AI, Adolescents, and the Apocalypse? Discerning the Digital Age Without Losing Your Soul

The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny God. As such, we need Thinking Christian to become as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian Podcast. I'm Dr. James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful, theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now, on to today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey, everybody. Welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. I'm James Spencer, and I'm joined today by Nate Girtano. And we are going to be talking a little bit about some developments that we've seen in AI and how Christians might think about them. And so, Nate, really appreciate you being on. Thanks for taking the time to talk through these different news stories that we've been discussing over the last couple days. And I'm looking forward to a good conversation. Yeah, definitely. Good to be here. So, man, the first one I think we ought to start with is this little skirmish that's come up based on a bill that was put out by the federal government that calls for a 10-year moratorium on state acts that would limit artificial intelligence models, artificial intelligence systems, or automated decision systems. And I'm looking away from the camera because I'm reading this right now. So why don't I just give everybody the actual language of this? This is in—it's a bill that is sort of on the way. It's from the Committee on Energy and Commerce, and it's been disputed then by the states because there's a subsection in this bill that is calling for this 10-year moratorium. So here's what it says. Subsection C states that no state or political subdivision may enforce any law or regulation regulating artificial intelligence models, artificial intelligence systems, or automated decision systems during the 10-year period beginning on the date of the enactment of this act. Now, there are a couple things that I don't understand about this, and maybe you have—maybe you do, and that would be great if you did because you can explain it to me. But it isn't clear to me that this is everything versus something more narrow, you know, and the language just isn't clear. But either way, I think a 10-year period where states are banned from providing regulations that would protect the people of their state is problematic on its face. 100%. Yeah, I mean, most people, I mean, including us, we were talking a little bit beforehand. We can't even wrap our minds around what all that means, like you just said. But the fact that we're looking at a 10-year period where there's not that, I think we should be concerned about that for sure. Like, and we should ask the question, why would that even be a thing? Like, why wouldn't you want to protect that? Because the average person, you know, you and I know more about this because we've spent a great deal of talking about it, researching it the last few months. We've spent a lot of time here on the show talking about it. But the average person has no clue, especially older generations, if we look at like our parents or, you know, different generations. It's very confusing. Most people can't wrap their heads around it completely. And I think part of what it does is that it assumes a uniformity that isn't actually there. Right. That we could assume somehow that Illinois is like Mississippi or, you know, Massachusetts is like Montana. And that there will be no differentiation in the way that these states will be impacted by a broad scale implementation of artificial intelligence in any specific realm. I mean, this is why we have the system that we have, so that states can care for and shepherd the institution or the people within their boundaries. And that we're not just constantly assuming that there's a uniformity that the federal government can put in place and assume that it's going to affect everybody the same. Absolutely. So this is, I mean, I think this is even more problematic as we kind of pivot to another news story. You know, the APA, I think it was last year, did a mental health advisory, as I recall, on social media. We did a couple episodes on that. I had a couple write-ups on it. But now they're doing one for artificial intelligence and adolescent well-being. And so at the same time, basically, that the APA is issuing a health advisory for the well-being of adolescents, we have this bill that's saying, well, states can't regulate this. Which either leaves it completely to the federal government to do, which I think, not commenting on, you know, sort of politics necessarily, but just thinking about that as a system of regulatory speed and flexibility. I don't know that speed and flexibility are really part of the vocabulary you would use to describe what happens at the federal government level. Right. We're not built for that. And so, as you've got this artificial intelligence and adolescent well-being health advisory from the APA, you've also got this other bill that's saying, let's leave it alone for 10 years and let's develop this. But that's 10 years worth of people, 10 years worth of adolescents, you know, 10 years worth of workers that may be experiencing adverse effects because there isn't sufficient regulation. Right. Yeah, I think if you look at 10 years ago, very, very rarely was our personal cell phones getting bombarded. Now you have to, like, pay for services to, like, block scams and, you know, different numbers and texts and calls and things like that. And I feel like it just opens the door wide open for people that want to use this in a negative way to mislead people, to, you know, affect people in a harmful way with their personal information, data, all that stuff. I think it should be a major concern. So it's definitely something that I'm keeping my eyes on. When I think, you know, when I read through the social media advisory back a year ago, my tendency is to agree, or my tendency is to think, and this is just an opinion, my tendency is to think that social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, you know, Twitter, LinkedIn even, right? These