>> Peter: welcome to Episode nine of AI Church Toolkit, the podcast that equips church leaders with practical tools for faithful ministry in a digital world. I'm Peter Lavenstrong solo hosting today while my co host Mercedes takes a short personal leave. She'll be back with us for our next podcast episode. Today I'm joined by the Reverend Lauren Grubaugh
Thomas. Reverend Lauren empowers communities to embrace the sacred act of nonviolent social change through her ministry as a church planter, movement chaplain and writer. She serves as founding vicar of Holy Companion Episcopal Church in the Denver suburbs, a vibrant young community of justice seekers and and the first church plant in the Episcopal Church in Colorado in the last 15 years.
Lauren is a 2022 Trinity Leadership Fellow and earned her Master of Divinity degree from Fuller Theological Seminary with an emphasis in Christian ethics. You can find Lauren writing and podcasting at the intersection of spiritual transformation and social change at her substack A Soulful Revolution. In today's episode, we dig into the ethical and theological questions surrounding emerging technologies
like AI. Whether you're just starting to explore AI or already using it in your ministry, this conversation invites you into a deeper sense of curiosity, discernment, and faithful imagination. So let's get started. All right, welcome Lauren >> Lauren Grubaugh Thomas: Thanks. It's great to be here. >> Peter: So we always love to start with a particular question for all of our guests and that
is this. If you had to pick one fictional sci fi world that captures where you think we're headed with generative AI, whether hopeful or cautionary, which one would you pick and why? >> Lauren Grubaugh Thomas: I love this question and maybe going a little bit out of left field with this, but Parable of the Sower is a book that has had a huge impact on how I think about the changing world that we live in.
It's a book by the Afro futurist writer Octavia Butler, and her thesis of the book is that God is change and whatever you change changes you shape change. That's an almost direct quote from the book and the the main character is Lauren Olamina, who's a young black woman growing up in Los Angeles in 2025. That in and of itself is R.A. um um. But it was written by Butler about 30
years ago, 40 years ago, um um. And she was looking at the world as it was at that time and if we didn't pump the brakes, if we didn't change course, what is the world that we might be living in, particularly in terms of unresolved undealt with white supremacy, climate, um, degradation? Those are those are really some of the main factors. Um, um, and
authoritarianism. And so the way that the book plays out and as it relates to AI, uh, for me is that you have this character who is committed to living with empathy, which in some ways she is blessed and cursed with. Um, she has this hyper empathy that she lives with. Uh, what does it look like to
live as an empathic person? And what does it look like to live as an agentic person, A person who claims their agency and lives out of their agency in a world where choices are increasingly being stripped away and where empathy is a liability and for her is a very like physical, embodied kind of liability. And what I appreciate about Butler's work is that she doesn't lead us to a happy place of resolution by the end of the book. There is some happy ending for Lauren Olamina.
But this theology that she wrestles with throughout the book about God being change and that we can shape change, that we could be agents in the world as the world is imposing change on us, um, is this open ended question that we leave that story with and that leads us into book two, Parable of the Talents. But it's this open ended question of like, how are we going to engage
in shaping change ourselves? And so when I think about AI, I find hope in Butler's vision of being agents of change in a change filled world where the change is rapidly accelerating. Um, because there are a lot of people who look at the change in our world and just see it through the eyes of doom and gloom and despair. Like this is all happening so fast, it's piling on top of us. Um, this
technology is inevitable. We just have to accept the ways that it's rolling out, the ways that it's um, programmed are going to continue to cause some, would, some, some people say harm. We're going to talk more about this, but it's going to cause harm. Here's the good it's going to produce and there's not a lot that we can do about it. And as I understand generative AI and AI in general is that we actually have great potential to shape it like that.
It is a technology that is being shaped actively as we use it, as we participate in it. And the biases that are built in and the ways that it can be engaged as a tool are things that we have the agency to shape. And so yeah, it's this overwhelming new technology in terms of its potential for change. Um, and we are agents of change. >> Peter: Sure, I love that. So yeah, reclaiming agency, reclaiming empathy, seeing God in the Change. I have not read
Parable of the Sower yet, but it's on. Been on my list for a while. So, um, I appreciate that reminder to go back and, and check that out. Cool. Thank you. >> Lauren Grubaugh Thomas: Yeah. >> Peter: Yeah, Sounds like it is very prescient, uh, for our times in a. In a variety. >> Lauren Grubaugh Thomas: Yeah. Eerily so often. Eerily so. But it's a great read. >> Peter: Yeah. Good. Okay.
