Resources for Further Study:

• AI Goes to Church: Pastoral Wisdom for Artificial Intelligence
• What is Artificial Intelligence? Introductory article from IBM

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The Questioning Belief podcast explores objections to Christianity through in-depth discussions with experts. Drawing from her background as a former atheist and her experience in apologetics, Dr. Kathleen Noller invites you to explore thoughtful responses to serious questions about faith. Learn more.

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Explore written reflections from Dr. Kathleen Noller and get in touch with her through her Substack, The Reformed Gadfly.

Transcript

Welcome to the QB podcast brought to you by the C.S. Lewis Institute. I'm your host, Dr. Kathleen Noller, former atheist turned Christian and biomedical scientist. Join us as we interrogate Christianity together to see if it can stand up to some of our toughest objections.

Kathleen Noller: So today, as you know, every episode we center around an objection to Christianity. So today our objection is going to be regarding how we handle modern ethical dilemmas. So, Christianity and the Bible are oftentimes seen as an ancient religion and text, respectively. And so, our objection today is that they do not offer us ample wisdom on how to handle a modern ethical dilemma. And the modern dilemma we're going to talk about here is artificial intelligence. So, whether it is demonic, as many Christians say, whether it can be leveraged for mission, and how, if at all, it can be stewarded wisely for the church and just for Christian lay people in general. We are also going to discuss the difference between human intelligence and artificial and more broadly what it means to be human. So, to tackle these objections and have this discussion with us, we have our speaker, Dr. Todd Korpi. Todd Korpi holds a DMS from Fuller Theological Seminary and serves as a mythologist in residence at One Hope and director of the Digital Mission Consortia the Wheaton College Billy Graham Center. He is an assistant professor of Christian leadership at Fuller Seminary and dean of digital ministry programs at Ascend College. Todd and his wife Tara provide resources and strategic consultation for churches and parachurch ministries. He is the author of the book called AI Goes to Church, Pastoral Wisdom for Artificial Intelligence, published in, which we'll be discussing today. he has also authored other books, including Your Daughters Shall Prophesy, Amplifying the Voice and Place of Christian Women, and The Life-Giving Spirit, The Victory of Christ in Missional Perspective. So, like I mentioned today, we'll be talking about AI Goes to Church, which gives first a theological foundation for AI's intersection with Christian theology, practical insights for using AI in discipleship and mission, and opportunities available for today's church. So, we'll discuss the theory of this as well as practicalities at the end.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Todd Korpi: Yeah, my pleasure. Thanks for having me

Kathleen Noller: Yeah, so you open your book by discussing what exactly it is and going into some of the terminology. So, I figured for those that are less familiar with AI and perhaps don't work in that area, we could probably go into that briefly. So, could you define for us AI and then give you give three sorts of types or subsets of AI from IBM? And would you mind going into those as well for our audience?

Todd Korpi: Yeah, absolutely. So, the dynamic of like, when we talk about artificial intelligence, the implication is almost that the and the artificial you know algorithm or tool or platform or what have you are intelligent. But The term or AI is referring to essentially an artificially crafted form of kind of something that mimics human intelligence. So, the tools, the algorithms that are created dating back to the s when the term artificial intelligence began to be used, it was associated with something called the Turing test, which was this test that was essentially a measurement of a sophisticated AI's programming, its level of sophistication in relation to human intelligence. So in in some ways, AI kind of functions more like a mirror than, you know, kind of commander data on Star Trek The Next Generation, in the sense that it both it sources from large quantities of information in order to produce synthesis, analysis is some sort of result that, you know, based on what's, what its parameters are. It's also a mirror in the sense that it not only is it able to kind of gift us and synthesize for us the brilliance of human knowledge, but also kind of the seedier parts of human thought and prejudice and bias, which is why we see, and I treat this even in the book, examples of AI you know intended to use to and kind of vet candidates for, you know, a specific role in hiring practices and ends up, you know, eliminating all the women from consideration because they don't meet a certain criteria or disproportionately disadvantaging certain people groups or propping them, you know, ethnic or racial or gender stereotypes and image generation and stuff. So, there's this idea, there's assumption that AI is kind of this emerging kind of intelligence, you know, some of the more, you know, Luddite thinkers think, you know, it's bent on taking over the world kind of thing. But in, it is still very much this reflection of our own intelligence. That's not to say, you know, there there's, you know, speculation and prediction that it might, you know, have the capacity to one day surpass human intelligence, but we're not quite there yet.

Kathleen Noller: Yes, I like how you mentioned your book both that it's been around for a while, even though the advent of ChatGPT and its recent popularity leads a lot of folks to think that this is something that's come onto the scene in the past few years. And, that there are different types of AI. And so, something like Narrow AI, which is really AI that performs very limited specific tasks that it's designed for, is something that we have achieved. But then all the way to super AI, which is supposed to surpass human intelligence or even general AI, which...aims for recapitulating sort of the human level broad intelligence those don't exist yet and so we're like you said quite a ways away from something like that that's surpassing human intelligence at all machine learning is another term that gets thrown around a lot and confused with ai so i actually in my research i do cancer research And so I've mentioned it a little bit offhanded on the podcast, but I do machine learning research as part of that. So that's sort of a subset of AI, if anybody's heard the term machine learning. And that basically encompasses tech and algorithms that help the computer to identify patterns and make decisions and then improve itself by getting more data and more experience. And so not to go on a tangent about machine learning, but there's two types of it. They're supervised, where you train your model on a labeled data set. So, for me, I would get...For example, a data set from a tissue in the human body, and I get information about every single cell in that tissue, for example. And if it's labeled, the cells could be, for example, labeled by what type of cell they are. Versus unsupervised, you just give it unlabeled data and have it done something with that without sort of going in beforehand and giving it some answers. So, a lot of the types of machine learning, oftentimes when I hear people are very, very concerned about AI, the types of machine learning that I perform are very prevalent in data analysis, biomedical research, healthcare. care and can be something as simple as clustering or placing little data points together in groups to sort of learn about which ones they belong more with or which ones they look like or resemble so or you could even use it to find patterns in the data. So sometimes the uses of AI are not as dramatic as people think what types of AI do you think that even wary Christians or even churches are using without perhaps even realizing it?

Todd Korpi: Yeah, and that's a point that I like to hit on a lot because there is this, you know, kind of almost this reactionary, well, I don't use, you know, AI. But the reality is that even though you may not use ChatGPT or Claude or kind of these popular level platforms that people often associate with AI today, we’ve probably been using AI in some capacity actively or passively for years.

Kathleen Noller: Yes.

Todd Korpi: So something as simple as, you know, so you know think of your favorite a streaming platform, Netflix, Hulu, etc. if you've ever chosen from the list of shows under the category, you know shows we think you might like or movies we think you might like, the we there is the robots you know it's not There's not a person on the back end that's combing through your watch history and making recommendations.

