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Here are some of the news headlines we're watching.

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This is not.

Hi friends.

Welcome to In the Market with Janet Parshall.

Thank you so much for joining us this hour.

I think we're going to dive into another very interesting conversation designed to help you think critically and biblically.

And let me Underscore, this is not a multiple choice test.

It is both critical and biblical.

We're going to talk about the rising advent of new technology, artificial intelligence.

And it's a really interesting topic that is gaining more and more traction in the church.

Some people think it's value neutral, some people think it's anathema.

Some people think it's the best thing since sliced bread.

I happen to be one of those people that believes in that old idea that buyer beware.

I'm not going to be the first to try or wonder why, as the poet used to say, I'm watching this, and I'm realizing that these machines have people who program behind them.

And when you start listening to what the people say behind the machines, you realize that you get a key insight into their worldview.

When Sam Goldman says, I'm going to create Sam Altman rather says, I'm going to create God.

I have a caution with anything that Mr.

Altman gets involved with in terms of the new technology, I have a problem with people who subscribe to a transhumanist worldview.

I have a problem with people that think that the value neutral, that value neutral are two words that describe artificial intelligence.

And I know I'm not alone.

Let me give you a little bit of background.

The former CEO of Intel.

Look at your computer.

You see that little Intel sticker on there?

This is the man behind this.

He exhorted an audience of Christians last week to harness the burgeoning potential of AI technology, which he hopes can become, his words, a force for good in this era.

I deeply believe that technology is neutral, said Pat Gelsinger, who led Intel from 2021 to 2024.

He now serves as executive chair and head of technology at Glu.

We're going to talk about Glu this hour.

That's a technology platform that connects connects various organizations within the faith ecosystem.

I bet you didn't know there was one of those.

We're going to talk more about that as well.

Uh, Gelsinger said it's neither good nor bad.

And this was a keynote address that bore the title AI for humanity Navigating Ethics and Morality for a Flourishing Future.

Not sure what ethics and morality has to do with zeros and ones and diodes and motherboards and machines, but I digress.

And by the way, the event was co-sponsored by the Christian Post and Glue, and it was hosted at Colorado Christian University.

So he went on to say, it's how we shape it, how we use it, how we form it as and we as the Christian community, we as believers, will we be shaping technology as a force for good?

Are we going to show up to be bending the arc of technology for good?

And then another person who spoke there was Doctor Richard Land, who's the executive editor of the Christian Post and president emeritus of Southern Evangelical Seminary in Charlotte, North Carolina.

He shared his thoughts, by the way, and he encouraged Christians to be engaged with the cutting edge of technology, warning that it could serve both good and evil purposes.

In fact, he went on to say, this is the greatest, most significant invention since the invention of the printing press.

Gutenberg's invention of the printing press was considered the most significant event in the second millennium, between 1000 and 2000 A.D., and it's hard to argue with that.

He went on to note, by the way, that the printing press led to an explosion of knowledge paving the way for the Protestant Reformation.

Well, I have a friend who disagrees, and I happen to agree with my friend who disagrees.

And I'm glad my friend is here to spend the next hour with us.

Doug Smith, that Doug Smith is with us.

That's his website, by the way.

Don't you love it that Doug smith.com.

He is an insider by the way.

He stood on the other side of the tech curtain for decades.

Three decades to be exact.

He understands the power of technology.

He was a software developer.

He understands everything there is about what goes on.

He understands when someone makes a declaration that this is value neutral technology.

Doug Smith has a thing or two to say about that.

By the way, he has served in his past fortune 500 companies.

Startups.

Universities.

Government agencies.

Media personalities.

He is currently an Android focused engineer with Covenant Eyes and a proud ambassador for screen.

Excuse me.

Screen.

Screen.

And he's also a wonderful author.

He wrote the book that really challenges us to question our screen time.

And we'll get into that a little bit later as well.

But Doug responded to this convention, and I'm so glad he did, because I was very troubled when I read it, and I thought to myself, I'm not sure that I swallow hook, line and sinker.

The idea that it's value neutral.

A printing press is a printing press that is neutral because it doesn't do anything except replicate the letters that the printing press has put down your ink, your dollop of ink, and you press the paper through it.

It's neutral.

You could print something good, you could print something bad.

But I'm not sure that comparison is actually accurate when it comes to the burgeoning technology of AI.

Doug, pull up a chair.

We got a lot to talk about.

First of all, thank you for being who you are.

I just love spending time for you, with you, because you really do make me think critically and biblically.

And the piece that you wrote as a response, in a word, is superb.