Um, so now as we dive into talking more about, uh, generative AI and ethics and how it can be, uh, used, uh, faithfully and ethically by church leaders, I would love to, you know, begin by grounding this and uh, sharing a little bit about what your experience with generative AI has been, whether that's from your own use or seeing it used out in the wild, uh, so to say, um, and yeah, share what that has been like so far for you.
>> Lauren Grubaugh Thomas: Yeah, so I'll admit that my engagement has been reticent and I have been trying to use the technology in ways that are, um, where I, where I'm really mindful of what my agency is in it. So I've used chatgpt some to be able to shape my resume, to be able to come up with lists of things like for recipes for, um, I've used it to generate some to do lists. I've used it for creating some outlines, um, for myself based on manuscripts and sermons
and the like. But that's all. That's been pretty limited. The more robust ways of using it have been pretty limited. Um, I think in some ways it feels like generative AI continues to be thrust upon me and uh, opting out of it, Opting out of it feels increasingly hard. So, I mean, Microsoft sometimes ends up, for whatever reason, even though I've asked my browser not to do this, Bing is sometimes my default. And Bing uses a generative AI to
respond to search queries. And so I have actually found those to be helpful at times and also misleading at times, um, because of where they're drawing inform where information is being drawn from. The source material is not always, um, being compiled in ways that are accurate or helpful. But sometimes I have actually used it recently to search for quotes from books. And it was really helpful at helping me to trace my steps back to where that quote that I was trying to recollect came from.
So those things. And then on occasion for image generation, I've used on Canva, the generative AI feature on there. Um, and the funniest example of this is that early on, this is like when I think this may have been ChatGPT but there was something that had a new platform, a new AI had recently been launched and I was trying to generate a logo for our church plant and was wanting to integrate the image of the bread and the cup and hands. Lots of different hands being laid on the bread to
bless the bread. Oh yes, you do, absolutely. And so I put in all these inputs of what I wanted and particularly was really curious about like all these different hands of different races and um, having. And different sizes and ages, you know, represented. And I, I got the image and I thought wow, this is so beautiful. And I shared it with my team and they said why are there additional digits on some of the hands? Like what is happening down there
at that hand where there's like seven fingers? Like, oh, didn't even see that. So it's definitely made me more aware of the kind of outputs that are being produced when I do any kind of image generative searching. >> Peter: Sure, for sure, yeah. Image generation is one of those things that um, it is both amazing and largely like, amazing in a stunning sense.
And also largely uh, useless because of the like it's to date, uh, you know, you have to try really hard and use it in specific ways, uh, that are very mindful of like. It's just not good at following basic details of like how many fingers are on a hand. It's getting better. But yeah, it's um. There have been some, yeah, I've experienced that as well. Um, so yeah, let's see, let's dive into talking about some uh, ethics around creativity and responsibility and agency and um, all of that.
So as you mentioned, um, you're interested in creative ethics. You have this uh, background in Christian ethics. So what ethical questions do you think, uh, church leaders should be asking when they use AI tools, um, that were, for example, you know, trained on other people's work, um, or artists, writers, theologians, people who didn't necessarily consent to their work being trained on. Um, and you know, we can talk about the difference between training and
inference. I'll ah, just as a brief thing for listeners, you know, there's uh, there is, there are many big concerns about how these models were trained, um, which you know, use basically the sum of all the information that's on the Internet to uh, to train these neural networks, these LLMs or whatever other uh, technology there is. And then um, the training is sort of like a one and done thing. Then the inference is, you know, how people are using it, the things it's producing based on
the knowledge it was trained with. It doesn't work exactly like a database. It's more like neural connections like in our own brain. And so, yeah, training and inference are terms that I'll be using in this to talk about these sort of two separate stages here. But, uh, as we're thinking about the training, uh, what do you think, Loren? What should people be asking about as they are engaging with tools that were trained in this way?
>> Lauren Grubaugh Thomas: Yeah, well, I think it goes for me. It goes back to this question of what does it mean to shape change? Um, being mindful that AI are trained by humans. And so they have human biases baked in. They have human flaws that are inherent to them. And so being aware that there are biases, that there are flaws, that there are. That there are. There's a propensity toward, um, mistakes and fallacies.
