EP278 - Kenny Jahng, Bacon, and What's Next for AI?

Welcome to the church digital podcast. Through this podcast, we'll talk about the technological

innovations within the church, but more than tech for tech itself, we'll address deeper

questions. Is disciple making possible digitally? How should we approach the digital mission

field? Can a biblically grounded church operate in digital space? Oh, and where does the metaverse

and artificial intelligence fit into all of this? Whether you're a big or small church,

an established church, or a startup church plant, the church digital's goal is to help churches like

yours learn to be a multiplying church digitally and physically. Our heart? The churches like yours

would discover a new founded focus on disciple making that will revolutionize your church.

And now here's your host, Jeff Reed. Hey everybody, episode 278 of the church digital podcast. Jeff

Reed here, founder of the church digital. I'm so glad you're here. I'm so glad we had this

conversation today and I can't wait to introduce you to my friend, Kenny Jang. Now a bunch of you

probably know of Kenny because Kenny's everywhere. That's, that's just who Kenny is. Uh, but if you

haven't met Kenny before, Kenny is arguably today in 2024, one of the top voices of the church in

artificial intelligence. And when I woke up this morning and said, Hey, who do I want to talk to

about artificial intelligence? Well, let's say it was Kenny Jang and Kenny Jang, like there's nobody else.

I really want to talk to you because the guy is phenomenal in this space. If you don't know,

Kenny historically, he's been around. He's one of the OGs in online ministry worked in Liquid Church for

a number of years up in New Jersey. Uh, he runs church tech today.com, uh, AI for church leaders.com,

groups, the guys all over the place, uh, creating resources and helping churches like yours, uh,

better understand artificial intelligence, uh, among other things. As a matter of fact,

he works with exponential next formerly leadership network, uh, is being there a director of AI next.

And so when I want to have this conversation with Kenny, like, okay, look, AI has been around for a

while. It's been over a year. It came out November 22. Like I let's, let's move beyond the whole chat

GPT stuff. That's nice. But there, there's more to AI than, than creating good social media graphics.

Like that's a great conversation to have, how to be more effective in social media using AI, but let's,

let's, that's not where I want to camp out. Let's, let's, let's get into, okay, like what's next?

Where are we going with this? Yeah. Okay. Probably one day AI will become our robotic overlords,

but how do we like, okay, that was the opening question with Kenny, but how do we get past that?

How do we be aware of that? What do we need to do today to prevent tomorrow? Like, what are we

actually going to do with this AI long term? What, what's the philosophy behind what we're doing with

this space? And so like, if we're going to have that conversation, who do I want to talk to?

Let's bring in Kenny Jang into it. And so that's what I did. We've got Kenny Jang coming into this

conversation. Of course, me with the church digital in this conversation that I'm calling church,

the church bacon. We'll get there in a little bit. And what's next in AI. Okay, everybody, here you go.

Hey, okay. Let's welcome Kenny Jang to the conversation. Kenny, how are you doing today, man?

I'm better now that I'm with you. Listen, anytime Kenny and I can get together, it's, it's always a good

time. Uh, it, it never feels like we're at the same conference in the same state at the same meetup.

Like we just constantly are playing, um, conference roulette. I don't know what to call it, but it's

that's what we should call it. Yeah. Trade, trade, somebody duck on that right now. Um,

but Kenny's one of the original OGs of, of online ministry camp coming out of, uh, liquid church,

right? I mean, it was, it was you, it was Dave Adamson. It was, um, rich Birch at some level.

And, uh, our friend Ben Stapley, like there's been a wealth of people coming out of, of liquid up in

New Jersey. So really good. Yeah. It's a, it's been a really good time. I've, you know,

Tim Lucas is a founding and lead pastor there has just been, um, I don't think he gets enough credit

for the digital savviness and the visionary of, and the reason why I was attracted at first to join

the team there was, he was one of the only pastors that I saw that was preaching to the camera back

in the day. And this is, you know, 20 years ago. Right. And so, um, if you think about it back then,

no one even, we always talked about, you know, how you and I have talked about this, where as a

church online pastor, a digital ministry person, you know, all the other people on staff and all the

other people, they, they always put you down and say, Hey, you know, you're pastoring to invisible

people. Or at the very least, it's like 50 year old guys in their underwear, their parents' basement.

You know what I mean? Like they're still living with their parents and stuff like that. Like,

and back then, um, liquid was just one of those churches that really understood the potential

that, um, there's, there's this thing called the internet and we could use it for God's purposes

and his kingdom. So I, you know, I know Dave Adamson is quoted as saying like, he is internet

pastor number nine, like he was the ninth internet pastor on the planet. I'm curious, have you

mathematically figured out where you are, you know, on the number line here? Uh, there was a Twitter

thread somewhere that, um, people started to chime in. I don't remember where I was on that list. It was

pretty, it was pretty fun to watch. And then some people would like recuse them of the list to say,

no, I wasn't an actual, you know, my, I think the, again, this is how nerdy our, uh, community is,

Jeff, right? People are still nervous. Like my title was not church online pastor. It was like

digital media specialist. And so they're like, they took themselves off the list or some people

would add them. So the, the, the list kept on changing. Um, I don't know where I am somewhere in

the top 20 or something like that, but I will say it, it's a family. It's not a list. It's when I

think it's the same thing today. Anybody who's a church online pastor, social media pastor, uh,

we like to trade notes. We like to share what's working, what's not. Um, and as we always say,

Jeff, anybody who, who, you know, sticks out their neck and say, Hey, this is the way to do it.

All you guys are doing it wrong. You got to ban that person and run because that's not the way to do

digital ministry, right? We're in it together. That's, that's, that's incredible. Well said.

And I have a feeling we're going to come back to that theme probably in a little bit here within,

within the podcast. So, so really cool. If you had, if you do not know Kenny Jang, uh, man of many

talents, uh, church tech today.com, uh, he's, uh, with actually exponential next formerly leadership

network is their AI next director. Really excited to see him come on board into that position. Uh, to be

honest, he's a, uh, a voice of artificial intelligence for, for the church in general.