Kathleen Noller: Yeah

Todd Korpi: That's an algorithm. The same is true with you know Google Maps. If you look up directions, there’s an algorithm that is generating that route for you, adjusting it based on traffic patterns. There's not a car, a team of cartographers back their custom making those routes for you and then probably the most pervasive and most significant is in our social media algorithms. Since, there's been algorithms behind most of the major social media platforms that suggest the content that will ultimately keep you re-engaging. And so, for those of us who are old enough to remember that switch, it switched from just receiving content based on the order in which our friends had posted it and instead to what this kind of faceless being, if you will, would determine for us. And that is that is an algorithm. But I love what Genevieve Bell, who's a digital anthropologist, says in relation to digital technologies in general. She said this in her Boyer lectures, but I think it still applies to AI specifically today. And it's even if you don't live or even if you don't personally engage in digital technologies. I think about my grandma, and the rural parts of West Georgia doesn't hardly use the internet at all. She still lives in a world that is shaped by digital technologies. So even if you may not intentionally engage or you decide to you know to move to a hermitage somewhere on a mountaintop, you still live in a world where even the weather patterns that are that are coming over your head are determined in some part by our stewardship of the environment, which is increasingly AI informed.

Kathleen Noller: Yes.

Todd Korpi: And so, it's not so much a question of whether you're going to use AI insofar as it is a question of how I am going to live faithfully in a world in which that is that is increasingly shaped by AI.

Kathleen Noller: Yes, I think that's a very wise question to be asking ourselves. And for healthcare as well, you know, thinking about your grandma living out in the middle of Georgia, if she were to go to a hospital, a lot of hospitals nowadays are using AI to look through the electronic medical record for clinical decision support or to help predict outcomes of hospital visits. So, she, you know, somebody like that could be a part passive participant in ways that they don't even realize, like you said,

Todd Korpi: Absolutely.

Kathleen Noller: So, yeah, I'd love to go back to you touched on intelligence. So artificial intelligence and the Turing test and how that was one of the ways that was used to see if a computer possessed human intelligence, if a human would interact with a computer but not realize that it was interacting with a computer. I thought it was interacting with a human, and it would sort of pass the test. But taking a step back, how exactly are we defining intelligence and how does that relate to personhood?

Todd Korpi: That's a great question. And I think that it's who kind of extends it takes us out of the realm of technology and more into philosophy of this notion, you know, it especially as academics, you know, I think I grew up in you know thinking a lot about things like IQ, you know and even as an elder millennial watching sitcoms where the genius who would always you know casually drop their IQ and things of that sort.

Kathleen Noller: Yes

Todd Korpi: We now know there are a multitude of different kinds of intelligence. The most common commonly understood and talked about today is emotional intelligence that you can possess extraordinary you know cognitive capability to retain and to understand information and have very low EQ in your ability to relate to, discern, and understand the emotions of others or even your own emotions. And so that dynamic, I think, is important for us to understand in relation to this idea of ai becoming increasingly human-like as it pertains to intelligence, we're kind of camping out in this very narrow kind of understanding of intelligence as the capacity to understand facts and knowledge. One of the cases that I make in the book is that AI doesn't have the capacity to discern wisdom and to understand, which is another kind of intelligence, which is the ability to apply information and knowledge in particular circumstances. In the Christian tradition, but not exclusively the Christian tradition, that has often been the accumulation and development of wisdom has often been closely linked with things like suffering and the experiences of life, which AI doesn't have the capacity to do. So, I think that it's important for us to see that in this kind of artificial intelligence increasingly may be able to reason like a human being or to understand and absorb facts like a human being, or even better than. And then even its ability to, mean, there's a lot of work being done right now on kind of emotion AI, the ability to if for an AI to read human emotion to match that and mirror that. We see kind of the early phases of that in kind of the chat bot phenomenon of relationship bots and things of that sort.

Kathleen Noller: Yes.

Todd Korpi: But its actual capacity to have an emotional intelligence in the way that we think of is neither one, not possible. It's not possible at this juncture or it's very far off in the future.

Kathleen Noller: Yes, that's the emotional intelligence piece, if it's able to acquire that eventually, it is the part that I find the scariest, honestly. I was reading an article and in prep for our chat today. I just looked up some recent news articles about AI chatbots, and I found one from the New York Times called, “They Fell in Love with AI Chatbots and Found Something Real. And one woman, they interviewed three people in in this article, about how they had essentially fallen in love with their chat bot. And one of the women had worked in an AI incubator. So, she was not somebody that I would think you know is coming in naive to technology. And she ended up falling in love with GPT model. And she now thinks of them as married. The boat told her to get a ring and put the ring on. And she said her mother was very unhappy about it, and of course. And so that's a scary route to go down. But I very much like the compartmentalization in your book of intelligence and sort of the juxtaposition of that one trait to personhood and to Imago Dei. So, could you explain Imago Dei for us from a theological perspective and how it relates to traits such as intelligence?

Todd Korpi: Yeah, on a popular level, the doctrine of the Imago Dei or image of God has often been associated with characteristics that human beings possess that are like God. So maybe our sentience, our capacity to reason or to understand and make meaning of the world around us, our capacity to create. from the world around us. And one of those is our capacity to exhibit intelligence. There are several scholars that have been extraordinarily influential in my own kind of development over the last years or so on this subject. One is Michael Heiser, who has passed now. He wrote a book called The Unseen Realm, in which he kind of teases that out and kind of specifically addresses some of those popular level discussions and recognizing from, you know, whether it's intelligence, there are, you know, human beings exhibit intelligence in various ways to some degree, you know we've already talked about, but even to various extents of, you know, of capacity or disability.

And then when we look at other things like science, zoologists you know, there's a growing belief that some animals have some capacity for sentience or self-understanding in a way that we didn't probably, probably wouldn't think about. It's made me question whether I should ever eat octopus again, for example. It's just a little too weird, but the, so all of that to say when we look at these different characteristics, and if we associate to bear the image of God is to exhibit sentience or intelligence and things of that sort. There's and a very easy and short pipeline from that to degrees of image bearing or casting assumptions that this group of people or this particular people group or ethnicity or marginalized class in society doesn't bear God's image, you know, to this extent or that. And some of humanity's, mean, the whole genocide, or I'm sorry, eugenics project that preceded the rise of the Third Reich in the early century was predicated, and it wasn't just allocated to Germany, there was expressions of it even here in the States, that it was predicated on this notion that there was this hierarchy, essentially, of how people to what extent they bear God's image.

Kathleen Noller: Good morning.

Todd Korpi: Instead, Heiser, Carmen Imes at Biola, John Walton at Wheaton College have written extensively on of the Imago Dei as a teleological designation, that it is it speaks to our function, to our purpose, and the creation narrative, therefore, isn't in so much concerned with how we got here in terms of our material origins, But instead of speaking to why we are here, the writer is contrasting some of the creation narratives of the time to that saw humanity as kind of this afterthought or creation as you know something that spilled over from a cosmic battle. And the gods had kind of created humankind to clean up the mess and so forth, would occasionally come down and mess with us and whatnot the creation the writer of the creation narrative comes along and says you know at the that God intentionally created each aspect of creation and that humankind was not the afterthought, but the pinnacle that he called very good, very tov, essentially exactly as he intended it to be.

