NXR Podcast - BONUS EPISODE - Protecting Our Children: How AI Threatens the Next Generation (A Biblical Theology of AI)
Aired: 2023-02-09
Duration: 01:37:35


=== Three Basic Types of AI (07:06) ===

[00:00:00]  All right, listen, guys, I get it.
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[00:00:38]  Thank you so much.
[00:00:39]  God bless.
[00:00:40]  All right, guys, welcome back to another one of our Monday live episodes with myself, Pastor Joel Webbin, host of Right Response Ministries.
[00:00:47]  We do this each Monday at 2 p.m. Central Time.
[00:00:50]  Each Monday at 2 p.m. Central Time.
[00:00:53]  And I'm about 50 50.
[00:00:54]  About half of the time, I'll take questions from our listeners.
[00:00:58]  And about the other half of the time, I have something that I want to address.
[00:01:01]  And today is the latter.
[00:01:03]  There's something that I think is.
[00:01:05]  Relevant, urgent, and significant that needs to be addressed from a Christian worldview.
[00:01:10]  That something is AI, artificial intelligence, most notably or recently having to do with specific forms and tools of AI like ChatGTP, which would be a text form, but also we have things like DALI, which is an imaging processor.
[00:01:29]  It's an AI that can generate images.
[00:01:32]  All these being original images and pictures, you type in a prompt and it gives you something to work with.
[00:01:38]  You further prompt the technology and it gives you something more.
[00:01:42]  So, Chat GTP and Dolly, but all within the larger discussion of artificial intelligence, how should Christians think about this?
[00:01:49]  And particularly, what I want to deal with is how Christians should think about this in relation to our children.
[00:01:56]  As we are seeking to be diligent to fulfill the scriptural command, especially as it has to do with fathers, to train up our children in the fear and ammunition of the Lord, we have a responsibility to.
[00:02:09]  Provide for our children.
[00:02:11]  That includes their education, the shaping and forming of their minds, their Christian worldview, their faith.
[00:02:17]  So, providing for our children, but also protecting our children.
[00:02:20]  There's physical protection, but there's also spiritual and mental protection that's all baked into the pie.
[00:02:25]  And so, how should we as Christians, through a biblical lens, view artificial intelligence?
[00:02:31]  And particularly, how should we view it in light of our role, our God given assignment to provide and protect our children?
[00:02:38]  Okay, so all that being said, Let's start with some definitions.
[00:02:41]  The first thing that we need to understand about artificial intelligence that I think a lot of Christians don't understand, a lot of people in general don't understand, is there are three basic types of AI.
[00:02:52]  There's obviously more complex things that could be discussed that would be above my pay grade, but what a basic understanding that I have that generally kind of covers the field is this you have narrow AI, you have IG or AGI, which is artificial general intelligence, and then you have an idea, it's really just a concept of transhumanism.
[00:03:13]  Okay, so you have AI, artificial intelligence, which really more specifically should be described as narrow AI.
[00:03:20]  And then you have this idea of artificial general intelligence, AGI, and then transhumanism.
[00:03:27]  And so, what we're discussing, what right now is on the horizon and already here, with ChatGTP being one example, Dolly being another example, is what would fall into the category of narrow AI.
[00:03:39]  This is not artificial general intelligence, it's not conscious, is what I'm saying.
[00:03:45]  Transhumanism.
[00:03:45]  So let me just give you a little bit of a definition of these terms.
[00:03:49]  Transhumanism would be like the attempt of people to somehow upload their consciousness onto silicon, silicone, you know, and have, you know, basically uploading their personhood up into the cloud, that they would exist forever.
[00:04:02]  This is the attempt of pagan men who hate God to try to escape their own mortality, to try to be able to escape their own death, to deify themselves, to become as God, man's attempt to be God, right?
[00:04:17]  So this transhumanism, which is to take your consciousness and input it into some computer so that you essentially.
[00:04:23]  Effectively live forever.
[00:04:25]  This is not something that has been accomplished.
[00:04:28]  In my perspective, this is something that will never be accomplished.
[00:04:31]  God won't allow this to be accomplished, I think, on two levels.
[00:04:34]  One, in his sovereignty, in his providence, he would not allow it to be accomplished.
[00:04:39]  We see Psalm chapter 2, right?
[00:04:41]  That the nations rage, that the rulers of this world, they seek to break the bonds apart.
[00:04:47]  What that's referring to is they seek to be autonomous, they seek to have an autonomous, libertarian definition of.
[00:04:56]  Freedom.
[00:04:57]  They don't want to be underneath the banner of a sovereign God who dictates and orchestrates and ordains all things.
[00:05:04]  They hate the deterministic sovereignty of God.
[00:05:08]  They want to be autonomous creatures apart from God's sovereignty, autonomously free, right?
[00:05:14]  So the nations are raging against God and his authority.
[00:05:17]  The rulers of this age, of this world, are seeking to break apart the bonds.
[00:05:22]  They're trying to somehow sever themselves from being under the banner of God's sovereignty and attain.
[00:05:28]  This autonomous freedom, and God's response is this He doesn't even bother to get up off of His throne, as it were.
[00:05:35]  It doesn't even merit an active, as it were, using analogous language, it doesn't even merit an active response from God.
[00:05:44]  He who sits in the heavens, he sits, he remains seated, composed, and he laughs and holds them in derision.
[00:05:52]  So, one, I don't think transhumanism is going to be achieved because I don't believe God and His sovereignty would allow it.
[00:05:58]  But, secondly, I think practically it's not going to be achieved.
[00:06:01]  God is the only capital C creator, right?
[00:06:04]  God is the only one who creates ex nihilo out of nothing.
[00:06:07]  All we do as image bearers of the living God, as human beings made in his image, is that we are creators in a sense.
[00:06:14]  We are lowercase c creators.
[00:06:16]  None of us are able as creatures to create out of nothing.
[00:06:20]  Only God is able to do that.
[00:06:21]  And he has.
[00:06:23]  We are able to take the things that God has made and produce from them other tools and developments and innovations.
[00:06:32]  That's what we're able to do.
[00:06:33]  We're able to multiply resources and take one thing and make another, shape it, form it.
[00:06:39]  But we are not able to create out of nothing.
[00:06:41]  And so, all we're able to work with at the end of the day, as image bearers of the living God, lowercase c creators, is we're able to create with the substance the resources that God has provided for us, namely the materials that God has baked into the world that he has made.
[00:06:57]  And I do not believe that the materials are available, that they even exist, to achieve something like transhumanism, to where we would be able to.