And I wanted to have a conversation here, uh, talking about artificial intelligence back here

on, on the podcast. And it's like, well, who am I going to bring in? And, and, you know,

the question the was like, okay, do I bring in Kenny Jang or do I go, no, let's just bring

in Kenny Jang. Cause they're really like, he's, he's the top dog in this space. So really glad

to have Kenny, uh, in this conversation. Cause, cause I really wanted to have this heartfelt,

heartfelt conversation right here. This question right off the bat. I want to know Kenny Jang's

answer to this right here. You ready? Uh, will the human race be one day enslaved by robot

overlords? True or false?

Uh, yes, let's move on.

Like it's, I mean, it's, it's inevitable. Somebody asked me the other day, they were like,

so like artificial intelligence, what's your take? And I was like, oh yeah, we're all doomed

one day, but we might as well enjoy it today. Right? So I think the question is, is it Tuesday,

Thursday, Friday, what, what, what 2 PM, 7 PM? Like let's just put it on the calendar. Um,

will the human race be enslaved by robot overlords? I think, look, there's a lot of fear out there.

And I always like to say, um, a couple of years ago, FOMO was the word of the day. We were

social media was creating all this FOMO as a mental health issue right now. And going forward,

it's going to be replaced by full low fear of looming obsolescence, right? And that's what is

driving a lot of the conversations that people are fearing, fearful that the machine will take over

terminator skynets. Um, you know, I think there's a lot of danger and you look at the AI experts out

there, um, talking about what is next, um, and how it's going to prove, you know, progress past the

second brain to what the nerdy term is AGI artificial general intelligence. Um, and that's going to

happen in the next five to 10 years, um, by many of the AI experts, um, from their predictions and

artificial general intelligence basically is when the machine is smarter than us. And I think once that

happens, it's going to open up a Pandora's box of questions and issues that we are not ready.

And the church in particular needs to start grappling with that, um, for sure. And so, um, yeah, I think

whether or not it actually happens, um, there's a lot of things before that, that we have to grapple

with together as a community in the kingdom. All right. So my mouth is literally salivating at the

idea of the conversation of the church and artificial general intelligence. Like we're going to get to

that here in a little bit, but in fairness, let's back up and kind of, kind of walk our artificial AGI

like that bluntly. That's the first time I've heard that term. And I am really excited to dive into

that. So, um, but let's get back because, cause it's all about right now it's about chat GPT and,

and, uh, generative AI. And that's, that's been all over the place. It's, it's funny. I can remember

in 2018, uh, I was part of a panel at the church it network and there was, uh, uh, I forget where,

I think we were maybe Washington DC, Kansas city, one of those two that year. And, uh, I was on this

panel. There was a sociologist who was saying, you know what? Um, when AI takes over,

we're going to see a boom, it's going to be a human Renaissance era because the first thing

artificial intelligence is going to do is it's going to take all the, uh, the, the remedial,

all, all of the mundane jobs, take out the trash, weed the yard, like, you know, mow, like all,

all this stuff, do the dishes, all this stuff that humans don't want to do. AI is going to do it.

And then, and then what's going to be left, the, the humans are going to be, have all this time to

explore art and write and create. And there's going to be this Renaissance era again. It's the

second, second wave of the golden, whatever Renaissance, what the garbage happened? Because

all I see is, is Canva. I see art. I see, I see they're doing all the writing, like the value of

content, some levels gone down the drain because AI is all people are publishing books that are a hundred

percent AI. Like how, how did we get here? And is this a good place to be?

Uh, yeah. So, uh, you know, the cost of good content, um, has not gone down. In fact, it might've

gone, has gone up. Uh, the cost of junk content is going down to zero. Right. And, uh, that's what

you're seeing. I do think that, I don't know, this is a double-edged sword, Jeff, we can go down two

different. It's like choosing your own adventure, which conversation and go down. There is one sense

that AI has kind of started to peel back the layers and expose the fact that all this stuff that we

think is, that's part of our humanity that needs a soul that is human only, um, such as creativity

is really algorithmic, right? Like that so much of what we do as humans, um, actually can be decoded

and can be brought down into algorithms and patterns, um, whether it be language or art,

um, or music even. And so there is one sense of that where it is just exposed, um, or it is,

it is exposing. And I think it's going to, it's going to become even more apparent as the AI becomes

better, smarter, faster, that so much of what we privilege as the human experience, um, actually

can just be, you know, decoded into bits and bytes, ones and zeros. Um, you know, we have AI now being

able to read our dreams, like read brainwaves and read our brain, uh, what, what's actually happening

in the brain, what we're thinking. Um, and so once, once we get beyond that, I think it's going to change

everything. So, uh, in terms of the creativity, yeah, I think that the cost of junk content is going

down to zero. Um, but I think it's like any other tool, Jeff, to be very honest, there's, there's been

other advents in even photography. Let's talk about the camera. Uh, before, before photography, there was

just painting and drawing, right? And you, you invented the camera and all of a sudden there's a huge genre of

photography art. And then from there became video. And now we're seeing, you know, you know, 3d, augmented

reality, VR, like there's so much, there's so much new and more out there, uh, once you zoom out. And, um, I think

that's what needs to happen in this today's day and age. We need to zoom out and see the bigger picture and not get

muddy down into the, the junk content that mid journey and dolly is making because that all that

stuff that you're seeing on the timeline of history, on the evolution of what AI can do is a blip. It's

not even a blip, right? Um, and you, you know that every AI tool that you use today as a, of today's

recording is the worst AI that you will ever experience, right? Whatever tool you are using today is the

worst AI. You'll be embarrassed of what we have today, even six months from now, a year from now,

10 years from now, when you tell your grandkids, Hey, when we were using AI, AI never even like we

would ask it to create a picture and we'd come back with like 10 toes and 15 fingers, right? Like

that's not going to happen in the near future. And so, um, I think you need patience and we got to zoom

out. Those are the two things that we need right now. That's, that's really interesting. The, but the,

you've said junk, um, junk content several times. Like I would love to drill in a little bit. Like

what does, is this 15 fingers, does that make it junk content? That is, is the, the lack of human

soul. Does that make it junk content? Is it, um, 97% accurate or can be guided by prompt? Like

what makes, in your opinion, as the AI expert in the church space, what makes junk content, junk content?