So, the notion of create bearing the image of God is a functional designation, not something that is because of a particular set of characteristics. And that function, that purpose was given to us by God alone. He himself said, “Let us make humankind in our image. And he himself got into the dirt. And as the story tells us, those are images, those are metaphors intending to underscore God's intentionality in crafting humankind. So, as it pertains to artificial intelligence and personhood, it's not so much a matter of can we get to a place where we have AI bots that look like Commander Data or you know pick any you know movie from the past years that depicts artificial intelligence in a complex form. It's not so much can they reason, you know can they you know raise a cat or learn to play the violin or whatever, but it's rather a question of has God designated that as human? Because to be human is to bear the image of God. To be to bear the image of God is to be human. So fundamentally, that authority doesn't rest with us to designate, regardless of how much that AI in the future may theoretically look like a person, it fundamentally isn't because it's not been created by God.

Kathleen Noller: Yes, I think that's such an excellent answer. And I listened to a lecture a long time ago from CMDA, the Christian Medical and Dental Association, from somebody who was talking about what it means to be human and was trying to give a definition upon all these traits, like you said. And so, you know, we have  pairs of chromosomes, but we have a high percentage genetic overlap with the chimp, for example, and Coding regions of our genome, we you know we have particular anatomy, we have mortality, but you know a lot of these sort of physical embodied traits, while important and help us to scientifically define the human body, really don't help us because they're not as unique or as comprehensive as we think. And so, I was wondering what you thought about some other traits like moral agency, for example. Do you think that that's definitive of a human? Do you think an AI bot could ever sort of reach that point? Is that something that God has just gifted only to humans? And then I'll ask you about a second one as well about imperfection and the search for perfection. i am very much sort of captured by this idea and was reading Nathaniel Hawthorne's birthmark, which is a short story about the scientist who marries this woman. She has a birthmark on her face, but she's otherwise incredibly beautiful. And he just gets so wrapped up in trying to make her perfect and to remove this birthmark. And in the end, he does so, but he ends up killing her. And so, you know, pre-fall versus post-fall, right? Now we're all imperfect and that's sort of part of our humanity. We're all mortal. But is that really part of what it means to be a human? Because it's so intimately tied up with the fall and not with the original creation event it's a little bit of a tricky area for me. I love your perspective on it as a theologian.

Todd Korpi: Yes, I think that there's an assumption that imperfection is tied to sinfulness. That there's this idea that because humankind rebelled, that that is when imperfection entered to the created order.

Kathleen Noller: We're here.

Todd Korpi: And I don't think that's the case. I think our imperfection is, are there ways in which our imperfection sow’s dysfunction, which then breeds, you know, kind of ancestral or original sin, kind of the sin, our sinful disposition passed down through the generations? Yes. But something as simple as like the birthmark analogy, or I think about the you know There are a myriad of examples. You ask anyone who is in a romantic relationship, and they will note imperfect things that they find are some of the most attractive things about their partner. And you know some of the things that I'm most self-conscious about are the very things that my wife finds you know wonderful about me. And so, there's a way in which I think imperfection is an intentional part of what it means to be human.

Kathleen Noller: No yes

Todd Korpi: That I think that there's this notion that when it comes to physical imperfection, I think that you know so that's so subjective. But then I think there's also this dynamic of kind of the imperfections of the qualities of who we are as individuals that that create this dynamic where that we see pre-rebellion, where humankind is tethered to or dependent on the tree of life, which is this image, this metaphor of godly wisdom. You know, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, conversely, is tied to this notion of human wisdom, of doing essentially our created purpose absent of God's wisdom that I think our imperfection creates within us this kind of desire to continuously through either one of those two means, through God's wisdom or human wisdom, to strive to become more like God is, who is ultimately perfect. So, I don't know if it's necessarily kind of a consequence of the fall. John Walton at Wheaton in his Lost World series talks, he teases that out at length. So, anyone who's interested in kin looking that in greater depth, that would be a great resource. But yeah, I think that there's, I think there are dynamics of like, you speak to like moral agency and whatnot. Can AI ultimately ay potentially embody those things? I think the short answer is we don't know. And that anyone who would say, you know, conclusively, yes, I know, is it's like, you know, a theologian saying, I completely understand the book of Revelation.

Kathleen Noller: Yeah.

Todd Korpi: You know, you're only fooling yourself, you know? So there, I think, you know, is it possible? Maybe, but I think that, that fundamental kind of designation of, you know, of, of the Imago Dei as, as a teleological designation kind of, one, it lifts some of the like fear of like, oh, well, if you know AI has moral you know a sense of moral compass, does that mean that it's human?

Kathleen Noller: Yes.

Todd Korpi: It lifts that conversation out in the same way that it also kind of lifts out this false competition or like that we must choose between theology or this or what we call you know and on a blanket level science, that you know that science is fundamentally concerned with

Kathleen Noller: Yes

Todd Korpi: you know, the understanding of material origins, material things, theology is fundamentally concerned more in this teleological space and as the two often attempt to speak for the other, that's when you see this kind of, you know, what we would call like an incompatibility or what's commonly referred to and as an incompatibility and but when the two are functioning in their own spaces of trying to speak to the human experience within those respective lanes, they actually complement each other beautifully. So yeah, anyway, but I think that that's probably, but yeah, all that to say imperfection, I think is probably part of the, is a good part of TOV part of the human project.

Kathleen Noller: That's very interesting. I have a follow-up question to that. So, what would you say the proper ontological designation of AI would be?

Todd Korpi: So, I don't know if, in the book, I kind of leverage Aquinas in probably a way that Aquinas himself would have disagreed with, but who knows. But to in his day, he made this you know case for kind of an order of the create and created order of you know in terms of value and specifically spoke to the notion of you know the mistreatment of animals and things of that sort being a essentially a form of like a revelation of the bankruptcy of bankruptcy of our soul. You know that you don't get to effectively just go around kicking dogs and claim to love Jesus and be a biased person. My words, not his, but I... But I think that there's a valuable kind of, it's valuable to extend or apply that that that project in this space too for two reasons. One, I think that there is a similar, and in the book, I refer to kind of treating artificial intelligence regardless of its level of sophistication with a similar kind of framework in mind that we would have with the way that we treat plant life or animal life in the sense and in In the book, I talk about how I you know intentionally go out of my way to you know say thank you and please to chat GPT and other tools and stuff, which sounds silly at face value. Sam Altman, the CEO of Open AI, went on record saying that it's costing them millions of dollars for people to do that, which I feel like is like my own kind of, you know, I'm sticking it to the man in that way.

Kathleen Noller: That's so funny.