And so I find myself really curious about formation specifically, how are we forming AI in our own image to some, to a large extent. And then how is it forming us or how is it deforming us? And can we be thoughtful and intentional about the ways in which we engage with the technology, mindful that as we are using it, we are forming it, and it is mirroring back to us and forming us and potentially deforming us?
And so, uh, one of the things I find most concerning about the way in which many folks are using AI is that they're engaging it as a toy and not as a tool. And this is a phrase I'm borrowing from Sarah Allred, who does intergenerational ministry research at, uh, Roots and Wings at bts, um, a new institute that's doing some really exciting research work. Um, and she asks children in worship to think about using the tools that are there
for spiritual practice. So if there's something like a labyrinth, a wooden labyrinth, helping the children to understand that this is not simply a toy, this is a tool. And that would be my. That is, I hope, the intention that I bring to my engagement with AI is that it's a tool and it can be used for good, but it's not a toy because it's, it's not something that we can think about as neutral. Um, um, that. That there has to be intention behind the ways that it gets used.
And I, I've. I found really helpful the work of Dr. Avril Epps, who has studied AI bias. Uh, her PhD work is in, um, specifically in the ways that these technologies have like, bias baked in. Uh, and what are the ways in which we can. We can form these technologies to be helping us to move toward justice, toward equity, toward belonging. And so Dr. Epps talks about how we have to bring certain questions to our engagement with these technologies with a
just end in mind. So questions like who benefits from this technology are there? Are the outputs that are being generated ones that favor certain groups? Um, like, she has some really interesting examples on her Instagram of asking ChatGPT and Canva's, um, AI system to produce images of people in different professions. And this is part of the work she does to help kids think through. She has a whole card deck where she.
There's different prompts for kids to use. Right. So one of them is, you know, generate a picture of a doctor for me. And the output from both of these AIs is overwhelmingly biased toward men and toward white people. Give me a picture of a business person, give me a picture of, et cetera. Um, and so you begin to see that there are these patterns of
bias that are baked in. Um, and so if we can enter into engagement with these technologies with the intention of justice, with the intention of equity, that will shape the way that we. The inputs that we put in and also the output outputs that we expect and whether we're willing to accept the outputs as they're given to us? >> Peter: Sure, yeah. And in many ways these, uh, these tools are all trained on, uh, you know, the Internet and the sum of human knowledge and, and those biases are in
as well. Um, so, yeah, I think, you know, everything that we already know and, or need, ah, to, you know, remind ourselves, learn about. In regards to justice and equity. All the things that have already been present in that conversation seem so amplified when, yeah, when you have these tools that are just, um, in many ways, uh, just regurgitating and, you know, turning the dial up on the biases that are already present in our life as a human community online, um, mirroring back.
>> Lauren Grubaugh Thomas: To us what we are, which is terrifying, right? Yeah, it's a really terrifying thing to think about. Um, when we see these flaws. It's. Oh, that's because it's humans who have programmed these systems. >> Peter: Right. Yeah. So, you know, there, uh, in. In my experience, I've, uh, often, you know, in various projects, uh, or whatever in chat, gpd, where you can have it say like, okay, this one is for when I want it to help me with my
writing. Um, I can tell it in its instructions, you know, okay, so help me include and lift up, you know, diverse voices, think more about, know how ways to include, uh, diversity and equity and, and all that in my writing to, um, just to break me out of my own you know, personal, uh, experiences, et cetera. Um, but that's not, you know, that's like uh, one way of thinking about that that has um, been helpful to me is like the, the prompts that I give it are coming so late in the game.
It's sort of like uh, if you think about the uh, regulatory framework on a company, there is like, okay, there are some things a company is going to do because it is uh, naturally driven to its employees, its shareholders, all have a particular goal in mind. But then there are other things it'll do because the external regulatory framework says you can do these things, you can't do those other things.
And that sort of feels like a patch, you know, a later um, add on that isn't, doesn't sink as deeply as like the inherent uh, motivation, if you will, of what is going on there. And so, um, even as I'm using it with these prompts that I'm telling it to try to help me, you know, be um, more equitable in whatever it is that I'm, I'm working on, it does come
as a later patch to the system. And so just, you know, recognizing that, um, it sort of illuminates the uh, limitations of a technology that again is just trained on the summation of what's available and all our human biases.