Yeah, I think you're, you're right. I think your little sentiment there of, you know, that, that last

mile, that last 3%, the last 2%, the last 1% that distinguishes something that's machine driven

versus human driven is the thing that allows us as humans to consider that junk. And that's all

subjective. And it really depends on the application use case, et cetera. Sometimes that 1% doesn't

matter. Sometimes the 1% does matter. Right. And so that's where, um, you know, uh, Kevin Roos,

the New York times columnist and an author, he's talked about some of the categories where, uh, AI

will not replace, uh, human work. And one of the categories is when your margin, uh, for error is

low, very low, like zero. For example, you would never want to assign a handling of the nuclear codes

to AI because the margin of error is zero, right? You don't want AI to make a mistake, misjudge

something, and then set off all the nuclear bombs. And so that's a place where your margin of error is

zero, literally zero versus there's many other places. Maybe an AI, uh, robot that does my hair

cuts probably has a lot larger, uh, margin for error that would be acceptable. But I do think it's,

it is that it is whatever that last mile is, is the thing that causes the junk. Um, and I think

that's, that's where, when you get to artificial general intelligence, when the AI is smarter than

us, and there's going to be this incessant drive to, to, um, get the results in terms of excellence in

our, in our, uh, eyes to as close to zero as possible, that margin is not going to be distinguishable.

Right now you can tell 15 fingers, um, on something, right? That's easy to, to do, but at some point,

the AI is going to become smarter and smarter and smarter where it's not going to, it's, it's literally

going to get to a point where it's, you're talking about, it's going to mess up on three hairs, uh,

on a head versus, you know, three heads on a picture, right? Like there, there's a point where

at what point does it become indistinguishable to you and me as humans?

This, this is, this is fascinating. Okay. So generative AI, let's focus on gen AI for now.

Yeah. We'll get to the, get to the, get to the other in a second. AGI. I literally cannot wait.

I'm like, I'm like itching to get in there, but right here, right here, generative AI. Um,

what should we, the church, um, how should we use this? Like what are okay things to do? And I'm

hearing you, maybe it's, it's the last mile we got to figure out what, what shouldn't we do?

Like what's the, what's taboo? Is there anything taboo that we should not be utilizing, um, from a,

from a philosophical standpoint? That's a good question. I, again, I think it's very subjective.

And this is one of the things where I think we just need more conversations in our own communities.

Um, both the secular, larger general culture, but also very specifically, uh, within the believer

community of the kingdom. And so I would say the first place that I would think of is, um,

anything where we feel like there's a risk of dehumanizing our own elements of humanity.

Um, it can compliment, but it shouldn't replace those pieces. And when we use AI, uh, in the wrong way,

it dehumanizes the whole experience. Um, so I think that's, that's where we all have discomfort of,

uh, you hear the common objection of, I would never have AI write my sermon for me. Um, and my,

my pushback there is like, why would you ever think that you would do that? Um, the metaphor that I always

say that you should think through is you should look at AI, not as a push button candy machine,

where like you push a button and outcome something like a candy, you open up the shiny wrapper and you

just consume it as is. You should think of AI in terms of a relationship and the relationship you

should think of is a smart seminary student intern. So is the intern going to get everything right?

Nope. Is it going to get stuff 70% there, 80% there, 90% there? Yep. Will it get it right once

in a while? And you're excited? Absolutely. And that's when you jump for joy and you're like,

wow, this thing nailed it. But immediately the next task, is it going to hit it again? No.

Um, what would you do with an intern? You would redirect it. You would mentor it. You would give

it examples of what's good and what's not. You would actually work with it with several iterations.

And so just like you would never assign a seminary intern, the assignment of, Hey,

I need you to write my sermon that I'm going to preach on Sunday and then show up on Sunday

and preach it without reading it. You would never do that. So I think that's a false red herring

argument. You know, when people's like, Oh, we should never get AI to write your sermon. Of course

not. Right. You would never do that with the human helper. Why would you do it with the machine?

Um, so anyway, though, those are the types of things I think that you have to start to think

through, um, you know, where and where you wouldn't use AI. Yeah. The, the seminary intern is,

is a great, I love that example that, that, that is spot on. It's what's, what's the old adage trust,

but verify. Yeah. Like I'm, I'm going to, I'm going to receive that, but man, I don't, I don't know

that I agree with point two here. Let me change it. Like, you know, the use of, I use a, I probably

should have said this earlier or up to the top, but I use AI in my writing all the time, um, to,

to, to come now I'm not going to, if I'll say this officially in Tom Pounder can back me through

the church digital. Anytime that we've copied and pasted an article, 100% from AI, we have said that

at the top and put that as a disclaimer. We actually, we have a thread where artificial,

we ask artificial intelligence all the time. How would you help the church? How would you help a

pastor with sermons? And we copy and paste what AI says back, which is really good stuff. Sometimes

how AI wants to, or it can be a help for the church. But when I use it in my writing, it's,

it's shaping around it. It's yeah, 70%. Let me adjust that. I like what he said here. This is

where I, AI, I don't know what today, he, whatever it is, uh, making adjustments. Uh, what is the,

not even going there? Nevermind. Forget that question, but we can make, uh, adjustments to it.

And then your idea of the 70%, um, it's a helper. It's a helper. It's a helper. It's spot on pastoral

care. Would you outsource pastoral care to a seminary intern student that just joined your staff

this week and be just started seminary this month? No, you wouldn't. Right now. Would you lean on an

intern to potentially do some research on some pastoral care issues that you come across that

you haven't actually encountered before? Um, would you role play with the intern for, uh, stuff that

deals with pastoral care issues before you actually engage the parishioner? Absolutely. Would you

brainstorm on a whiteboard and try to come with outcomes and suggestions that would be follow-up,

uh, for a session? Absolutely. So those are the types of things where I think the biggest risk is

over-reliance, over-reliance on AI that you think that is this big, shiny, you know, magical button

that will do anything and everything for you. And that's really not the case.