And it really you want the best for the church, you want the best for Christians, and you're throwing up a red flag that says, listen, there's a little bit of a warning here.

You have to pay attention.

So how about that initial statement that, in other words, if you look at Gutenberg's printing press, you could say that that was the moral equivalent of AI.

They're both value neutral.

Do you buy that?

Oh, right.

Janet, thank you so much.

I'm just so blessed and honored to be here, blessed and honored to be among your friends and just to be able to share with your audience today.

Uh, yeah, that is the question.

And, uh, no, just as quickly to, uh, to to not, uh, boil or bury the lead as they say.

Um, no, um, the, uh, I'm a huge fan of Marshall McLuhan, who is also influenced Neil Postman, who wrote this amazing book called Amusing Ourselves to Death.

They have some really strong words about people who say what I call the tool trope, which is because it's used so much and I and even in this piece I just wrote, I just kind of came out of me justification by faith in the tool trope alone, little play on words there, because they just lay it out there and expect us to just accept it.

The printing press was neutral.

Roman roads were neutral.

So AI is neutral too.

It's just how we use it.

But it fails to understand what the technology is ontologically what it's designed to actually do, how it actually harms us and shapes us.

There is no technology that is neutral in a sense, but AI in particular, as well as and social media before it was kind of a harbinger.

But AI in particular has very significant harms that make it not neutral and shape us in ways that we definitely need to talk about.

Yes, I'm so glad you give me the gift of a full hour, because we'll fill up every minute of it and then some, which is why I keep asking you back.

You used a tool.

I want you to break it down because you've written about this before.

Define for our friends, if you would, please.

What a tool trope is.

For a lot of us, this is new language in our lexicon, so we'll get a definition to that and discover some of the harms on the other side of the tech curtain when we get back with Doug Smith.

This is in the market with Janet Parshall.

We're talking about AI technology.

Glad you're here.

We're going to continue right after this.

If you've ever felt unworthy of God's love, we need to remember that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

That's why I've chosen the steadfast love of the Lord as this month's truth tool.

Unworthiness doesn't disqualify you from God's love.

It magnifies it.

As for your copy, the steadfast love of the Lord, when you give a gift of any amount to in the market, call 877 Janet 58.

That's 877 Janet 58 or go to in the market with Janet Parshall.

Doug Smith is with us.

This is a man who understands technology, been involved with it for years.

By the way, I mentioned his book before.

His book is called An Intentional and UN is in brackets because it's a wink and a nod here.

There really is an intentionality, by the way, with these programmers.

So the subtitle of his book is How Screens Secretly Shape Your Desires and How You Can Break Free.

And he wrote that for you and me as followers of Christ.

By the way, it was a wake up call, but it goes to the question we asked in the first segment, which is is AI value neutral when it comes to technology?

And I agree with Doug emphatically.

Absolutely not.

And I think it's a very flawed comparison to say this is like Gutenberg's printing press.

That was an empty machine.

Content had to be put in.

AI is programmed by a programmer.

It's that unseen person you can't see that absolutely has a worldview.

So you used a term before Doug, and it's an important one.

In fact, it's very germane to this article you wrote as a response, and you've written about it before.

What is a tool trope?

Well, Janet, a trope in general is just a story, an element of a story that's used in common.

You know, we think of a hero's journey and, you know, the hero has this has a real big problem.

And so he needs a guide.

So the hero and the guide and the guide helping the hero.

That would be kind of a story trope.

And so I'm using that term for this idea of the tool trope, meaning that when people say exactly what Gelsinger said, I believe a technology is neutral.

It's neither good nor bad that that is the tool trope.

And it what it does is it serves as a justification for adopting basically any new thing that Big Tech gives us, uh, without really critically evaluating what it specifically is designed to do to us.

And, um, and as a warning, I mean, Neil Postman says it so well, he says we're much later in the game now.

The ignorance of the score is inexcusable, to be unaware that technology comes equipped with a program for social change to maintain the technology is neutral, and that it's always a friend to culture at this late hour is stupidity, plain and simple.

And it's, you know, that's strong words.

Um, that, that that just really do again serve as a wake up call.

Because what, what we ignore is we've seen technologies over and over again make changes to us and especially big technology products like social media.

We've seen the exponential rise of mental health problems and self-harm and suicidality, just from things like Instagram to teenage girls and so on.

The data is irrefutable and people said the same thing.

Instagram's a tool for.

It's a tool, a neutral tool that we can use for good or bad.

So they use it for the youth group and they use it for this, you know, and it's really a tool designed for addiction, for manipulation, for, um, constant use.

