Digital Parish: Navigating the AI integration in the church

Ryan Dunn [00:00:00]:
Hi, welcome to pastoring in the digital parish, your resource and point of connection for building your online ministry toolkit and bringing your congregation into the digital age. My name is Ryan Dunn. I would love to know how your AI integration is going. I think about all of us have implemented some form of artificial intelligence enhancement into our ministry. Whether that might be in having an AI bot take care of automated responses on Facebook Messenger to maybe asking a GPT to analyze a sermon for sound bites. In this session, we're exploring ideas for implementing more artificial intelligence applications for digital ministry success. Our guest is an old friend of the podcast, Jason Moore. Jason was one of the OG original guests on pastoring in the digital parish back in season 1.

Ryan Dunn [00:00:53]:
He presented then on hybrid worship. In this episode, we explore Jason's journey from AI skeptic to AI advocate. We'll explore the practical applications of artificial intelligence in church settings from chatbot discussions to sermon preparations and creative storytelling enhancements. Jason provides some principles guiding responsible AI use in ministry and the ethical considerations that we really need to address when embracing this technology. As always, if this kind of content is useful and meaningful for you, well, so the goodness. Drop a rating or review on your podcast listening platform. Now that might be Apple Podcasts or the Spotify mobile app. You can leave a comment on YouTube if you listen or view there church by the way Pastoring in the Digital Parish has its own YouTube channel so mash the subscribe button there as well.

Ryan Dunn [00:01:50]:
Thanks so much. Alrighty. What do you wanna know about Jason Moore? Well, according to my AI podcast content companion, it distills it as this. Jason Moore is a discerning technologist immersed in the evolving sphere of artificial intelligence, AI parenthesis. Known for his pragmatic approach, Jason actively engages with various groups that are either using AI like chatbot technologies or are simply inquisitive about its potential. He has often found himself in the midst of vibrant discussions, if not debates, primarily with skeptics who have only grazed the surface of AI capabilities. Not bad, chatbot or AI. Not bad.

Ryan Dunn [00:02:35]:
I know Jason as a consultant and author who helps churches bring the good news into digital spaces. He's written the popular hybrid worship book, both Dunn, and Jason leads cohorts of church leaders for implementing AI. He runs Midnight Oil Productions Dunn you can get some details on all of their activities through the Midnight Oil Productions website. There's a lot to explore here, so let's get going on pastoring in the digital parish. Jason, we're gonna talk about artificial intelligence Dunn building community in digital spaces. But first, you posted something last week that just piqued my interest. I have to know a little bit more about it. Maybe it was 2 weeks ago.

Ryan Dunn [00:03:21]:
You said you get your best writing done between the hours of, like, midnight and 5 AM. How did you test this?

Jason Moore [00:03:29]:
Well, I have been a night owl my whole life. Mhmm. I am not a morning person. I can be when I have to be, but, I you know, the thing about, writing overnight is that I don't get any emails. Nobody calls me. My family doesn't eat anything at that time.

Ryan Dunn [00:03:47]:
That's because they're all sleeping. You know that.

Jason Moore [00:03:49]:
That's because they're all

Ryan Dunn [00:03:50]:
sleeping. Yes. The world. Okay.

Jason Moore [00:03:53]:
And, I have always been wired for, like, I'm a 4 to 6 hour a night guy anyway most of the time.

Ryan Dunn [00:03:59]:
I mean for you.

Jason Moore [00:04:00]:
I'm happy if I can get, you know, 8 hours of sleep, but that doesn't happen very often, and I don't often need it. So, yeah, that I guess I just tested it Ryan and error, you know. And and my most productive times as I've been working on a new book on AI have just been from, like, you know, 12 or 1 AM until, like, 4 or 5 in the morning. And then I then I sleep till, you know, 9 or 9:30 or something like that. And there we go.

Ryan Dunn [00:04:25]:
Well, you've been making the rounds talking about AI, with definitely a lot of church conferences. You're working with some cohorts of of church leaders in developing uses for AI within the church context. How do you find that right now church are utilizing artificial intelligence applications?

Jason Moore [00:04:44]:
Yeah. You know, it's a great question. I kinda I see sort of 3 different groups in the church right now. There are people who are curious about AI. Mhmm. There are people who are convinced that AI is something that we ought to hang on to and and be using and and lean into a bit. And then, of course, there are those skeptics who are online, this has no place in the church and that kind of thing. Mhmm.

Jason Moore [00:05:08]:
And I think, the first two groups seem to be using it. I I think maybe the 3rd group has played with it. But I'll tell you, most of the pushback I've gotten Dunn the arguments I've had Dunn not really arguments, but, you know, the debates Yeah. Are often from people who haven't really played with it much. They just they've heard things that make them uncomfortable. Yeah. But I would say the curious and the convinced what I see with the curious is a lot of people, heard about chat Dunn. And when that came out, they played with it a little, and maybe are curious about, a bit about it.

