Let's pray. Fathers, we come before you. We pray that you would meet with us here today. That as we look at the world around us, we see what's happening with technology. We recognize something big is going on. We pray that we would meet with you there. That you would be our all in all. You would be our heart's desire. You would be our greatest delight. That life is found in you, and we wouldn't make any technology or anything an idol to let it become between us and you. So guide us as we talk about AI and technology this morning. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. You know, I can remember the first time I came across a major technology that changed the world. I'm going to date myself just a little bit, but I saw my first computer. I was a kid, right? It was this box, it was black, that green screen, it was the flashing, the little green thing, and you could type stuff in and stuff, and I thought, that is the coolest thing I've ever seen. What's going to happen with this? Right? And I was a kid, I just ended up playing games on it all the time. But that technology has changed the world. As we know it, my life before that thing and my life now is quite different. I mean, we knew computers would be a big deal, but I never imagined back then it would become this. That when I went to university, and they had a room that was full of computer, and you had to slot a time, and I was doing mathematics research, that this thing can do more than that thing did. I never imagined I could right now call my parents in the States, and they would be on the video, and we'd talk. I could never imagine I was in Europe. I would just shine this, and it would translate any language, and I could read it. We knew then, wow, there's something cool here. But we had no idea what it would turn into. And this is still evolving. And so I believe that that, a lot of people are thinking that's what AI is for us. There's this new technology, it's pretty cool, but what's it going to turn into? How's it going to be helpful? How can we use it? What's it going to be? And people, as we learned yesterday, investing billions of dollars, and it's the hype and So I'm given a task, and you'll notice I tried to use AI as much as I could on everything. So you can look and say, is that AI-generated art, or is that something I made, okay? That's AI. It made that for me. And so you say, so how can we talk about helpful AI tools? And so what I wanna look at is, what is AI, just a little bit, and then develop a theology of what makes technology helpful. And at the very end, I'll give some tools and some ways that I'm playing with it right now. So to get started, my son, he was 11. He just turned 12 today to celebrate his birthday this morning before we came in. And when he heard I was talking about AI, he was all kind of excited. He loves technology. He wants to be a rocket scientist and all that. And he's like, Dad, you know what? When you go speak, you should ask AI to write your talk for you on what AI gets. And I'm like, OK, that's a good idea. Why don't you do that for me? So 30 minutes later, he came back. Well, actually, I should have got an email from him. Ding. So I had a talk on AI. Then I get ding. I have an image. for my talk, right? Ding! I get the talk in Sulu, for those of you that would appreciate it. Right? Ding! I get a second version. Ding! I get a third version. Ding! I get a fourth version. Pick the one you like the best. 30 minutes later, that's done. 11 years old. So what I want to do, let me read the first one he sent me. And I think this will dim, there's his empathy sitting. So this is what AI wants to say to you about helpful AI tools. It's an honor to stand before you today to discuss a topic of profound significance and exciting potential. The use of artificial intelligence in theological studies. We live in an area where technology is rapidly transforming every facet of our lives. from how we communicate and how we learn to how we understand the world around us. Amidst these advancements, AI has emerged as a powerful tool capable of revolutionizing the various fields, including the deeply rooted and traditionally human-centered discipline of theology. At first glance, the union of AI and theology may seem unconventional, a pairing of the most modern with the most ancient. It is precisely this intersection where we find extraordinary potential. AI, with its vast computational power and ability to analyze and synthesize large volumes of data, can provide fresh insights and perspectives, helping us to delve deeper into the age-old questions and texts that have shaped human thought and belief for millennia. Today, I will explore the myriad ways AI can enhance theological studies, from facilitating more comprehensive scriptural analysis to fostering global interfaith dialogue. We will examine how AI can assist scholars in uncovering new interpretations, patterns, and connections Additionally, we'll consider the ethical implications and responsibilities that come with integrating AI into this sacred domain. Join with me as we embark on this enlightening journey, discovering how we can embrace AI and how this can augment our understanding of theology and enrich our spiritual quest for truth and meaning in an increasingly complex world. I think you can see the power of AI. I mean, not only did he write it, he sent me that graphic. I just put that graphic into PowerPoint and then it designed using its own AI, that slide. You know, he gave it to me in EasyZilla. You know how much EasyZilla he speaks? Zero. I don't even think he knows who Johnny is. And then he sent me three other drafts like this. Different. All with different emphasis and themes. Fifteen. Thirty minutes, I