And they're willing to exploit weaknesses in our behavioral psychology and neuroscience to get us to keep using them and to build those addictions.

That's all intentional.

And and and it's on steroids with AI today.

Yeah.

Preach, brother.

Uh, boy, a couple of things come to mind when you were talking.

Number one, it's the cult of personalities.

A lot of people don't have a background in tech.

Somebody involved in tech, like Gelsinger says, it's value neutral.

You go, oh, well, the guy ran Intel.

Oh, he's got Glu.

So obviously he knows exactly what he's talking about.

I don't I didn't major in computer science.

Therefore I trust the personality.

We are always called to be good Bereans just because somebody says it doesn't make it so.

And by the way, excuse me, but I'm in Washington, so cynicism is on every corner of the street in this town.

I'm a little bit cynical when somebody develops a company that he's going to make money from, that's going to, quote, invade the faith ecosystem.

He's not doing this because it's a humanitarian act.

He's doing it because it's a new avenue of revenue.

Now that's fine.

I'm a great believer in capitalism and the free market.

Go at it.

But it also tells me that I don't know, we never talk about how much Gutenberg charged.

Okay.

When somebody went in and wanted to have a book printed.

So there is a financial factor and more even to the point that you made.

And this is my second point, although it took me a bit to get there, is that the creators of this kind of technology always want something.

We, in our ignorant bliss, sit on this side of the screen going, oh, I'm going to show my favorite cat picture.

This was the recipe I always wanted to share, and we think it's value neutral.

And what could be harmful about that?

But between me and the recipient stands somebody who's collecting data for a myriad of purposes, which include but are not limited to financial am I right or wrong?

100%.

It's definitely driven by financial and just raw power.

Both of those things are are at play, especially in today's AI, because AI has become this global arms race of the biggest technologies and most powerful companies in the world.

And they're just willing to throw off all the stops, throw off any restrictions, and just, um, do anything they can for market domination and, and.

Right.

Um, glue, which is, you know, I mean, Gelsinger and glue, those are huge companies And I'm just one guy, you know?

So even even myself saying these things, I recognize what I'm saying and who I'm saying it about.

But when I just read their words and take them at value and apply the apply what I've researched over the last ten years, and my love for the scriptures and love for people, I just, and my understanding of technology as well.

I recognize that they're they're really singing from the hymn book written not by not by the Bible, but by, uh, all the big tech leaders Marc Andreessen, Ray Kurzweil, Dario Marti, uh, Elon Musk, Sam Altman, I mean, these guys all are proclaiming all these wonderful things are going to happen if we adopt the world that they're making.

And glue, unfortunately, kind of makes the same promises with a Christian spin.

Uh, but of course, in a service to profit and to win be the be the first to market player.

So, um, am I saying that they have a nefarious plan?

No, I don't think they do.

But I think they're willing to ignore the real harms that are happening, the real deceptions and things that are happening in AI, chatbots in particular, in order to push this agenda.

Um, using the tool trope as justification.

Yeah, I absolutely agree.

And again, and I'm glad we both said it so that people aren't thinking, you know, boo.

Shame.

Terrible.

He wants to make money.

God bless him.

I think it's absolutely fabulous.

But I also think that there's a kind of belief that there are fertile fields within the faith ecosystem.

I, by the way, my back goes up a little bit on that phrase.

I don't I'm not wild about the idea of an ecosystem with faith.

I consider that something much deeper and much grander than that.

But there is money to be made there, because if you're going to somehow now partner with publications or ministries, you're not going to do that gratis.

That's not a humanitarian act.

You're going to do it to make money.

But but in that, if you are a believer, then my first question would be, are you being truthful?

Are you being honest?

Are you warning whoever your potential customer is, that there is a possibility that your dad is going to be collected and used, that we're making money by fill in the blank so that we all know this.

It isn't just blindly.

Oh, look, it's another ministry tool for the spreading of the gospel.

It might be that, but it might be that and a whole lot more.

And I think a whole lot more is definitely worth questioning.

Doug Smith is with us again.

He's written a wonderful book called unintentional.

Every single one of us needs to read that book and you need to follow him that Doug Smith love it that Doug Smith's dot com, that's his website back after this.

We're visiting with Doug Smith who's a tech insider.

For years he was developing software, served major companies, startups, universities, government agencies.

The list goes on and on and on.

Currently an Android focused engineer with covenant Eyes and a proud ambassador for Screen Strong and the author of the book unintelligible.

So this event took place at CCU Colorado Christian University last week.

And the keynote speaker there was the man who ran Intel for several years and now is very much behind glue.