=== The Problem with Narrow AI (08:31) ===

[00:07:07]  Upload our consciousness into some kind of computer framework to where our bodies could die, our physical bodies, but our consciousness could go on eternally existing.
[00:07:20]  That's not going to happen.
[00:07:21]  Now, mark my words, I do think that there will be people in the future who will lie to the general public, those who are naive enough to believe it, ignorant enough to believe it, and say that that's happening, but it won't.
[00:07:33]  I do think that you could get to a point where your memories could be harvested.
[00:07:39]  For those who are foolish, or even for those, you know, not just Neuralink or some kind of chip in your body, which I would advocate strongly against, but not just that, but harvesting your memories and experiences and all these things just through your social media accounts and just your online internet activity, right?
[00:07:57]  This is how Amazon is able to suggest, you know, what things might, you know, spark your interest, what things you might be willing to purchase, because they can see all of your previous purchases and they can see, you know, what websites you've been on and what.
[00:08:11]  Items you've looked at.
[00:08:12]  This is the same as streaming devices, whether it's Netflix or Disney, you know, these things, which Disney would be a great example of something that I would recommend Christians not have, especially for their children.
[00:08:24]  Disney is utterly and entirely woke.
[00:08:27]  They hate God.
[00:08:28]  They hate white people.
[00:08:29]  They hate masculinity.
[00:08:31]  And ultimately, they hate Christian culture.
[00:08:34]  They hate Christ.
[00:08:35]  But for those who have streaming services, all this kinds of stuff, Google would be another example.
[00:08:41]  Google Maps, not just Google Maps, but But Apple Maps, any kind of thing that's getting your directions that knows these are the places that you visit most frequently, and these are the searches that you put in when you're looking for things online that you use most frequently.
[00:08:57]  So, is it possible, in theory, that pagan men who hate God would take a bunch of data that they have about you, your memories and experiences, and these kinds of things, and then from that use a narrow AI tool or device in order to?
[00:09:14]  Predict, right?
[00:09:15]  To search through the log of your memories and then offer a whole host of different scenarios and most likely predictions of what you might say, right?
[00:09:25]  So, where your loved ones are asking you a question, and it's using this deep fake technology, which is real and currently available to mimic the way that you look, mimic the sound of your voice, and then pull from all your past experiences that they have access to to then predict.
[00:09:45]  What you might say and do it in an original format again and again and again, and ultimately lie to your loved ones and say that your consciousness, that so and so is not really dead, their consciousness is going on forever, and you've preserved your loved one.
[00:10:00]  There's a monthly fee that you have to pay.
[00:10:02]  It's going to cost money for us to keep your loved one eternally existing in this digital world to where you can continue to have access to them relationally, and they're very happy.
[00:10:13]  While all that's going on, of course, the reality is that that person is either in heaven or hell.
[00:10:19]  They're not in the cloud.
[00:10:20]  That's just not going to happen.
[00:10:21]  So, transhumanism is not going to happen because God in his sovereignty wouldn't allow it to happen.
[00:10:26]  He would hold the powers that be in derision if he had to, or like the Tower of Babel, he would come and confuse their languages in a literal sense or metaphorical sense to break up that demonic unity against him.
[00:10:42]  So, in his sovereignty, God's not going to allow that to happen.
[00:10:45]  But then also, not just providentially, but practically, I don't believe that.
[00:10:50]  That those materials are available in the world.
[00:10:52]  And for those of you who have been following this show for a while, you're aware that I, you know, in terms of my eschatology, I hold to post millennialism.
[00:11:00]  So I'm not saying that these kinds of things won't happen because Jesus is coming back next Thursday and there's not enough time.
[00:11:07]  I believe that if Christ tarried for 10,000 years, it still wouldn't happen.
[00:11:11]  One, because of God's sovereignty not allowing it to happen.
[00:11:13]  And two, because practically it's not possible.
[00:11:17]  People pretend that it's possible, they can wish, they can dream.
[00:11:21]  But it's not possible.
[00:11:22]  So transhumanism is not going to happen.
[00:11:24]  But beyond just that, I am of the persuasion, this is my opinion, that AGI, this artificial general intelligence, is also not going to happen.
[00:11:33]  So, to define that term for just a moment, the transhumanism is uploading a person's conscience to some kind of computer framework, whereas AGI, artificial general intelligence, would be somehow the machine itself, the computer, the AI attaining consciousness.
[00:11:48]  And what you need to understand about something like ChatGTP or DALI or these other programs, Jasper, different things that are launching on the scene, they're only going to get better and there's only going to be more of them.
[00:11:58]  There's going to be competition, all these different things.
[00:12:01]  As that happens, what you need to understand is that this computer, this technology, Is not conscious and it is not thinking, it is searching and predicting with incredible speed and incredible accuracy.
[00:12:17]  But it is not thinking, so we're not talking about AI like you would see in some kind of horror sci fi movie.
[00:12:25]  That's not what we have.
[00:12:26]  It's not this artificial general intelligence, but it's a narrow AI and a narrow artificial intelligence that searches and then predicts.
[00:12:35]  And so, in that sense, if Christians want To in principle, they say, Well, I don't think that this is right.
[00:12:40]  I don't think it honors the Lord.
[00:12:41]  I think that there's a problem with this and there's a problem with that.
[00:12:44]  And I want to avoid using AI altogether.
[00:12:47]  Well, then you need to trash your smartphone.
[00:12:50]  You need to never use Google or Bing or any kind of search bar, you know, search technology.
[00:12:57]  That is narrow AI.
[00:12:59]  That's a form of artificial intelligence.
[00:13:01]  It's searching and predicting.
[00:13:03]  So you need to get rid of that.
[00:13:05]  Furthermore, you can't use maps on your phone.
[00:13:08]  If you use any streaming device, right?
[00:13:10]  It's predicting.
[00:13:11]  Netflix or whatever it is, right?
[00:13:13]  Whatever kind of scenario you might have, it's looking at the things that you've previously viewed, the things that you've previously liked, right?
[00:13:22]  So it's searching this backlog and then it's predicting what you might click on in the future, what you might find interesting in the future.
[00:13:29]  This is what social media is doing.
[00:13:32]  Social media is ultimately just saying, hey, these are the kinds of things that the person clicks on, the kinds of things that the person seems to be, based off of their past history, interested in.
[00:13:41]  And we're going to keep Putting these things in front of you, predicting what you might find most interesting in any given moment in order to keep you on our site longer.
[00:13:50]  All of these are forms of AI.
[00:13:54]  And so it's a narrow AI.
[00:13:56]  It's not artificial general intelligence.
[00:13:58]  It's not thinking.
[00:13:59]  It's not conscious.
[00:14:00]  It doesn't have personhood or anything like that.
[00:14:03]  But it is searching and predicting at such speed and such accuracy that it appears to us as though there's actual thought.
[00:14:13]  So it looks like thinking.
[00:14:15]  It's not.
[00:14:16]  It is searching and predicting.
[00:14:18]  All right.
[00:14:19]  So, narrow artificial intelligence, that's some of the things that we have right now, like Chat GTP would be an example.
[00:14:26]  Then, this AGI, artificial general intelligence, where a machine actually has consciousness, it's actually thinking.
[00:14:32]  I believe that that is impossible, that that's not going to happen.
[00:14:35]  Again, twofold, because God is in sovereignty, I don't believe we'll allow it.
[00:14:38]  And number two, I don't think that those materials, in a practical sense, are actually in the cosmos that we would need in order to develop such.
[00:14:47]  Such a thing.
[00:14:48]  And then third, transhumanism, not making a machine man, but trying to use a machine, upload a man to a machine to make man God, right?
[00:14:57]  AGI is trying to make a machine man.
[00:15:00]  It's trying to make that artificial intelligence, give it personhood, make it conscious, make it alive in a sense.
[00:15:08]  So I don't think that's going to happen.
[00:15:10]  AGI, I don't think you're going to make machines into men.
[00:15:13]  I also don't think that transhumanism makes men through machines into God, where they could somehow escape.
[00:15:19]  Their own death and achieve immortality.
[00:15:23]  That's not going to happen either.
[00:15:25]  But what I do think we're going to have is further and further developments within this category of narrow AI, narrow artificial intelligence.
[00:15:34]  Chat GTP is just one example of narrow AI.