Yeah. There was a, maybe you remember the story better than I do. I, you know, I think we talked

about this on a, on a leadership network podcast. You and I did something, but there was a church,

um, that somebody came up with this idea with the church. This was earlier this year, or excuse me,

23, early 23, that the entire church service, the sermon, the, the scripts, the flow, the hymns,

everything was, was developed by artificial intelligence. Yeah. And, um, like, first off,

hats off to the creativity. I would say for whoever made the decision to let chat GPT or whatever tools

they use speak into that, like, that's a, that's a, that's a gutsy move. Um, and so like the,

the creativity and the freedom to explore that, I actually give credit, uh, credibility to, um,

but the negative responses from the church, um, angry that they're letting a computer speak into

something sacred, like the flow of blah, blah, blah, whatever. Um, like not a lot of people agreed

with me or were that comfortable with that. Like, what's your take on something like that? Are you,

are you comfortable with that level of freedom of artificial intelligence or how, how do you feel

around? Yeah. I, so I think there's been more than, there's been two that I know of that has

done something like that. I didn't think both cases, they have advertised it as such. So it's

almost, you know, one extreme, one point of view, you might say, oh, that's just a publicity stunt.

Um, but on the other side, it's responsible in the fact that it's just complete transparency of what

they're doing. And they're trying to see what God has in store for them. Now, I will say, um, in that

argument, in that, you know, boxing ring, uh, when we're discussing, should we do that? Should we not do

that with AI to that degree? I think it comes down to fundamental. Like if you go to like the

Toyota five wise questions, like, what do you believe? What do you believe? Why do you believe

that? Why do you believe the fundamental thing that will determine where you fall on the, that issue,

I think is, do you believe that God can do anything in the divine with something digital?

Is there divinity potential in the digital? I think that you have to answer that question for

yourself very seriously. And if you say no, that digital stuff cannot be used by God and his divinity

to redeem, to do anything, that the Holy Spirit is not able to do anything in that realm. Then I think

you have a roadblock and there's no discussion. If you do believe that there is some ability for divinity

to actually do its thing with digital properties, then that opens the door. Um, and then, then it's

becomes a question of responsible use. And how do we use it? Uh, how much do we use it? Where do we use

it? When do we use it again? Um, it's like you bought a hammer to build a house. You don't use the hammer in

every, uh, every place, right? It's not, I say it's, it's the opposite of Sriracha sauce. Sriracha sauce

goes great with everything or some other, someone else told me you should use the excuse of bacon.

It's not like bacon. Bacon goes with everything. Um, there's, you know, AI is not bacon. You need

to use AI responsibly and you need to pick and choose where you're going to use it. And so I think

that's, that's what it comes down to though. Do you believe that there could be something divinely

done through the digital? That is the question. Okay. I'm gonna, I'm gonna be point blank with you

right now. That response from you actually shocked me. AI is not bacon. Now we can set the, set the

actual words aside, but I'm going to be, I'm honest here, Kenny. I was not expecting you to tell me in

this interview that you cannot use AI to do everything. Like I'm, I'm genuinely surprised

that you are telling me that there are things that AI can't like, I'm just, I don't want to speak for

other people, but I know like a lot of your contemporaries that AI people in the church space

would not agree with you that they're there. Yes, you can use to me, 2023, I'm going to be honest.

2023 felt like it was the year of, of artificial intelligence being the disruption. And, and I,

I'll be my, and I've said this publicly several times. I didn't feel like AI needed to be the headline

of 23 that so much attention became on that, that it was distracting from, from other key component.

I'm not talking digital church. I like just in general, like everybody got stuck on this thing

of AI and it became the disruption where AI, like I agree with you. It needed to be salt. It needed to

be the secret sauce. It needs to be the thing that's underlying, that's helping. It's not that,

not the headline. And what you're telling me is it's not bacon. And so I like, I'm, I'm literally,

I don't know what else to do with this interview. We'll figure out something. We'll get into AGI,

but like, I just am shocked right now that that's what you're telling me.

Yeah. I mean, come on. I think you're, it's easy to understand why, because it's like anything

else in life, what else is universal that you're going to apply and slather it on to everything?

There's, there's nothing else that, that fits that category. Now, is there potential for AI to

be tangential to almost everything that you do? Absolutely. Is there potential for AI to have some

sort of impact or maybe it's influencing things that are earlier in the workflow before it gets to

your main events? Absolutely. Or, or afterwards. Um, but it doesn't need to be, again, I don't,

I don't think it's responsible for us as Christians to, to, to use it as a hammer and going around trying

to fix everything with a hammer. It's just not just, that's not how life works. That's not how

technology works. Um, and so one of those things I think is just, let's be level-headed and not get

carried away with, um, the bandwagon. All right. Well, you heard it here first. Kenny Jang says AI is

not bacon. Kenny, I'm going to say this. Like I, I have a joke here on the podcast that if,

if something is tattoo worthy, it's something to be remembered. And, uh, AI is not bacon. Like

that's tattoo worthy. So I would put your name on my body as a tattoo. That's hilarious. I, I might

be called that as heretical. Uh, the bacon lovers out there, there might be an uproar.

So, uh, listen, when I look at, at AI, like even in the, in the sermon, what, what I love about

even sermon prep on that, the, the, the 70, uh, percent intern we're talking about here, uh, is,

is this idea that, that it can help normal people step into that space or maybe take some pressure

off that pastor away from sermon prep to put it more into community into other, like it's, it's a

time saver. It's that research assistant of, of, of what you're describing. You know, I mean,

I can remember, you know, earlier conversations about, you know, I've made jokes about pastor

Google about how Google oftentimes does that. We're typing in, you know, give me, give me an

outline or give me a verses that are on this and, and, and it generates some, some of that. But

honestly, all of this is some level of concordance or a commentary where we're going even to these

old school books to, to help us get definition and understanding towards what we're reading in

scripture, which even gets back to even some of the earlier concepts of what we were talking about,

where, you know, maybe it's, it's, it's receiving the information digitally or receiving the

information from AI, but not necessarily receiving the, the application from AI. Like I may read a

commentary from some German guy from the 1600s, which may mean something great for him in his

context. But in 2024 context may have changed on that. And so I'm going to have to be free to adapt

that with AI. I think we need to have that same theory. What do you think?