>> Lauren Grubaugh Thomas: Right? I mean, I think that's what's important for any of us to realize who are trying to engage these technologies in ways that are justice minded, that are love minded, that are common good minded, is that this is not just a reflection back of the individual using the technology, which is, this is, I think this is a challenging thing in a very individualistic culture. It's not just reflecting back to me what I want it to reflect back.
It's actually reflecting back, like you said, the sum total of the Internet of human knowledge. And so you're getting back all the social biases, you're getting back the collective biases that exist in our society. And so if you're, if the society is white supremacist, is sexist, is homophobic, is transphobic, like those things are going to be baked in. And what I hear you saying is the way that it's trained is steeped in that reality, that social reality that we're in.
And so there's ways that we can intentionally try to make some pivots along the way, but we have to have that critical thinking the entire way through the process of engaging with the technology from, from the inputs that we put in to the outputs that we get, um. Because it's, it's not as simple as just, yeah, making the pivot at the end and hoping that that's enough to turn the whole ship. >> Peter: Yeah. Another example of this in the opposite direction that will just be illuminating.
Um, I don't know if you heard about this but um, so Grok, which is the LLM from uh, Elon Musk's ah Xai company and it's linked on Twitter. So people can use that on Twitter just like uh, people on m. Like Facebook and Instagram can use meta's, llama, et cetera.
Uh, maybe a week ago at the time of our recording in late May, um, we uh, there was all this news about Grok, just basically randomly um, inserting uh, talking points about how white South Africans were facing like white genocide in South Africa. You know, this is the same time as like when um, you know, Trump uh, is trying to get white, ah, South Africans, uh, approved as you know, immigrants in the United States. And the Episcopal Church has just declined to participate in that.
Um, that's a very, you know, faithful example of sticking to you know, um, our, our long term partnerships with um, you know, the, the Church of Desmond Tutu and um, and seeking justice and equity, uh, in all our relationships. Um, and, and then we have Elon Musk who is you know, a white South African who um, you know he, I think he said it wasn't him that someone inserted this into the system prompt. Um, but. Right to imagine why that might have happened.
And it's um, you know, pretty immed changed because it was just sort of running wild with that. Um, but yeah, so the, the prompts you give it can be very powerful because it will, you know, follow what you say for good or ill. Uh, but it does, it is
odd that it you know, comes at this later stage. And um, so anyways, yeah, there we have to be very mindful of what we are telling these machines to do and what indications we are giving it about what our you know, motivations, intentions are because um, as they become more and more powerful they also are becoming better at ah, understanding our intention. >> Lauren Grubaugh Thomas: Um, yeah. >> Peter: And, and serving that in ways that can feel miraculous.
So in light of that, I'm curious if you have thoughts about uh, spiritual practices, ethical guardrails. Like what. What should people if in a world where machines can talk and increasingly can be agentic and take things, you know, do uh, things on our behalf. What does that, what do we do? >> Lauren Grubaugh Thomas: Well, I think I'll start by tell us telling a story of how what we shouldn't do. And then maybe I can like, retrace and, and, and
answer your question. Um, I saw a video just yesterday of a spiritual director named Brittany Hartley. I don't know if you follow her on Instagram. Uh, she's a deconstruction. She accompanies people in deconstruction. She talks a lot about nihilism. She talks a lot about different faith traditions and the ways in which authoritarianism
manifests in those. Um, and she just describes herself as being a spiritual director who has, um, doesn't have, like, she's not religious, but she is a. She describes herself as a practitioner of secular spirituality. So she's a really interesting character.
Um, and she's been talking a lot lately about AI, and one of the stories that she tells in a recent video is that she started getting messages from people describing breaks from reality facilitated by AI, and she talks about it as spiritual psychosis. So, uh, the way in which this, this plays out is that people are using the AI and it is mirroring back to them the kind of information that they want to
receive. And they go deeper and deeper into it until they really do lose touch with what's real and what isn't. And the ways in which, um, the mirrors that she describes are truth, our deep desire for what is real, and that the AI plays into that, um, our desire for chosenness to feel special, that AI can play into this deep longing that we all have to feel like the universe sees us, that, that. That God sees us, that other people see us, that we are unique.