Jason Moore [00:05:47]:
I think that a lot of people, have a misunderstanding or not a very clear picture of what AI is if they've only ever just opened chat GPT and not realized that, like, simply asking a question isn't isn't enough. Like, you have to learn how to talk to it. And it's pretty easy to talk to, but, I I talk a lot about the idea that AI is a conversation, not just a query or a command. If you wanna use it well, it's not just a, hey. Do this for me. Or, Hey, here, what's the answer to this? You can, you can do that. But, and then I would say for the convinced, what I'm seeing more and more is, obviously using, ChatGPT. I've seen people using using it for, like, writing discussion questions Dunn, sermon research and stuff like that.

Jason Moore [00:06:34]:
But but imagery is a really big area where AI is taking off. So lots of people are creating graphics. And, I think that 2024 is gonna be the year of video. We've, there's been some recent developments. There's been some tools around for a while, and they're kinda okay. They're not great. They're Mhmm. You know, fun to play with, but not ready for prime time.

Jason Moore [00:06:57]:
But you probably saw the news that, Soera was just announced, by the same company that makes chat GPT and, DALL E 3. And it is a, the, I mean, mind blowingly realistic looking video that is long form. So, like, it'll go when I say long form, most of the current, video programs will generate 4 seconds of video, and this would do, like, you know, a minute or more or whatever. And it's pretty it's it's got some weird stuff like AI Dunn, but, but, anyway, that's where I see people using it most right now is branding and image generation Dunn then, you know, helping to craft content.

Ryan Dunn [00:07:42]:
Yeah. Well, how are they using those pieces of content then to really help build their faith community? What are some of the practical ways that they're, like, creating their images and then tossing them out into digital space?

Jason Moore [00:07:54]:
Yeah. You know, again, I think that's a great question to ask. Dunn of my greatest fears, about AI is that we become so reliant on it that we lose the human connection. Like, we don't want to put our faith in AI. We don't want to, allow it to become kind of a proxy for relationships. Yeah. Well, that's

Ryan Dunn [00:08:16]:
probably, like, the main, detriment or argument that we hear from those who are expressing skepticism about AI. Right?

Jason Moore [00:08:24]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, like, most of my work for my entire ministry has been on kind of collaborative worship design Dunn how do we work together to build worship from the ground up, music directors Dunn pastors and technical people and artists and all that kind of thing. And I do think there is a if we're not careful, we have to exercise restraint. I think if we're not careful, we could become very reliant on well, I'll just do my brainstorm with chat GPT, and I'll let chat GPT design my image rather than using a designer and, you know, those kind of things. So, I I what I've seen people do, is to use it as sort of another member of the team. So I've seen people brainstorm around the table Dunn then consult chat gpt when they're stuck and, you know, stuff like that.

Jason Moore [00:09:15]:
I have seen people using it for, again, bible study and and, discussion questions. It's it's great at, like, putting your sermon in and saying, okay, come sum summarize this, write 3 or 4 questions, you know, what are some additional verses that people might read on this topic throughout the week? And so I think it's good at facilitating conversation amongst groups of people. One of the things that I really love about it, and I think, maybe people haven't leaned in yet enough to this, is that it can help you get inside the head of someone that you don't fully understand. Mhmm. Yeah. So one of my one of the things I talk about in my trainings and in my cohorts and and I'm writing about in the book is that, use AI as a foil to your ideas. And what I mean by that is if you're writing a sermon on stewardship, you know, there are a lot of people that are skeptical about the church always asking for money. Mhmm.

Jason Moore [00:10:18]:
So ask ask chat GPT to take on that perspective Dunn and then give it your sermon Dunn then, you know, ask it to point, you know, point out the places that your logic isn't quite right or whatever. But what I really appreciate is that if you say, you know, I want you, you can give, these chatbots sort of a persona. You can tell them what you want them to be. And because of all of the data that it studied, it does a pretty good job of of mimicking that point of view. And so, what would it look like for us to say, you know, during Black History Month, I want you to take on the the persona of an African American person as I'm preaching on this topic, where where might my logic fall apart, or where my as a as a Caucasian, you know, Anglo Saxon, you know, male in his mid forties. Maybe I'm not or late forties. Maybe I'm not the guy to be preaching that without a little bit of perspective. Or as I'm preaching about, you know, stewardship, maybe I ask it.

Jason Moore [00:11:28]:
I want you to take on the perspective or the persona of a a single mom who works 2 jobs just to make ends meet. And I'm gonna talk to you about, giving 10% of your income. You know, what am I not seeing? So I think that in some ways, it can help us to better understand outside of our point of view, which I think is important for community. Another thing that for me is just really important, and I've been working a lot on this, is, in the way that we're generating images to to, prompt around the biases that are built in. Mhmm. You know, this technology is trained on art that humans have created, and humans are biased. Yeah. So, I did a I did a post a while back promoting my AI cohorts, and I said I just gave Chet, GPT and and DALL E working together, create an image of a pastor considering signing up for an AI cohort.