are unnecessary innovations. I think, now, LinkedIn's a little bit more, a little bit less noxious. But I have trouble believing that Instagram, Facebook, Twitter is adding so much more to my life and so much more to everyone else's lives that it's upside is greater than its downside. I just, that's not to say that I think social media is evil or something like that, and I hope people recognize I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is that if I could go back to a time without social media, I don't know that I'm experiencing so many adverse effects without it that I actually need it. I don't think it's a necessity for life. It's a way of living that we've adopted that I'm not sure actually promotes human flourishing. Right. And, you know, we've seen that over the years sort of grow from something that was a little bit less, you know, back in the day, MySpace is where I started with social media. MySpace was pretty simple. It wasn't really ramped up. You were just posting some of your stuff. It's almost like a personal website kind of feel. You could connect with people and keep track or whatever, but it was a pretty segmented and relatively isolated part of what you might do as a human being. Now what we have with social media is it's sort of everything. If you're a business, you have to have accounts. If you're, you know, a person, you're interested in personal branding. You know, if you're presenting content, it has to be a certain sort of content and you're constantly pushing for likes and comments. If you're into that sort of thing, it just doesn't feel to me like it's a necessity. So I'll say that. Yeah. My concern then in reading the APA advisory for artificial intelligence is, number one, I would be personally an advocate of saying I think artificial intelligence has more potential than social media to actually help humans in various ways. Especially within the context that we find ourselves now, right? So if we're extremely busy individuals, and you and I know this, we've used AI tools to do video editing, for instance. Neither of us really knows how to do video editing. AI makes that simple. Hey, yay.

AI, right? So some of those administrative tasks or technical skills that we may not need to develop and may not want to develop. We can now do things with AI that we couldn't otherwise. I think that's a positive. On the same token, I'm hesitant to say that AI's benefits will outweigh its detriments overall without some controls, because we're continuing to see problems with, you know, you're seeing an expansion of artificial intelligence porn. Christianity Today just had an article on this, what Christians need to know about AI porn. We're seeing deep fakes. We're seeing, you know, you mentioned the social media campaigns with, you know, sort of biblical characters going around and acting like they're posting selfies that really do look real. And I think overall, while there is promise in certain sectors for artificial intelligence, I think some administrative tasks, I think education can benefit from it. I would advocate for more of a closed system type of AI than the sort of AI that we're seeing with like a ChatGPT or, you know, the Google AI that pulls up answers for you so you no longer have to visit websites. I think these are conveniences we could really do without. Right. And I think they're too open. They're too manipulable. And combined with social media, which I would go back to say, I think social media is a bigger part of the problem than we're really giving it credit for. Social media allows for these things to spread. And so, you know, overall, I think jury's still out on whether AI is going to be positive or negative on the whole and whether the downsides are worth the upsides that will accrue. But this mandate from the government really does feel like what we're doing is we're plowing into artificial intelligence and we're saying we're going to give it 10 years of progress, multiple billions of dollars invested in this. We're going to allow these companies to develop whatever it is that they can develop and, you know, through an enhanced technology that we don't really understand the effect of those things on human flourishing past that decade. I think it's important, too, to have safeguards like what just happened in Japan where that specific AI, like, figured out how to rewire its internal stuff to where it couldn't be shut off or it could avoid prompts. And when it becomes out of our control, that should be alarming to people. And I think we should have safeguards to, because this is, it's already the wild, wild west. And if we move this direction where it's 10 years of, like, no work to be able to have a center that's, like, safety, like to make sure everything's regulated. If it's like that now, how much more is it going to be even five years from now? So it's very concerning to me. Yeah, and we're seeing certain movements in this. So there was another news story that came out from The Guardian, a gentleman who's generally considered sort of one of the big founders or forefathers of artificial intelligence is starting a nonprofit called Law Zero. And Law Zero is going to aim at a more honest artificial intelligence. And part of the way they describe that is instead of giving a straightforward answer as if this is the answer, here's your truth, boom, period, they're going to build in what I would say is nuance. Let's talk about the probability that this is the case. Let's talk about the different views that may be surrounding this and give you what most people think, you know, is true, but what could possibly be the case. Whenever I teach and do biblical studies, I'll do that an awful lot, right? It's when you're reviewing the sons of God and the daughters of men in Genesis 6, right? It's hard to come down on any one hard view. It's just a difficult text. And a lot of people have a lot of different viewpoints on it. And so my tendency is to say, here are all the viewpoints. I tend toward this one, but these others are absolutely valid. And so there's, you know, they actually talk in the article about building an