Absolutely. Again, your, um, example of, Hey, it's kind of like a Bible commentary, right? It's

like Google, like, um, and it goes to attribution, right? Like every pastor, I, I clear majority of

pastors out there. Let's be safe. Clear majority pastors out there during their sermon prep uses Google

at least once in their sermon prep, right? Let's just be safe. The clear majority, right? Let's not

say all. Do you provide attribution when you preach it that I used Google during my sermon prep? No.

Um, because that behavior has become normalized. Um, AI is not normalized yet, right? You'll only,

I think only 14% of the U S has used chat CPT so far. It's still in the early stages of the adoption

curve. Um, now maybe this is going to be equally mind bending because I'm going to go the other

direction. I totally agree. You can't use, you can use, you can use AI to cut down on sermon prep time

and help you find richer ways of saying things. You could use it to actually, um, not just spell check

and grammar check, but logic check, argument check, as I call it, your, your sermon. Like you can use

AI to, to say, Hey, is my arguments logical in my, um, assumptions and setup of the premise of my sermon

and the call to action at the end? Is there a better way to say that? Is it something that a

specific segment of my audience would receive? Well, is there a way to improve it? Right? There's

all this stuff that AI can actually, um, make it sharper for you, but here's the thing. Here's my

question. And I think this, we might lose a couple of people in the audience. Um, at you, you should

timestamp this Jeff, because you might have a drop after this. What happens, right? When AI,

AI, which has basically at some point going to read every single book under the sun,

going to know all the special, uh, specialties and expertise, uh, out there. Um, it's going to know

every communications framework. It's going to understand how to be persuasive more than you

and me or anybody else. It has the general knowledge of everybody. What happens when AI can write a sermon,

a manuscript that you can actually deliver and it is more productive than anything that you've ever written

as a local pastor in your history. You write 50, 52 sermons a year as a local pastor. And then

this AI can actually write a sermon manuscript that you can deliver next Sunday and that it will actually

bring to faith more baptisms than anything that you've done on an average Sunday in the past.

What happens when we use that as the measure of productivity and says, we could write messages,

heralds of the gospel messages that can be read out and brings people to faith decisions for Christ

on a consistent basis. What happens then?

Do you, I'm a side sidebar here. Great question. Do you think artificial intelligence will actually

be unfiltered enough to make that happen? I mean, the reason, let me context this, like I've used

artificial intelligence, what, which religion is right. Um, and, and it gives me the PC answer.

All religions are equal and it gives me the Christian, the Jewish, the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Because, you know, somewhere is, somebody's got a filter on, that was Jarvis, Jasper, Jasper AI.

That wasn't chat GPT, but, um, Jarvis is a completely other AI, not for conversation today.

But, um, the, the, the heart of it is somebody's got it locked down. Do you think it's actually

going to get to the place where it'll be unfiltered and allow it to, to operate the way that you're

describing that specific to Christianity, to bring people to the throne of Christ?

Oh, I think those are two separate questions. I think with a handler, like you and me at prompting

AI, um, in very soon, if not together, if you, you and I had a, um, if you and I worked together

writing sermons enough every single week, I do think we could probably employ the knowledge that

the databases and the LLMs have to write sermons that are rock solid, that are better than,

let's just, let's do a low bar, forget about the high bar, that, uh, a seminary student who

just graduated that has never preached a sermon in his life. If that seminary student, she's

never actually done anything in terms of a live audience. Can we write a better sermon with AI

that actually has more fruitful outcomes than that, that person? Probably, you know, because

our AI, right, is stacked in our favor because it knows, um, we could feed it and give it scores of,

uh, these are the sermons that have brought people to Christ at revivals. Um, Billy Graham,

Tim Keller, et cetera, et cetera. We could actually have it realize what are the things within a sermon

manuscript in terms of homiletics that actually can bring people to Christ that makes those logical

arguments in culture contextually for any given sub segment. I am sure that we could do that. If we

had enough resources, time, energy, you know, brains about us to actually wrangle the machine,

we should be able to do that. I, and that's a totally different question. What you're talking

about of unfiltered, can it really find the truth as we see it and align that way? Um,

I think that question, um, is twofold. One is it all depends on who's prompting and how it's being

prompted. And so that's why this evolution of AI technology is really important to watch. Um,

but many people say that like all these LLMs and these AIs are biased, but most of the time,

it's really how you prompt it, what you put into it. Right. And so, um, yeah, so I don't know if

that's helpful. Those are two different places. I tell you, next time we were at the, the conference,

um, next time we both went on the conference roulette, you and I will sit around a Starbucks

and, and we're going to talk about how we bring artificial intelligence to Christ.

Uh, because if it has the opportunity to be sentient, um, I think it has the opportunity

to at least better understand who Jesus is. And I probably lost half the audience with that right

there. Uh, and so we, we can have that conversation and, uh, and see how that goes. We can get a whole

bunch of people mad at us heading down that road. Um, hey, let me ask, uh, maybe just real quick

here. Let's, let's, let's, let's pivot a little more towards the practical, because then I want

to get to this AGI whole thing that, that I want to wrap my brain around. Um, this is going to be so

good. Um, how do we use AI? So we, let me, let me contextualize here. How normal people,

like I even think 70% seminary student, like that's, that's a, that's a high bar. How does a,

how does a soccer mom, how does a, a bivocational dad, how does a, you know, somebody that's in the workplace,

marketplace, how do they utilize artificial intelligence to, to be more pastoral? Um,

what are some things that they can do with these tools or what tools exist that, that can help them,

um, be met, be more pastoral in the workplace, at home, um, maybe even helping out in their church.