=== Wealth and the Root Sin (08:09) ===

[00:15:38]  All right.
[00:15:38]  So, now all that being said, we need to have a theology of tools.
[00:15:45]  Doug Wilson has done some great work on this in the first half of his book, Productivity.
[00:15:49]  I'm going to use some of those concepts and I'm going to add to it a little bit of some of my own research, my own thoughts.
[00:15:55]  But the first thing is technology is simply a tool.
[00:15:58]  That's what it is.
[00:16:00]  It's a tool.
[00:16:00]  It's a high powered form of a tool.
[00:16:03]  The question is okay, but what is a tool?
[00:16:05]  The Bible doesn't address tools at great length, right?
[00:16:09]  We don't have long, you know, multiple lengthy passages of scripture dealing with tools.
[00:16:16]  But we do have plenty of scripture outlining for us a theology of wealth.
[00:16:21]  And tools, technology is a form of a tool, and tools are a form of wealth.
[00:16:27]  They're a form of wealth.
[00:16:29]  And so we can look to the scripture and see what does the scripture say the Christian's responsibility is to wealth?
[00:16:35]  One of the things that the scripture says, or I'll start by saying what it doesn't say, the Bible doesn't say that money is the root of all evil.
[00:16:44]  And the Bible also doesn't say, many of you are probably aware of that.
[00:16:48]  You're already ahead of me and thinking, yeah, that's right, it's the love of money.
[00:16:51]  Amen.
[00:16:52]  But the Bible doesn't say that money is the root of all evil.
[00:16:55]  It doesn't also say that the love of money is the root of all evil.
[00:17:00]  The better translation of that is that the love of money is the root of all evil.
[00:17:05]  All kinds of evil, not all evil.
[00:17:08]  It's not as though every sin that has ever been committed throughout the whole course of human history can be tracked back to the love of money, greed.
[00:17:18]  But greed, as what I would consider to be a root sin or a root idol, this root idol of greed can sprout, it can bear the fruit of all different types of sin.
[00:17:32]  So it's not as though all sin that has ever been committed tracks back to the root sin of greed.
[00:17:38]  But greed is, in fact, according to the scripture, it is one of, I would argue, several, but it is one example of a root sin that can give birth, it can produce all different categories of surface sins, right?
[00:17:52]  To give some more examples of root sins or root idols that give birth to multiple expressions of sin at the level of thoughts and speech and actions, some other root idols or root sins would be the love of power, love of control, love of comfort.
[00:18:12]  Pleasure.
[00:18:13]  Another would be, certainly, would be, and we see this throughout multiple places in scripture, but the approval of man.
[00:18:21]  The incessant desire and even need, insecure, incessant need for the approval, not that comes from God as Heavenly Father, but that comes from man.
[00:18:32]  Wanting the approval of man.
[00:18:34]  The fear of man can be a root idol, a root sin that drives all different kinds of surface sins, meaning that.
[00:18:43]  That desire to have the approval and applause of man, being bound in slavery to the fear of man, can cause a person to commit a whole host of different kinds of sin.
[00:18:54]  So, too, the love of money, greed, is not the root of all sin, but it is the root of all kinds of sin, all kinds of evil.
[00:19:04]  So, every category, every major category or expression, physical, outward manifestation of different kinds of sins, different kinds of evil, can in fact come from.
[00:19:17]  Greed, this one root sin.
[00:19:19]  And likewise, you can make the same argument when it comes to the root sin of the approval of man or the root sin of addiction to pleasure and comfort or, you know, fill in the blank.
[00:19:29]  I don't think that there's a limitless amount of root sins.
[00:19:31]  I think there's probably a good four, five, six of them.
[00:19:36]  But then there's virtually limitless expressions, outward manifestations of surface sins that come from these root idols.
[00:19:43]  So, what does the Bible say about the Christian's responsibility to wealth?
[00:19:47]  Well, at first, it warns us.
[00:19:49]  It doesn't say that money is evil.
[00:19:52]  It doesn't say that money is inherently immoral, but it does say that an idolatrous love of money, namely greed, can bear all kinds of sinful fruit.
[00:20:05]  That can be the source of all kinds of sinful fruit.
[00:20:08]  So, the first thing, one of the first things that the Bible tells us about wealth, as we seek to view wealth through a Christian lens, is that we should have a holy suspicion.
[00:20:17]  We should be on our guard.
[00:20:19]  We should be seeking actively, diligently, constantly to guard.
[00:20:23]  Our hearts in Christ Jesus and to guard our minds by the truth of God's word.
[00:20:28]  The heart, as Calvin said, is an idol making factory.
[00:20:31]  So we need to be on guard against making money an idol, loving money in a sinful way.
[00:20:39]  That's the first thing.
[00:20:40]  But then the Bible also says a lot about wealth in terms of positive things that can be achieved by wealth.
[00:20:48]  And a Christian has a responsibility to be ultimately the main word that's used again and again is stewardship.
[00:20:56]  That we are called as Christians to recognize that, in a very real sense, if we're to be literal about it, we as human beings, whether we're Christian or non Christian, we as mere creatures do not own anything.
[00:21:11]  God is the one who owns the cattle on a thousand hills.
[00:21:15]  God made everything, and therefore God has exclusive ownership rights over everything.
[00:21:21]  And so we are simply stewards in the Master's house.
[00:21:25]  This world is a blood bought world, this world belongs to King Jesus.
[00:21:31]  Belongs to him.
[00:21:32]  He's the one who has ownership over the world, but his servants have stewardship responsibilities within his kingdom, within his house.
[00:21:41]  And so we are called to steward wealth in wise, careful, God glorifying, and neighbor loving ways for the good of our neighbor and for the glory of God.
[00:21:54]  That's the Christian's responsibility to wealth.
[00:21:57]  Tools being a form of wealth, and technology being a high powered, sophisticated form of a tool.
[00:22:05]  So, I think the first thing that we should think of is that, well, let's go back to wealth for a second.
[00:22:11]  If somebody has little wealth, then there is little potential for sin, to use that wealth in corrupt ways.
[00:22:21]  There's still plenty of temptation to be greedy.
[00:22:22]  You can be poor and be greedy, you can be poor and be more greedy than somebody who's rich.
[00:22:28]  But in terms of the utilization of wealth, using it for nefarious means, using it in corrupt ways, greater wealth, greater potential for sin.
[00:22:39]  Corruption using that wealth in evil ways and sinful ways.
[00:22:44]  Well, tools, same thing.
[00:22:47]  More tools or better tools, more sophisticated tools, higher degrees of technology, same thing.
[00:22:54]  There's greater potential for good.
[00:22:56]  There's also greater potential for bad.
[00:23:00]  Wealth, in and of itself, and therefore tools and therefore technology, is not inherently evil in and of itself.
[00:23:07]  The question is, how is it going to be stewarded by the Christian?
[00:23:10]  It can be stewarded poorly or it can be stewarded.
[00:23:13]  Well, and there's just a progressively increasing degree of responsibility to steward wisely as that wealth increases.
[00:23:23]  And so, with high power, sophisticated technology, a very, very sophisticated tool, which is a large degree of wealth, is the way that we could understand it, then there's just all the more temptation to use it in bad ways and all the more moral obligation to steward it wisely.
[00:23:41]  Okay, so that's kind of a theology of wealth as it relates to tools, as it relates to technology.

=== The Tower of Babel Explained (02:06) ===

[00:23:48]  Okay, so now all that being said, I want to use a biblical example.
[00:23:52]  Okay, Genesis chapter 11, the Tower of Babel.
[00:23:56]  I've already briefly referenced it, but now I want to go into a little bit more depth.
[00:24:00]  One thing that a lot of Christians are unaware of in this biblical passage is that you have man, and you have man after the course of multiple generations of rebellion against God, right?
[00:24:17]  Because you have The line of Seth, right?
[00:24:20]  So this would be right after the fall, Genesis chapter three, and now you have Genesis four and then five.
[00:24:25]  Four is where we find the dispute between Cain and Abel and how Cain murders his brother Abel.
[00:24:33]  And then you see Abel's now out of the picture, and then you have the line of Cain picking up in Genesis five and the line of Seth.
[00:24:42]  And Seth is righteous, and he's teaching his children the ways of the Lord, training them up, and the fear and admonition of the Lord.
[00:24:49]  And then you have Cain, who is wicked.
[00:24:53]  And from that line of Cain, you have multiple generations.
[00:24:57]  That's where you get Lamech.
[00:24:58]  He's the first polygamist.
[00:24:59]  He's the first guy to take two wives.
[00:25:01]  He's bragging about his violence and all these different things.
[00:25:05]  He's saying, well, if the penalty for hurting or harming or murdering Cain is a life for a life, well, then for Lamech, for me, it's seven times.
[00:25:20]  And he brags about how he abused or hurt or maybe even possibly killed.
[00:25:26]  A young boy who offended him.
[00:25:28]  So he's a wicked man.
[00:25:30]  And this is a few generations removed from Cain.
[00:25:32]  So you have the line of Seth going in one direction, for all intents and purposes, to simplify it, in the direction of righteousness.
[00:25:41]  And then you have the line of Cain going in this direction of wickedness.
[00:25:45]  And with each generation from Cain, you see that they're progressively getting more evil.
[00:25:52]  They're getting worse.