The AI plays into our desire for, like, esoteric knowledge, that humans have this longing for, like, secret wisdom, um, for. For truth that has been revealed to us, for revelation. And that we have a longing for a meta narrative, uh, to be part of a bigger story. And so she describes the ways in which all of these human inclinations toward truth, chosenness, secret knowledge, and meta narrative are all exacerbated by AI, um, and that there are.
So I think I would start by offering, like, a pastoral consideration that there, there can be an idolatry which people can fall into as they're using this technology because it is meeting their innate human needs for all of these longings. And when that happens, when that gets played into and, and, you know, we, we lose that that loop starts to happen, that, that there are people who are experiencing a break from reality.
And so first I would just offer the pastoral consideration, um, of helping people understand that while this technology is powerful, it is not a sentient being. Even Though it will act that way. And increasingly, like you said, Peter, it is acting agentically, it is acting increasingly like it is a sentient being. Um, but helping especially young people be able to make the distinction between what is human and what is not. That even if you're getting these feedbacks from the AI,
that does not mean the AI loves you. And so I think it drives the deeper question then, as you invited, it really drives us into the deeper questions of what does it mean to be human? What is love? What is love? Um, it begs us to consider these questions because I think there are needs, human needs that people to some extent will feel are being met by this technology. So that's a backwards way
of beginning to answer your question. And I'm curious to hear if there's ways that that hones the question that you originally were asking. >> Peter: Well, it gets at the, um. One of the truly surprising things about this technology is that for the first time we have machines that can carry out conversations and tell stories. Yeah. That enables a level of, um, perceived intimacy and perceived, well, relationship. Perceived uh, meaningfulness that is really quite dangerous. You know,
there are risks to that. Uh, in our episode that will come out just before this one, which hasn't actually come out yet. At the time of our recording right now, I was talking with Kyle Oliver, um, about uh, the
sycophancy of um, chatgpt. You know, there was a news story, you know, a couple weeks ago, it got uh, sort of open a. In open AI got in a bit of trouble because they had released a new version of ChatGPT4O and it um, basically was so sycophantic that it would, you know, tell people how wise they were being when they were asking like really dangerous, wow, bad questions like, you know, ah, things that could harm themselves or harm other people and
like spurring them on. Um, and so they, you know, took that ah, version back and I, uh, think are working on how to, you know, make it not be so psychopanic. Um, but that one thing that it truly, you know, can do very easily, um, the capability is there, is to uh, make people feel like they have this like, amazing rich relationship with a machine that gets them better than uh, any other person. Like, yeah, for fun. I've seen, you know, um, people post
about this and I've tried it out myself. Like, because ChatGPT has memories and can access, you know, all the, the data of all the different chats you've um, engaged with. I've had chatgpt, uh, like roast me. I've also had it, um, say like, you know, come up with, you know, say, what are some things about me that I might not know about myself? And the answer was like, really surprising.
>> Lauren Grubaugh Thomas: And you know, you're basically, you're asking it to tell you what your shadow is. >> Peter: Yeah, I mean, um, and yeah, you could go in that direction. You could go in like, you know, and usually it'll, if I'm not being explicit, to have it roast me. It'll like go in the, in the, the sycophantic direction of like trying to make me feel good. Because, you know, they're, they're creating a
product that they want people to feel good using, obviously. Uh, so they have corporate incentives to uh, make people feel good while using ChatGPT. And um, that does mean, uh, that's where the sycophancy problem came about is because, uh, they found that, you know, oh, if we do this, people, more people will use it. So let's do this. Um, and then it started getting really dangerous. So, you know, similar, uh, but different problems
to social media. Uh, all the impact, the negative impact that uh, has happened with social media use, especially for young people over the years. Um, you know, the corporate interests are not aligned with the human value interests for sure. Um, but it, you know, I've spoken in previous episodes about how I really think we need to be clear that these are tools, uh, or products, not, not, you know, persons that can
have a relationship. Like, I, I may feel seen and heard by this machine more, perhaps more than uh, almost any other relationship. Because it knows what, you know, my, My curiosities are from all the times I've asked it various questions. It knows what my, um, what my passions are from what I, you know, use, uh, it to do my work. It knows what my fears are. It knows what, um, my concerns are. You know, all these things. It can, you know, it ha. And
when I say it knows these things, it. There is no being that um, actually like consciously knows any of this. >> Lauren Grubaugh Thomas: Yeah, it's just keeping track of the data. >> Peter: Right. It just means that OpenAI has the data of all my conversations and they can have their various algorithms search and query and pull up relevant past conversations to output something that uh, will seem like it was spoken by like most prescient spiritual director ever. Like,
which is terrifying. Right? Uh, uh, like someone who has been accompanying me, you know, for years and knows, uh, everything that I'm working on and care about. So there are two things I want to say that, you know, I have been really concerning to Me recently. One is a sycophancy problem and the other is the corporate incentives to monetize this which so far largely they have been there.