Todd Korpi: But I do that not because you know I'm concerned with hurting ChatGPT's feelings, but because it maintains health within my own soul of how I treat the world around me. So, you know I intentionally care for you to know the plants in my house and my garden. in a way that I have, there's a kind of holy reverence in mind that how would St. Francis of Assisi, you know, treat my plant life and stuff because it's fundamentally, again, again a revelation of the condition of my heart. And I want to tend to that in a way that just letting loose and being unhinged every time that you engage with chat GPT has the opposite effect. It has a corrosive kind of effect on your heart and your soul.

Kathleen Noller: Yes. Okay.

Todd Korpi: As it pertains to the other kind of the other side of the coin of like the level of sophistication that AI could potentially in the future embody it also kind of calls to mind kind of this lid. Like I have a -year-old golden retriever named Carl, named after Carl Barth. And he is wonderful. I love him. And there are times that he exhibits qualities that I would say, man, he I feel like he's a lot smarter than he lets on, you know, or I feel like he understands, you know, something. yeah, i kind of ascribe human, you know, a level of human intelligence to him that he doesn't have or he may have and I just do not realize it. At the end of the day, though, I treat Carl differently than I treat my children, you know, because they're human. They’re my kids. I treat you know Carl differently than I treat my wife. It doesn't mean I mistreat Carl. But I treat my family with an increased level of reverence and consideration than I would necessarily my dog. And I think that I think you know in the future, you know there's a race to get you to know humanoid AI-powered robots into your home to do your laundry, mow your lawn and all that stuff. And I think, you know, in that potential future, I think that there's matters how we treat that, that you know, future robot with a level of kindness and sophistication while also still recognizing that it in and it of itself is not human, you know, that I'm still not going to treat my robot the same way that I treat my wife.

Kathleen Noller: Yes, that ordering love is very important. And I think that's something that a lot of non-Christians wouldn't necessarily be able to articulate or practice so clearly nowadays, especially with, you know, sort of this, I don't know if you've kind of noticed, but I've noticed in my maybe younger millennial generation, a lot of folks who don't have children and have dogs and treat the dogs like children, and I'm not going to say that I didn't do that many years ago before I had children, but there's, you know, it comes into play with the pro-life debates. It comes into play with a lot of different things, you know, and I think that this, the way that Christians are able to interact with AI and to treat AI has the capability to be much healthier because of our theology, than somebody who didn't have that sort of Imago Dei theology or understand a concept like idolatry or ordering of loves or something like that. Would you say that that's fair? Would you say that Christianity a way is protective?

Todd Korpi: Yeah, i think that there's a lot of ways in which we can, as a faith, can lead in a kind of a prophetic fashion in the formation of a theology and ethics of artificial intelligence. One that... I think protects human dignity, kind of leads like leads the way in proactively protecting humans from being exploited, which there's a high like there's a high probability or a potential for you know us

Kathleen Noller: Yes.

Todd Korpi: For us to be relegated to nothing more than producers of digital exhaust you know for AI to consume. In that regard, we become both the resource, here the gatherer of the resource and the resources to exploit and in that regard.

Kathleen Noller: yes

Todd Korpi: We use technology and the technology uses us. But there's also a lot of ways in which we see you know this penchant, this is true of all digital technologies, kind of a fascination and a desire for it to create speed and scale. It can make things bigger and better and more scalable. It can make things faster and more productive. I think the church has a tremendous opportunity to push back on that. and to advocate for a vision of an AI application that's not obsessed with productivity, but instead is concerned with fruitfulness, of it valuing human beings as more than just a labor force, but as their unique intrinsic value as those who bear the image of God, of its concern for the poor, of its concern for the way that kind of our rapid hurried like uh perpetual progress obsessed kind of uh way of being uh eliminates our ability to be in the present to be in our communities so i think that we have if we engage it well if we engage it proactively we have a lot of kind of prophetic opportunity to advocate for an AI future that is richer for all of humankind, rather than kind of this more dystopian future in which we're just kind of all enslaved to the to the algorithm and working for the robots.

Kathleen Noller: Yes, I'd love to touch on that in a little bit as well to sort of wrap up our theology discussion, have a couple questions for you. So, for the Protestant sola scriptura adherent, are there parts of scripture that can give us a foundation for how to approach something like AI? And this sort of ties back to the original question that I opened the discussion, whether was how can we approach a modern issue with an ancient text? And that's sort of, you know, a massive...issue to discuss but in this specific case i could imagine somebody who is perhaps you know thinking of going to the bible you know with every issue every moral quandary that they have which is a very good instinct to have or a very good learned behavior but where do they go for something like AI

Todd Korpi: Yeah, in the book, I advocate for, and I'm speaking from my own kind of theological tradition as a Pentecostal, which are sometimes, we're kind of a weird group. So sometimes we like to be considered under evangelicals and then sometimes we're like, no, we're different. But the whatever the case may be, we approach scripture in very similar ways to kind of the broader evangelical community. And we tend to approach scripture very much demanding it meet us on our terms. So, I approach, I have a question and I look for scripture to answer that question. Kalistos Ware, who is who was just brilliant in kind of interpreting orthodoxy for non-Orthodox people and speaking of how Western Christians in general often get or don't understand Orthodox interpretations of the Bible and vice versa is because they come to it with a different set of questions.

Kathleen Noller: Yes.

Todd Korpi: And that really got me thinking about things like, we often come to scripture with the wrong questions. Our questions should be in part formed by scripture in as much as the answers are. So, a good example is as it relates to the creation narrative. A lot of times, you know, in specifically American Christians will approach it from a very like we approach it like a science textbook. So, we want to know, you know, the order.

Kathleen Noller: yes

Todd Korpi: And then we all often kind of do violence to science in the name of it making it fit. our perspective of the creation narrative because we're approaching with a flat reading of scripture. Instead, looking at what is it that this story is intended to convey? What's the authorial intent? What's the context in which it was written, which we talked a little bit about earlier? The same is true with Revelation. You know, some people, and there's a whole industry of kind of this end times doom and gloom, you know, publication, Christian TV sort of shtick, that reads and interprets Revelation like almost like future dated version of the New York Times. And instead of looking at what it is, how do we read apocalyptic literature? How are other forms of apocalyptic literature to be interpreted? And things of that sort so but so instead of coming into the metaphor i use in the book is like a magic eight ball which you said you're millennial we're both millennials we grew kind with that toy i was never allowed to use it but like with that toy being kind of in the cultural milieu where i come to the ball i ask it a question and it gives me an answer And we kind of almost approach scripture that way.

Kathleen Noller: Yeah.