=== Total Depravity in Genesis (07:38) ===

[00:25:54]  Now, at the level of the heart, they're not getting worse.
[00:25:57]  The Bible teaches very plainly the doctrine of total depravity.
[00:26:00]  So, at the level of the heart, people are, well, Genesis 6 15 would be a good example, that every intention of man's heart and every thought was only evil continually.
[00:26:13]  So, at the level of the heart, for the unbeliever, apart from saving grace that comes through faith in Jesus Christ alone, apart from that, apart from being born again and actually receiving from God a new heart and the heart of stone being removed, at the level of the heart, speaking about man inwardly, He's as evil as he possibly could ever be.
[00:26:35]  He only ever sins against God, right?
[00:26:39]  Romans 14 says, anything that does not proceed from faith is sin.
[00:26:44]  Hebrews chapter 11 says, without faith, it is impossible to please God.
[00:26:49]  And an unbeliever can never do anything in faith.
[00:26:52]  I've defined what it is to do something in faith like this.
[00:26:56]  I've said, to do something in faith is to do it with a reliance on God's grace and a desire for God's glory.
[00:27:05]  You could put it like this for a little bit more alliteration.
[00:27:08]  Dependence.
[00:27:09]  So, 2D's dependence on God's grace and desire for God's glory, right?
[00:27:15]  So, the unbeliever, because he's made in the image of God, that image of God has been tarnished through sin, but a vestige of the image of God remains.
[00:27:23]  Unbelievers are still made in the image of God.
[00:27:25]  They bear God's image.
[00:27:26]  And because of that, the imago de and the law of God written on their hearts, even as unbelievers, there's this conscience, this moral compass within them.
[00:27:34]  An unbeliever, at the level of their outward behaviors and speech, actions, outwardly, A non Christian can do things that align, that outwardly align with the revealed will of God, that outwardly align with God's law, God's moral commandments.
[00:27:51]  So, an unbeliever could keep his wedding vows, for instance, and never commit adultery.
[00:27:56]  An unbeliever could not cheat on his taxes.
[00:27:59]  An unbeliever could have ethical integrity in their business practices.
[00:28:04]  An unbeliever can do these kinds of things.
[00:28:06]  An unbeliever could cure cancer in an ethical way.
[00:28:09]  An unbeliever, a whole host of different Outward manifestations of actions or behaviors or speech that align with God's moral will.
[00:28:18]  Inwardly, though, total depravity.
[00:28:20]  All right, so utter depravity would be outwardly, not just inwardly, but outwardly, you're doing as much possible evil as you possibly can all the time.
[00:28:28]  The Bible does not teach a doctrine of utter depravity, but it teaches a doctrine of total depravity.
[00:28:34]  Inwardly, the reason why man is constantly sinning, the sinful man, the unbeliever, apart from becoming a new creature in Christ Jesus and their body being a temple of the Holy Spirit, Apart from that supernatural salvific grace found in Christ Jesus alone, an unbeliever is totally depraved because inwardly everything he's doing is in defiance of God.
[00:28:56]  He could do good things outwardly at the outward level that align with God's moral will, but inwardly there's no acknowledgement of God's grace and there's no desire for God's glory.
[00:29:09]  So if an unbeliever does something that outwardly is morally good, even by God's moral standards, he has done it with a reliance on himself.
[00:29:18]  And a desire for his own glory.
[00:29:20]  Or at best, the best that we could say of the ethical atheist, who is ultimately only ethical because he's behaving inconsistently with his worldview, but plenty of people are behaving inconsistently with their own worldview.
[00:29:35]  They can't help it because they're created in the image of God and they have no choice but to live in God's world, and God's world works in a certain way.
[00:29:41]  And so these people who live inconsistently, right, the humanitarian atheist, the moral atheist, the best that we could say is.
[00:29:49]  Either he's doing everything with a reliance on his own strength and a desire for his own glory, or giving him the most benefit of the doubt.
[00:29:56]  We could say he's doing what he's doing, even those things that outwardly do align with God's moral will that are good things in terms of outward behaviors.
[00:30:04]  He's doing it with a reliance on the collective strength of humanity.
[00:30:08]  Oh, not just my own strength.
[00:30:09]  I'm not just relying on me.
[00:30:10]  That would be arrogant.
[00:30:11]  I'm relying on the team.
[00:30:13]  Couldn't have done it without the team.
[00:30:14]  I'm relying on the collective strength and spirit of humanity.
[00:30:19]  And I'm doing it not just for me, one small step for man, but one giant leap for.
[00:30:24]  Mankind, I'm doing it for the good of people.
[00:30:26]  But what he can't ever do is he cannot do anything with a reliance on God's grace and a desire for God's glory.
[00:30:33]  He could rely on collective humanity and do it for the benefit of others, but he can't ever, apart from salvation and having a new heart, he cannot do anything with an acknowledgement and a dependence, a humility, recognizing the grace of God, that it's only God who created him, it's God who gives him his life and his existence, his.
[00:30:55]  His being, his movement.
[00:30:57]  In him we live and breathe and have our being.
[00:31:00]  And so he's not relying on God's grace, and he may do something for the betterment of others, for mankind, but not for God's glory.
[00:31:09]  In that sense, he is totally depraved.
[00:31:11]  Not utterly depraved, outwardly doing as much evil as possible, but totally depraved inwardly at every turn, everything he does, even good things, ultimately is an offense to God.
[00:31:23]  It is without faith.
[00:31:25]  And without faith, it's impossible to please God.
[00:31:27]  Anything that does not proceed from faith is sin.
[00:31:30]  Okay.
[00:31:31]  All that being said, Tower of Babel, Genesis chapter 11, you have the line of Cain that has progressively gotten worse outwardly, not inwardly.
[00:31:41]  All right, right?
[00:31:42]  David says, In sin did my mother not just bear me, not just in birth, but conceive me.
[00:31:48]  I was conceived in sin.
[00:31:49]  So from conception, the Bible teaches plainly, apart from regeneration by the Spirit, salvation, a human being from the point of conception is totally depraved.
[00:32:00]  So at the inward level, speaking of man, we're talking about biblical anthropology, a biblical view of man.
[00:32:06]  Speaking of man and his moral inclinations inwardly, every single human being from conception is as bad as you can get.
[00:32:15]  So the line of Cain did not get progressively worse or progressively more immoral inwardly.
[00:32:22]  They were totally depraved, just like people today in 2022.
[00:32:27]  When you're conceived in your mother's womb, apart from saving grace, apart from salvation, totally depraved.
[00:32:32]  So Lamech isn't any worse than Cain in that regard.
[00:32:36]  But what does happen within societies?
[00:32:39]  Within cultures throughout generations, outwardly, that inward total depravity begins to seep out and manifest itself in tangible, practical, physical, outward ways progressively more and more.
[00:32:54]  And that's what you see leading up to Genesis chapter 11.
[00:32:57]  All right, so that sets kind of the theological framework of total depravity, utter depravity, meaning people were really, really bad by the time we come to Genesis chapter 11.
[00:33:06]  And what they're now trying to do is a couple things they're trying to build a tower that reaches to the heavens.
[00:33:12]  So that they can be like God.
[00:33:14]  They're trying to deify man.
[00:33:16]  It's like this transhumanism kind of idea.
[00:33:19]  You know, it's we're going to live forever.
[00:33:20]  We're going to be as God.
[00:33:21]  We're going to become a deity.
[00:33:22]  We're going to, you know, escape our own immortality, our own death, and all these kinds of things.
[00:33:26]  We're going to transcend our creaturely existence and become like the Creator.