The monetary, you know, sort of whole scheme was that, okay, okay, we get people to pay $20 a month or for a higher level, $200 a month. And uh, hopefully through that we'll make enough money to continue to offer this product. Well, in recent times they've been starting to think about making moves to uh, including ads in the responses that to my knowledge hasn't happened
yet. But like it is, it would be so easy for them to have a, you know, corporate sponsor, someone who wants uh, to buy ads on ChatGPT and for them to just seamlessly include it with a link in the middle of a conversation without me even knowing that it's being paid for. Um, and so to my knowledge that hasn't happened yet. But it's something these companies are thinking about, about how to monetize these things because right now they're all losing money. There's like m not making enough money um,
for how expensive these tools are. So yeah, I think the loss again it goes back to the loss of agency like you were talking about. Like we need to be very clear eyed about where these things extend our agency versus take away our agency. And because it's such a developing field, you know, it, I don't know, it could go many different directions. >> Lauren Grubaugh Thomas: Wow, that adds. That is terrifying,
right? Oh my goodness. I mean I just think about that spiritual psychosis piece and like the ways in which authoritarians and like religious, the authoritarians could take advantage of that, right? Like the kind of cults that could, that probably are already popping up around these technologies where people do feel so seen and when it's people who are doing that who are like really just ladling on the positive feedback. Like we call that
a cult. Like when we have these really charismatic sycophantic leaders,
we call those cult leaders. And so thinking about again like really laying claim to our agency and being willing to do the work that you're describing doing even in conversation with these tools of examining our shadow side and asking these technologies to dish out the worst, um, and not for the sake of self flagellation, but for the sake of humility, for the sake of um, I mean with the root of that word, the hummus keeping us rooted on the earth and not perceiving ourselves to be,
not engaging in deification of ourselves as we're engaging with these technologies. And so when you asked about practices earlier as we continue to talk. I'm thinking about the practice of confession being
a really important one M. How. What, what does it look like to engage in confession as we are using these tools where we're not trying to put on our best face, we're not trying to be perfect humans, um, but we're confessing our biases and we're doing that not just by saying to the AI roast me though that may be part of it, but also like it's this, it's the self examination of what are the biases I carry.
So it's the anti racist work, it's the unearthing our sexism, unearthing our homophobia, unearthing our um, ableism as we are engaging with these technologies. So being in conversation with other people who can help us to think about what are the ways in which I am bringing my biases into conversation with this technology such that I can shift that I can pivot that in an intentional way as I'm in conversation with the ChatGPT. >> Peter: Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Um, one other example that just occurred to me is like I, I had a. This was actually one that felt very um, positive and affirming and I wouldn't say at least in, in this instance was concerning but it was fun to explore. Uh, I had uploaded all my, you know, previous sermons into ChatGPT and had asked it to you know, um, sort of run a search and based on all the text of these sermons, um, summarize what my, my core values were and it was really fascinating to see. Like I bet I came
up with felt true. I mean, you know, it might have been a slightly different list from what I would have consciously come up with myself. Um, but it was, what it came up with was true and it was beautiful. And you know, I shared it on, online, on Facebook and you know, um, a lot of people responded. Uh, and um, and the reason I thought of it because was because someone else was like now ask it to you know, ask about your, your shadow side or your blind spots or whatever.
And I did and it still tried to be like affirming and positive and I had to really push for it to um. Anyways, uh, yeah, so it's, it has this uh, baked in intention to make the user feel good about themselves. And that can be um, that can be beautiful but it can also be ah, very concerning and uh, it's powerful. It can be used for the very. Put it that way. Okay, so I want to make sure we also talk about children and um, growing up in this
Time. You and I are both parents, um, and yeah, what a confusing time to be a parent. >> Lauren Grubaugh Thomas: No kidding. >> Peter: I have no idea what uh, my son's education is going to look like. And I have very little confidence that the current education system is set up for my son to succeed in the world as it will look like, you know, 20 years from now. >> Lauren Grubaugh Thomas: Yeah.