AI with a level of intellectual humility that would not just assert a particular view as correct, but would provide a little bit more context, a little bit more nuance and a little bit more maybe intellectual honesty than some of the AIs that are out there now. Yeah. Yeah, totally. I think that could be part of the solution. I do worry about it a bit because even, it doesn't matter what kind of conversation you're having, you're always leaving things out. And so we're just going to have to figure out as a society, how we interact with these tools and begin to understand, you know, how do we do, and this is something the APA Health Advisory calls for, how do we do information literacy in a world of AI? You know, what use of AI is going to actually cultivate the sort of critical thinking and discernment skills that all of us are going to need to interact with any sort of information, right? How do we do that with AI as opposed to just allowing AI to give us answers and then interacting with that small piece of content that it gives us? It seems to me that we never get away from the old school methods of going out and actually looking at different sources, vetting those sources, understanding the underlying data, all of those kinds of things, unless we're just going to give that discernment away to AI. Like, I think we're always going to be in the mix on this and we're going to have to sort of vet the information the AI is giving us. Right. Yeah, and if there's no center, if there's no line that stuff's being held to, it, over time, people are just not, it's going to keep moving in whatever direction that's going. And then no one's going to have anything to come back to. And then I really worry about the younger generation that's just going to take whatever the current playing field is that's normal. And, you know, then there's still people like you and I that remember what it was like to do a paper with Encyclopedia Britannica before the internet, you know, like when we actually had to write papers. I'm kind of jealous at times, like with my kids or, you know, this younger generation, sometimes it's everything's at their fingertips and it's so much simpler. And I think there's also studies that have proven and shown, like, human interaction, relationships, the family unit have certainly changed since the internet has moved forward and social media and all those things. There's negative connotations to that that I think we should look at because this could compound in a major way years from now with this if we don't get this right. So it is very concerning. Let me ask you a serious question. 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I think there's also something to be said about, you know, working through curiosity. So if we just think about what we had when we were Gen Xers, right? So we didn't have the internet. We didn't have, we had like yellow pages or, you know, rotary dial phones. There was no real way for us to get information other than Encyclopedia Britannica. Or we had to print out like four papers of MapQuest to like go on a trip. That's right. That's right. And so, you know, we're having to do more work to figure some of this stuff out. And yes, there was advertising and, you know, that guided us in certain ways. So it's not like we were without these influences, but to a large extent, there was a way in which we could be more curious about the world or curious in different ways and actually explore a bit, right? Because we didn't have the answers at our fingertips. And I think part of what we're going to end up seeing with artificial intelligence and its merger with other technologies, like this is something we don't talk about enough. But if you look at what like Ray-Ban is doing with their AI-enabled augmented reality glasses, functionally, I think what that's doing is it's providing a layer of story over reality. And so in providing information about the various things that we're seeing, you know, and allowing us just to ask the internet a question about what this is or what that is, it creates sort of an oddly overconfident view that we understand what's really going on. There are old studies that were done.

when people, you know, they overestimate their own intelligence because they have a smartphone. Mm-hmm. Right? Because they can find the answer, they think they know the answer. And I think that aspect is just going to ramp up as we get more augmented reality sort of going. Totally. So these are all sort of the problems that I see as we move into this artificial intelligence age. I think it comes back to me, for me, it comes back to this idea of if we don't have a good idea of what it means to be human, if we don't really understand how information, entertainment, automation and efficiency, work, actual labor, right, physical interaction with the world, if we don't understand how all of these things contribute to human flourishing, we're always going to be in danger of minimizing something that we really need, that makes us human and allows us to experience the world in a way that is important for us. I think we see that in scripture. I think we do see that there's a sense in which we are part of creation, right? Even if we just looked at the Noah's Ark narrative, right? God's going to destroy the whole world on a flood. He puts Noah in a boat with all of these different animals to shepherd creation through the time of the flood. Noah is doing the hard labor of feeding, you know, eating on the ark, feeding the animals on the ark, like he's doing all of this. And it's difficult for me to believe that that effort wasn't intentional and formative, right? Would God have needed to, in other words, create all of, or to save all the animals, as opposed to just creating new ones, right? And so, but the fact that he doesn't just save humans, he also saves non-human creation, I think is significant. And so this work, this sort of placed idea for us where we exist within creation, I think it's just part of human flourishing. And the more that we divorce ourselves from that, distance ourselves from the world through technology, it's not that