think, altogether. The power of AI. You encounter this and you think, whoa, there's something here. There's some strengths. There's some tools. But at the same time, There's some problems with AI. Now notice on the picture the robot's hand. It's all messed up. When you look close, there's problems. So we saw the strengths of AI. My son, 11 years old, could create that. Well, what's the weaknesses? My son doesn't speak easy, Zulu. My son can't draw anything beyond a stick figure. My son cannot write this well. My son doesn't understand those concepts that were presented in that introduction. I just gave. So the same things that are like the potentials are also some of the biggest weaknesses, right? I mean, if Joey, my son, decided, you know, I don't need to work hard at school. I don't need to learn to write essays. I don't need to learn to develop my art abilities. I'll just plug it into AI. That would handicap him for life. And that's what we've talked about yesterday. And that's true for everyone. But for the Christian, as we're thinking about how is AI helpful? How can we use this? There's even a bigger problem than that. And the problem is, what he sent me isn't actually true. I mean, he didn't realize this when he sent it to me. I read it to my family. Y'all laughed like you guys did. But let me read a couple of quotes that I just read to you, and you tell me if this is biblical. AI said, we will examine how AI can assist scholars in uncovering new interpretations, patterns, and connections within sacred texts that might otherwise remain hidden. It also said, AI with its vast computational power and ability to analyze and synthesize large volumes of data can provide fresh insights and perspectives, helping us delve deeper into age-old questions and texts that have shaped human thought and belief for millennia. Do we think AI is going to give us new insights to the Bible? Is it going to, should we have AI change how we answer these age-old, millennial questions? I don't think so. So let's come back to that later. That's a unique problem for us as Christians, right? But before I can share AI helpful tools, I think we have to ask the question, what does it mean to be helpful? I mean, what is even helpful with technology, right? What's even helpful? Now, for me, this isn't a new debate. in Michigan. And in Michigan, there is a large, it's not large, it's a small community, but it's a significant community where I stay called the Amish community. You guys know of the Amish? Yeah, right? The Amish, they were Europeans, and in the 1700s with the Industrial Revolution and all this new technology, they said, wait, this is changing society too much. And based on philosophical and religious basis, they said, no, we're drawing the line. We're going to live like Europeans from the 1700s. And there's a significant Amish population at where I stay, in the States. And so you would see this right across the road. On one side we have the Amish farm, and on the other we have, you know, modern farming. And so I would engage with Amish people, people in my church, you know, they're part of the community. We would talk with them about technology and its effects on our lives. And so for me, this is something I've wrestled with for a long time, living amongst Amish people who said, no, 1700s, electricity, car, industrialization, we don't want any of that. We want to live like our ancestors. And some of us with AI may feel similar that, I don't know, I'm just going to stay 2020. That's my year. I'm not moving beyond that. For them, it was 1700s, right? And there's some real, at first I thought these Amish were kind of crazy. But then as I got to know them, and I heard their arguments, I thought, oh, okay, maybe they're not quite as crazy as I thought. For example, some people mentioned this yesterday, but, you know, these smartphones, if you're in the States, if you're in the States, people are on these a lot more than they are here. I remember I went back, I sat at the table with a bunch of my friends, and they're all doing this, and I'm sitting there looking at them, and they're all, we're at dinner, having fellowship, but they're all on their phones. I mean, it buzzes all the time. It rules our life. And books were mentioned yesterday that I highly recommend that talk about how this thing changes our life. It's a powerful, wonderful tool, but man, if I don't have it with me, I'm missing something, I'm naked, I mean, you know? You feel that way. I'm addicted in a way. That buzz, you've got to look and see who's buzzing me. I don't care if my wife's talking to me, I'll stop and look at my phone. And that's not right. Right? And so technology changes our lives and they saw this and they're like, look guys, this isn't good. And then you see stats like the rates of depression in the States are at an all-time high, mostly amongst people under the age of 40 who grew up with these. You know? Oh, my kid's crying. Here. Oh, my kid's bored. Here. They're on this all the time. Mental illness has skyrocketed. Depression has skyrocketed. that, but I think so. There's a correlation. And so if we're just thinking technology in general, it has impact on our lives. It's sometimes negative. This is a wonderful tool. I have one. I had one. I got rid of it. I said, I'm not going to get a smartphone. And then everyone in my church had it. They could never get a hold of me and they were upset. So I got one. That's my lock with the Amish, okay? My wife told an Amish guy, My husband's more Amish than you! For a time. Because he was calling on his cell phone. My husband doesn't even have a cell phone, you know? It's funny. So as we think about what's a biblical theology of technology, right? And then let's move to