Jason Moore [00:12:29]:
And so it created this in in the style of a far side cartoon. And so it created this image, yeah, of a, of a, you know, middle aged white guy, little little gray in his hair, you know, hip looking glasses, little priest collar, you know, whatever, Dunn and a traditional church office, you know, whatever. And, posted that, not really giving it a whole lot of thought, and immediately, and rightfully so, I got a little pushback, like, oh, what about female clergy? And I'm like, you know, it'll Dunn image doesn't represent the totality of AI, and it's not AI that's biased. Yeah. Excuse me. It is the data. So I went back and reprompted it as an African American female pastor and an an Asian, pastor, and and it gave me cartoons for all those things. And so I just went back and and and, you know, added to the post.

Jason Moore [00:13:27]:
And so I think that we have the opportunity and the responsibility to create more equity in the world Dunn and to, lift those things up. And again, to me, I feel like there's an opportunity to build some community there. Mhmm. The last thing I'll say, is just that if you don't give any context at all, if you're not intentional, and you ask it for any image of Jesus, it's likely going to create a a guy that looks like he's from Alabama. He's gonna have a a mullet and he's gonna look white, and, you know, all those kinds of things. Like, it it it picks up on all those traditional images of Jesus. Oh,

Ryan Dunn [00:14:06]:
right. Yeah. A little surfer flare. Uh-huh.

Jason Moore [00:14:08]:
Yeah. Absolutely. And so I always say it kinda looks like Kenny Loggins, Dunn the eighties. But, you can absolutely with intentionality prompt to make Jesus look Middle Eastern, you know, to to and I mean, it's also possible for those traditions that, would like to see a representation of Jesus that is African American or Korean or, you know, whatever. It is totally possible to do that. And so I think one of the ways that we, as leaders in the church, can build, a better sense of community Dunn and, not going with sort of the bias around us is to learn how to talk to these things so that, these these stories we're telling, the images we're using, the representations of our faith, are are including people of all stripes, You know? So I think that's, that's one of the upsides of it.

Ryan Dunn [00:15:05]:
Yeah. Well and it it learns along the way. So even on the grand scale, we can talk about the church having a place in teaching the AI to be a little less leaning into its biases. Right?

Jason Moore [00:15:21]:
Absolutely. Now there is sort of a a weird line that, we have to be careful of, I think. You may have heard, the story this past week. Bard, which became Gemini, which is Google's AI, chatbot, but also image generator and all of that. Basically took the ability to prompt the biases out Dunn is doing it on its own. Okay. And so, people were asking for, like, historical figures. And they were getting, like, you know, George Washington as an African American person.

Jason Moore [00:15:59]:
And, like, it wouldn't prompt, you couldn't prompt back to the Caucasian, you know,

Ryan Dunn [00:16:07]:
whatever. Okay.

Jason Moore [00:16:08]:
Yeah. And in fact, there the one of the images I saw was it was online a a, Nazi soldier or whatever, but it was an African American. Well, I guess, African German. I don't know. But, but I do think that, like, there is sort of, you know, there is sort of a way that we can go, over the top, and I think that, we've gotta just, with integrity and with, a sense of ethics approach these tools in a way that we are representative of of the people that we're trying to reach.

Ryan Dunn [00:16:41]:
Well, one of the things that I think attracts people to AI is the level of individualization that it, it offers where, you know, instead of taking a stock photo off of Adobe or whatever, whatever stock photo place we're looking at, we can really tailor an image to fit into our specific space. Why do you think that is so important in in church development Dunn and especially within digital spaces?

Jason Moore [00:17:11]:
I I think that, again, it's so important to to be able to see ourselves in the way the gospel is represented. And, you know, I think there's a whole population for whom church the gospel is never, imaged in a way that is is that church. You know? Mhmm. So the beauty of what AI can do is that you can prompt for just about anything. One of the things I do in all of my trainings and in my cohorts is I do something I call, mid journey Mad Libs. And, you I'm sure you're familiar with the old Mad Libs book where you enter a a noun and a verb and an adverb and, you know, those kind of things.

Ryan Dunn [00:17:49]:
Yep. Many road trip. Yeah.

Jason Moore [00:17:51]:
Yes. Keeps us entertained. Mhmm. But I do that with my group. So I'll say, okay. What subject would you like to see? A person, it could be, you know, Darth Vader or a fireman or John Wesley or, you know, whatever. And people, you know, yell something out in a live training or on in chat, they'll put something in. Okay.