I think we should never have any technology. It's just that there is a certain closeness that we need to have with the rest of creation. And we need to attend to that as we implement some of these technologies. That's really well said. And it's a very good point. So I don't know any, as we think about the artificial intelligence world, and we've had a lot of conversations about this, Nate. I mean, it comes down to, I think we are being rather flippant about the dangers of AI. But what I don't want to suggest to Christians, if we really kind of pivot the conversation to how should Christians think about this. I would really encourage Christians not to jump into conspiracy theories. Right. Like if you looked back, you know, 10 years earlier from today, there may be some people who guessed that we'd be where we are, but it was just a guess. Right. There are so many things that happen in between our hypotheses and our actualities, but we really don't know what's going to happen. Right. And so, you know, do I think we should be concerned about AI? Absolutely. Do I think that we should buy into some sort of conspiracy theory about AI? No. I think we need to be cognizant of it. I think we need to be well informed about it. I think we should be appropriately cautious with it and evaluate where it makes sense and where it doesn't and listen to trusted voices that are helping us understand where it makes sense and where it doesn't. But I also think that merging artificial intelligence and the apocalypse is probably wrongheaded. Right. Yeah, totally. You know, so, yeah, go ahead. I was just going to say, I think it's important to note, too, that we've kind of become addicted, you know, even as 25 years ago, however old the movie I Robot is, like we kind of tie a lot of these things to like entertainment and like, you know, the possibility of like, you know, it's just like, oh, that that could happen, but it's mostly just like for fun and entertainment. But like, I don't I don't know about you, but I didn't think when I watched I Robot, I didn't think, oh, 20 years from now, this is going to be some real possibility. I thought it would be way longer down the road. Just like when I was a kid, I thought for sure when I was out of high school, we'd have flying cars and, you know, hoverboards because of Back to the Future. I think we we have this misconstrued perception of reality because we associate a lot of it with entertainment and fantasy and fiction and all these things. But like we have to realize just like even in the Bible, like, you know, they didn't deal with this, but they dealt with some of the same stuff just in a different way. It all comes back to good and evil and, you know, the possibility of all of it. But it's important as Christians that we stay biblically rooted and we look to Jesus for the answers, because even though they didn't have AI when he was on the earth and they didn't have like all these technological advancements and stuff, they still had things that was against good and against, you know, like the moral fabric of human beings. It's just a different playing field now. But it's the root of it's still there, just like in Bible times, you know, the good and evil aspect is still there. So I think we just have to always come back to the scripture and you know, look at how the Lord says, like when it gets closer to the end times. I think we're getting closer, certainly than we were when we were kids. You know, my whole life I've been told Jesus is coming soon, Jesus coming soon, but we didn't see signs of the times like we see now. Yeah, I mean, I'm always, so you look back in church history and you start to realize that there are a lot of scholars within church history, including folks like Martin Luther, who believed they were living in the end times. And so when we say, you know, we're seeing the signs of the times, even today, they were seeing the same things back then. Right. And I think part of it is that we need to just be sober in the way that we think about this and recognize that the patterns we're seeing now don't necessarily indicate that we're any, obviously we're closer to the end, right? But how close, who knows? These patterns are recurring, right? Because humans are constantly trying to manipulate the world to serve their own purposes, to create safety, security, comfort. I think we're constantly questing for the rest that we see in, you know, Genesis 2, 1 through 3 and, or Genesis, yeah, 2 verses 1 through 3, where we see the Sabbath on the seventh day, you know, we're constantly looking for the rest, the peace, the tranquility of a Revelation 21, right? Where all our tears are wiped away and there is no more death. We're questing for those things, but we're doing that through our own means. And so I think we see these recurring patterns in part because it's a constant re-application of human effort toward very similar aims throughout history. And the trouble with that is that humans are short on resources always. And so that means that as we're questing for these things, someone else is ultimately going to have something that we want or someone else is going to be a threat to what we think we should have. Right. And so we end up in conflictual relationships. Right. And so a lot of this stuff, I think, to me, I'm really hesitant to say I think we're living in the end times in the sense that, you know, Jesus could come back tomorrow or whatever, or to put a date on it. Right. What I think we're seeing is the consistent patterns of a fallen humanity trying in vain to build a utopia without God. And those patterns are consistent across time. And so as Christians, we experience this sort of interesting peace and tranquility, the peace that surpasses all understanding, because even when the world is becoming virtually unbearable, we can bear it. And so there's an aspect of this that I think that we just wanna, you know, again, as Christians think about this, Hebrews 12 is great. I think, you know, we should be grateful that we have inherited an unshakable kingdom. We need to live like we're living in an unshakable kingdom because we are.