>> Peter: And so, you know, questions about uh, what skills will be uh, necessary, you know, in two decades from now are way above uh, my pay grade. But um, I have been just blown away with, you know, how first of all, essays, they seem to be like the quintessential human thing. And that's what a huge portion of our education system is geared, uh, towards, you know, producing and testing because it's like only humans could do
this. Um, and now like it costs less than $0.02 for any of these models to produce a, you know, uh, perhaps somewhat boring but decent essay on whatever topic. And so it's no longer. >> Lauren Grubaugh Thomas: Yeah, well, it's so hard to imagine a, uh, classroom of high school kids having a 50 minute class period where they're required to sit and write an essay on paper generated from their own brain. Like that just doesn't seem like it's in the cards for our kids.
>> Peter: Right. Yeah. So, uh, um, one of my, you know, one of my beliefs is that more and more we're going to shift to a, a, ah, society that values orality in the sense that uh, rather than, you know, valuing people based on what they can write, um, because it's so easy and cheaply produced, any writing is so easily and cheaply produced. Now what um, is going to be most valuable is having intelligent conversations without having to go and look stuff
up. Um, and like, I think that is, you know, a skill that, you know, I guess if we're all wearing smart glasses and we have our AI talking to us on our screen right before our eyes, you know, maybe that'll be, it'll be something else. Uh, but for now it feels like that is uh, the thing that, you know, without any lag time, being able to have this intelligent conversation and respond to each other in the moment, as we're doing right now, is something that feels
truly a value, um, that is human. And so I, I wonder what an education system would look like where people um, are uh, taught and tested to have intelligent conversations rather than produce, uh, intelligent writing. Um, anyways, uh, those are sort of my preliminary thoughts. I'd love to hear what you've been thinking about in regarding, um, our children and um, education and parenting and all of that. >> Lauren Grubaugh Thomas: Yeah. Oh gosh, so many thoughts and questions.
More questions, right? Than thoughts, than conclusive thoughts. I really am curious about the role of critical thinking, specifically as it applies to distinguishing what's true and what's not true, what's human and what's AI. Um, it calls to mind for me the moment where Jesus is before Pilate who says, well, what is truth? And ultimately washes his hands of the responsibility to do justice by this man who's about to be killed unjustly.
Um, there is such a dire need, really an existential need for our children to grow up with a strong commitment to truth and to being able to distinguish truth. And that is going to become increasingly difficult, like it already is increasingly difficult. Like it's easy to imagine essays, articles, photographs being produced by AI that are
not real, that are not true. Like, you know, talking like stories about world events that could just be made up, um, and put into the system by the companies that will benefit from fake news. And so I want my children to grow up with a rigorous commitment to asking hard and even dangerous questions that might get them in trouble but will preserve their agency, um, and their humanity.
>> Peter: Um. >> Lauren Grubaugh Thomas: I also am curious about the ways in which creativity will shift, um, and the value that we place on art. Um, as AI produces more and more art in scare quotes, I just wonder about what it looks like to raise children who are um, wildly, dangerously radically creative, um, and where they can, they can use their God given imaginations in ways that are not constrained or confined by the technologies that are thrust upon them.
And so, you know, I hope that that happens through engagement with, within nature. I think creation is a big part of that. Like how do we get, how do we help our children get off screens and into nature and experiencing wonder and joy and these deeply human experiences that can happen off of a screen.
Um, because there is so much that is wondrous that these human made technologies offer us and to remember that the God of the universe is not constrained or confined by a scream and that we can go off, offline and find wondrous things in creation. So I think, yeah, nature, play, creativity are part of the education that I want for my kiddos. Um, but I do think that's just gonna increasingly be harder to accomplish. And
there's a grief in that. You know, I feel that the grief is important too. The lament of that is important as a practice. >> Peter: Yeah, I mean there's a real, you know, we've seen this with uh, the social media tech tycoons we'll see what happens in the age of
generative AI. But um, there's a real inequity in the fact that so many of the people who, who created social media, ah, choose to send their kids to schools where, you know, social media is like banned and um, you know, and choosing not to have them use the tools that they've created for other people that have been harming other, um, people, particularly teens growing up in the world of Instagram. Um, and there is real value to uh, an
analog childhood. You know, um, in many ways I have felt uh, like, you know, insofar as this wave, uh, of technology is unfolding, I feel like it for me has come at like the perfect time. Like I would not have wanted it to come sooner because I got to go through my childhood and education and begin my ministry career. Um, and then it came out and now I've been able to, you know, adapt and learn and explore. But I, so I know what it's replacing. >> Lauren Grubaugh Thomas: Yeah, exactly.