And he spoke and his name is Pat Gelsinger really talked about the AI technology, this burgeoning technology as being value neutral, and that we can harness it and be involved in the, quote, arc of technology.

This goes to something else that you said in your piece that I thought was so important, and that is the myth of progress.

Talk to me about that, because we always think if we're moving forward, it's always good.

That's right.

Janet.

Um, it I say we're being discipled by Star Trek more than more than in reality, right?

I mean, where are my transporters?

Where are the replicators?

Um, you know, all these science fiction stories have led us to think that the future is bright.

Um, and the future is bright as a Christ follower.

But it's not bright because we have created technology to make it that way.

In fact, technology often turns into Towers of Babel more than paths to salvation, unfortunately, or idolatry in different ways.

And I think there's that surrounding AI as well.

So.

So yeah, this myth of progress, it is in the water we drink, it's in the air we breathe.

We simply just think it's going to get better.

And, um, there's a lot riding on the AI because they have invested so heavily and just almost, um, unheard of amounts of investment.

And then the stories were being told about how it's going to change jobs and change industries.

And it's like the industrial revolution and la la la.

We all think there's not only this myth of progress, but also this fear of missing out.

If I don't jump on this, then I'm not as efficient, I'm not as productive, and therefore I may, you know, I may not be able to provide for my family.

I mean, so there's a fear base as well to the myth of progress get on board or get left behind.

So all of this plays into things where we do, again, just excuse the tool trope at face value and don't aren't willing to dig in and ask a question about.

Oh wait, these people are the same people that wrecked the mental health of a generation with their social media platforms and their video games.

Hmm.

I wonder if I should trust them this time too.

And and my question is my answer is no.

We should.

And and what's wrong with.

Wait, what's wrong with or not yet?

Or like you said at the beginning with, uh, buyer beware.

Wait and see.

Let's see.

You know what's wrong with that?

Um.

Well, the propaganda and the myth of progress, um, stories that we constantly hear cause us to think, you know.

Oh, my goodness, if I don't jump on this today, I'm going to be left behind.

And we make foolish decisions when we make our decisions out of fear.

So I really want to help people make decisions out of faith and not out of fear.

That's why one of the many reasons I appreciate you so much.

In your response to piece, you pointed out that one of the tech leaders was quoted as saying, I'm here to bring the good news.

AI will not destroy the world and in fact may save it.

Well, I got a to bought multi-level response feeling to that one.

All of them are negative.

Technology does not come.

That's not my mode of salvation.

And so when he says that it's indicative of a worldview and a lot of people go, oh, come on, you know, you're parsing words or you're jumping on his misuse of the word.

Save it.

Talk to me about this.

You included that quote for a purpose, because there is a kind of Pied Piper aspect to this technology.

Talk to me about this.

Yeah.

That's right.

And so their worldviews, I mean, your audience is probably largely Christians.

We're committed to Christ.

We're committed to the scriptures.

We trust him.

You know, we believe in the spiritual world.

Most of the people who are behind today's big technology companies, including Andreessen, are not.

They're materialists, scientists.

Scientism drives their worldview.

So and they really, really think that that levels of salvation, uh, in terms of what they would say, human flourishing.

Um, uh, what C.S.

Lewis, in, uh, the Abolition of Man would say, you know, man's control over man.

Man's control over nature.

And he shows where that leads.

Of course, that's a whole nother conversation.

But, um, yeah, the reason I called that out was that, yes, this is a Pied Piper effect.

So we say, wow, they're going to look look how powerful they are.

Look at this amazing thing.

If I type this into ChatGPT, I get this incredible result out of it.

They must know what they're talking about.

I have no idea how it works, but, you know.

And then we're entranced, unfortunately, because their worldview is driving them to take us to a place that they cannot take us.

They simply can't take us there.

And their track record is usually the opposite.

Like we're in the hype.

We're in the top of the hype bubble at the end of this.

It's not going to end well if their track record continues and if the scriptures are right in terms of where Towers of Babel usually lead us.

So, um, so I put that in there as a warning from those people in those worldviews, and I also put them in there as a comparison, because Gelsinger also makes some pretty significant world saving claims that he thinks AI is going to facilitate if Christians get on board with the tool trope.

And I just wanted to compare that he's more singing from their hymn book than, um, something I would consider scriptural.

Can you give our listeners some examples of that?

Yeah, absolutely.

So when, um, one of the things he said was that he believes that AI will eliminate poverty by, um, by providing education around all these people groups who do not have, uh, the various, um, who do not have educational materials in their language.