all of this stuff that goes on around us, it's not that it doesn't impact us in any way, but it doesn't shake our lives to the extent that it forces us to live unfaithfully. And I think that's sort of at the heart of, you know, when I read Revelation 6, right, the judgments of God are coming down, but then we see these people dressed in white robes, and they're, you know, they've been cleansed in the blood of the Lamb. These are the people who have overcome. These are the people who have borne faithfully the suffering and turmoil of the world. And so, we just, as Christians, I think we need to realize that that's coming. It's really here, right? We all endure pain and suffering every day. And that our role here is to offer a faithful witness. And so, whether it's social media or AI or famine or war or whatever it is, it, like our response is always the same, right? Let's speak truthfully to it. Let's be smart about it. We don't ignore the challenges of the world, right? It's not even that we would want to not faithfully work to reform some of these things that are going on, to restrain what evil they might bring into the world. But the reality is we're not going to stop an inevitable train. We just won't. We're going to have to live through it. Totally. So, there is that aspect to it. Yeah, there is that aspect. Yeah, definitely. I think, too, it's valid to mention, I know me personally, I can speak for myself, you know, Proverbs 3, 5 through 6, trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding and always submit to him, and he will make your path straight. Like, I think this complicates things and more than ever in my life, do I not to lean on my own understanding because I don't understand the vast majority of this. Like, I'm trying to research, I'm trying to wrap my head around it, but there's no solid foundation for you to even come back on. The only thing as believers we have is the Scripture because that's the one thing that doesn't change. This thing we're talking about, this whole landscape, it's going to be so different a week from now than it is right now. It's moving at such a fast and rapid rate. But the one thing that doesn't change and doesn't waver, doesn't move ever, is the Holy Spirit and Scripture, the instruction that God gave us through his word. And so I think for me personally, but all of us as believers, it's so critical and so important that we keep our eyes on him and not this constant moving. It's like an island. It's constantly growing, changing, moving, and shifting. And that's the exact opposite of what we're called to, you know, to stand on and be firm on with the Scripture. So I just wanted to point that out. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free retirement defense guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. No, I think that's good. And I think we can actually sharpen your point because I'll say, you know, as much as AI gets press, there are these other interesting things that are going on in the world that I would call transhuman adjacent. Transhumanism is the philosophy that advocates that if we can overcome our biological weaknesses through technology, we should be allowed to. And they construe technology fairly broadly, so it can include anything from an AI or, you know, some sort of technological implant that we put in our body, but it also involves use of drugs, the introduction of different substances into our body to allow us to get bigger or stronger or healthier, what have you. And so I think part of what I would encourage Christians to do is frame it in this way. If you're familiar, Nate, have you ever heard about the enhanced games? Enhanced games. I don't believe so. Okay, it's this group that they're actually going to do an event in Vegas coming forward, but they've already done one event, the 50-meter freestyle swimming event. And they had these athletes go in and take a number of different peptides and steroids and different substances. One guy got super huge. I mean, it's unbelievable. And when they had the race, they actually broke the world record. And so the gentleman who broke the world record got paid a million dollars. And so this organization's goal is to break every world record. And they want to use these enhancements, these drug enhancements to do that. So if we just think this through just for a second, right, because I don't think the two are not connected, right. When we're looking at the use of these technologies to enhance our, quote-unquote, humanness, enhance our performance, right, to do something that we ordinarily couldn't do, part of what we're trying to do there is transcend the limits of human biology, transcend the limits of our natural state, let's say. This is different, in my estimation, than, let's say, lifting weights. You know, I lift weights, you lift weights, right? And so we're trying to build our bodies, but we're using what we naturally have to build them, right? We're not introducing other substances or anything like that to our bodies. We're just trying to get stronger, trying to not even maximize maybe the strength that we could get, but on some level just building our bodies through actual human effort. I think that as we approach these technologies, we need to keep the enhanced game sort of move in mind, right? These are intentional ways that we're trying to demonstrate that the human body's limitations are somehow inferior. They make us inferior humans, right? The records that we set when we weren't using these substances pale in comparison to the records we could set when we are using these substances. And I think we need to be careful about drawing that mentality over to artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence needs to remain a tool. It needs to remain something that we can use when we feel warranted, and that can help us in certain