the most advanced technology that exists now, AR. So Ken, so I made a case, an Amish case, that maybe we should just draw the line and say, 2020, we're good, before GPT-3 came out. So can technology be used in the Bible? What does the Bible have to say about technology? Man, you love it when things just work together. I was gonna read this psalm, 20 verse 7. Some trust in chariots and horsemen, who we trust in the name of the Lord our God. Most advanced technology of the time? There are strengths and weaknesses. Let's think through technology we see in the Bible. I jumped to that one. But think about the development of paper. As soon as they had a new type, a better type of writing God's Word on, they used it. Think about chariots, the invention of the wheel, the chariots, and technology, and swords, and whatever the newest technology was. You see them using that in warfare in the Bible. Even think of David's sling to fight Goliath. Somebody had to invent that. There was a time pre-sling. Right? Adam and Eve wasn't God created Adam and Eve with a sling. No, they created that at some point. Then we get to more modern, like New Testament, the Roman Roads. Paul used that to take the gospel to the world. So you have to say, yes, technology was used, but you have to understand how it was used. Are we trusting? Do we feel safe because we have the most modern technology, the chariots? Or do we recognize safety really comes from the war? Psalm 27, right? the theology of technology. Now, let's go a little bit more modern. The Reformation. Reformation, most historians agree, would not have happened the way it did without new technological advances of the print press. I mean, if not everyone can have Bibles, then you don't really have the Protestant Reformation like it happened. And the Reformers used it, all Luther's pamphlets, and getting Bibles in the vernacular, printing them, sending them out. And have you ever read a scroll? It's a different experience, trying to read the Bible on a scroll, versus reading the Bible in a book. You go there, and there's all these different scrolls. You pull one out, and you read it. That's different than having them all like this. Technology. We've embraced it. in our Protestant, before our church. So yeah, we see the Amish side. We go on. We see the biblical side. We see positives. Man, I'm so thankful I have one of these, in my own language, that I can read. It's so common I actually write in mine, because I can buy another one. Isn't that a blessing? That didn't exist I'm thankful. So can technology be helpful? Yeah. Can it be harmful? Oh yeah. How do we tell the difference? Well, I'm sorry, we're not gonna be able to do the whole thing, but let me give just a few things with AI as we're trying to think through this. Because I believe AI, it's a new technology and we can't imagine where it's going. So we need to be out ahead of it, thinking biblically, so that as these new things hit us, we have scriptural basis of which to analyze and say, helpful, not helpful. So artificial intelligence, is it really intelligent? I was glad this was addressed yesterday, but I want to add just a few thoughts to it. What is intelligence? You know, I liked what he said yesterday. Intelligence, there's two meanings. One is like presenting data, and the other is how we think of it. When I hear AI, I always thought of this definition of intelligence. The ability to use reason. The ability to think abstractly. The ability to have understanding and act in accordance to that understanding. So, is AI intelligent? I mean, the answer is no, it's not intelligent. It looks like it's intelligent, but it's not. And to understand that, this was discussed in one of the breakouts as well yesterday, but not everyone was there, so I'll quickly cover it. There's many different types of AI. I'm just gonna talk about the most famous, which is the LLNs, the Language Learning Models, like GPT. That's the one everyone talks about with AI. And so, do you know where this came from? When you're typing a message on your WhatsApp, and it pops up little words at the bottom, anticipating what you want to say, you're typing email in Gmail, and it's popping little words up, anticipating what you're saying, that's where this came from. That's the early form of this technology. That they're just anticipating what it is you want next. And as they became more sophisticated on this and they ran bigger data sets and running it through multiple things and analyzing and moving, they were able to develop this highly sophisticated language learning model that when you put an input in, it analyzes billions of data out there that we can't even comprehend. And it says, usually when we see this series of inputs, these are the next outputs that are coming. And that's what it means. Instead of one word, like the early forms, like what we have on WhatsApp, you put in a sentence that gives you an essay. So is that reasoning? No, there's no reasoning. But really, is there any abstraction? Is there any understanding? No. It's analyzing inputs and putting out outputs based on patterns. Very sophisticated training of patterns that it sees. And that's why when you mess with it a lot, you see lots of glitches because the patterns don't always match up. And so, is AI intelligent? It doesn't think, it doesn't reason, and it doesn't understand. AI doesn't. It appears to, but it doesn't. So let's think about this a moment in the idea of being helpful. So I have my 11 year old who doesn't understand put in a prompt, right? AI that doesn't think or reason or understand on its own searches the internet puts together, from what it gathers out there, what it would expect to see. From this prop, you get these responses, and