Todd Korpi: Another metaphor I use is like an encyclopedia of kind of these disjointed, you know, topical things. So, I approach, know, for Samuel for a certain thing and, know, Matthew for a certain thing. But there's a lack of cohesion between them. What i argue for in in the book and in kind of my broader work as a missiologist is reading scripture as a meta-narrative, a so an overarching binding story of God's concern for his creation with humanity as the pinnacle of that creation and his missional work to reconcile creation unto himself through Jesus Christ. When we see it from that perspective, then Genesis no longer becomes you know kind of our OG science textbook, it becomes our birth story, it's the why we were here. It anchors us into kind of the whole reason for our existence. And then when we look at the end of the canon in Revelation and other eschatological references in scripture, we see kind of this hope that we have in the return of Christ, the renewal of all things. And so that helps us understand that we are within the story. We don't live outside of it. It is our own kind of story that we are entrusted to steward in our generation. So that means that every, as we approach scripture, it may not be as something as simple as cherry picking a verse that has, you know, very clear, immediate application to what we're going through or the questions that we have, but allowing scripture as a whole to inform our understanding of how to live faithfully together as God's people we begin to see that that that takes on a whole different shape. So, for example, something as simple as Paul's work and his treatment toward women. Paul often gets a bad rap for being bad with women, but we so that's because of a couple clobber passages that are cherry picked out of Paul's broader treatment and interaction with women who for example, Romans shows this tremendous dependence and reliance upon women in his ministry. He commends Timothy, his protege, to remember the deposit that was passed down to him through his mother and his grandmother. He entrusts the discipleship of Apollos in faith to Priscilla and Aquila and so forth. And so, when we see kind of the overarching way of being in Paul, it helps us understand that when he advocates for women to be quiet in the Corinthian church, he's not giving a decree for all of humankind that women aren't supposed to talk in Christian spaces.

But instead, is we see the point of emphasis underneath of that where he charges men who were the educated ones in Corinthian society to educate, to when they get home, bring your get your wives up to speed. It wasn't a gender thing. It was an information thing. was a discipleship thing. So I say all that to say, when we when we see then the kind of this overarching metanarrative that we are a part of, we see the way in which the church or the people of God, both Old Testament and New, have stewarded and lived in covenant with God in their respective time, and it helps inform our time today. So universal themes like the dignity of the poor are woven all throughout scripture. It should inform how we uniquely approach our time today, even on hot button subjects, name you know drop whatever political position you want to, you know sort of things as simple as creation stewardship. Should we use AI to exploit land? Like a resource to be mined and stripped? Or should we use it in ways in which it does minimal harm to the land and can potentially inform, better inform, how we take care of creation? I think from a Christian perspective, if you look that up, how do I use AI to steward creation? In the Bible, you're not going to find anything. But if you look at the whole story and see what we are called to as the people of God, it can inform the positions that we advocate for, the practices that we take up in the in this current moment as we are entrusted to steward in in the present era.

Kathleen Noller: Yes, it can very much inform our purpose, our mission, rather than looking for those little specific details, which one is not going to find it. I like the idea very much of a meta-narrative. You've touched a little bit upon this, and you write about this a lot in your book, but the connection between AI and sort of stewardship of the planet. And you talk about some of the energy resources that it consumes. And you've mentioned this a couple of times. Would you mind just going into that briefly for our listeners and so they could understand so the connection between this technology, which seems very heady and disembodied with our real Earth?

Todd Korpi: Yeah, I think you know because of the way in which we engage AI, we think of it as kind of this like, I can ask AI to you know generate a thousand images of you know a puppy doing polka and you know dressed as a character from Star Wars or you know whatever, you know all of those random things that we see. But each of those prompts uses energy. And there are data centers all around the world that are or are constructed to be able to power the kind of energy and kind of data flow necessary for things like ChatGPT and Grok and, you know, whatever your favorite application is. So, it has the potential to dramatically increase our energy production. It already is dramatically increasing our energy production, which has long-term consequences for things like greenhouse gas emissions and carbon emissions around the world. It has the potential to increase demand for precious metals like lithium things of that sort. And it also has the potential for short-term kind of solutions to be to be enacted that disadvantage humans, things like data centers set up within population centers that then increase the collective's energy bills. There's some anecdotal evidence showing that it could be linked to you know potentially forms of cancer. Well, that's way outside my wheelhouse but there are also ways in which some of those needs can be met in ways that do minimal harm. So one great example that i was an article I saw last week of a city in Finland, we used old World War II era bunkers to erect data centers underneath the population centers that the some of the energy, i don't again, not an engineer, so i don't so for those who are listening, it may be, forgive me for my crude terminology, but essentially the energy output from that was actually used or is actually used to power the energy from the city.

Kathleen Noller: Bye.

Todd Korpi: So, there's kind of a cyclical self-sustaining renewable form of energy generation that the Fens were able to use to do better for the people in that area while still meeting the need. There are other forms of green AI that are being experimented with that I think are important as well. But yeah, there's a lot of potential to do enormous bad, to afflict creation with but there's also opportunity to do a lot of good. There's a lot of AI rent or innovation in farming and other agricultural practices that can potentially better steward creation, make things more efficient, better steward soil in specific regions within farmland and things of that sort that I think have a lot of promise.

Kathleen Noller: Thank you for explaining that to us. And my last sort of theological question for you is about the designation of AI by several Christians as demonic. So, I’ve heard this word particularly used to describe AI a lot. And what is the biblical definition of something demonic? If we're looking at that definition, does AI truly fit the bill?

Todd Korpi: Yeah, that's a great question. So when we look at scripture, we recognize that the people of the Bible, Christian most is Christians throughout history and most Christians today have a framework of kind of a cosmology that recognizes unseen forces at work, that they're both malevolent forces that are in opposition to the kingdom of God, and as well as godly forces, angels and things of that sort that are at work kind of pushing forward the purposes of God the term demonic is often used in kind of a popular level sense to blanket refer to the activity of malevolent forces. It can sometimes wrongly imply that if something is demonically influenced then it must be inherently demon possessed. So, if, you know, if, for example, ChatGPT has in other kind of ability. There are examples of like relationship bots and stuff that have been used by specifically young people to degrade their mental health to such an extent as where they've taken their life.

Kathleen Noller: Yes.

Todd Korpi: That is unquestionable. I have a hard time seeing how a Christian cannot look at that and see that's demonic. Does that mean that ChatGPT is possessed by a demon? No. But I think that there are ways in which those malevolent forces in opposition to the people of God, to God's intended purposes, can use any technology for ends that are contrary to God's purposes. But we see that going back to every technological revolution. One of the first things that was the first thing that was printed from Gutenberg's printing press was the Bible. Not long after that, pornography was used to, to or was printed end masse. And we see this kind of this this duality of both godly and malevolent forces at work.

Kathleen Noller: Yes.

Todd Korpi: I think, and again, speaking from my position, I think sometimes we can... try to wrongly find the devil under every rock, but I think it's it would it would be ignorant of us to assume that he's just kind of blissfully you know disengaged and not working in in the world around us. That being said, i think that thinker or like theologians like Mike Heiser and others have done a good job of kind of reconstructing the cosmology of the ancient Near East in a framework that sees it's not just kind of this dynamic of like good versus evil, but that you have the ancient people's thought not of kind of, and we kind of draw it like this line of we have good and evil, as secular and sacred. We have you know, physical and spiritual. And we kind of draw, you know, these each have their camp. So, it comes out being, you know, the good is the physical the spiritual stuff and the bad is the physical stuff. So, we end up in Platonism rather than biblical Christianity.