ways, but does not in any way, shape, or form make us better, smarter, you know, more enhanced humans because it isn't that. It's another way of packaging and synthesizing information and dealing with a vast amount of information that we now have available to us. It allows us to be creative in new ways. This is where, you know, sort of deep fakes versus, you know, AI-generated movies and those kind of things could come in. And some of those are good, some of those are bad, but we need to be thinking of it in terms of, number one, is there really a need for me to deal with all of this information? What do I actually need to know? Right. And number two, in having AI synthesize all of this information for me, do I really know more than I knew before? Or now have I just been given a perspective on an issue as opposed to really knowing that issue? Yeah. You know, I would submit to you, like, that I think, you know, we've talked with David Zock a couple times, or you've talked with him more from Remedy Drive. David understands sex trafficking in a different way than you or I ever will because he's been in those places where it's happening. He knows the, you know, he's breathed that air. He's smelled the smells. He's seen the victims with his own eyes. This is, it's not colored by a screen. It's not shaped by a narrative. It's just bald in front of him. That's a different way of knowing than going on to ChatGPT and saying, give me some stats about sex trafficking. Right. And we can't, we can't ignore the former for the latter. 100%. We need to understand what we're getting out of these machines.

And understand that that is not all there is. Getting a Bible answer out of ChatGPT is very different than obeying God on a day-to-day basis and watching God show up in your life. That is a different sort of knowledge. Takes away the connection too, or whatever. That's right, and so we just have to be careful with these things and not pretend that just because we have some sort of enhanced knowledge, the ability to pull up any Bible verse at any moment through a keyword search, or, you know, an AI that's going to give us a devotional Bible verse in the moment as it listens into our conversations, that that is fundamentally different than experiencing God through obedience in our day-to-day lives. Yeah, and my fear would be, just like if you stop doing something for even six months, just like a muscle if you don't use it, what happens? It becomes weak. I don't want to see us as a people, as a generation or whatever, as a whole. I don't want to see us lean on these tools so much that we lose the ability to think for ourselves. We lose the ability to be creative. We lose the ability to use what God's given us. It shouldn't be a replacement. Right. And I think if we're not careful, it can become a replacement for some people without them even realizing it. And that's the scary part, because it doesn't happen overnight. Over a long period of time, we're going to be like, whoa, no one's even really doing that anymore. No one's reading and researching themselves. They're just asking something, putting a prompt in. And I see that shift already, James, so have you probably, where it's like learning how to utilize something and now there's all these articles and everyone's trying to teach us and show us how to use this better. And then what we're forgetting about is how to use our own mind and how to use our own way of thinking and our own way of coming to conclusions without this tool. So I see that as very problematic too, potentially, if we don't keep that at the forefront of our minds. No, I do too, because at the end of the day, and I've said this before, if we just think about it, even if we have AI-powered robots that are walking around, iRobot kind of vibe, right? And they interact with us very similar to the way other humans would interact with us. They have sort of an intuitive way of creating the illusion that they are thinking the same sort of thoughts that we're thinking. I think a lot of the work in cognitive psychology around embodied cognition would suggest that these, when they come around, AI-enabled robots are simply not thinking the way that we're thinking. They can't, because they're not experiencing the world in the same way. We are vulnerable to different things, right? We have different biological needs and necessities. We're going to get hungry and thirsty. We're going to get hot and cold, right? We're going to be worried about sweating through our shirts, right? You know, we're going to have all these different problems as we interact with the world and all these different enjoyments that these robots may be able to mimic, but they can't have. Right. And so does it make any sense at all to think that something that is mimicking us can really be thinking like us in any substantive or full sense of that word? I'm not sure it really does. Right. So it's a mimicry. It's partial. And the problem is that the partial really does seem to be more complete than it is. 100%, yeah. And I think even 10 years from now, as advanced as it could ever get, it's never going to have discernment. It's never going to have emotion. It's never going to have a soul like we do. And I think we kind of short sell ourselves if we think that we could be replaced or that could be superior, like you were saying earlier, that we're inferior to this because it's like better in some ways. It's still, at the end of the day, can never, nothing will ever replace what God's design was in the human mind, the human heart, the human soul, you know, our moral compass, all these things that God's given us. It's our jobs. We've been commissioned to steward them and, you know, try to align ourselves the best we can with him. It's never going to replace that. But I fear that people will forget about those things and just hop on