentation. It's. It's been more research development and then I take the minutes for our leadership meetings and I.
Recording them and then dumping that transcript in has saved a ton of time and actually captures things better. I, we do have to go back through because sometimes it mixes up names and stuff. So.
[01:06:11] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I.
Then there's an example of an administrative task that can be really helpful.
I was going to add something about what you were saying about sermons. Oh yeah, like, as far as like people wanting a human, I think that's, that's exactly right. Like we want connection and in some ways if church, if you could view church as, as sort of a haven from the world, I don't know if that's a good theology of church or not. But it shouldn't be highly technologized like the rest of our world. And in some ways there should be a level of non conformity of where we can come and just really be focused on worship and connection.
And from a rhetorical standpoint, like you talked about the art of rhetoric possibly being maybe a little devalued in that pursuit of just less perfect, less perfect communication. I think part of rhetoric is just understanding what your audience wants and communicating to them effectively within a genre form that resonates with them. And so there is an art to that kind of communication that feels and sounds human, that connects deeply.
That's still there and still is and there's still craft there that I think is important. And yeah, I, I do think there's going to be greater connection if it comes from you. And it's not perfect.
And I, yeah, I've seen too the AI generated devotional and servant content is just. Is very shallow.
And yeah, I did.
[01:07:51] Speaker B: I taught a Sunday school class this winter and it was really not a very good time of life. We had a baby through it and everything and everything else kept going and so I, I used AI a lot to prep those lessons but I had, I mean it's stuff I had taught before so I had all the resources and that I up. I would upload to Claude is who I was using with it. And, and so that was kind of interesting engagement. But even there I probably only went with about 30% of what it actually gave me. Like there was still.
I'm grateful for the past experience that I had had to know where I wanted to go in some of those lessons.
I'm not sure what it would have been like if I was trying to create just from scratch, not having gone through that.
Right. And.
Yeah,
[01:08:57] Speaker A: yeah.
[01:08:59] Speaker B: What is.
[01:08:59] Speaker A: Yeah, I think go for it. Go for it.
[01:09:02] Speaker B: No, you were gonna say something.
[01:09:03] Speaker A: I was gonna. I was gonna also talk about a spiritual dimension. I think that like, even just like from a discipleship perspective or like, personal growth, I think that, you know, when we talk about values of, of what we believe, I think that we, in like a church context, we serve a God who, like, when Paul is crying out to him, saying, take away this thorn in my side.
Christ says, my power is made perfect in your weakness.
And Paul's kind of approaching God the same way we might approach Claude or ChatGPT. It's like, I have this problem. Take it away from me.
And ChatGPT would say, like, sure, I'll take that away from you. Here's a solution, you know, and. And we serve a guide who says. Who doesn't take it away. And, and who says, actually that space of pain is where you'll find my presence and my grace, my power.
[01:10:01] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:10:02] Speaker A: And so I think that that is core for me. And thinking about AI of like, this is a. It's built to be very quick, gratification, solution oriented.
And, you know, even Christ asked for his cup to be removed from him, but then he walks that path. He shows us that the way of Jesus is accepting that cup in all its terrible difficulty.
And it's that acceptance, that path that leads to everlasting life. And so if we're. And I think like in Christian humanism, communion with Christ and walking in his way is the path to joy and meaning and happiness and suffering is a key part of that path.
[01:10:45] Speaker B: Death.
[01:10:46] Speaker A: But the ideology that undergirds AI is that no suffering, toil, all these things, that's bad. We got to eliminate that stuff. We got to maximize leisure. We got to avoid death as much as possible. The Sam Altmans and people of his class, the amount of investment they put into life, prolonging studies and experimentation is kind of mind blowing. We want to avoid death and suffering.
And I think AI really press impresses on that idea of, like, Christ being present in our suffering. And that's where grace occurs.
And we, we. Yeah, and so I think that's. That's the. To me, that's like the spiritual threat of AI just outside of, like, ministry and the tasks of ministry. In the Christian walk, there's like this, this cost,
[01:11:37] Speaker B: the push to remove pain from, from life, which, which has like shows up in every generation and ours is showing up in, in how we engage AI with or even what like you said, the, the founders of AI kind of what they're.
Oh, because there's, there's talk about AI. Oh like the.
I can't think of the word that they have like where AI takes over every. The world and everything and all.
[01:12:12] Speaker A: Super intelligence, I think. Is that what it's.
[01:12:14] Speaker B: Intelligence?
[01:12:15] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Aig, something like that.
[01:12:17] Speaker B: I think as a Christian.
Yeah. Something like. Well, AGI is adjusted gross income, right.
[01:12:26] Speaker A: I think it's artificial general intell. Or. Or is it.
[01:12:29] Speaker B: Is it also AGI?
[01:12:31] Speaker A: I think so. I have to check out. But yeah, I know what you're talking about.
[01:12:35] Speaker B: I, I guess I find myself like, I don't think Christians should get anxious about that at all because I, I don't think that'll ever happen.
First of all, these, these machines are only as intelligent as the people that train them, which are humans.
And, and ultimately I believe the story of Yahweh, the Scriptures is what's true about the world.
And there's not an AI Jesus coming to save us.
We have already been saved.
But like you said, the message of the gospel is through suffering.
Part of the hard things to reckon with as a disciple of Jesus is the fact that suffering is a part of the formation and the.
[01:13:26] Speaker A: Yeah. And it's, it's especially, especially hard to reconcile in a word that the world that's constantly telling us through a myriad ways that, yeah, any kind of pain and discomfort and challenge is something to evade and that leisure is something to pursue there.
Yeah.
[01:13:45] Speaker B: What is.
We should wrap this up. We could keep talking, but we, we got to get back to work.