=== Building a Tower to Heaven (14:44) ===

[00:33:33]  Okay?
[00:33:34]  That's one level.
[00:33:35]  But the other level is, and this one's more practical, and this is the one that I think we should take note of.
[00:33:42]  The other level is they're simply trying to practically.
[00:33:45]  Revolt against one of God's clear, physical, witnessable, visible commandments that he gave to Adam in the garden, which is to be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth, subdue it, to exercise God given stewardship.
[00:34:02]  That's what dominion is it's Christian stewardship over the earth, the physical earth.
[00:34:08]  To exercise dominion, proper Christian stewardship as sons of God, but not just over one corner of the earth, not just in the garden.
[00:34:16]  Adam's eschaton.
[00:34:18]  If Adam had never sinned and eaten of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, Adam, just like us, he had an eschaton.
[00:34:28]  And I believe that Adam's eschaton, I think ours is more glorious because we have Christ's eschaton.
[00:34:32]  We're not in Adam.
[00:34:34]  A person can only have two identities they're either in Adam, the first Adam, or they're in Christ, the second Adam, the last Adam.
[00:34:41]  And so for those of us who are Christians who are in Christ through faith, we have a higher eschaton.
[00:34:47]  But Adam still had an eschaton.
[00:34:49]  I believe that he was on a probationary period.
[00:34:52]  In the garden.
[00:34:53]  A probationary period to obey the commandments of God, to teach his wife what God had said.
[00:34:58]  God gave the commandment to Adam.
[00:35:00]  And I think Adam was responsible to relay this commandment to wash his wife in the word, in the word of God, to disciple her, to defend her, to be a guardian, to work and keep the ground.
[00:35:13]  Work and keep.
[00:35:13]  Work meaning cultivate the ground, provide for it, cultivate it, nourish it, and cause it to ultimately, by nourishing the garden, it would have also increased, it would have expanded.
[00:35:24]  So it's not just to remain in this garden, but that the garden would fill the earth.
[00:35:29]  Adam, the Bible says, he was created in the wilderness and then placed in the garden.
[00:35:33]  So All the world before sin entered, all the world was good, but that doesn't mean that there were no portions of the world that were barren, that were wilderness, that the garden was not global.
[00:35:47]  But I do believe that that was a part of Adam's eschaton, is that he was meant to work the ground and in working and cultivating, providing for the creation, exercising godly stewardship there, dominion, he would have expanded the garden to cover eventually over time that there would be no desert.
[00:36:05]  Any longer.
[00:36:06]  There would be no wilderness any longer, but the garden would expand and increase and fill the whole earth.
[00:36:12]  And then Adam was also called to keep, work and keep.
[00:36:15]  Now, that working kind of relates to provision.
[00:36:17]  The keeping relates to protection, to guard the garden.
[00:36:21]  And Adam certainly failed, if in no other regards, he failed by the mere fact that the serpent gained entrance into the garden and was able to slither up right to his wife and began blaspheming God and lying about what God.
[00:36:35]  Had said, and the Bible says that when Eve ate of the fruit, her husband was there with her.
[00:36:41]  And so he was not keeping, guarding, protecting his wife or this garden place.
[00:36:47]  But Adam, all that to say, Adam had an eschaton, and it was not just to live in this garden area geographically in one portion of the world that God had made, but to work and keep it, protect it from threats and enemies, but also work it and by working increase it so that it would eventually expand and fill the earth.
[00:37:07]  So the commandment that God gave and the cultural mandate.
[00:37:11]  The dominion mandate, all the way back before sin even entered the world to our first parents, Adam and Eve, was to, in part, there's multiple pieces, I've already covered them, but part of that is to spread out.
[00:37:23]  To spread out.
[00:37:24]  To multiply, to procreate, and to multiply image bearers of the living God, worshipers, but to also spread out so that every corner of the earth, as it were, every single portion of the earth would be filled with worshipers of the triune God.
[00:37:43]  The whole earth would be filled with the garden, and the whole garden now, a global garden covering the whole face of the earth, that it would be filled with image bearers of living God, paying homage to him and worshiping him in spirit and in truth.
[00:37:56]  Now, line of Cain, okay, sin enters the world, Cain kills his brother.
[00:38:01]  Down the line of Cain, they're not getting worse at the sense of total depravity inwardly, but they are getting progressively worse in terms of that total depravity coming out in physical outward actions and manifestations of evil.
[00:38:15]  And it eventually culminates in Genesis chapter 11 with this evil desire.
[00:38:20]  And now they're acting on it, which is to what?
[00:38:23]  To not obey God's commandment to spread out, to fill the earth, and to exercise dominion over all the earth.
[00:38:31]  And they say, let us not just be like God building a tower to the heavens, but the second part is let us make a name for ourselves so that we will not be scattered over the earth.
[00:38:44]  What they want to do is defy God who said, Fill the earth, be fruitful, multiply, and spread out and fill the earth with image bearers of the living God and with, more importantly, worshipers of the triune God in spirit and in truth.
[00:38:56]  They don't want to do that.
[00:38:57]  They want to congregate.
[00:38:59]  They want to disobey God.
[00:39:00]  They're rebelling against God's commandment to fill the whole earth.
[00:39:03]  Instead, they're saying, let's stay in one place.
[00:39:06]  Let's congregate here in this metropolis, this city, this civilization.
[00:39:12]  And the way that we can achieve that goal to stay put, the way that we can ensure that people don't naturally and inevitably down the generations eventually spread out well, one of the ways that we can incentivize people to congregate and to stay here. Is by making a name for ourselves.
[00:39:32]  And how can we make a name for ourselves?
[00:39:34]  Well, one of the ways that we can make a name for ourselves, yes, try to be like God, yes, deify, build a tower to the heavens, but to just say that practically for a moment, one of the ways that we can congregate and not spread out is to make a name for ourselves.
[00:39:49]  And one of the ways we can make a name for ourselves is by technological advancements.
[00:39:55]  And what we miss, because it's so rudimentary to us, hindsight, on this side of history, But what we miss is that you have multiple generations of sin and the line of Cain, but you have that coupled now, culminated with sinful outward behaviors, and then coupled with a very recent, for them, a recent and extraordinary, given the times, technological advancement.
[00:40:26]  And what was that?
[00:40:26]  What was this new tool, this new technology that they discovered?
[00:40:30]  Well, it's called a brick.
[00:40:33]  Straw and mud.
[00:40:37]  And it doesn't seem, you know, like a tool to us, but it was.
[00:40:42]  It was.
[00:40:42]  And it was the most advanced thing for its time.
[00:40:46]  It was revolutionary.
[00:40:47]  Instead of building one story houses that could only go so high off the ground because they didn't have the structural integrity to build a story upon another, upon another, upon another, it would collapse, you know, if it was just wood stacked together or this or that.
[00:41:02]  All of a sudden, what they had was the ability to build with bricks.
[00:41:07]  And My point is this God responds to their foolish claims of building a tower to the heavens and making a name for themselves and congregating.
[00:41:18]  God responds, and he says, Let us go down and confuse their languages.
[00:41:24]  He says, For if they remain united together, if they're united, nothing will be impossible for them.
[00:41:33]  Now, let's think about that for a minute.
[00:41:35]  What does God mean?
[00:41:36]  Nothing will be impossible for them.
[00:41:39]  Do you think that God is saying they've claimed to build a tower all the way to heaven and to be like God?
[00:41:46]  And with unity, you know, teamwork makes the dream work.
[00:41:50]  With the united, you know, triumph of the human spirit, the collective human spirit, if they remain united, nothing will be impossible for them, including physically building a tower all the way to heaven where I am enthroned and upseating, you know, dethroning me and taking my place.
[00:42:08]  Is God saying that?
[00:42:09]  I mean, really, do we think God's saying we got to confuse their languages and divide them because together, if they're united, nothing's impossible, including that?
[00:42:16]  Of course, God's not saying that.
[00:42:18]  So, what is God saying is not impossible if they remain together?
[00:42:23]  Well, what he's saying is not impossible is not that they could become actually literally become like God and literally build a tower to the heavens.
[00:42:31]  We have rocket ships and we still haven't been able to get to the heavens, not in a literal sense.
[00:42:35]  We can get to the heavens as it refers to sky, but not.
[00:42:39]  A spiritual heaven where God, who is spirit, is enthroned.
[00:42:42]  So, God wasn't worried that they'd be able to achieve that through the collective teamwork of humanity.
[00:42:48]  But what they could achieve is, like they said, that we could make a name for ourselves and not be scattered.
[00:42:55]  Not be scattered.
[00:42:56]  We could remain congregated right here and not obey the commands of God to fill the earth and subdue it.
[00:43:05]  And so God confuses their language.
[00:43:08]  Now, all that being said, my point is not much has changed.
[00:43:14]  In practical ways, sure.
[00:43:16]  Technology has changed immensely, and especially in the last 60 years.
[00:43:21]  It was Silicon Valley, silicon.
[00:43:24]  It's a material baked into the fabric of God's world, God put it here.
[00:43:28]  It's not like man made anything new.
[00:43:30]  We just finally discovered something that's been here all along and are beginning to tap into its potential uses.
[00:43:38]  And that's been a big development where all of a sudden we're able to do things that we never could before.
[00:43:43]  That we have processors that we carry around in our pockets that are immensely highly powerful.
[00:43:51]  The smartphone in your pocket has more computing power than some of the computers that were used with NASA in the first Apollo missions.
[00:44:00]  And so, yeah, massive developments at the practical level, but spiritually and theologically speaking, not much has changed.
[00:44:07]  God remains who he always has been.
[00:44:10]  He's the same yesterday, today, and forever.
[00:44:12]  And man really hasn't changed that much either.
[00:44:16]  You know, Jesus, there's a portion in the gospel narratives where it says he did not entrust himself to man, for he knew what was in the heart of man.
[00:44:24]  You know, Peter says in one of his epistles, you know, references the sin which is common to man.
[00:44:31]  Meaning, regardless of what time period, what generation, what place, what nation, what culture, there are just certain things in regards to depravity and sin, and even certain giftings and inclinations that are just common to man.
[00:44:47]  It's just who God made us to be and who we are in light of God's creation, His design, but then also that design now tarnished by sin.
[00:44:57]  And one of the things that is common to man that hasn't changed, whether it's all the way back in Genesis 11 with the Tower of Babel, Or whether it's today with Klaus Schwab and George Soros, you know, or guys behind AI, people want to try to be God.
[00:45:13]  They want to make a name for themselves.
[00:45:15]  They want to congregate in one location.
[00:45:18]  They don't want to be scattered.
[00:45:20]  They want a one, you know, global world order.
[00:45:23]  They want to somehow, this transhumanism idea, they want to transcend their humanity and achieve deity and somehow be able to bypass their mortality and all these kinds of things.
[00:45:35]  People have always been like that.
[00:45:37]  That's not uniquely evil.
[00:45:39]  It's just not.
[00:45:39]  I'm not saying it's not evil.
[00:45:41]  I'm just saying it's not uniquely evil.
[00:45:43]  I'm not even saying it's not terribly evil.
[00:45:45]  I'm just saying it's not uniquely evil.
[00:45:47]  It's terribly evil.
[00:45:49]  And there was terrible evil in Genesis 6 and in Genesis 11 and all throughout human history.
[00:45:55]  What's changed is technology.
[00:45:58]  That has changed immensely.
[00:46:00]  But I'll tell you this with all the technology we have today, we are no more, we are no closer.
[00:46:08]  To building a tower, as it were, whether it be metaphorical or digital or whatever, what have you, whether it be physical, literal tower out of bricks in Genesis 11 or whether it be a digital tower out of AI.
[00:46:20]  Mankind is not one inch closer to building a tower to the heavens than he ever has been.
[00:46:27]  Technology has changed, yes.
[00:46:29]  We can do incredible things that we could not do before.
[00:46:33]  But one thing that we are no closer to doing, and we never will be able to do, even if Jesus tarries for 10,000, 20,000, 30, 40,000 years, We will never be able to achieve deity.
[00:46:45]  And that's for two reasons.
[00:46:47]  Again, going back to what I kind of started with in this video.
[00:46:50]  One, because he who sits in the heavens laughs and holds them in derision.
[00:46:57]  Genesis 11, God confused their languages and caused them to disperse.
[00:47:02]  But it's not just a one off event that happened in Genesis 11, because that same kind of concept is used in Psalm chapter two to describe God's work with the rulers of this world throughout all time periods and all generations.
[00:47:15]  He who sits in the heavens holds them in derision.
[00:47:18]  He laughs.
[00:47:19]  He doesn't even, he's sitting, he doesn't even bother to stand up.
[00:47:22]  There's no threat to him.
[00:47:24]  There's no concern.
[00:47:24]  So, one, God is sovereign.
[00:47:26]  He's not going to allow man to build a tower to the heavens a physical tower, a digital tower, a metaphoric tower.
[00:47:33]  It doesn't matter.
[00:47:34]  It's not going to happen because he's sovereign.
[00:47:36]  He won't let it.
[00:47:36]  Number two, it's not going to happen because it's practically impossible.
[00:47:40]  Because we are lowercase c creators, we don't create out of nothing.
[00:47:44]  We only create or produce with the materials that God has provided, the materials that he has baked into the physical cosmos, the world that he created.
[00:47:53]  God is the only ex nihilo creator.
[00:47:55]  We're only creating with what he's given us.
[00:47:57]  And God, I believe, with every fiber of my being, God has not baked into the physical cosmos that which would be necessary in order for man to be God because it's a logical inconsistency.
[00:48:10]  It's a logical contradiction.
[00:48:11]  It's not real.
[00:48:13]  It doesn't exist.
[00:48:14]  It's impossible.
[00:48:15]  It is absolutely impossible.