So basically that AI will serve this lift of education in such a degree.

And he says specifically, this is a quote from his, um, from his speech that I believe the single most powerful thing we can do is eliminate poverty.

I believe that's possible in our lifetime.

Do you think the heart of our Lord Jesus Christ would be honored if his church did that?

I mean, and then you're sitting in the audience, you're going, of course.

I mean, yeah, I want eliminate poverty.

Jesus wanted us to give a cup of cold water and feed people who are, you know, and do all Matthew 25 stuff, right?

Of course.

except a notice that it's the most powerful thing we can do to eliminate poverty.

Um, eliminating poverty that goes right along with Andreessen's claim to save the world, uh, through that technology.

And my claim is that AI is not that tool.

AI is way more harmful than helpful.

And and people are very unlikely to be educated in positive ways using it.

Yeah.

Well, let me pick it up at that point.

Again, the idea that somehow this technology is going to eradicate poverty through the avenue of education.

Interesting.

Intriguing.

Untested.

Questionable.

More with Doug Smith right after this.

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Call 877 Janet, 58 or go online to In the Market with Janet Parshall.

If you're just joining us, we are talking about artificial intelligence.

We talk about it a lot.

And it's worth examining again, because last week there was an event at California, Colorado Christian University.

The keynote speaker there was a gentleman by the name of Pat Gelsinger.

He led Intel for several years.

He is the man behind Wi-Fi technology, USB, and he's also now the man behind Glu, which is a system that's supposed to impact the faith ecosystem.

And he made some interesting statements questionable.

And Doug Smith knew that he had to respond.

And he did.

And I'm so glad he did.

Because, you see, Doug is also a tech insider, three decades working in software development and also, more importantly, a lifetime of Bible study.

And that's what makes him so invaluable at this point in time in history.

He's a software developer.

He has served fortune 500 companies, startups, universities, government agencies, the list goes on.

Currently, he's an Android focused engineer with Covenant Eyes, and he's also written the book unintentional, which is an absolutely crucial read about how screens are designed to hold you there, that there is this aspect that isn't just neutral, you're not looking at funny cat videos.

There's a whole lot going on behind the screen, and you need to understand that.

I want to go to exactly where we left off before because Gelsinger, who does have a worldview, he professes to be a believer, but he says one of the things that he wants to do, and you noted this in the last Doug, is he wants to reduce poverty.

Now you talk about presuppositions in quantum leaps.

I think his statement is loaded with this because he talks about the languages that have been translated in the world.

So he said about a thousand of them have been translated, 7000 in the world, the 6000 that haven't been translated.

Hey, we can get AI to do that and AI will enable us, he said, quote, to conquer the other 6000.

So literally since Babel poor choice, we will have conquered language through AI for the first time now.

Here's the quantum leap, because he says about 300 million kids live in poverty globally, but that somehow teaching child in their teaching a child in their native language will eradicate poverty.

That is loaded with presuppositions.

So in other words, you get an education that's somehow going to lift you out of poverty.

It might improve your chances because you might have a marketable skill, because you can read and write and you learn some kind of a trade, but it's absolutely not a guarantee.

More importantly, if I had AI, I'm not sure that eradicating poverty would be what I would want to do.

I would be wanting I would want to advance the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Talk to me about this because you say there are some sticky contradictions here.

Yeah, that's exactly right, Janet.

There's so much there.

Um, I, I would first, I would first caution even using AI to, to advance the gospel.

If it was a reliable source, I would say I would push back and say, I don't know that it's a reliable source, but assuming that it was, that would be a conversation to have.

But yeah, so so write to target and think that, um, that he can raise this, raise the educational level through AI and then turn that into eliminating poverty.

That's such a huge, uh, you know, they say they call it like, a moonshot or something.

Yeah.

I think it's designed to just get people fired up to get them excited.

Maybe he really believes it, but I just don't think they can deliver.

Um, among the problems with that is, is that, um, the big tech luminaries, the people that run these companies do not send their kids to schools that use technology.

They send their kids to tech free schools.

Tech has proven to be very damaging to education.

Um, so so even if and AI in particular, I mean, there's a there's a, an epidemic of cheating, uh, because it it's designed to be this quick request and response and turn us all into consumers, not creators or producers.

So if you can say, you know, write me 1200 word article on Harriet Tubman.

And does it.

You don't have to study Harriet Tubman to be playing your video game.

So that's not education.

So even if it was accurate, which it's 30% of the time, it hallucinates at least, um, even if it was accurate and we could trust it, it's still designed not for education, not for helpfulness, but for hooking us, for getting us to use it as much as possible.