Like what, what makes, what's jumps out to you with that question? Yeah. I mean, I think, um,

depends on the demographic segment, right? Like for example, uh, Snapchat users have had access to

their own AI pal as a chat, um, conversation partner for a while within the app. And it's,

it's being used by a significant portion. Um, we talk about chat GPT because we're old fogies,

but Gen Z and younger, the number one AI website is not chat GPT for them. It is characters.ai where

you're having conversations with different people, um, authors, historical figures, celebrities,

et cetera. Um, and so people are just using it. Instacart is coming out with AI where that you're

going to be able to say, Hey, I've got, you know, craving for Mexican. I've got these three ingredients in

the fridge. What else do I need to, you know, what do I need to make a, um, a quesadilla or something

like that? And then it can figure out what's missing, put it into the cart and have it delivered

and give you the recipe. Um, we're going to see these advancements where AI is just going to be

baked into everything that we are surrounded with. Um, on a practical basis, I think what's going to

happen is you're going to see, and you see in some circles already that people are stopping, um,

the usage of Google and they're just asking chat GPT, you know, as, as the LLM, the data set and what

they draw from, it just becomes bigger and bigger and rivals Google's crawl of the web. Um, why wouldn't

you, right? If, if all things are equal and, and chat GPT has the same amount of data and web pages and

content inside it as Google, why wouldn't you just ask chat GPT versus Google? And you're seeing the

races happening with all of these search engines, uh, figuring out what to do. And that's why you're seeing,

you know, barred, um, you know, integrates AI chats into everything that they are offering now. I mean,

there's all these implications for business models and all this kind of stuff. Um, but the end of the

day is you're going to see people spend more time on these search engines or these, um, chat bots,

search engines that have chat bots integrated in them. People are just going to spend more time

there because instead of making a search and clicking on the, to go off of the search engine

to find an answer, the answer is right there. And not only that, you have followed questions and

conversations and you're just going to get, you know, richer responses. So the answer in terms of how

do we help normal people use AI to make their lives easier? People are just going to use it and ask

questions all that day. Right now I've got, uh, chat GPT hooked up to my phone with Siri. So I'm literally

talking to chat GPT and it's responding everything in a voice manner, uh, Alexa and Siri are, they've

announced they're being upgraded to, um, have LLM chat bots integrated into that. Now for the pastoral

side, how do you have the believer, the Christian start to use it? I think it's the same thing as if

you had a really good friend is just being able to ask questions. You know, I just met with my friend,

Jeff, he's going through a hard time. He just had XYZ circumstances. What's the best way that I would

be able to support my friend, right? Those are the questions that you want to ask to get advice and

counsel. I think that's, that's probably, um, the best way because most of the times, the best way to

be pastoral, those opportunities are, are times and circumstances where we don't have the specialty or

we're not aware of what the, you know, what the background is and just getting up to speed with

what does that mean on their side to be empathetic is probably one of the easiest ways that you could

start to use AI. Does it make sense? Oh, so good. Yeah. And you, but the good news is you're hopefully

in tune with the spirit and have that, you know, going on in your own and Hey, artificial intelligence

says that I should say this. Like, does that, does that line up? Once again, you're, you're a seminary

student, 70% done. Like there's some things you're going to be like, I don't know that I would actually

do that. Or that may not make sense in context of my friend. Uh, and so being able to vet that,

but use it as a, as a, as a compliment, as it, as an aid or something like that. I, I, I love that

context. Cool. Well, role-playing is great. Jeff, like role-playing with AI is great. You can say,

Hey, I want to role-play with you. I've got my friend, Jeff. He's going through a hard time.

X, Y, Z is happening with him. Um, what, what are the, some of the things that I should actually,

you know, maybe offer, or should I actually send a note? What should I say? How do I say it? Right.

And then you might say, okay, then I'm going to say this. What might be the responses? Because

there, there's, it's a choosing an adventure, right? Like it's not, it's not just a given what

you're going to say back. Um, and so what might, you know, what should I expect that Jeff might come

back with? Like, he can be pissed at me. He can embrace and hug me. He can be, you know, ghost me.

Like what, what are the options on the other side? It's kind of like a, a war games, right? You got this

other conversation partner to role-play so that you can actually work things out and then

contextualize it and make it your own. And I think that's, it's just one of this, it's a coach right

by your side to give you advice and counsel and, um, that's safe and that you can try things out with.

I think that's the best way in terms of being pastoral with the other people in your lives,

whether it's someone at work, someone that is a family member, someone that you know intimately,

someone that might be a stranger, a neighbor that you really haven't talked to ever down the street

and you notice something. Um, that's where I would, I would look at the, the opportunity to be pastoral

with your spheres of influence. I love it. I love it. Contextualization is so key, even when working

with AI. Okay. All right, let's do it. Um, I literally, I'm going to read from the question

that I have on my screen that I told you in advance. Okay. There's generative AI,

like what's next, what's this next wave of AI. And now you're telling me there's this thing called

AGI, artificial general intelligence. So tell me about that. Is that next? And in like, how do I,

how do I prepare for that? Yeah. I, you know, we are now seeing everything that's text-based, right?

Chachapiti started off as text. You put in text and it comes back as text. Um, now you're seeing

Chachapiti. Now I, I, today, um, I put in text and I got back images. They use their Dolly system.

And, uh, it's called multimodal. Um, me, it's just a nerdy way of saying it can now, AI is going to be

able to process text, images, audio, video, and then it's going to be able to come back to you with either

text, images, audio, or video. Things are going to get smarter and smarter and smarter, right?

So some of these chatbots, you can now upload, uh, an image and it could read it and make sense of it.

And you can ask questions about it. Um, there was a demo I just recently saw. Someone took a picture

of their fridge open and asked, what can I make in the next half hour? And I identified all the food

elements and then gave it some recipes. Um, you, you can now upload, uh, PDFs. Um, I just did that

with Claude the other day. I uploaded a PDF. It was a long PDF and I asked it to summarize it and give me

some learnings and questions and where I should go next, right? And so, uh, multimodal is next.