Jason Moore [00:18:10]:
What are they doing? You know, playing volleyball or, water skiing or, you know, whatever that might be. Where are they at, in Denmark or, you know, next to a volcano or, you know, whatever? They'll come up with that kind of thing. What time of day is it? It's midnight, you know, whatever. And then I'll put a couple other little parameters in there Ryan then hit the button, and, I've never not had it generate something that has been fairly mind blowing for

Ryan Dunn [00:18:36]:
Mhmm.

Jason Moore [00:18:37]:
The people that are participating, and they're like, wow. You know? The reality is, it's really hard to find good images of biblical stories. Yeah. You know, there's not a lot of good stock photos. It's oftentimes gonna look like an old, you know, flannel graph board from when I was a kid or some kinda old coloring book or something like that, or online a bunch of old renaissance art or something. And that stuff's great. It's wonderful. But, you can tell these stories now in a way that feel like they are relevant, and they they, are put into a context that makes sense to me today.

Jason Moore [00:19:16]:
So, one of the things that I did a while back that was pretty popular was I created this little, a biblical selfie series. So if Instagram, Oh, yeah. You know, existed in in biblical times, and I so I did, like, Noah in front of the ark, look looking for one of his 2 unicorns that he lost. And, you know, Jesus and the disciples looking for a table, although they were all biblical settings, you know, doing it in a way that was relevant to today. But I just love that, we can if you can imagine it Dunn you can describe it, AI can do it. And so, one one of my favorite examples that I share all the time in my training, back in August of last year, I was in the Holston conference doing a a training on creative worship, but then also I did a workshop on Ryan. And we wanted to do a worship service on the 1st night of that event. And so, when I, was planning with the pastor, we were talking about, doing a worship service on Jeremiah 18.

Jason Moore [00:20:22]:
So Jeremiah is looking for a word from the Lord. He goes to the potter's Dunn, and he finds the potter at the wheel crafting something. And then that clay becomes misshapen and marred, and, the potter takes that clay and forms something new. And that's when the word word of the Lord comes to Jeremiah that we are like clay in the hands of the potter. And as we were planning the service, Tim said, I've got a story like that from my childhood. And I said, oh, tell me about it. And he said, well, we went to this neighbor American village, and, it was a vacation. I was 13.

Jason Moore [00:20:52]:
I thought this is gonna be stupid. And then I was kind of, like, blown away by how cool it was. And he said, at one moment, this Native American chief came out, and he began to sculpt something. He, you know, started pumping the wheel with his foot, and clay began to spin. And then it began to spin too fast, and it sort of broke into 3 pieces and went off the wheel and hit the ground, and there were little bits of dirt and grime and gook and stuff in it. And he took it, reformed it, put it back up on the wheel, and, and then he made something from it. And he said, we were all just breathless at that moment. And I said, do you have an image of that? And he's like, well, Jason, I was 13, and we didn't carry cameras around in the eighties.

Jason Moore [00:21:32]:
Yeah. So, no, I don't. I said, well, do you mind if I create something with AI? And he was like, no. Go ahead. And so I actually created, this image here. Oh, you can't see it because I'm not on the right right thing. But there was this really powerful image of a native American man sculpting, and it sort of looks like, it was shot on a Kodak camera, so it kinda had that vintage look to it. Not not with the frame and all that around it, but the muted tones and all that.

Jason Moore [00:22:02]:
And, I watched people in that room just sort of gasp and lean in at that story. And I thought, you know, you'll never find that stock photo. You're not gonna find a stock photo of a mirror most likely. Or if you did, it might take you know, a day to find it or whatever. So one of the things that I just really think one of the reasons I want the church to consider embracing AI. There there's some downsides too. There are lots of downsides too. So we can talk about those too if you want.

Jason Moore [00:22:31]:
But, if you think about the amount of time it might take me, to if I wanted to do a a series on Jesus' parables. And I said, help me go to chat GPT and say, help me identify some of Jesus' parables in order to create a series. It can do that within, you know, 30 seconds. So rather than going to a shelf and pulling down a concordance and, you know, leafing through it and spending an hour looking up all Jesus' different miracles, it can do it for me in 30 seconds.

Ryan Dunn [00:23:02]:
Now Yeah.

Jason Moore [00:23:03]:
I still think you wanna get those concordances out. I think you wanna study. I think you there's still a lot that we're gonna do. We don't want AI to exegete the text for us, but it can help us identify where these things are. Right? Exactly. So I maybe just saved an hour by doing that. And then, if I were going to create an image or wanted an image like I just described for you, the amount of time I would spend scouring the web and looking for a royalty free image of a Native American man sculpting something, might take me, you know, another hour or 2 or whatever. And I could go on and on.