it produces this really interesting thing that I read, right? So what's the problem? You have a non-understanding person that puts in inputs. You have a non-understanding machine that produces a document that appears to have understanding. Do you see the problem? So number one, we see dumb AI isn't helpful in producing understanding. Don't ask it to think. Don't ask it to use intelligence because it doesn't have intelligence. In a lot of the discussions I hear, well, can you have it write a sermon? Well, do you need intelligence to write a sermon? I hope so. Right? Maybe not, you know? We only work one day a week. It's easy, you know, right? But how is that? Now there's different types of intelligence. Can you have an algorithm that translates without like reason, you know? I've messed with that. The translations aren't there yet. I mean, you can understand what they're saying, but it's... It's not proper, you know? You can't use it in academics. I don't think, but maybe you can. It needs editing a lot, because there's not understanding. But it's helpful. See, that's where we're going. So number one, don't ask it to do something that requires understanding, because it doesn't understand. It's just input, output, analyzing patterns. But for Christians, there's even a worse problem. There's even a worse problem. That's just for the world. That's true of everybody. I could say that in any talk. But for Christians, there's a worse problem. What is our job in theological education? Do you like that AI image? It looks pretty cool, doesn't it? What is our job in theological education? 1 Corinthians 2, verse 12. Go ahead and open in your Bibles there if you'd like. We're gonna spend a little bit of time. Paul says, now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we embark this in words not taught by human wisdom, but taught by the spirit. interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God for their quality to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things but he himself to be judged by no one. For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him? that we have the mind of Christ. Let's take just a moment to reflect on this passage, interpret it, and then apply it to our current discussion. He says, verse 12, We received not the Spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God. Why? that we might understand the things freely given us by God." So how do we understand the things given to us by God? He tells us, by the Spirit. That we can't understand the things given to us by God except through the Holy Spirit. That's pretty intense. So what's our job in theological education? Are we just doing the world's work? Are we just imparting worldly wisdom and worldly knowledge? That's not what we do at ICBM. I hope that's not what you do in your institution. Verse 13 talks about what we're supposed to be doing. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom. but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual." Isn't that what we do? We impart spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. We are not imparting words taught by human wisdom. What does that mean? When they come to our institution, we're just not another college that's out there, and we just happen to teach religious texts. No. We are Christians indwelled by the Holy Spirit, following the one true God, in whom in Him is life, and there is life in no other other than Him. See, that's a spiritual truth that the world cannot understand. The only way we can get that of life is as a free gift through His Son that He sent, dying on the cross and being raised from the dead. And He imparts that free gift of life, that relationship with Him, because from Him comes every good thing. There's no good thing that doesn't come from God. And we get that through the death and resurrection of His Son. Spiritual truths. Where do you hear that other than places where the Holy Spirit is present? You don't. That's what we teach. Right? I've got a point. I'm not just preaching a sermon for fun. Although I like to preach. So he's saying, look, Paul is saying, look guys, I don't give worldly wisdom. We get spiritual wisdom. And how do you understand the things of God? The Holy Spirit. If you don't have the Holy Spirit, you don't understand the things of God. Verse 14, 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. 14. The spiritual person judges all things. See, we're spiritual. We're judging AI. Is this helpful? Is it not? We're judging. We're not just judging, can it be used in the world? We're judging, is this helpful for Christians? Is this helpful to train pastors and ministry leaders? Is this helpful to connect us to the one God, whom every good thing flows from Him, and our life is found in Him? Right? That's what we're judging. We're spiritual. For who has understood the mind of the Lord? What's the greatest intelligence out there? Well, the Lord, right? And who instructs the Lord? Does AI instruct the Lord? No. The most advanced robot intelligence that could come a hundred years from now? No. Nothing will ever surpass the Lord's intelligence. We have the mind of Christ. in the Holy Spirit. So you're getting the interpretation. When we teach, we're not teaching worldly things. We're not a human institution. Our Bible colleges are an extension of the church, the spiritual entity, the body of Christ. And we teach spiritual truths, training people to be godly men. so that they can train people in their churches to be godly men and women, according to the gospel which I shared. That's our job. That's what we do. So how does AI help us with that? One, does AI help the Holy Spirit? Does anyone debate that? He doesn't have the Holy Spirit, right? So if we go to... Let's