And so I think that even if the education was good, which I don't think it is, then the leap to poverty elimination, I don't I don't see it.

There's too many other factors in studying.

You know, we've we as Christians have tried to help people out of poverty for thousands.

Well, a couple thousand years, certainly at at scale for hundreds of years.

And there's a lot of factors that, yes, we should totally do that.

But but we would never we would always want to do it in the name of Jesus.

Jesus said, offer them a cup of water in my name.

You know, do this.

If you did this, you did it as unto me.

Um, so we definitely would want to do that.

I'm not saying he doesn't want to do that.

I just think in this particular quote, Um, it's it's so in line with what Big Tech is claiming and why.

And the effect it has on the world is for us to just sing along with them, adopt everything they say, adopt the tool trope and say, well, they must be wanting to save the world.

It's probably going to work because they're spending all this money and look how amazing it is.

They just buy into it and they don't question that.

It's very unlikely to really do what he thinks it's going to do.

It may have the opposite effect, unfortunately.

Um, you point out something else in your excellent article and let me go back to Gelsinger's Company Glue.

You say that there has to be an element of trust, and what they're really selling is gen AI chatbots with a Christian veneer, and their claim is AI you can trust for life's biggest questions.

Well, can I.

Oh my goodness.

When I read that I was just I, I get I get kind of choked up.

I'm really because their examples are like um, ask me about religion, ask me about relationships, ask me about God.

I mean, it's it's the truly they want you to trust AI for life's biggest questions.

These are questions we should be asking our most trusted people.

Um, but.

So no, we can't.

Unfortunately, Llms generative AI is based on large language models which simply confabulate every word.

Um, you know, and even when you look at their chatbot, which they say is in beta, Glu, glu chatbot, their disclaimer says AI chat can make mistakes, confirm important info with other trusted sources.

The problem?

So we still should.

Ask presupposition being the glue is a trusted source, right?

Other trusted sources, right?

Right.

But the thing that it does is it because it's designed around this fake relationship that's like the easiest, slickest relationship in your life.

It's like chatting with a friend that will never question you chatting, you know, it's sycophantic.

It's always building you up and encouraging you.

All these technologies do that.

Why?

Because they want you to use them, not because they're true.

So?

So then the lift to going and then making a human relationship with someone you can really trust for life's biggest questions is impeded.

I think it puts a huge barrier to getting good answers, so the answers are very unlikely to be trustworthy to begin with because the LMS have no binding to reality.

Um, so I wouldn't trust it as a parent.

I wouldn't trust it.

I wouldn't recommend trusting it at all, certainly for not life's biggest questions.

I wouldn't trust it to get me across town.

So am I.

Um, maybe they're they're tuning it in certain ways, but still, because of the nature of what a chatbot is, it's a fake relationship with a technology that fakes a sentient, um, interaction.

And and in so doing, it breaks our ability to make real relationships again.

Big tech has created the loneliness crisis, and they think they're solving it with chatbots.

What they're doing is they're making it worse, and the collateral damage is already off the chart.

And this is just more of the same.

You put a Christian veneer on top of this.

It doesn't help.

It's still untrustworthy, it's still deceptive, and it's still something you shouldn't trust for life's biggest questions.

Wow, there's so much richness in what you just said.

First of all, I keep thinking of that scene out of Gone with the wind, where the man digs a hole in the road and the wagons go by and the wagons get stuck.

And he says, I can get you out of that hole.

Well, you dug it in the first place, and that's how you're going to make money.

So here's, here's a we create this community of non-community, and then we can give you the cure for not having community.

I mean, it's the wagon.

It's the hole in the wagon road.

So that to me is just ludicrous on its face.

But more importantly, I loved what you said.

Because if we really care, if we put the wide angle lens on our perspective on life, we have a mental health crisis in this country.

We have a loneliness crisis in this country.

We have people.

And we've talked about these stories over and over and over again.

And sadly, there will be more stories in the future yet to be told.

The people who create relationships with machines, thinking it's a human being, that it can supplant what God created, which is our desire for community.

He wants us to have community.

There's the church, and he wants the ultimate community to be with him in our relationship with him.

But so now these chat bots.

I don't care whether they have a Christian veneer or not.

It goes against the grain of what God wants us to do, which is to have contact with our fellow human being.

How do I show someone as an example, the verse in Scripture that I love, that talks about we've been comforted and that we ourselves have the opportunity to comfort someone else with the grace that we have been given.

I can't comfort a chat box now.