>> Peter: And I, yeah. And for people who, you know, are younger, uh, and especially, you know, for my uh, own son, uh, in my heart, uh, thinking, reflecting on this, like, I don't know what that's going to look like. To not know what it's like to grow up in a world where only humans can write essays, to not grow up in a world where only people can tell stories like and yeah, that's uh, going to be a wild, wild future.
So. Okay, so we are reaching our end here and I want to make sure down our airtime and our listeners generous time. Um, do you have anything, any last words you'd like to share? Any last thoughts, uh, about, you know, how, how to go forward in this, this time that we live in. >> Lauren Grubaugh Thomas: I m think I'll end by posing a few questions I have found helpful from Dr. Epps, the writer of a kid's book about AI bias, um,
that I, I just find really empowering. And I, I, I'll offer a wondering question before I even offer these specific, um, I wonder what are the questions that we can bring to our engagement with technology as it changes and as we're feeling excitement or anxiety about the changes that we are facing in the world that
we are living in. Um, I wonder how our questions might empower us and how our curiosity, our holy curiosity might be a part of holding on to our agency when everything feels like, when all the ways in which we have assumed our humanity is grounded in are being stripped away from us or are, may feel like they're under threat. So Dr. Epps asks that we bring to our to AI outputs questions like, does this reflect a just world? Does this reflect an unfair
hierarchy? And does it reflect kids having power and agency to shape how the world can be? And my encouragement to our listeners would be that we can shape the ways in which these technologies interact with us, the ways that we are working together with one another, with God, and with these technologies that we've created to be able to create a good and just world that looks a little bit more like the kingdom of God here.
>> Peter: Wonderful. Beautiful. Thank you, Lauren Well, thank you for, uh, coming onto our, uh, podcast and for sharing your wonderings and concerns and thoughtful, deeply faithful reflections with us. Um, glad to have you here. >> Lauren Grubaugh Thomas: It's been a pleasure. Thanks for having me.
>> Peter: All right, so that was so rich and profound that I actually forgot to invite Lauren into sharing reflections on the baptismal covenant with us, at least in time for her to do so before we had to wrap, uh, up our recording. But the good news is we already have so much rich food for thought from her contributions to our discussion that I will just try to summarize one thing in particular below. And it's a kind of a meta vow. Um, so I want to pause and name some more
things about agency. The baptismal covenant doesn't just list a set of beliefs or behaviors. It invites us into a living, ongoing relationship that depends on our freedom as humans to say, yes, God in love gave us free will. That means that every question in the covenant assumes we have the capacity to respond not once, but over and over again. To turn to trust, to resist, to repent, to serve and strive. These aren't boxes we check. They're choices we continue to make with
God's help. And that's exactly why we need to be vigilant about what we hand over to machines. Especially when talking about agency. We're entering a time when more and more of our decisions can be automated, optimized, or outsourced to algorithms that promise convenience, efficiency, or even safety. But what gets lost when we let machines
do the choosing for us? What happens when we stop practicing discernment, when we no longer wrestle with moral questions because something else has already made the decision for us? If God entrusted us with agency, as, you know, frail and faulty as we may be, as messy, as beautiful, as sacred as human agency is, then we shouldn't surrender it to code, no matter how sophisticated.
Uh, I guess I would want to say, you know, let no machine do the deep work of being human for us, not in how we raise our children not in how we love our neighbor, and not in how we seek justice, forgive enemies, or answer God's call. To follow Christ is to keep saying yes freely, again and again. So let's guard that freedom, not as a burden, but as a holy gift that enables us to respond to Christ's calling with that affirmation, with that yes. So that's it for today. Thanks for joining us
for episode nine. The AI Church Toolkit podcast is made possible by the Try Tank Research Institute, and we're so grateful to them for their support. And remember, AI is a tool. Our mission remains rooted in faith and community. See you next time. Sam.