=== Embracing AI Ethically (15:50) ===

[00:48:17]  So, transhumanism, I don't think you need to be worried about that, Christian.
[00:48:22]  It's not possible.
[00:48:23]  Worried that people might say that it's possible, worried that people might eventually say we've done it.
[00:48:28]  Like the Wizard of Oz hiding behind the curtain saying, Yeah, we're uploading people's consciences and we're putting them to death with euthanasia.
[00:48:35]  I mean, think about that for a second, right?
[00:48:37]  So, that's absolutely possible that euthanasia would become even more popular as it's being legalized.
[00:48:44]  It would become even more popular this humane, moral way to kill yourself, assisted suicide, and to do it in a painless way, a humane way.
[00:48:54]  And oh, all the more reason to not have any hindrance about euthanasia because you're not really dying before we inject you with this needle.
[00:49:02]  We're going to upload your consciousness to the cloud and you'll exist forever.
[00:49:06]  Will people say that they've achieved it?
[00:49:08]  Yes, of course they will.
[00:49:10]  But will they actually, in objective terms, be able to achieve it?
[00:49:14]  No.
[00:49:15]  Christians should be aware of this so that when those things are said, which I believe it's more of a matter of when rather than if, we can call them out and say, the emperor has no clothes.
[00:49:24]  This is a joke.
[00:49:25]  This is just a highly developed, sophisticated form of narrow AIs, not even artificial general intelligence.
[00:49:32]  There's no consciousness to this, and it's certainly not transhumanism.
[00:49:35]  This person's not being uploaded to the Cloud.
[00:49:37]  This is not their consciousness.
[00:49:39]  The person is dead.
[00:49:40]  They're either in heaven or hell, their soul, and their consciousness is with their soul in heaven or hell, and their body is buried six feet under the dirt.
[00:49:48]  That's where the person is.
[00:49:49]  And what you've uploaded to the cloud is just the collective data that you had on their memories and a high powered search engine that's able to search through that data and predict with a high degree of measured accuracy what they might say in this scenario.
[00:50:04]  So their loved ones think that they're communing and think that they're relating and conversating with their.
[00:50:10]  Deceased loved one, but it's all a charade in order to get your money and to pretend to be like gods.
[00:50:15]  So, sure, will people lie?
[00:50:17]  Sure.
[00:50:17]  But objectively, can they accomplish it?
[00:50:20]  No.
[00:50:20]  They're not going to be able to accomplish transhumanism, man through machines being God.
[00:50:26]  And they're not going to be able to accomplish even AGI, making a machine like man in the sense of it actually is thinking, it's actually conscious, that it's sentient.
[00:50:38]  It's not going to happen.
[00:50:39]  That's my personal opinion.
[00:50:41]  What they can do. Is further and further and further develop narrow AI, all within that category, but more and more sophisticated expressions of it, narrow AI with faster and faster and better and broader and more accurate search engines and prediction.
[00:51:01]  Searching, predicting, searching, predicting.
[00:51:04]  And that could be incredibly powerful.
[00:51:07]  And that can do a whole lot of bad, evil, and a whole lot of good.
[00:51:14]  It's a form of technology, which is a form of a tool.
[00:51:18]  Tools are a form of wealth.
[00:51:21]  The commandment is not to take all of our wealth and put it in a big pile and have a bonfire.
[00:51:28]  The commandment is not monasticism.
[00:51:31]  It's not to go off like the Desert Fathers and live in caves and forsake all technology.
[00:51:38]  It's not to become Amish, right?
[00:51:41]  To say, well, we actually do like technology, but only to this certain date.
[00:51:45]  We've contextualized with the culture all the way up to the cutting edge of the 1800s, and then we decided from then on it was bad.
[00:51:52]  How do you decide that?
[00:51:53]  That's arbitrary.
[00:51:54]  It is arbitrary.
[00:51:56]  These are not the ways to respond.
[00:51:58]  The way to respond is not to disavow wealth, the ways to respond is to properly steward wealth in all its forms, tools and technology being an example.
[00:52:10]  Now, in terms of my predictions over just the next, I think, three to five years, but especially the next decade, Some of my predictions of what I think is going to happen is a few things.
[00:52:21]  Number one, what will probably happen, and I'll be frank here for a moment, and I know that I'll probably offend a few people, but I just need to be honest.
[00:52:28]  You need to hear this because it's true.
[00:52:31]  In the church, we've just got to get past what I'm about to say.
[00:52:36]  We've got to grow in this, we've got to mature.
[00:52:39]  Because of dispensational premillennialism, the question of will Christians embrace and use narrow AI?
[00:52:48]  Like chat GTP in the next presentation, in the next presentation.
[00:52:53]  Will Christians use narrow AI?
[00:52:57]  Sadly, the answer is yes.
[00:53:01]  But probably they'll be using it and embrace it 10 years after pagans have already been using it.
[00:53:08]  And therefore, we will be exponentially behind.
[00:53:12]  And the AI we'll be using will be pagans' AI, which is not neutral.
[00:53:16]  Nothing is neutral.
[00:53:18]  It has a blueprint.
[00:53:19]  It has a rubric.
[00:53:20]  It has rules built into its system, which means it will be a God hating AI.
[00:53:28]  What Christians have done for the last 150 years since Schofield and Darby, Christians used to be leading the way in technology, in innovation, in discovery, in medicine, in arts, in culture, in everything.
[00:53:43]  The Christians, because we have the worldview that's actually true and good and beautiful, that actually consistently makes sense of the world in which we live.
[00:53:53]  So, naturally, Christians were the best when it came to science, when it came to innovation and discovery and inventions and all these different things.
[00:54:02]  But we forfeited that about 150 years ago, and really longer than that.
[00:54:07]  You can trace it back all the way to the Enlightenment.
[00:54:11]  But let's just deal with the last 150 years.
[00:54:14]  I think we abandoned it even more so with Darby and Schofield and dispensationalism.
[00:54:19]  So, what'll happen?
[00:54:20]  My prediction is it's not so much a matter of if, but a matter of simply when.
[00:54:26]  It's not if Christians start to use narrow AI and embrace it.
[00:54:32]  It's simply when Christians begin to embrace it and use it.
[00:54:35]  And sadly, because of stupid doctrines like dispensationalism, because that's what it is, Christians will embrace these new advancements in technology.
[00:54:46]  They'll just do it a decade after the pagans, just like we did with social media, just like we did with the internet, just like we did with everything else for the last 150 years, and so we'll be utterly behind.
[00:54:58]  What would be nice for a change is if Christians actually had a post millennial eschatology.
[00:55:08]  That they, you know, I think, you know, Calvinism.
[00:55:11]  I'm a Calvinist.
[00:55:12]  I gave my whole spiel on total depravity and I'm a post millennial, which I like to think is the sweet spot, right?
[00:55:18]  I think that's a marriage made in heaven.
[00:55:20]  I think that's biblical doctrine.
[00:55:21]  My Calvinism makes me suspicious, right?
[00:55:24]  That's why people, you know, a lot of people come to my church.
[00:55:26]  A lot of people have found me.
[00:55:27]  A lot of, you know, have listened to my podcast and found it helpful.
[00:55:30]  Why?
[00:55:30]  Because I was suspicious very, very early on and calling out things with, you know, the branch Covidians and all the COVID nonsense.
[00:55:38]  About wokeology, you know, and Black Lives Matter.
[00:55:40]  And so I'm not a post millennial in the sense that I'm naive and just wishful thinking and everything, you know, everything is happy, everything is great.
[00:55:50]  No, I'm highly suspicious.
[00:55:53]  I am very aware.
[00:55:53]  I have a biblical anthropology.
[00:55:55]  I understand what's in the heart of man, I understand his total depravity, I understand our culture and its hatred towards God.
[00:56:02]  But I also, in the long run, right, and that's kind of in the here and now, the short run, but in the long run, I have a very positive outlook on.