Jason Moore [00:23:38]:
I I can save 2 or 3 hours by using artificial intelligence, which is time that I can go visit someone in the hospital, or I can prepare a bible study, or I can go work with my youth group, or I can go visit a soup kitchen and serve others, you know? And so I think there's a way in which AI can allow us to, sort of increase our humanity in the world. It'll allow us to connect with other people and to serve and to be in mission Dunn not do some of the stuff that, maybe takes us I mean, think about it. You spend, for pastors, you spend so much time writing a sermon they're gonna give for an hour, which is really important Yeah. But, maybe not so much time amongst their people or in service or whatever. And then so I think there's a real opportunity here for us to to save time and to be, more high-tech, but also more high touch with other people and to build, build community and relationships.

Ryan Dunn [00:24:36]:
Yeah. This whole podcast came about because, in pandemic time, we had all these pastors who were now being challenged to, add additional aspects to their ministry. And and now as we are in post pandemic time, I think one of the issues that we're having with pastoral burnout is that you're still assuming those responsibilities of not just being like the parish pastor and doing all the ministerial things that you talked about, but also being social media managers and digital content creators and everything on top of that. Are there ways that you've seen AI, besides the research part of it really help pastors ease that burden of putting on so many different hats?

Jason Moore [00:25:19]:
Absolutely. AI has the ability to automate a lot of tasks. So I I have a friend named Rob Lauder, who often will come and do a, he does sort of a bonus session for my AI cohorts. And he does a whole session on automation and how you can use make.com Dunn and chat Dunn. And you can, you know, program it to basically run your social media feed for you. You can get it to do, like, daily verses and generate an image and generate text for that. In fact, this afternoon, I'm doing a session with my one of my cohorts, and I'm gonna show them this afternoon how you can take a sermon and put it into chat GPT Dunn use that to create all sorts of different things. You know, you can create a podcast script, which by the way, if you're comfortable doing it, you can clone your voice Dunn.

Jason Moore [00:26:09]:
And, you can actually, take your sermon, ask it to create a 2 minute I mean, you have to do the voice sort of separately. ChatGPT can write it. You can obviously use what bits and pieces you wanna write or use, and then write the other pieces that you don't like. Stick that into, the voice, simulation software, and put out a weekly podcast for your congregation to encourage them to go deeper into their faith, and it wouldn't cost you more than putting it in chat GPT, copying, pasting, put it into the other program. And in probably 10 minutes, you could have a podcast, which doesn't mean that you have to, like, go write a script and go to a studio and record it and edit it and all those kinds of things. So, Yeah. I mean, I think there's there's lots of opportunities to take some of that. I mean, announcements.

Jason Moore [00:27:01]:
Like, writing announcements is no fun, and it's it can it can be a burden that takes you half an hour or whatever. Put the information in chat gpt Dunn tell it to make it creative and fun, and it will do, you know, really and you again, you don't have to use everything it comes up with. You can always edit and use it as a starting point. So I see all sorts of opportunities for those overtaxed pastors to be able to farm some of the ministry that they do, not obviously, not the major things. We don't want chat GPT to to disciple our people. We don't want it to preach to us. We don't want it writing our sermons. You know, I'm not I'm not encouraging anybody to do any of that, but we can let it write announcements.

Jason Moore [00:27:43]:
We can let it do some automated, posting to social media and stuff like that. And then, again, you're all you're in control of all of it. You get to decide what what goes and what doesn't.

Ryan Dunn [00:27:53]:
Yeah. Well and you really need to keep eye on those things. One of the best analogies I think I've heard when it comes to to working with AI is to assume that it's really online an untrained intern. And so there are certain roles that you have no problem handing to an intern. Right? Like, I would have no problem taking a sermon, handing it to an intern Dunn saying, hey, take a stab at turning this into a podcast. Yeah. And along the way, I'm gonna find that there are certain prompts that I need to give that intern to help them perform their job better. Right? Like, oh, well, you know, really I had in mind that this would be for a young audience, you know, people who might be curious about the church, but not, not connected to the church.

Ryan Dunn [00:28:33]:
All that is helpful then in developing a better sense of what AI can give you. Yeah. But we still need to review on what product we're getting back. Right?

Jason Moore [00:28:44]:
Absolutely. And, you know, the thing that I always say to folks, there are Dunn 3 guiding principles that I I talk about when I think about AI. The first one is that AI should be a do it with you, not a do it for you.

Ryan Dunn [00:28:58]:
Yeah.

Jason Moore [00:28:58]:
Now there is a caveat to that. There are certain things it can do for you. But but in general, we have to partner with it. So that's thing number 1. Thing number 2 is that it's a conversation, not just a query. So the more you talk to it, like you were just saying, help help it understand what your goals are and what you're trying to accomplish and who your audience is and all that. When you do that, you get much better outputs. I have people say, oh, I tried chat gbt, and it was all really vanilla and awful.