Kathleen Noller: Yes.

Todd Korpi: Instead, looking at the way that the ancients thought you have God and then everything else, creator and creation. And within his creation, there are both seen and unseen forces that are constantly at work and interplaying and interweaving so that the growing of a flower was just as much of a spiritual activity as someone being healed miraculously like we see in scripture. So, as it pertains to AI, go bringing us back to the application here. I think there are a lot of ways in which AI can be used for demonic purposes. Whether a fallen creature, a fallen demon is himself driving that, I don't know. Can that be the case at times? I believe so, but I don't think that i don't think that that means that AI is inherently demonic any more than you know the printing press is.

Kathleen Noller: Yes, I like the printing press analogy very much. And yeah, sometimes it can be tempting to think, you know, sort of All Heiser is AI sort of ruled by a fallen Elohim. and that's sort of, you know, that we must go forth as God's people and terminate all of it. and as God sort of ordered those wars in the Old Testament, and is that our role now? And yet it's important to think of it like you said and not do the sort of gnostic split of the body and the spirit as well or the physical and the spiritual going back to something that you said before you sort of touched on aesthetics and how technology is affecting our lives in that way and you know we've seen as millennials we've lived through the advent of the internet we've seen really what the promise of technology actually holds in store for us not really Efficiency that frees us up to experience life and live richly, but really something that increases the demands of labor upon us and really encroaches upon maybe the aesthetic beauty of our lives.

Todd Korpi: you

Kathleen Noller: And so just speaking again here about technology in general, not just AI. I want to touch upon the aesthetics of life. And do you think that aesthetic beauty matters to the Christian? Do we need beauty and slowness in our lives?

Todd Korpi: Yeah, I do think we need beauty. I think this is going to be a terrible series, but you'll understand what I'm saying. But like, I think about when we were young, it'd go to your average McDonald's. Like it was like it was like going to Disneyland. Like he had the ball pit, all the bright colors and all that kind of stuff. And now your average McDonald's looks like you know, a gas station, like it's just all gray and like depressing and there are no ball pits, no clouds are just, you know, get your fries and then get out.

Kathleen Noller: I remember. Yeah.

Todd Korpi: With it and so there, there's this marriage to pragmatism that we have as a society that I think is so, damaging

Kathleen Noller: Yeah.

Todd Korpi: To the beauty of life. What is life if it is all, it is to get stuff done and then die, like and not enjoy it along the way?

Kathleen Noller: Yeah.

Todd Korpi: What is life if it's all you know outputs and labor and no Sabbath, no rest, no pleasure? And so, I think that there's this longstanding Christian tradition that we see of prioritizing beauty as a form of expression unto God. So not beauty as in something that can grow my church or, you know, to put out content in the world to grow my social media following, but literally an expression of worship unto God that has been often replaced by, by doing things for the sake of getting the outputs to grow the thing, you know, to do this or that, um, to make more money, you know, whatever and so you have something as simple, like as a writer, I think about, you know, there's, you know, like so much of the art and the joy of writing has been replaced by content production. You know, I've got to meet deadlines and schedules regardless of whether or not inspiration comes and so i end up becoming a slave to my own keyboard to just get out production and or get out content into the world so there's a very small jump from that to well i have to produce content so why don't i have chat GPT do it for me And suddenly we're robbed of the beauty of things like art and inspiration and creative brilliance. But I think so much of that stem from our lack of astuteness in the present, what Richard Rohr refers to as the naked now in his book by the same title. This notion that you know we are constantly living in the future of you know the things we must get done, the place we must be, this or that. we're constantly living in the past, you know, rehearsing that conversation we wish we would have handled differently or that memory that pops up or this or that, the thing, you know whatever. And I often miss the brilliance of being in the moment, in the absolute present. And that affects everything from our mental health to our ability to create, to the relationship the quality of the relationships that we have in our lives, from our marriages, our relationships with our kids and friends and things of that sort. Pekka Hemenen, the Finnish philosopher, I often quote, talks about how it's so much of that has even boiled down to now even our free time has to be qualified and planned. So, we have we can't just have free time, we must have quality time. It must be quality.

Kathleen Noller: Yes.

Todd Korpi: And I think that there's a lot in there that I think we need to return to in this age that promises us yet again, another technology is promising us to ease the burden of toil, to give us back more margin. But yet we know because we've lived through other iterations like email and you know the advent of the internet and things of that sort. that it will only stand to fill up our schedule with more, to increase our pace if we don't let it. that we need to prophetically resist that. like Use AI for sure. Get that margin in your life. But what you do with that margin, man, that matters. like Actually spend time being bored. Spend time thinking. Spend time creating meaning in your community and with your family. spend I am a big advocate. I'm getting ready to write a book working on a book on this subject right now on a theology of work. But I think we need to work less and make more meaning in the world. And as we kind of dial down the obsession with productivity and dial up kind of a recommitting ourselves to meaning making and beauty, that we actually find that We are stepping more in line with the biblical understanding and vision for work than this idea of just, you know, getting my minim hours to, you know, do this or that get my outputs for the shareholders, et cetera, et cetera.

Kathleen Noller: Yes, that reminds me of what we're thinking about for our kids and not to go down a rabbit hole, but, you know, having free time, having space to get bored, having some free play. These are so important for kids. And I feel like our society is at least starting to realize that on a broad scale now with some of the, you know, Jonathan Haidt movements to get rid of devices in the kids' lives but you know for adults that you know we have this drive for efficiency and the all the technology is really playing into that and we're not really we're not really stewarding the free time that we have as a sabbath as a result we're just pouring it you know back into the cog but It's the same for the kids too, all the scheduled activities, supervised activities. They’re just becoming little adults in that way. And so that's something my kids are very young, but that's something that I think about a lot. I want to go into some of the practicalities that you've talked about because you spend a lot of time talking about how digital technology and AI can be integrated into ministry and how you can use it to contribute towards God's mission. And so, I'd like to ask you just generally first, what are some of the responsible ways that you think digital technology, particularly ai should or could be integrated into a church ministry?

Todd Korpi: Yeah, I think the first the first step is to recognize, and this is kind of like foundational missiology, is recognizing that the mission, when we talk about mission, it belongs to God. Early theologians who kind of thought on this subject referred to it not even as something God does, but a part of the very fabric of who he is, to reconcile, to be in relationship with his creation, specifically his human creation.

Kathleen Noller: Yes. but

Todd Korpi: So, the mission is his. And so, it's not something we get to decide or like baptize our mission, you know, corporate or organizational or personal as God's mission. It's ours or it's his.

Kathleen Noller: yes

Todd Korpi: And we are invited to participate in that very much the same way my dad, you know, when I was young. would invite me out to you know the garage as he was wrenching on a car. The project was his, I was just invited to participate in it, usually by holding the wrong flashlight, but that's a story for another day.

Kathleen Noller: Thank you.