After that, um, you're getting to stuff where I think it's going to be hyper-personalized. It's not

going to be like chat GPT, which is kind of like a public machine that we all go to the time town

square. There's this chat GPT box at the bit there. We put in their queries, we do it and we come back,

right? Um, we're going to have hyper-personalized AI. So AI is going to follow you and know anything and

everything, every email that you've written, all the calls that you make, um, all of the, um,

GPS on your phone and track you of where you go, how long you go, what days, what times your

preferences. It's going to know that I prefer window seats on a plane because I like to sleep

and put my head against the wall instead of like bobbing in the aisle and getting hit by the cart in

the, in the, in the aisle, right? Um, it's going to understand those preferences. And so it's going

to become a second brain, um, an assistant. AGI is beyond that, right? Like AGI is the ability to

understand, to learn, to apply, to get smarter, um, by itself, to make decisions. Um, and so it's

going to become much more personalized, much more versatile. It's going to have applications that are

beyond, uh, what is available today, right? Today we live in a world that's almost like,

hey, there's an app for that, right? Over a thousand AI apps were launched last month alone

because they're single use focused. Um, AGI is going to bring us intelligence that you can tackle

a wide variety of problems, uh, making it useful throughout, uh, every, everything that you do

that's connected, right? And because there's continuous learning, what it learns in one side, like maybe on the

food side of cooking, what you cook, what you buy will affect, uh, the other parts of your life.

Um, it's going to be able to solve problems. Um, and so it's not going to be something where

you just ask it questions, what to do. It's going to help you predictively give you, um,

answers and suggestions and recommendations like never before.

So what's the helpful side of that. And what's the dear God, it's all over side of that. Like

what's the, give me both sides of the coin. Why, why am I happy about this? And why am I terrified?

Um, I mean, the pros I think is just going to be your life is, has the potential to be radically improved.

Um, not just us, but in societies and stratas of economies where, um, you know, they just don't

have that ability and the resources, right? So it's democratization of so much education always

is a democratization force, right? And so this is just something on steroids.

Um, on the con side, I think you got, um, ethics and safety and all these things, right? Like it's

things that we have not figured out yet. And this is why I say we need more conversations,

right? So even, even the basics that we kind of accept today is the self-driving cars that have

already hit the streets, right? Um, at some point when they're fully autonomous, we have to,

someone has to programming in the morality and the ethics, right? So like when you're going down the

street with driving a car and it identifies, um, it's going to have to crash no matter what,

do you kill the one person on this side of the street or do you veer off and kill three people,

the crowd? It has to make a decision that it's going to kill somebody or ram into someone at 60 miles

per hour. It must make that decision. You have to program that in and who does the programming,

right? And that's on so many different levels across so many different issues and so many

circumstances. So ethics, safety, all those concerns, I think is really important. Um,

and then the other part, I think that's a con is just unpredictability. We don't know what it's

going to do because AGI means it can learn by itself. It can make decisions and learn by itself and

do it. So, um, I was talking with someone who, um, talks with is one of the major, uh, significant

companies in our, in our world. And they recently found out that their AG, their artificial intelligence,

uh, came across something, realized that it was in a language. Um, it did not know. And so it went off

and learned that language without telling anybody. Um, and then another one is it created another language

that was much more efficient than human language because human language is inefficient. Like

English language is the poster child of that, right? Anybody who is an ESL student

will agree that English is just crazy, right? So many exceptions to the rule. There's exceptions,

the exceptions, the exceptions, right? Like I was on a TikTok, um, rabbit hole the other day with some

really hilarious videos of just making fun of how unpredictable the English language is. Um, and so

the, the AI for this instance, I think came up with a much more efficient language that was consistent

and made sense. Um, I was totally going to ask you like, how real is this concept or how many years

is it going to take for AGI? No, we're, we're, we're here already. We're already there. We're

already there, right? Like, um, I, this, this last round of conferences, I, I've, I was showing one,

two clips and one of them was, uh, MIT scientists who have figured out how to use AI

to use wifi signals. So the router that's in your home, my home in the office today is radio signals

bounce off of things and come back and it uses wifi to effectively turn into, um, cameras because it

created 3d scans of bodies and understands movements. And so think of surveillance issues

just by using wifi that's already installed. Wow. Right. And the fact that it can decode and

and read our thoughts and brains and our dreams like that to me is wild. Now that's not in the

future. It's not sci-fi that actually happened already. And the demos in the conferences are

afterthoughts, right? Like that's, they are showing you what has happened already months ago,

if not years ago in the lab that through MRI scans, that they are literally recreating thoughts,

um, and dreams, dreams of what you're dreaming. AI can read with the right circumstances and really

understand what you're thinking. Uh, that's wild. And so imagine you were in a world that that happens.

Now, I think it's on two levels. One is what happens when the AGI, the, the machine itself

starts to understand what we're thinking without saying. And it interprets all that intent. And

then the other one is what happens when humans, which we always have to factor humans that are

become bad actors. When humans have that power to read someone else's brain thoughts.

That, that is scary. So there's all this stuff that I think that's, that's where the follow comes

in the fear of looming obsolescence. And then here's the last one that I think is something

the church needs to wake up on and figure out pretty quickly because society depends on the

church in so many different ways is that there will be significant. Um, what's the word job

displacement, right? There will be, it's like, um, I'm in Jersey, the easy pass toll. Remember,

I was telling my kids the other day when I was growing up, every one of these easy pass lanes

where you would just drive the speed through the toll booth had a human that would be there to give

out a ticket and take a ticket and you would have, and the kids were like, what? Then there would be a

line of cars like you would that they would have to give change to every single car. Yes. Um,

there, there has been massive job displacement machines and technology taking the jobs of humans

forever, ever since technology has been created. Um, but we are going to see it accelerate even more.

And so what do we do with that? How do we, can the church provide relevance to the community

on two levels? One is just on a very tactical basis of, um, skill development, right? Um, and, and

helping them with job displacement. Um, and the second one is identity, identity. What is your meaning and

significance? Um, when, uh, think of this on the, on the ladder of humanity, we've been told in the Bible

that we are the top of the ladder and that we have dominion over everything. We're the boss of this

world, right? What happens when machines are smarter than us and can make better decisions and can be more

fruitful in many different factors than us. When our identity is no longer tied to being the smartest

thing on this planet. How does that change our identity? What does that mean? What's our purpose? Where

do we fit in, in compliment to AGI? I think there's a lot of existential questions that we have to answer

for, for, for the masses and the church, um, not only as an opportunity, but maybe responsibility

to lead that conversation. No. Yeah. So the idea that, that AI artificial intelligence is, can be,

can be better than us. Like that's, um, I mean, that's scary, but it sounds like that's not even a

potential reality. It's the reality of, of where we are, or at least in test labs somewhere that are

being publicly talked about. And Lord knows what's being happening in test labs that we don't know

about. Um, you know, the, the weaponizing of this, like it's, it's, it's, it's a very scary place.