Jason Moore [00:29:26]:
Well, yeah, it really will be if you don't really if you don't talk to it. Yeah. And then the third one, which is maybe the most important one of all, is that you have a soul. AI does not have a soul. If you don't bring your soul to the conversation, there is no soul in the conversation. Another way to to say it is that you're a cocreator with Christ. AI is not. But when you cocreate with Christ, it can be the tool that helps you cocreate.

Jason Moore [00:29:53]:
So, it's not gonna do it itself. It'll be shallow and and awful Yeah. If you farm out your ministry to AI, but when you use it and and you co create with Christ, panic can help us do some really incredible things. So, I I guess one other thing I'll just say quickly is that don't let AI do the exegesis for you, but use it to do your exegesis, which is sort of a sounds like the same thing, but I don't wanna go and ask it to to figure out the text for me, but I I wanna figure out the text and then have it augment that. So what was happening during that time, in the scripture? You know, what was happening in 1st century church, or what's a good example of this particular what's a what's a good illustration that goes with this? It's good at that kind of stuff, but Mhmm. I don't think we wanna let it solve our our theological questions.

Ryan Dunn [00:30:51]:
Yeah. Well, we've touched on some of the limitations and even some of the ethical considerations like biases. Are there other ethical considerations that we really wanna keep in mind when we're starting to implement AI?

Jason Moore [00:31:03]:
Yeah. You know, I think, one of the biggest things that everybody is concerned about is just sort of the misinformation Dunn the fake news and all that stuff. I would suggest that it's fake news has been a problem long before AI came around. A lot of the things that I'm seeing people get up in arms about are images that came from AI. But for someone like myself who's been using Photoshop for 25 years, I could do, a lot of the things that you see now, and and sometimes even more convincing than AI. You know, some of the images are pretty good now. So I think we have to help people become more discerning about, what they're believing and and not. And I I think that we have a responsibility as the church to help people navigate life and faith in a world where AI is going to become more intertwined Dunn everything.

Jason Moore [00:31:57]:
It's not going away. This isn't a fad that is, you know, a couple years, from from fading off. Like, it's only going to become more integrated. And so how do you navigate faith when you can go to a a piece of software and ask it any question, and it's gonna give you an answer? It's even if the answer's not right. You know, sometimes when it comes to prayer, we ask God to answer our prayers, and we don't see the answer. I mean, maybe God's answering, but we don't see it. It doesn't feel like so what happens when a computer can answer and make you feel really good about whatever that answer is? Like, how do we help people navigate our faith? So one of the concerns I have is just that we not become overly dependent on AI. I think that could be a real danger.

Jason Moore [00:32:40]:
The the way that I have been describing it is sort of like that scene from the movie Wall e, where, all the passengers on the Axiom, the ship that escaped the Earth are now these blobs that float float around on carts, and AI does everything for them. It delivers food and clothing and, you know, takes them from place to place. And at the end, when they return to earth, they can barely move because they everything's so atrophied. Mhmm. If if every time we go to do ministry, we have to go to chat gpt. We have to ask it, how do I start this sermon? Or how do I do this or that? Like, I think we're becoming overly dependent on it. So it's a great tool, but it shouldn't do our ministry for us. So that's that's a concern I have.

Jason Moore [00:33:27]:
I also think that we've gotta be just careful about, Dunn know, how we're sourcing things. Chat GPT says at the bottom of every screen that it makes stuff up sometimes. It can be inaccurate. And so, there was a story a while back about a lawyer, who got in trouble because he used chat g p t to prepare for his case. And I guess it was last night or the night before I heard another story on the news where, something very similar happened where, they had used, information from chat gpt. So trust but verify, which which means, when you're writing your sermon, don't just don't just take whatever it gives you without double checking and making sure that that's an accurate, you know, scripture and an accurate representation, and that character is real Dunn, you know, all those things. I've as I've been working on this book on AI, I I, admit right at the beginning that I'm using AI, as, a research assistant, sometimes to help me, clarify a thought, you know, whatever. And there have been a number of times that I have asked it for like, I don't know the entire history of AI, So I asked it to write the history of AI, you know, give me the, the bullet points on, you know, how this has played out.

Jason Moore [00:34:48]:
And I want you to include references. Show me where you got your information. And then I've been double checking that against, a couple other chatbots, and every once in a while, I'll get one that says, I can't find this reference anywhere. So, you know, it will it's called hallucinations, that's a technical term. So we just we have to be careful about that kind of misinformation stuff too. So, those are some of the downsides. You you kinda mentioned, the big one that I'm probably most passionate about, and that's just how do we prompt around the biases? Okay. Because it's when you put in pastor, it's gonna think male.

Jason Moore [00:35:25]:
When you put in Jesus, it's gonna think white. You know? There's just it's not really thinking, but it's the the algorithms that it accesses in its data. Yeah. And so, what what I would say to folks is that AI does not have an agenda. It's not sentient. It's not Dunn. It's not pushing its biases on us. Not yet.