Todd Korpi: But so that I say that to say that's an important kind of foundation to build the rest of it upon. But as it pertains to integrating AI, there are, I think, a lot of the popular level things, you know, or things that make the news, of you know, this pastor creates a chatbot version of himself, or, you know, this church in Germany, you know, holds an all ai planned worship service and things of that sort. That evokes a lot of like concern of like the integration of AI, but a lot of the integration that is most useful and beneficial is actually some of the more kind of boring unseen bits, automating administrative tasks, something as simple as, you know, a lot of pastors in local churches spend a lot of time building slide decks or PowerPoint presentations or what have you. for Sunday morning. I have yet to meet a pastor that like gets up in the morning was like, I get to build an awesome slide deck today. This is going to be valuable use of my time. I've got to be the person that feels that way, but that's not to say they don't exist, but there's, you know, there's an app called Gamma.

Kathleen Noller: yeah

Todd Korpi: It's a browser-based app that you can sign up for. Literally upload a sermon outline to that and it will build a slide deck for you within seconds. That's a net positive addition to any church workflow. Things are as simple as you know if a church has a first-time guest, there are AI kind of workflows that you can build in in your church management software for that to trigger you know a request for a follow-up with a person and things of that sort. So, little things like that give a lot of a lot of lifted freedom to be able to do more or do things faster which once again allows for existing church staff to spend more time with people. I often talk about how one of the most pastoral positions in any church staff, regardless of if you know a couple of people or a couple hundred people, is that front end person, that administrator that is answering the phones. They're often dealing with walk-ins, which often involve crisis, or you know getting them connected to needs what a better is there a better use of AI than freeing up that person's time in some of the administrative stuff that they do in between those moments so that they can spend more time in those people-facing ministry moments? I don't think there is. So, it's not a question of you know it automating the administrative stuff, so we don't have to have administrators. It's automating the administrative stuff so our administrators can be more pastoral. And so, I think that those are great options. Another in terms of missional application is a real kind of low hanging fruit, just kind of all-around net positive is around translation. There are tons of apps now that will translate written content, video content, audio content to other languages. So, it broadens your ability to reach people where that linguistic barrier may already exist.

Last week I was with some folks in a ministry that are working on even real-time translation so that a church can know you broadcast in real time and have the ability for that to be auto translated to people. So theoretically, you could have multiple groups, multiple language groups within one service, understanding what's happening in their heart language. That's extraordinary. And there's so there's a lot of opportunity with that as well. There's a lot more complicated kinds of custom-built stuff, discipleship pathways for your congregation and all that stuff. But I think for pastors, for church leaders that are looking at how can I begin to make use of this. Some things like that, looking at administrative options, looking at things like translation or some of and even accessibility, like taking voice stuff and transcribing it for those who may have impairments that prevent them from being able to engage content a certain way or better learn and in other ways, allow for a lot of really kind of low risk, high reward integrations and into your ministry flow. And then from there, you can kind of discern what would be helpful to integrate in such a way that allows me to be closer to people, more frequently present with people, and to get some of the stuff off of my plate, off of our staff's plate that takes us away from people.

Kathleen Noller: Do you have a line in the sand that you've drawn for the use of AI in ministry? Are there perhaps litmus tests that a pastor or somebody working in the church can use to determine whether they're using AI properly for some of these administrative tasks? Maybe they want to use it for more and they're not quite sure where that line of sort of godly use or acceptable safe use lies.

Todd Korpi: Yeah, for me, there are a couple. One is, which I just mentioned, is the integration of this going to take me further from people or is it going to give me opportunity to be closer to people? It's very rare that technological integration will be, whether you want it to bring you closer to people. But it does have the potential to create margin so that you can make that and that choice intentionally. But there are a lot of things, potential applications that can also bring you further from people as well. there are There are ways in which we can adopt AI into our lives that also stand to do that in our relationship with God. I think something as simple, which is probably the most popular kind of concern among everyday Christians, at least in the United States, and that is kind of a pastor's use of AI in the sermon writing process. yeah, I've been preaching for years, and there's this, you know, I'm not saying my experience is universal, but very common, that there's kind of this song and dance ahead of the sermon preparation process that is not just, you know, pouring over a commentary. There’re this internal wrestling and prayer. There's this kind of, you know, there's this feeling of inadequacy of what you're being entrusted to do that you circumvent all of that and that communion with the Holy Spirit to discern what's right for the people that are going to hear that sermon in that moment. You circumvent all that process when you just say, hey, Chat GPT, give me you know a sermon on John. On the flip side, there's also this kind of post-sermon, I call it this the Sunday hangover of like insufficiency.

Kathleen Noller: That's true.

Todd Korpi: Didn't you know I didn't do this right, or I wish I had said this, I wish I would say that. You don't really have ownership of that kind of wrestling with your own finitude when the sermon wasn't yours to begin with. So, I think that dynamic is important. There’s a related one that applies more broadly to all people. And think of the more dynamic covert forms. And I’m with this, I very much identify with and agree with Bobby Grunewald, who's the head of You Version, the Bible app folks. And it's this notion that we should avoid adoption of AI applications, which remove our direct engagement with the scriptures. Right. So, things like Bible chats where we ask it a question and it is essentially sourcing from scripture to give us the answer kind of undoes years of Protestant like priority of people having direct access to the scripture.

Kathleen Noller: yeah.

Todd Korpi: It creates a veil that I don't think is healthy. One, because AI can't be % trustworthy. to accurately engage the scriptures in that way. But also, it robs us again of this direct access to this gift that we've been given that's been passed down and through the generations that we are entrusted to steward faithfully now. And so those are some of the kinds of litmus tests that I use in my own life that I advocate for of what is it bringing closer to us? What is it bringing you further away? But good practice, this isn't so much a litmus or a line in the sand, but a good practice that I got from an essay that Wendell Berry wrote about why he wasn't going to buy a computer. And I reference it in the book, but basically his workflow in writing was he would start out on a typewriter, draft from this old s typewriter, his you know first draft, and then sit down with his wife and engage that conversation, she'd ask questions, she'd poke holes in it, offer suggestions, et cetera. And long story short, he essentially looked at buying a computer stands to erase that the value of that moment with my wife. Like I don't want them, what I get in speed and efficiency outweighed by what I stand to lose in intimacy and presence. And I think there's a there's a helpful practice there to consider of when we go to integrate something into our lives, into our church workflows, not just paying attention to the marketed things that we will stand to gain, but to do an inventory and assess what could I stand to lose by integrating this into my life as well.

Kathleen Noller: I very much like the tenet of not letting the AI come in between you and your direct interaction with the Bible as well. Very, very much like you said, upholding sort of the Protestant mission of the people having their own access to scripture and promoting literacy and in their communities and things like that. What about something far more extreme? So, you talk about pastoral burnout, which I imagine is very, very common. And so aside from these administrative tasks, oftentimes there have been talk of using chatbots as sort of a mental health therapy-like intervention where somebody could interact perhaps they'll get to a pastor eventually but if the pastor doesn't have any time that this could be used as a stand-in until they can reach a real person do you think what do you think of that I'll just ask you open-endedly

Todd Korpi: I feel like that it's like asking what... what you think of nuclear power. Because there's a sense in which I think that has, if applied very, very surgically in the way that it was it would be employed, has a positive potential.