Yep, we.
I try to squeeze in these interviews around the working hours and, and yeah, the time that worked out for this one was right in the middle of the workday. So taking a little break here.
[01:14:07] Speaker A: No worries.
[01:14:08] Speaker B: I'm going to let her out of the room here.
[01:14:10] Speaker A: Yep, you're good.
[01:14:12] Speaker B: I apologize. All our challenges of working from home are happening in one day today.
[01:14:19] Speaker A: You're good, you're good. I totally understand.
[01:14:24] Speaker B: Yeah. So just to kind of close, close out our time, what is one thing you would like to say to someone who's just trying to figure out how to use AI? Well, not an expert, just a regular person trying to stay healthy.
What would it be? Should, should they be using it at all?
It's.
I'm guessing everybody uses it in some way, shape or form.
[01:14:52] Speaker A: It does seem like Everybody uses it from my vantage point, but actually I would have friends from church who would work more blue collar jobs and are pretty removed from it.
But yeah, I think in this in two ways, a primary way and a secondary way. I'll start with the secondary. I think that's just being aware of, of being highly self aware when we're engaging with AI. What is AI doing to us? How does it affect my mood? Just like with any technology, social media and et cetera, we need to always be very self aware and how those things are impacting us. How is our digital consumption impacting our ability to love well, live well and be present with the people around us and with our communities?
And it's built. AI is built as a problem solver and so it comes with great value in myriad ways. But I'd say the primary way to engage with AI is to make sure your default setting as a Christian remains to turn to God and your community when you face problems and difficulties. AI cannot and should not replace that. And don't let AI disconnect you from God and your most important human relationships just like any part of the digital space.
So if you prioritize your relationship with God, your time with God, your, your presence with your people, I think it's probably hard to abuse AI if that's what you're prioritizing. So just keeping the, the primary things first in your life and yeah, secondarily being aware of the costs and trade offs of, of using AI.
[01:16:29] Speaker B: If today's conversation stirred something in you, if you find yourself wanting to go deeper than just listening, the Unfeigned Christianity membership program might be exactly what you're looking for. It's a formation community for people who are serious about becoming theologically anchored and emotionally healthy so they can love and disciple others. Well, it's a real space where we do ongoing work together. Members get access to teaching resources and ongoing conversation through monthly mentorship calls. The kind of stuff that doesn't make it into the podcast, but shapes the people who are in it. You can join at www.asherwhitmer.com member and get started for as little as $5 a month, if you purchase an annual membership, you get a 20% discount. The link is in the show notes below. Yeah, that's good. And, and, and just to rubber stamp it again, like why, why should I want to engage?
Take for example, I'm struggling in a relationship with somebody and I could go on Claude or ChatGPT and talk through how to think about or what do I do in this situation versus find someone in an embodied form to talk that through with or go and directly talk with them. I mean, I think it can be helpful to separate if there's conflict going on, to have some space and kind of think through. But yeah, what.
Again, even as Christians, we tend to avoid the conflict or avoid the toil of.
And what is the value of that embodied interaction processing together when AI can pull from a psychology psychologist perspective that my friend who's just a peer of mine can't. Right.
[01:18:29] Speaker A: Yeah, I. Oh, man.
I think there's a lot of different dimensions because, yes, it can pull from a psychological field in ways that are helpful. It also is concerned about your customer experience.
And so it just seems less likely that's going to challenge you and your part in that conflict.
And so you want people and you want connections when it comes to relational conflict that are going to challenge you and make you better and more mature. And I think, like, as a person, I would rather my wife come to me and say, I don't know how to solve this problem, then come to me with the solution she got from a conversation with ChatGPT, you know, and so I think just being.
Again, it comes down to when we accept our limitations. I think there's possibility and growth that can happen there in a relationship.
And again, it's keeping our values first.
I don't think the solution is necessarily the most important thing. So when it comes to conflict, we always want that solution, resolve the conflict. And we often rush that in our religious circles and we sometimes just need to sit in that space of limitation and lack of clarity and do it together.
Obviously, where it's healthy. It just depends on what the conflict looks like. But just being able to own that is going to gain you so much more grace and rapport in a relationship than being an ant, a mouthpiece for an answer generator.
[01:20:00] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, no, that's good. Thanks for. Thanks for coming on. There is a sometimes when I'm feeling slightly ornery and narcissistic.
All you have to do is, like, correct to your point of. Of it being a focus on customer experience.
You correct AI and like, this is. This is awful. You need to, you know, do xyz. And it comes back with, you're right, that's. I should have done that the first time and thinks you're just.
[01:20:32] Speaker A: Yeah, yep.
[01:20:34] Speaker B: That's not a healthy use of AI. But I find it humorous sometimes to
[01:20:37] Speaker A: like, yeah, it's better than just accepting the answer. And. And it is. It's always like, oh, you're so right, it's this and then sometimes it's even more wrong, you know? So anyways, okay.
[01:20:49] Speaker B: Well, thanks for taking the time to talk about that. Obviously.
Yeah. For our listeners, AI is an evolving tool. It has evolved tremendously just in the last six months, let alone what it will in the next six months to a year whenever somebody is listening to this.
But I think the underlying principles you shared with us are true regardless of the era and even regardless of the tool, just the value of toil and sweating out our thoughts and our work, the embodied community relationship. Yeah. Thanks for sharing that.
[01:21:31] Speaker A: Yeah, thanks for having me on. Appreciate it.
[01:21:36] Speaker B: Yeah, we'll I mean, Stuart and I get to hop off and continue working together, but everybody else will have to look Stuart up sometime to have a conversation.
[01:21:48] Speaker A: Yep, that's right.
[01:21:50] Speaker B: Sam.