Jason Moore [00:35:45]:
Yes. Frank's great. No. Well, I mean, the conversation is happening all the time though about what happens next, which is, what is called AGI or artificial general intelligence. Right now, we have what is called artificial narrow intelligence, which means that a human has to, give it all the commands. Like, it doesn't function on its own right now. Chat GPT isn't doing its own thing. Even if you're using something that's automated, you had to set up the automation in order to make it, you know, happen.

Jason Moore [00:36:18]:
But the next phase of AI, if it happens is where AI basically becomes, as smart or it's quote, brain neural network, functions like humans. And I just watched a video, the other day, that said they think that could be 7 months away. And digital, they thought it was 10 years away. Well, back in 2015, they thought it was 30 years away. And it's like every because of the pace at which this stuff is moving, that becomes more and more that that timeline gets more and more, and it narrows a bit. But some people still question whether artificial general intelligence is even, possible. And then there's, like, a whole another level, which is the scary level, which is called ASI, which is our artificial superintelligence. And that is like the matrix.

Jason Moore [00:37:09]:
That's when it becomes smarter than us. Yeah. Yeah. So I always tell people, be really nice when you talk to chat GBT. Say please Dunn thank you Dunn just, you know, I wanted to remember I was one of the nice ones.

Ryan Dunn [00:37:22]:
Yeah. It's funny. I do the same thing. I was Yes. I always give it a compliment, like, this is great. I need it to be adjusted for this. Right.

Jason Moore [00:37:30]:
Me too.

Ryan Dunn [00:37:31]:
I believe if I can be nice to the robots, I can be nice to people as well.

Jason Moore [00:37:34]:
So Yeah. That's true. It's good practice.

Ryan Dunn [00:37:36]:
Yeah. And and I

Jason Moore [00:37:38]:
I always tell people too, if you if you're having a bad day, go talk to chat gbt because it'll be like, that's a brilliant idea. Yeah. That's very affirming, isn't it? Yeah. What a wonderful metaphor you've selected or what a, you know, it's like, ah, yes. I feel better about myself now.

Ryan Dunn [00:37:53]:
Well, for the skeptical church leader, that's ready to take their first sojourn into AI world, what might be a logical first step?

Jason Moore [00:38:03]:
Well, I think, first of all, right now, all of these tools are accessible for free or for very little money. So you can try chat gpt 3.5, the old model. It's not as good as the new one. Absolutely free. You can go to Bing's image creator, which accesses DALL E, which is what, it's a little bit the model's a little different, but you can generate images for free there. Google Bard Ryan no. I'm sorry. Google Gemini.

Jason Moore [00:38:31]:
They just just changed it a couple weeks ago. Also, you can generate images for free. Claude, clade, dotai, is another chatbot church, is really, really capable, and you can try that for free as well. Mhmm. I'll I'll tell you, Ryan, the thing for me is that when this first came around, it was pretty scary to me. As a graphic artist of of, you know, 25 years, or more now, I was like, oh my gosh, am I what witnessing my extinction? And the more I played with it, the more I realized online, no, it's just a more sophisticated toolbox, and it can really help us. I I've been using Grammarly for a long time, in my writing, online, long before chat gbt came around. And I've always thought it to be helpful that it, you know, corrects some of my bad grammar and fixes things.

Jason Moore [00:39:22]:
And, again, this is a way more sophisticated version of that. But what one of the things that happens a lot when I'm writing is, like, I'll have an idea, and I know what I wanna say, and I'll say it, and it just gosh. I I keep trying to work the paragraph, and it's just clunky. It's like it's there, but I can't I can't get it to, you know, flow the way I want it to. And I can put that paragraph Dunn chat gbt and say, can you can you rewrite this for clarity? And it doesn't always get it right, but it'll, like, fix the 2 or 3 little errors, and then I can massage it the rest of the way there. So, you know, it's great for those kind of things.

Ryan Dunn [00:39:56]:
Yeah. In some ways, it can be that, that comrade who is sitting, like, across the cubicle.

Jason Moore [00:40:05]:
You can

Ryan Dunn [00:40:05]:
just kinda bounce the idea off of. Right?

Jason Moore [00:40:07]:
Absolutely. What, and you know, you asked about what what I would tell people. The first first thing is just to just to try it. And the second thing is, don't let what you've heard other people say about it be, your entire opinion about it. Meaning that there are some people who are scared of it, or they've had an experience that wasn't great, or you hear the the sensational news where people have tried to push it to where it says crazy things, and it does that sometimes. I kinda liken it to this. I, when I was a kid, my dad took me on a roller coaster when I was probably too young to get on a roller coaster, and it scared me to death. Yeah.