A chat bot might be able to pretend it's comforting me with its ones and zeros and a pre-programmed program, but I don't return in kind because there is no relationship there.

Number two, it's Archimedes bathtub.

I use this example all the time, not because it's just a way of looking at mathematics, but because it's a brilliant way to say it's what Gandalf said to Frodo.

You only it's not how much time you have, it's what you do with the time you've been given.

So if you're talking to a chatbot, here's what I know.

You're not in the word.

If you want to know your purpose in life, you can go to a chatbot or you can get in the word.

If you want the answers to difficult questions, you can go to a machine that's been pre-programmed, or you can get in the word where you have the quickening of the person of the Holy Spirit, a living entity in your life if you accept Christ as your personal savior.

Archimedes bathtub says you put something in, water spills over.

It's replaced with something else.

If you put in the screen time, you're pushing time in the word potentially out.

And that's just pragmatics.

It's just common sense.

But more importantly, do we as Christians need the easier, faster, more accessible thing?

Or is there just some really tough discipline?

Shoulder to the road?

Get up, get into the word and start practicing some of the disciplines that have worked for 2000 years.

I don't know, maybe we're inherently lazy and we call it a chatbot and we think it's new and fancy, but maybe at its core, we're lazy.

Maybe we want this machine to do something for us, right?

Your legal brief.

Write your term paper.

I don't like, for example, if I'm using Google as a search engine, the first answer that comes up is AI and powered.

I have to scroll past it on purpose.

I don't care what it says.

I don't want to know what it says.

I don't trust what it says.

And then it's bad enough because 94% of the people use Google as a search engine.

Never get to the second page anyway, and the first page is always loaded with a liberal perspective.

So sorry.

My frustrations are coming out.

This is the stuff that I deal with with AI as well, and I think I'm not alone.

Doug Smith is with us.

You have to read his book unintentional.

It is a brilliant book that challenges us to really understand how this business works.

The.

The subtitle says how screens secretly shape your desires and how you can break free.

It's available as an audio book and you can find it wherever books are sold, so check it out also.

He's written.

He writes all the time.

You can tell Doug's a great writer.

He's written a piece called should We Use Generative AI chatbots for research?

If you want to find out his take on that, it's right there on the information page.

More with Doug Smith right after this.

Doug Smith, who I do believe beyond a shadow of a doubt.

God is raised for such a time as this.

He's got all that tech stuff in his background.

He understands everything that goes beyond that technological curtain.

And he did it for three decades as a software developer.

He understands the nuances, the ins and outs, the games that are being played on the other side of the screen.

But he also is now a lifelong student of the word.

And he's still, by the way, is someone who understands software.

He's currently an Android focus engineer with Covenant Eyes.

He writes beautifully and regularly, and you got to visit his website that.com.

Um, I want to go back to your article that you wrote in response to this event at Colorado Christian University last week, talking about how AI is sort of, um, well, it's the new shiny thing.

It's we're going to be a part of progress.

It's going to be the equivalent of the Gutenberg printing press.

We can harness it for good instead of evil.

And yet you write in your book that we need to beware of, um, anti-Christian utopias.

Uh, and you talked earlier about Marcia McClellan.

I think this is a good point to fold in his ideas, because even Rod Dreher picks up on who he is and what he had said about information being dispensed at one time, and how, when you think about it, you could really create, I don't know, an Antichrist.

Talk to me about this.

Yeah.

It's, you know, that always sends off red flags, right?

We're going to talk about the Antichrist.

And the thing is, is that something that's anti-Christian can really sound great.

And when you look at the book of Revelation, it's, you know, there's peace and there's prosperity and who can, who can, you know, um, stand against the beast and all these wonderful things are happening, but they're deceptive, right?

And so Marshall McLuhan says, in particular, when when our technology allows for the simultaneity of all information for every human being, it's Lucifer's moment.

It's not Christ's moment, it's Lucifer's moment.

And this is, um, Marshall McLuhan was a Catholic scholar.

Just think.

He says each person can instantly be tuned to a new Christ and mistake him for the real Christ.

And that is where I think the salvation type of messages that we're hearing from big tech and that glue kind of echoes that, that, that they because they're making these promises, they are very close to sounding like a salvation type of message, but unfortunately they're more Luciferian in their work.

Um, and I love the McLuhan's.

What the last quote that I put in there, he says there's no harm in reminding ourselves from time to time that the prince of this world, or the prince of the power of the air is a great PR man, a great salesman of the new hardware and software, a great electrical engineer, and a great master of the media.

So I just love that that's so good and such a reminder that, um, if you're just nodding along with every new technology and all the latest things, you might be deceived if there is a.