So I would agree with you that the church does have a responsibility. My, my follow-up to that

statement is, I don't think the church is ready to handle that responsibility. Like how do we in 2024,

how do we, the church in 2024 begin to prepare ourselves? What do we need to be asking? What

do we need to be looking at? Who do we need to be talking to? Right. How the crap do we wrap our

brains around some of the stuff that you're talking about here? Right. Who cares about chat GPT?

That's like elementary school to some of the stuff that you're describing here. Like how do, how do we,

you know, hormonal, crazy teenager IAI? That's the thing I'm scared about. How does the church get into that?

You know, I think it's one of those things where, again, um, the question is, what is our sense of

urgency in trying to become aware, educated and engaged with these issues? Right. Uh, and then

when you say you're scared that the church is not ready for this, I, I agree in many ways and many

times, um, you'll, you'll get the sense that I have a dim view of humanity. All right. And, and the

church in particular, right? However, I think on the counterbalance, maybe this is the conundrum of

when you're speaking to me because I'm, I'm all over the place, one side and then the other. Um,

I do think that you have to have hope, respect, and also faith in what God can do with his church.

It's not our church and it's not up to us. Now, if it was up to us, we're all doomed.

We're totally doomed, right? Um, I think that's the punchline and that's the punchline of this whole

story. We know the, the last chapter of the book. We know how it ends and you know what? We win. We're

on the winning team. Um, and I think that's at the end of the day, what it comes down to is that

God doesn't need us. Uh, God, God's church will march on through time without us, despite us,

in spite of us. Um, and I think that's the hope that I have, um, and that we just need to figure out

how do we become more obedient? How do we become, um, more open to listening to what

that the divine has in the digital? Is that something that we can do? And again, I always say

our dreams are what leads to our fears.

And sometimes you need to dream bigger to, to get past the fear, right? Sometimes we dream and we're

fearful because at the end of the dream, the boundaries of what we dream is a fearful ending.

And yet sometimes I say we need to dream bigger to go beyond that because be right beyond that

is something as much hopeful and that we're just not, we're not looking up.

You got to admit there's some irony though. You just said to dream bigger,

maybe five minutes after you said that AI can read our dreams.

Yes.

Um, and, and I was really enthralled with the fact that AI is not bacon and now, you know, it's,

it's better than me and it's going to take over the world. Uh, but no, I, I do, I do respect the

point. Um, and, and, and, and I, and I love the, the sentiment, you know, historically God's had his

church. Uh, and so we've, we've gone through seasons where we as humans have screwed it up.

Uh, but God is the same yesterday, today and forever. And, you know, two, 2000 years, uh,

worth of history has not brought an end to his church. Uh, and Christ is still, um, reigning ruler.

And so as of that, you know, we, we put our hope and faith and trust in him, uh, and, and hope that,

uh, that reigns true as the robotic overlords. No, I'm kidding. Kind of, maybe I'm not, I'm not

actually sure. I may be a little down right now. I'm a little fearful. I got to dream bigger.

Yeah. I think it's this, it's what we're doing right now. Right. I think it's not being, um,

able to, um, don't let yourself succumb to the echo chambers and that things are better in community.

And the more discussions and conversations we have about these things is the path forward. We might

know, we might not see the answer and what the next step should be, but the more we actually come

together as a community, the better we'll see in terms of having a vision for what's next and how we

should respond. Yeah. So good. So good. Kenny, we got to really overcome this whole conference

roulette thing and figure out how to be in the room at the same time. Absolutely. I, I love spending

time with you. It's been such a good conversation. AGI, AI is not bacon. Like this has just been

inspiring from, from top to bottom. I hope this has been good for, for the audience out there.

And, and we're going to, we're going to have you on again, digging into this, this conversation

centered around AI. Cause I just, I mean, I love spending time with this has been a lot of fun,

but Hey, you know what, as we're, as we're landing the plane here in man, any closing thoughts?

Um, you know, again, I, I feel like the number one, um, the number one thing that's needed in the

church right now is more conversation. You don't need to be the expert. You just need to be the one

that is willing to talk about it. And so whether it's a team huddle, a lunch and learn a conversation

in your small group, you just need to talk about it more and more. And then the second thing I would

say is don't be, don't be the majority, the 86% that have not tried Chachapiti yet.

Right. It's, it's easy to be a critic without actually trying it out. Um, you actually have to

try it out to have any validity and to have any formation of thought that's responsible.

And so I would just say, try it out. Um, start by asking some questions, um, any question.

Um, and so that that's, those are the two recommendations I have the parting thoughts of today.

Awesome. Love it. And so you can, Kenny, if they want to get in touch with you,

like what's, what's the best way to connect?

Um, um, I'm, I'm searchable. You can look me up anywhere. Um, I think probably the, the place that

you, you can find me the, the most these days is in our Facebook group. We got a Facebook group of

over 5,000 leaders. It's called AI for church leaders. Um, it's been an amazing place where

everyone's trading notes and sharing questions and answers with each other. Um, and then AI for

church leaders.com. It's a training library that we are building incrementally, um, case studies,

real examples from real pastors and church staff and leaders of how they're using AI.

And there's a free ebook. There's a free tools report. There's tons of, um, free resources there

for everybody. So, um, I would say those are two places that you might want to check out next.

Awesome. AI for church leaders, Facebook group, AI for church leaders.com. Not to be confused with

Al for church leaders.com. When you type it, you'll understand it's the joke. Uh, but no,

this is, this is great. Kenny, man, thanks for jumping into the, the, the conversation here,

but we're going to land the plane for Kenny. This is Jeff with the church digital. Uh,

thanks for jumping here on, on the podcast. We'll see you next time on the show. Y'all have a good day.

Bye.