say we have a brilliant friend. That's a non-believer. Verse 14, the natural person. He's brilliant. He's hung out at your church. He's been a part of your family. He knows all the Bible and all the Christian things. He's brilliant. But he doesn't have the Spirit. You see where I'm going? What are you going to ask that godly friend? What help can they bring to theological education? They know all the Bible verses. They've read more theology books than you've read. But they don't believe any of it. They don't have the Holy Spirit. See where I'm going? A.I. doesn't have the Holy Spirit. It will never have the Holy Spirit. No matter how advanced, how brilliant, how great it gets, it will never have the Holy Spirit. They can train A.I. on only people that help the Holy Spirit. That are only limited to read the Bible and these theological works from your favorite authors. But does A.I. have the Holy Spirit? No. people that have the Holy Spirit, but it doesn't possess the Spirit itself. So if it doesn't possess the Spirit itself, our job is to impart words not taught by human wisdom, but taught by the Spirit. So if AI doesn't have the Spirit, can it impart spiritual truths? See? Does it help? This is my wrestle, right? I'm like my son. I'm the one that got him today. I like this stuff. But can it empower spiritual truths without the Holy Spirit? Can my non-believing, brilliant friend that knows more Bible and theology than me empower spiritual truths and bring fruit? No. Can AI? No. 1. AI isn't intelligent. Don't ask it to do intelligent things. Now, it may become intelligent in the future. 2. AI isn't spiritual. It doesn't have the Holy Spirit. It cannot impart spiritual truths to those who are spiritual, which is our job in theological education. And that won't change in the future. See? We're developing a theology of what's helpful. How do we use this tool? I found this very helpful. So, that's kind of weird. My job is to give helpful tools, and all I've done is continue yesterday. I guess it's good I'm first. I get kind of rich. So what? How can it be helpful? So I've already reviewed this. Don't ask it to do anything that requires intelligence. And don't ask it to do anything spiritual. Why? Because it doesn't have the mind of Christ. It doesn't have the Holy Spirit. But we do. And when we're teaching, I hope we're relying on that. And we're teaching from His word, trusting that the Holy Spirit will illumine His word to the hearts and minds of those people that overcome our weaknesses, so that they can know Christ. and know Him as life that's given freely, eternal life, found in His Son. His Son is eternal life, by the way. So the nice thing that I thought of is, if I wouldn't ask that really smart, unbelieving friend of mine to do it for me, I'm not going to ask AI to do it for me. I think that's helpful. So helpful AI tools. Now we're switching gears to kind of new, so we've had some theology of AI, we've had some parameters on how I define what is helpful, what is not, why. I did part of my biblical basis for that. So helpful AI tools. What is helpful? This put ourselves back in the days of when they first invented the airplane. So you're there at the Wright Brothers, you see them fly the plane, and you're like, oh, this is amazing technology! Somebody flew! Okay, how can we use that in theological education? You're studying in North Carolina. You can't. You see potential, but it's not there yet. Or the car. The first car is made. They're going. You're like, How is this car? This is cool. I see potential. How is this better than my horses and oxen that I have right now? And at that time, they're like, well, it really isn't better yet. Soon, in a decade, it got better. And now, it's far better. You can see it with my Amish friends, but it's a lot better. But that's where we are in AI. It's brand new. It's my experience, and I felt bad saying this, so I talked to a few of my IT friends. And my experience with AI is it's a lot of hype, that when I actually use it, it's really cool at first, but when I think about it more deeply, I'm like, this is so flawed, I can't actually use it in a professional setting. I love that AI drawing. And so, with that being said, it is fun to play around because it is going to become better And it is going to be used, I think. That's what everyone's saying, and I, man, seeing what my 11-year-old did, I'm like, yeah, man, there's some power here, right? And so I'm gonna talk about the two most popular types of AI that really I think most people are thinking about. One is generative AI, and that's like chat GPT, where you put in information and it puts out an output. My favorite website to go to deal with that is a website called poe.com, P-O-E dot com. And you can also, I didn't know this, but my 11 year old said, oh, he's doing it on his phone. And I said, how are you doing that on your phone? He goes, well, they have an app. So last week I downloaded the app, right? So they have an app, it's really cool. Now the nice thing about Po is it is for people to experiment with AI. It doesn't just have ChatGPT on there. It has like ChatGPT 4.0, 3.5, 3. It has Lama, it has all these others. There's dozens of AI out there and they all have their own personalities. And some of them are better at some things than others. Some are better theologians than others. It's really interesting. It's like talking to people. I'm serious. But you have them all on, you click on the thing, you talk to it, and it talks back, you know, it gives responses, and you're like, oh, this one's more evangelical, that one's more reformed. I'm serious, you know? It's really interesting. So get on and play with it. My experience is that AI is about like a first year Bible college student. It's a brilliant book. They say things in moments of brilliance, you're like, whoa. And then they say the dumbest thing you've ever heard in your life. That's where AI is right now. It's like that initial airplane. It's learning. 