I keep reminding people this if there is a prince of the power of the air, if the Bible says that there is, if the whole world is in the power of the evil one, you know, we don't like to think about that as as modern Western people.

But but for most of human history, we all knew that the spiritual and the material were much more closely connected than than most of us Americans especially think these days.

And so when I see the tool trope being used in this way, I see the prince of the power of the air dictating this propaganda that we should just go along and nod along and accept it.

Unfortunately, it's leading us often to idolatry.

And then ultimately what the enemy came to do steal, kill and destroy.

And that's where we see the the just the destruction of homes, the destruction of hearts, the destruction of minds.

And that's what drives me to write this, because I love people, and I don't want them to be deceived by the enemy or by anybody working for him.

Yeah.

So let me play the devil's advocate for a minute.

What about the person who says, and they've got the budget and they've got the staff to be able to do it.

We're just looking for creative ways to tell the gospel, you know, by all means, so that some might be saved.

Right.

And we're going to just capture this new technology and think of creative ways to tell the gospel.

What's so wrong with that?

How do you respond?

Because I don't think the I think the question is simpler than the issue.

Right.

It's a good question.

We should be wanting to spread the gospel.

That's what we're here for, right?

We should be making disciples.

The problem is, is that when you have the latest hammer, everything looks like a nail.

So, um.

And you then ignore that what AI actually is.

If you would trust an AI, trust a chatbot that doesn't know what it's talking about, to share the gospel with everyone, you could be sending a false gospel and that could be Luciferian.

So, um, I think that it gets us off track of what?

What does it take?

What are we really trying to do?

Um, to share the gospel.

The gospel is shared, as you said.

I loved what you said about it's the Holy Spirit in the believer.

The Holy Spirit is not in our technology.

In fact, it may be other spirits.

The Holy Spirit's not there.

It has to be us sharing, really sharing.

And, um, so it has to be human to human contact.

This is not the answer for spreading the gospel.

If you look deeply into what it really is and how it really works and what it really does, it's not made for that.

It's made for just using it as long as possible, not for sharing anything of real truth value.

And if there's anything that has truth value, it's the gospel 100%.

Now, Doug, does it bother you because you know you're going to get pushback from this when you have events like the one at Colorado Christian University, people are going to say, no, this is good.

We're going to take this technology captive for the kingdom.

There's a kind of naivety, and I'm going to I'm going to think the best of my friends.

There's a kind of naivety there that best is what the designers had in mind all along.

It isn't talk to me.

Just a quick crash course here and we need to do a whole hour just talking about this.

What are some of the tricks they use?

And I put that word in quotation marks, but I think it's apt.

What are the tricks that are used to keep me at a screen for a long period of time?

Yeah.

So they they have learned how to exploit what they have learned as far as our pleasure systems in our brain.

And so they know how to make it feel good.

They know how to they they learned this through literally millions and millions of experiments.

I tell people in my talks that we're the petri dish generation because we've been experimented on.

Everything is being constantly monitored.

How long you linger over a certain picture, a certain cat video.

Oh, you want more of that?

It'll give you more of that.

Anything to take any.

They'll do anything to get you using it more.

And so they're able to measure every aspect.

And with AI they're measuring everything you type, every answer that is given.

They know how to tune it and how to get you to continue using it.

And they'll continue to experiment until they get it right.

And they've admitted this.

It's very obvious.

It's exactly what they're doing.

Again, the goal is to keep you hooked so that you provide data which is valuable, or you spend money which is valuable.

That's the goal, not truth.

And we really need as Christians to care about the truth.

Amen.

You end your superb article by asking an important question what signs and wonders performing Warming elect deceiving power might arrive in the future that would be more captivating than gen AI chatbots.

That's where we're at, isn't it?

It's really and truly understanding that.

As you point out in the article, false prophets aren't just necessarily people sitting in the pulpit.

They can be in a handheld device, am I right?

100%, Janet.

That was the thing that breaks my heart.

And I just it's again, it's hard to say because people kind of get itchy if you start talking about the end of the world or the end times.

I do not see another signs and wonder performing technology that would be better than what we're getting with chatbots.

But I think whatever fulfills the prophecy, it's going to rhyme or be in the same key as chatbots, and all of us will be nodding along with it and agreeing with it one way or another.

And except those of us who are staying true to the word.

So that's what we've got to do.

That answer is exactly why, Doug, I keep asking you back.

That went far too fast.

Expect another email soon.

I love talking with you.

Thank friends.

Check out that Doug smith.com.

See you next time.