[00:56:11]  Mankind's trajectory because I believe that the Great Commission ultimately will be successful and that the nations will be discipled and baptized in the name of the Triune God and they will be taught theonomy.
[00:56:22]  They will be taught part of the Great Commission is that we teach them to obey all of God's commands and not just his commands in a couple contexts like the home and the church, but all of his commands that have application, sufficiency for all of life and godliness, which means the law of God does have civil application.
[00:56:37]  It applies in the sphere of the civil government.
[00:56:40]  And I believe that that's going to be successful.
[00:56:42]  That Great Commission, Preaching the gospel, making disciples, not just of individuals out of nations, but discipling nations.
[00:56:50]  That nations will be discipled, nations will be baptized, and they will also be taught not only the gospel and the necessity for faith, but also out of that faith, bearing fruit and obedience to God's law, not just privately, the private lordship of Christ in the home of the church, but Christ being Lord of lords, King of kings, Lord over all, obeying his commandments in every single realm of life.
[00:57:12]  And because of that, Yeah, I think that we're going to be okay.
[00:57:18]  Now, that being said, I think things can get worse, and I kind of lean towards things getting worse before they get better.
[00:57:25]  I think things could get a lot worse for the next five years, 50 years, maybe even 500 years.
[00:57:31]  But in the final analysis, I do believe that the gospel will be successful.
[00:57:37]  The gospel will be successful.
[00:57:39]  So I have a positive outlook in the long game, in the long run.
[00:57:45]  But I also am suspicious of total depravity and Calvinism, those kinds of things.
[00:57:49]  So you could call my theology, as I look at cultural things and political things, I have a hopeful suspicion.
[00:57:59]  I'm suspiciously hopeful.
[00:58:01]  That's kind of the way that I view things.
[00:58:03]  So you'll have to humor me.
[00:58:04]  That's my theology.
[00:58:05]  I do believe that it's biblical, and I've done lots of videos explaining why.
[00:58:08]  So, all that being said, I don't believe that narrow AI and this form of technology is inherently.
[00:58:17]  Evil.
[00:58:17]  I don't believe it's the mark of the beast.
[00:58:19]  I don't believe that it's going to mean the end of human civilization.
[00:58:24]  And I just don't believe those things.
[00:58:26]  However, in the short run, I believe its effects could be detrimental, ultimately, glorious.
[00:58:34]  All of Christ for all of life, right?
[00:58:36]  Kuiperianism.
[00:58:36]  Abraham Kuiper, not one square inch of all the world that Christ doesn't cry out, mine.
[00:58:42]  AI will be baptized.
[00:58:44]  AI, people aren't going to like this because it sounds weird.
[00:58:48]  AI will be Christianized.
[00:58:51]  AI, you could even say it like this AI will be discipled.
[00:58:55]  It will be one of the disciples that the church makes.
[00:59:00]  And it will be, in a sense, not in the eternal sense, but it will be baptized, as it were, and And it will bow its knee to King Jesus, and it will be used as a tool for the glory of God in exponential, incredible ways.
[00:59:18]  I believe that.
[00:59:19]  I believe that's the final analysis.
[00:59:21]  I believe that that'll be the final score when it's all said and done.
[00:59:27]  But for the foreseeable future, in the upcoming years and maybe even decades, my fear is this first, we must understand that neutrality is a myth.
[00:59:38]  Neutrality is a myth, including technology and tools.
[00:59:42]  Including technology and tools.
[00:59:46]  AI doesn't think, right?
[00:59:49]  So, back to a prior point, this is not AGI.
[00:59:51]  It's not conscious.
[00:59:53]  It's not sentient.
[00:59:54]  And so, what I'm saying is, this is not a machine's thoughts.
[00:59:58]  This is a machine searching and predicting.
[01:00:02]  Searching what?
[01:00:04]  Not searching machine thoughts, but searching human thoughts, the thoughts of men.
[01:00:10]  Primarily, the collective thoughts on the internet.
[01:00:14]  And not just that, but searching these thoughts, but with certain rules by its designers baked into the equation, certain, we might call them presuppositions.
[01:00:26]  I'm Vantillian, right?
[01:00:27]  So I'm Cornelius Vantill.
[01:00:30]  And Cornelius Vantill, I think, culminated in the implications of his presuppositional theology was really actualized by Greg Bonson.
[01:00:40]  I think.
[01:00:41]  He took the principles of Van Til and applied them in the realm of apologetics and in the realm of general equity theonomy.
[01:00:48]  Now, all that being said, as a presuppositionalist, nothing is neutral.
[01:00:53]  Everything has an allegiance.
[01:00:55]  And AI is a man made thing.
[01:00:58]  It doesn't have personhood, nor will it ever.
[01:01:00]  It doesn't have consciousness, nor will it ever.
[01:01:03]  It'll get smarter and smarter as a computer and look more and more human like, but it will never actually think.
[01:01:11]  It will never actually be sentient.
[01:01:14]  It will only ever be searching and predicting, searching, predicting, searching, predicting, producing.
[01:01:19]  And it's going to be searching man's thoughts, everything publicly available.
[01:01:24]  It's going to be searching all the way, not just men today, but throughout the course of history, anything that's been made public.
[01:01:30]  It's going to be searching Beowulf because that's on the internet.
[01:01:34]  It's going to be searching the writings of Homer and the Iliad and Homer's Odyssey and all the.
[01:01:39]  It's going to be searching from Homer all the way to.
[01:01:44]  Well, all the way to Klaus Schwab.
[01:01:46]  You know, it's all those things and not just searching.
[01:01:51]  So I don't just think AI is going to have a bias because it's going to just be searching the collective works of humanity and humanity up to this point.
[01:01:59]  For the record, if I haven't made this clear, as a post millennial, I believe the majority of mankind will be saved.
[01:02:05]  I believe that heaven will be more populated than hell.
[01:02:08]  However, I don't believe that we're there right now.
[01:02:12]  If human history were hypothetically to end right now, I believe that hell is going to end.
[01:02:17]  Currently, far more populated than heaven.
[01:02:20]  I believe that the gospel will be progressively more and more successful, that the church will be progressively the church is the battering ram of Christ.
[01:02:28]  Christ promised not just to sustain it, but to build it, increase it, expand it, and that the gates of hell, gates being a defensive mechanism, hell is not on the offense and the church is just trying to survive and being sustained by Christ.
[01:02:42]  No, the church is the battering ram of Christ.
[01:02:44]  He's the head of the church.
[01:02:45]  The church is his body, his hands and feet in the world, and he is using the church as his battering ram to break down the defensive measures of hell.
[01:02:53]  The church will not just be sustained, it will be built, it will increase, it will grow, and hell will be built.
[01:02:59]  Hell is on the defense and hell won't be sustained.
[01:03:02]  Hell will not be able to prevail or to hold up underneath the battering ram of the church.
[01:03:10]  So, all that being said, I believe that the gospel will be successful, the Great Commission will be successful, and that progressively over time, as the mustard seed grows progressively more and more into a tree that covers the earth, as the leaven works more and more through the whole batch of dough until the whole dough is leavened, that by the end, you're going to have.
[01:03:29]  Substantially, even then, not universalism, not each and every individual person, but by the end, you're going to have the mass majority of humanity Christian.
[01:03:39]  And not just Christianized with a Christian worldview and Christian governments and Christian nations, but I mean Christian in the sense of individual regenerate hearts, truly born again.
[01:03:52]  And not each and every individual person, but the majority of individual persons, the vast majority.
[01:03:58]  So I believe that by the end, you're going to have more Christians than non Christians.
[01:04:02]  And you couple that just simple math here with us being fruitful and multiplying, right?