10 years from now, watch out. Right now, that's where it's at. Play it, poe.com. If you go one place, go there. It's really a nice tool. It's got, yeah, it has everything. And what's really funny is when Brian and I were first talking about this, Poe looked one way, and now it's totally different. I'm like, oh, I'll tell him about that. I was thinking a couple months ago. And now, it's not there. And other things are in its place. Or, well, that was free, and now it costs every time you put it in. But now this one's free. So it's changing daily. So I'm not going to give specifics. You just have to get on. And next week, it might look different than this week. Two weeks from now, we may show up at poe.com because of some lawsuit. I don't know. It's there. I don't know of any lawsuit. It seems totally legal. But anyway, poe.com. Other than that, that's really where I've gone on. I've looked at translation ones. I've looked at voiceover ones. You can speak in English, and then it'll speak in Zulu for you. You can speak in Zulu, and it'll speak in English or translate on the screen. You can put text in, and then it'll speak in whatever language you want. I cut and paste an English essay in. How does it, I don't think, have this one, but there's other ones out there you can find. They change all the time. But all of those, when it does it, it's interesting. It's nice if I'm a tourist and I'm trying to ask, where's the toilet? Where's the toilet? And they're like, hmm. And you're like, oh, yes. But when I'm presenting an academic paper, it's just not there yet. You have to have it and then have a professional that actually knows, read through it, edit it, and work on it. It can get you down the road. It can make life go a lot easier and faster. And so, yes, there's all these tools that are out there that are in the pipeline, but they're not quite there yet. The other one that I tried to demonstrate is the art generators. And I've played with this a little bit. I've done it for fun. But these are really nice. I mean, I think that's a cool picture. You guys like it. I said, give me a picture of AI. Boom. That's what it told me. I thought, wow, that's interesting. Yeah, a woman. AI is always a woman. Why is AI a woman? I don't know. That's how AI sees herself, as a woman. I love my mom, so maybe I invite my sister, I don't know. She's not threatening. Yeah, yeah, I don't know. But that's interesting, AI sees herself as a woman. Her hips up, but it's up, it's up. I don't hear it. So anyway. And then also there's things on there where you can do the other type is art generators. And Po has those as well. I didn't know that. So I said, where did you get that art? I use Po. I said, it's doing that now? So I looked, there's a ton of them. You do one, it's like, well, try these four. And you click, click, click, click, you get four or five images from the same input, different. It's like asking five artists, can you draw me a picture of how you envision AI? You draw one, you draw one, you draw one. But it does it all in five seconds each. 15 seconds later, I have five images. I'm like, that's my favorite. Boom. Just stick it in PowerPoint. PowerPoint's like, do you want it arranged like this? I say yes. And boom, there's my slide. All AI. Pretty cool. I think we can use that now. Now, careful on art. Art communicates theology. Right? I mean, it's communicating. I'm a woman. I'm pretty. I'm robotic. I'm cool, you know? It communicates, so if you'd ask a non-believer to illustrate that or take a picture, then AI's fine, but if you wouldn't, don't have it do it. And so there's other, like Gincraft I think is my favorite, other than Poe. You can get a paid subscription to it. Those right now, so the Playground 2.5, you can use it at your, it's commercial license, so you can use it at your Bible college for your advertisements, slides, stuff like that. But the other thing about AI is the ones that are helpful are being integrated into the things you already use. Like we heard yesterday on Microsoft, already has AI there. You go on Google, the top result is often AI. For me, it's always AI. Top results, AI. What AI is found. Canva. I use Canva to create slides for my classes, illustrations, advertisements. It's a really nice program. It's got AI built right into it. So that's how I'm using AI. And then Google watches over my shoulder everything I do. So it starts sending me, hey, do you want to read this article from TechRadar about how people use AI? I'm like, yeah, sure. It's artificial intelligence. And so this is how people use AI. Well, number one, this article said that hardly anyone's using it, because almost everyone's found it's not quite good enough to be used professionally. The US has the most people using it daily, and it's at 7%. that use it daily. Another 11% in the US use it on a weekly basis. So in where it's invented, where people are using it all the time, the states, less than 20% of people use it on a weekly basis. I don't use it on a daily or weekly basis. Maybe I should, I don't know. It's fun. And so how are these people using it? That's this. Answering factual questions. Kind of like you Google something, you click on Wikipedia. AI is good for that. Instead of going to Wikipedia, go to AI. You get similar results, similar accuracy, similar depth of thought. Generating ideas. That was really funny. I'm like, yeah, I just really haven't thought of that helpful. And then my wife was teaching Sunday school. And she said, hey, I'm