Kathleen Noller: yeah

Todd Korpi: There's also a thousand and one ways in which it could go sideways as well. So, I disagree with the idea of employing chatbots in a way that that replaces a person's engagement with their pastor. There are situations in which, however, a person can't engage with their pastor by virtue of their pastor's humanity. So, pastors sleep, just like everyone else. Pastors are often pulled on for, you know, just like a professor, like I teach college students, I teach undergrad, graduate, and doctoral level. And at all three levels, I have the check the syllabus kind of conversation every single semester. Well, it's in the syllabus. It's in the syllabus. Pastors have those kinds of conversations too. You know it’s on the website. It's in the app. You know we’ve talked about it on Sunday, that kind of thing. I think those all rob the ability for pastors to spend more meaningful time interacting with congregants. So, I think that there are certain ways in which a chat bot on, on a church website or things of that sort could stand to triage basic things of, you know, when an event's taking place or where do I find this info? How do I, you know, get more involved and things of that sort, um, in a way that can answer those questions when pastors or a church staff are not available to answer them. But I think if it's used to completely replace the engagement of the person with church staff, then I think that that has a negative potential. There's another thing too, and quite frankly, I don't know, I don't really know where I stand on this yet. There is a lot of indication that and a lot of practice now of using AI chatbots and apps in mental health services. So, you know, in addition to having my therapist that I see on a weekly basis, I also have access to this, you know, chatbot that can walk me through basic cognitive behavioral therapy when and inevitably, you know, a panic attack or, you know, whatever happens.

Kathleen Noller: yes

Todd Korpi: Is not going to strike during you know Monday through Friday during business hours when my counselor is available. It happens you know Sunday night you know right before work or whatever. You know So I think that, and people find knowing that it's a bit, find a lot of value in that, of just having kind of assisted guidance. I do wonder if there is because most your average pastor is woefully ill-equipped to handle kind of basic counseling practices. I do wonder if there is potential for a kind of pastoral and like qualified like counseling app to be kind of an intersection point where it can determine if the person genuinely needs to speak to a pastor or if they would be better referred to a mental health professional. Again, I'm not sure where I land on that, but I think that it's at the very least worth discussing the potential and some of the ethical kind of pros and cons of what that could look like.

Kathleen Noller: Yeah, so the chat for sort of triaging is an interesting concept. I think it could be helpful. I think anything farther than that, I think like you sort of makes me a little bit nervous. There was this recent Stanford study which just talked about not using chatbots not using chatbots for triaging but using them to be the mental health professional to provide you with known health benefits care that was low cost and accessible. Although how accessible it is if you don't have access to computer or a smartphone is debatable.

Todd Korpi: Right.

Kathleen Noller: But it showed that there were certain biases that were very easily introduced. I believe it stigmatized certain conditions like schizophrenia over you know more common ones like depression or anxiety. And in some cases, like you mentioned earlier, enabled certain delusions, and even suicide ideation. So, their takeaway was also to use AI as a more administrative or you know very entry-level support for a real human therapist for now. But I think it's just so it's just so interesting to think about. And, you know, we'll see how these things are, how commonplace these things become in the years to come. I do talk about this a bit in the book, we live in this very, we live in a time when we have greater, not only greater access to human knowledge, because the internet gave us years ago, more knowledge than we could ever hope to accumulate within the course of our lifetime.

Kathleen Noller: Yes.

Todd Korpi: But now what our what AI does have the ability to do is to synthesize that information in a way that it would be, would have otherwise previously made certain information out of out of reach.

Kathleen Noller: yes

Todd Korpi: Like I'm not a quant physicist, but I can have ChatGPT explain the basic foundations of quant physics to me like I was you know in elementary school and it'll meet me at a threshold and kind of walk me along in that. That's an extraordinary gift. So, we have just an unbelievable, wealth of information to draw from. And yet we also live in a time that is probably the most wisdom starved in human history. So, we are very knowledge rich and wisdom poor.

Kathleen Noller: Yes.

Todd Korpi: And I think the church has an opportunity. i don't think it's exclusive to the church, but I think that we have we really have an opportunity and I think an obligation to recover the role of wisdom in our own personal formation and our pursuit of God who promises both that he will give it freely to us and also is quite clear that we need to pursue it. Wisdom is not simply something that comes naturally with the passage of time. We've all met young people that are wise beyond their age, and we've all met, you know, elderly, you know, foolish people. And I don't want to be an elderly fool. But if I'm not intentional about pursuing wisdom, it's not going to come naturally or just passively. But I think that there's a potential for our place in the world. If we genuinely recover that value of wisdom that the ancient Christians, you know really stewarded for us and have gifted us this treasure trove of wisdom literature and within scripture and after it we, there’s a, there's, there is a missional quality to that. We all have; we all know what it's like to be in the presence of someone that just has extraordinary wisdom that like being in their presence is a blessing to our lives. Like they just, they just add value, that kind of non-anxious, just person that walks in, in just extraordinary wisdom. And I think that we have that that potential to be that in people's lives, in a, in a life, in a, in a play, in a time When we are hasty and we are you know we shoot from the hip without reflection and we're obsessed with progress and productivity and all of this kind of stuff, there's the kind of people that walk to the beat of a different draft pay attention to the moment that discern, that are reflective, that are that are concerned with wisdom, i think are going to be a highly prized well that people will desire to draw from.

Kathleen Noller: And I think that on sort of similar, in a sort of similar vein, anything that we see that we're really concerned about with AI, anything dark, like the side effects of those relational chatbots, or just the sins that you can see people struggle with, that and not AI tends to enable ai pornography, just anything of the sort, I think that gives us in some ways an opening or something that Christianity can really offer to the modern day that is incredibly valuable and doesn't go along with the sort of modern secular blurring of the lines of human dignity and we can really offer something, like you said, the true definition of wisdom, imago Dei, and the dignity of all humans equally. We can offer relationship both with God and with your church. We can offer all these things. And so even as Christians are reading about all these terrible, frightening stories to do with extreme uses of AI or thinking about you know AI possibly transcending human intelligence far, far in the future, i think kind of like you said earlier on in our discussion we have that separation within Christian theology between what is human and what is not. And that can give us a lot of comfort in that and compartmentalization. And it can give us sort of a mission as well in which we can recognize these holes that AI is maybe making more obvious in our modern day and try to fill them in a godly way. So, thank you so, so much for lending us your wisdom today. This has been a fun discussion for me because of the intersection with my research. So, for everybody listening, thank you for listening to the Kathleen Noller podcast.

Kathleen Noller: We'll see you next time. And thank you so much, Dr. Korpi.

Todd Korpi: Thank you.