Jason Moore [00:40:49]:
And I didn't ever wanna get on a roller coaster again. And I spent my all of my teenage years and, my young adult years, like, I'm not getting on a roller coaster, not getting on roller coasters. And then one day, some friends of mine were like, you gotta get on this coaster with us. I'm like, no. No. No. Not doing it. And I got on, and it was like, that was incredible.

Jason Moore [00:41:07]:
Oh my gosh. You mean that that's what that was like? And so

Ryan Dunn [00:41:10]:
Yeah. Her

Jason Moore [00:41:11]:
husband's been on my

Ryan Dunn [00:41:12]:
life. Yeah.

Jason Moore [00:41:12]:
Yes. And so I I I miss 15 years of riding roller coasters. And then the next year, my wife and I got married, and, we went to 7 different theme parks because I wanted to ride as many roller coasters that year as I could. So don't let, you know, it's scary from the line to see it, you know, standing in line and watching roller coaster. Those hills look big Dunn people are screaming, and somebody might say, oh, don't go on that one. That one's too scary. And I just I I don't I want people to give it another world if they Mhmm. If they tried it once, and they were like, it didn't seem all that impressive to me, or I you maybe didn't know how to talk to it, you know? So how can we we do that? And then, I guess the last thing I would say here is just, there's always fear in new technology.

Jason Moore [00:41:59]:
I mean, people, I write about this in the book, but when forks first came around in France, they thought that forks were of the devil. They said that anything that has been given to us to god by God, like food, shouldn't be touched with a foreign implement. And the the fork reminded them of the pitchfork that the devil had. So then when, when the phone was invented, they thought that evil spirits came through the phone, and they didn't want to use, that phone technology. People were scared of it thinking that evil spirits traveled through the phone lines because it could talk and those kind of thing. And then when the Internet came around in the in the nineties, I don't know that people thought it was the devil, but there was a lot of concern about how it would change society. Of course, maybe some maybe some of that stuff Dunn out the right way.

Ryan Dunn [00:42:48]:
A tiny bit of it is invalid, but yeah.

Jason Moore [00:42:50]:
Yes. No. But just, you know, we resist what we don't understand. And, I don't I'm not saying let's jump in willy nilly because there are some, I never had to worry about the screens, which are I was a proponent of early in my ministry using screens in church. I never had to worry it was gonna become self aware and, enslave humanity. And, you know, every once in a while, I get a little worried about what what might happen with AI. Mhmm. But, but just try it for yourself.

Jason Moore [00:43:19]:
Don't don't just believe what other people have said, or don't believe that early experience that you had when you tried it back when it first came out, and it wasn't as good as it is today Dunn and that.

Ryan Dunn [00:43:30]:
Well, Jason, where are people gonna look for announcements about the book and that kind of stuff for you?

Jason Moore [00:43:34]:
Well, I'm I'm publishing with InvitePress, which, also published my last book, Bothand. And so you you'll be able to find, that at Invite Resources. I think it's Invite Resources dotcom or InvitePress. I don't don't recall. Sorry about that. But, it's probably this is the hardest book I've ever had to write. I had to write, but get to write. This is this is number 12, and it's the hardest one I've ever done because it's changing so rapidly.

Jason Moore [00:44:03]:
So it's been, it's been daunting. And I told somebody the other day, it's like writing this really wonderful chapter about how you can rub 2 sticks together and get fire, and here are the kind of sticks that you want and the conditions you wanna create and all that. And the next week, they come out with lighters, and you don't need to rub sticks together anymore. There have been times that I've had to scrub entire portions of the book because a new technology came out, you know, Dunn week that just invalidated all this stuff. So but that's also exciting because it's it's moving fast. And and as long as we put guardrails in place, that's a good thing.

Ryan Dunn [00:44:39]:
Thanks for the insight and the time this morning, Jason. Appreciate it.

Jason Moore [00:44:42]:
Thanks for having me. Always good to talk to you.

Ryan Dunn [00:44:44]:
What's next for you in your AI journey? Let's get talking about it on the Pastoring in the Digital Parish Facebook group. I would love to see you there and to learn about how you're implementing AI in your digital ministry context. If you want a good follow-up to this episode, then check out an episode I did called using AI to become a content machine. Now as Jason noted, advancements in this area are coming fast and furious. So even though this episode just came out in July of 2023, some of the info might be a little bit dated, but I promise there's still plenty there to get a lot of value out of the lesson. Also, in January of 2023, we talked with Jason Kaston in an episode called what Amazon, ecommerce, and AI can teach the church. It would be a great follow-up here too. There are plenty of more episodes to explore at resourceumc.org/ digital.

Ryan Dunn [00:45:43]:
And as you know, resourceumc.org is your destination for resources and tips for leading across the United Methodist connection. My name is Ryan Dunn. Had a lot of fun. I'll be back with you with a new episode of pastoring in the digital parish next week. So gonna chat at you then in the meantime, peace.