having a hard time coming up with a craft idea. for the Sunday school class, I wanted to do something to engage them. You've done all this AI talk, let's see, can you ask AI, see if it'll give me an idea? So I went on my app that my son just had me download, I typed in her passage, craft idea, and it came up with this beautiful idea of the Jesus's light of the world was like her main theme, and these beautiful lanterns where you use white paste and you mix some water in, and then that made it translucent, and you put tissue paper on it, and they made these beautiful lanterns out of old jars that we had, and it was like, The kids had a great time. He's like, this is brilliant. And she googled it. She found actual instructions. She doesn't use AI. And it was great. It gave me an idea that then I could process and say, does that actually, would that actually be helpful in a Sunday school lesson? It was. They found the website. She found the website and had grabbed it from and then went from their instructions from the Sunday school. So it's good for generating ideas. It's fun for playing around. You can summarize a text. I tried this with some South African law that I was reading. I'm like, I don't understand this at all. What are they saying? I put it in AI, and I said, summarize this. And it came out gobbledygook. And I'm like, OK. So I outlined it in my exegesis, and I was like, yeah, these sentences don't make sense. So there are limits to it. If you can't understand it, it can't understand it. But if you struggle with reading comprehension, it can make it easier. And then, you know, some other things. Translation, I think, for us, is a big one. If I were doing more translations, I would definitely play with it. Not as a final product, but to get you started. It saves tons of time. The second way, you see on the right-hand column, so mostly for getting information but also creating media. And most people just play around with it. They just, hey, this would be funny. Let me send it out on WhatsApp. They're writing an email, making an image. You've seen me do that here. Writing an essay. Don't want to do that for class, but people are. Creative writing. I've written stories I read to my kids. Write-up changes. It doesn't do a whole story, short ones, but if you think through an outline, and then each chapter you have it right, and then you kind of work to bring it together, you can write a book pretty fast. I did in the evening. It's pretty fun. I read it to my kids. They thought it was pretty cool. So you can do stuff like that. Was it great literature? No, but it was fun. So you can play with stuff like that. Could I use that in a classroom? Never. So what's helpful now? So I've played with all this. I've shown how people use it. What ways is it helpful today? What, for me, that's teaching on these helpful things, what am I using? There's another AI image. It kind of, you know, they have a little, once you see it, and you're like, oh, that's what AI looks like, then you'll realize how much online you see AI images and you didn't realize you didn't take a picture. But that's AI, right? So what I use now, I use Logos. Does Logos AI know? But it's better than AI. And it's what I use. I've used it for a long time. You can get it for free. You get free books every month. It doesn't think for me, but it's a library that I can get like this on my phone. I can pull up 20,000 books right here. It's pretty cool. If I want to do a Greek analysis, I don't trust AI to give it right. But if I use Logos, I know who the scholars that did it, and I trust what they say. I'll trust BDAG over AI. I'll trust Hallett over AI. I've got this on Logos. Not to pay for it, but I'm a scholar. Those are my tools. So I use Logos. So if you're saying, hey, I want to incorporate technology, I wouldn't go on Poe.com and start using AI. You can to play around with it. But I don't think it's reliable enough for my personal research. I don't want to put my name on it because AI said it. It's like Wikipedia, okay? And so I want to go to the actual sources. I teach our students Lagos. We have a free Lagos class on our ICBM website, www.icbm.ac.za. Self-study through it. If you want us to teach you Lagos, we have very reasonable rates. Let us know. We'll work out something for you, your church, your institution. It's very cheap. We do it as a ministry. We don't get any payment from Lagos. I don't work, but Lagos never have. It's the best tool out there. Better than AI. What else do I use? I teach my students Bible.org. Use the Net Bible. I know the scholars that have done that, godly men. You just hover your mouse over it. It gives you the Greek translations. They give their translation notes. Men filled with the Spirit, grappling with the text, giving different views. It's awesome. It does all the same things that I would use AI for, but it's much better. If it's older, I still like it better. Maybe because I'm old. I don't know. Bible Gateway. Best concordance out there. Type in a word. You can use AI like that. Give me every time the word charis is used in the New Testament. It'll do it. I still use Bible Gateway or Logos. Blue Letter Bible, lots of good free resources there. They even have that bee on there. I thought that was pretty cool. Talking to my New Testament scholars out there, dropping all these afternoons. So that's what I do. I use a lot of technology in my studies. AI isn't on my list yet. It's just something I play with to see if it'll get good enough. I use AI like I use Wikipedia, honestly. which is just I'm kind of curious about something I don't know about, and I read, and then if I want to do serious research for my work, I don't use it, you know? It's the same. Now what if I'm