the train and go whichever direction it's going. Yeah, I mean, I have no, we have a Roomba, you know, that sort of vacuums the house. I have no sense that Roomba has any intelligence other than what it's programmed to have. I mean, it's great because it vacuums the house and I don't have to. It's awesome. But I would also just say it's going to get harder and harder to tell the difference between on a practical level. It's going to really, I think, seem like these things think like us. But I think to your point, all you have to do is go to something like Ezekiel 36, right? In that passage, God is frustrated with Israel because they've misrepresented it in the nations. And he's not going to allow his name to be profaned amongst the nations. And so what's he going to do? He's going to replace the hearts of his people, the hearts of stone with hearts of flesh. And he's going to put his spirit within them to cause them to follow his commandments and obey his instructions. These are things that no matter how good the technology gets, there is no heart of flesh and there is no Holy Spirit in these things. And so when you say that they won't discern like us, I 100% agree because, especially for Christians, we don't discern based on our own neuron firing intelligence, what have you. Our discernment is colored by the fact that God has a claim on us and that he has put his Holy Spirit within us and allowed us the capacity to develop that wisdom. And so there is something very unique about humans beyond the physicality aspects that I was mentioning. There's also a spiritual capacity that humans have that these robots simply won't. They'll only be able to mimic and that will be, I think, like I said, increasingly difficult to differentiate. But from a theological anthropology sort of standpoint, how we understand ourselves as humans, it's crucial that we remember that none of these things, whether it's an app on your computer or a robot standing in front of you having a conversation, these are just different beings, different embodiments of interaction. They are not human. Right. And as the landscape changed and this gets, you know, more elaborate and crazier and harder to understand. That's why when we get saved, I got saved 7/27/98, but I didn't just renew my mind and have that transformation once. He calls us to do that every day. You know, because a week from now, it's going to look different than it does now. Six months from now, it's going to be crazier. So as Christians, I think it's so important right now more than ever maybe to submit to that and be made new every day that the transforming of our mind happens every single day and we make sure we're aligning that with scripture and we don't lose our sense of center as believers that we have something greater than any of this technology is ever going to, but we don't want to lose sight of that. Right. Well, I think this has been a good conversation, Nate. I think we'll close it up here and just encourage people. We'll probably address artificial intelligence again. We'll probably address technology again. These are areas that I think we need to keep coming back to and reminding ourselves how to think through them and kind of wrestle with some of the applications of them. But I would also just say that as Christians, there's no need to be, we don't have to be worried. We know where this thing is going. We know how this story ends and our job is to be faithful within a broken world that God is in the process of fixing. We're just sort of waiting for the end. And so we need to really key in on what is going to make us more faithful representations of Jesus Christ? How is it that we can conform more closely to his image? That needs to be the constant cry of our hearts. That needs to be the constant focus of our actions. And we'll do that within the midst of a technological world. We'll do that in the midst of war and famine and all these other things. But that is our true north. Christ is our true north. And so I always just, I'll end this and just say, Jesus isn't just the person we cling to as savior. He's the way. And I think that his life was the only life that resulted in resurrection, ascension, and glorification. A lot of times around Easter, we hear, well, Jesus is the only person who was ever resurrected. It's not exactly true. We have instances of resurrection throughout the scriptures. What I think we really mean is Jesus is the only person whose life yielded resurrection, ascension, and glorification.

And so that's why we follow him. Right. And we follow him regardless of what's going on in the context around us. We are trying to conform more closely to the image of Christ. And so as Christians, that's what we're always doing. And then some of these other things sort of fall underneath that. And we say, how do I do that within this context? How do I do that in relation to technology, in relation to whatever else happens to be going on in the world? Yeah, I agree. Very well said. This has been great. Thanks for having this conversation with me. Hey, as always, man, it's great to have you and we'll catch you on the next episode of Thinking Christian, everybody. Take care. I just want to take a second to thank the team at LifeAudio for their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to LifeAudio.com, you'll find dozens of other faith-centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more. Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for working everything out for my good. Help me trust in your perfect plan. Amen. Father, thank you for loving and caring for me. With Christian Prayer Meditation, you can pray along to prayers based on specific topics. Go to LifeAudio.com or search your favorite podcast app for Christian Prayer Meditation. You can also download the Abide app for biblical meditations at Abide.com.