in my marketing department? Canva. This is excellent. It's free. It's been free for 20 years. It's amazing. You can do a non-profit license. It has all these designs of flyers and tables and charts. And then you can make beautiful things for your student, illustrations, handouts that illustrate your points. Canva's wonderful. And Canva has an AI. You're like, oh, they don't quite have in their stock images what I want. Click on that, tell it what it wants. It'll generate one for you. Their AI is not as good as Poe, though. So I go to Poe, have it make it, and then bring it into Canva. But anyway, you know how to use these things. It's already there. And that's where I think AI is going, is that it'll be incorporated with the tools we already use. Lagos is bringing in AI. They're working on it. Canva already has it. Google already has it. Microsoft already has it. And they'll keep developing in 10 years. From now, we're going to be having a totally different conversation we're having this morning. Because instead of this rickety car, now people are driving Model Ts everywhere, and there's roads, and everything's designed for these cars. That's where we're going. But I am not a prophet, I can't predict this from that old computer I was looking at. But I am a theologian, I can say I'm not ever going to ask you to do something that requires the spirit. See? And I'm going to recognize it as artificial intelligence. So let's summarize. What are helpful tools for us? What can we use? What can we not? Let's recognize this technology does not have the Holy Spirit. This technology is looking at everything, both people that have the Holy Spirit and people that don't. Is it scouring the internet? You're going to hear terrible things. Let me go back to my intro. We are going to provide new insights into the Bible. So what if right now AI said, hey, we have a new perspective on the New Testament and how it's to be interpreted. We're like, oh, wow, we've been wrong for 2000 years. Let's shift and follow AI. But I'm serious. People are going to do that. I think I think it's coming. We'd better be ready. What's my response? AI doesn't have the Holy Spirit. This is human thinking. The Church has had the mind of Christ for 2,000 years. I trust Spirit-filled believers of the past two millennia versus a computer analysis. That's my response. Has it happened yet? But when I do, I'm ready. So you have to think. And yeah, Spirit-filled believers have sinned a lot. But AI makes a lot of mistakes, too. AI doesn't have intelligence. It mimics intelligence. It doesn't have understanding. It doesn't have the things we have. It makes lots of mistakes. It can't be trusted. I was trying to do research. When I had just finished my PhD, when AI really started coming out, and so I typed in my title for my dissertation on it. What is the Lucan Perspective of Leadership? I typed that in. That's my title. And AI came back, and I thought, that's pretty darn close. Not quite right. And I'm like, well, there's something to this. But it only used the Book of Luke, and it analyzed Luke, and it evaluated how God would judge success from the Book of Luke and the Book of Acts, just Luke and Matthew, right? Same that I did in my... And I'm like, whoa, that's kind of cool. I spent two, three, four years working on it. It did it in five seconds, you know? Mine was better, but it wasn't bad. We had a good conversation. I asked it some follow-up questions. And then I did the same thing the next week and it gave me rubbish. Same program. I'm serious. And I'm like, why this week was it so good? And then they updated. They put a new guy. That's AI. It's weird. It makes lots of mistakes. There's lots of potential, but it's that old rickety cart, that airplane that we're not on a jet. We're not flying across the world on a jet yet. So I believe technology is helpful if it gives us access to and helps us ourselves interact with the biblical text. The more I can be in this, me and God, the Holy Spirit, interacting with Him, the better. If technology helps me do that, great. If it costs me to have my Bible Technology is helpful if it expands our communication of the biblical texts. I'm trying to communicate to a brother. They can't quite understand. AI puts something up. They read it. They're like, oh yes, now I understand. That's helpful. That's the process of reformation of the printing press. But don't ask AI or any other technology to do what it can't do. First Corinthians 2.13, interpret spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. It's not spiritual. We are, and we communicate like that. If you cannot do that, you will never be able to do that. So, how do I practically apply that? For me, I don't ask EA to do anything that I wouldn't have my brilliant, non-believing friend do. So there you go. Play with it. Have fun. But just ask yourself, Hey, should I have AI help me with this sermon? Or would I ask my brain-not-believing friend to write that part of the sermon for me? Just ask yourself, right? Do I want a non-spirit-filled entity doing this? If the answer is no, it's not helpful. Even if it's cool, let's pray. Lord, thanks so much for your grace to us. Thank you for this time that we live, this time of information age with things happening that was just science fiction. Like 20 years ago, I couldn't even imagine having this talk in front of these people about artificial intelligence. But you and your province, as was talked about yesterday, have had us live at these times. So help us to walk with you, to be wise, to use the tools that are helpful, and to not use them in ways that aren't helpful. Guide us. Help us to be men and women of authenticity and integrity. We pray these things in Jesus' name, amen.