=== The End Times Majority Christian (03:59) ===

[01:04:07]  The population of mankind has exponentially, right, like an exponential curve, has increased with time, with each century that goes by.
[01:04:17]  And so I believe that at the end of this church age that we're currently living in, or gospel age, you could call it, when Christ in his final physical return to judge the living and the dead, when Christ finally returns, you're going to have the overall population of humanity.
[01:04:35]  Far more of them being Christians, actually regenerate Christians, than non Christians, and that population being exponentially higher than the population today.
[01:04:44]  So if the clock of human history stopped today, I would argue that there's probably 100 times, not just 10 times, 100 times, maybe even 1,000 times more people in hell than heaven.
[01:04:58]  But the clock isn't stopping today, at least it hasn't so far.
[01:05:01]  No man knows the day or the hour, but I don't think it's going to stop today.
[01:05:06]  And if Jesus tarries for another 10,000 years and more and more that the tide begins to turn, and all of a sudden you have 51% of the population that's regenerate and 49% that's not, and then that increases, and you have a higher and higher percentage of the population that is Christian, and you have a larger, just generally larger population exponentially throughout generation by generation, century by century, then in the final analysis,
[01:05:35]  there'll be more people in heaven than in hell.
[01:05:38]  All that back to my point.
[01:05:40]  Although I do believe in the final analysis there'll be more people in hell, hell will be more people in heaven, that heaven will be more populated than hell.
[01:05:48]  At the end, I believe that currently we have more people who have an allegiance to Satan.
[01:05:58]  Nobody's neutral.
[01:05:59]  Romans 8 says that the mind of the sinful man is hostile, not just indifferent, not neutral, not uninterested, but hostile at enmity towards God's law.
[01:06:10]  The mind of the sinful man is hostile.
[01:06:14]  Toward God's law, he does not submit to God's law, nor can he.
[01:06:20]  He doesn't submit to God's law, nor can he, meaning he's unwilling and unable.
[01:06:26]  And so, if the majority of people are sinful and not redeemed, not regenerate, and if that's what we have so far throughout human history, is the vast majority of mankind up to this point in human history being unregenerate, and those who are unregenerate aren't just neutral or indifferent, but actually at enmity towards God, and everything they do, they do with a presupposition.
[01:06:49]  So, everything they've produced, everything that they've written, everything that they've said has a presupposition.
[01:06:54]  Christ said, A man is either for me or against me.
[01:06:57]  Everyone has an allegiance.
[01:06:58]  If all that is true, this Vantillion, Greg Bonson, presuppositional, you know, all these things are true.
[01:07:05]  If this is true, then what is this narrow AI searching?
[01:07:11]  Well, it's searching the collective works of man that have been created thus far up to this present day, which I would argue that there's a lot of good Christian works in there.
[01:07:21]  We've got a thousand years of Christendom from King Alfred all the way to.
[01:07:24]  Right now, within Western civilization, and a lot of good things that came out of that, guys who weren't themselves Christian, but they were living in a Christian culture and a Christian time, a baptized nation, as it were.
[01:07:38]  And so, even for the unregenerate, they were producing better things than people do today.
[01:07:43]  And the admit now that we're in the midst of 300 years of apostasy, give or take, 275 years of apostasy.
[01:07:53]  All that being said, my point is, even with Christendom and even with some good works, I think.
[01:07:57]  That the lion's share, the majority report of what AI is searching today is going to be unregenerate, God hating garbage.

=== Avoiding Plagiarism with Tools (08:45) ===

[01:08:07]  So that's just what it can search, what's available.
[01:08:09]  It doesn't think, it's not sharing its own thoughts, it's searching the thoughts of men.
[01:08:13]  And I think predominantly the thoughts of men have been bad thus far.
[01:08:17]  Now, the second thing is even if that wasn't true, even if point A was wrong, point B is that who is responsible for making AI?
[01:08:28]  Who's behind Chat GTP?
[01:08:31]  Who's behind Dolly and Jasper and all these different things?
[01:08:36]  Predominantly, the people who are behind it are God hating people with an atheistic, God hating worldview, a progressive, atheistic, satanic, demonic worldview.
[01:08:52]  And nothing is neutral.
[01:08:54]  So they have built into the fabric of these search engines, which that's all it is.
[01:08:59]  At the end of the day, they've built into these tools a presupposition to not be truthful about certain things.
[01:09:08]  And as they're finding, oh, we missed a spot there.
[01:09:10]  Oh, we missed.
[01:09:11]  Like, you know, I read that, you know, people were asking ChatGTP about, you know, the energy crisis and what's the solution.
[01:09:21]  And all the answers that it was giving, searching just all the data that's available, is well, the solution is really simple it's fossil fuels.
[01:09:29]  And then, you know, the people behind this device were like, oh no, we forgot to cover that hole, right?
[01:09:37]  Chat GTP is telling the truth.
[01:09:39]  We need to make sure that it lies, right?
[01:09:41]  Because, of course, that's the obvious answer.
[01:09:44]  And that's the right answer.
[01:09:45]  But we forgot to disciple Chat GTP.
[01:09:49]  It needs to be discipled, right?
[01:09:50]  You've probably heard that one of the big examples was, you know, write a poem about the positive characteristics of Joe Biden, you know, and so Chat GTP wrote a poem.
[01:10:01]  Extolling the virtues of Joe Biden.
[01:10:03]  And then the same question, exactly the same wording, was write a poem expressing the positive attributes of Donald Trump.
[01:10:11]  And it said, oh, I'm sorry, I can't do that.
[01:10:13]  I can't do something that would be overly controversial.
[01:10:17]  And then since then, I've seen that people have gotten it to do that, which I have no doubt that the answer is that the people behind the scenes have gone, oh, we're getting found out that we need to make it a little bit more subtle, not quite so obvious that there's a presupposition.
[01:10:31]  But then on the fossil fuel example, yeah, we don't want it to be obvious that we have a presupposition here.
[01:10:37]  But at the same time, we can't afford for people to get wise and realize that we don't have to have some of these economic crises because we need, right?
[01:10:46]  Never let a good crisis go to waste.
[01:10:48]  We need that.
[01:10:50]  My point is, there's a bias.
[01:10:53]  There's an allegiance.
[01:10:54]  There's an agenda because it's not sentient.
[01:10:58]  It's not conscience.
[01:11:01]  It is powered by and geared by men.
[01:11:06]  So, what is the Christian reaction?
[01:11:09]  The Christian response?
[01:11:10]  Well, one, I don't think that we should be fearful.
[01:11:14]  I think that we should be suspicious, have a holy, hopeful suspicion.
[01:11:19]  We should be wise.
[01:11:20]  Right, cunning as serpents, innocent as doves, cunning as serpents.
[01:11:24]  Um, but we shouldn't be given to fear, we shouldn't be fearful.
[01:11:27]  I think we should engage.
[01:11:28]  I think Christians should be willing to use narrow AI and some of these technologies that are being made available, and they need to use them in ethical ways, not ways that are just theft, plagiarism.
[01:11:41]  Right?
[01:11:41]  So, there's a whole I could do a whole nother episode, I probably will sometime, about ethical ways to use something like Chat GTP.
[01:11:47]  Right?
[01:11:47]  That you're not just stealing what other people have written and then putting it in not your own words, but but The technology's own words, but it's not actually any of it, is not actually your thoughts.
[01:12:00]  So, you know, I think Christians should embrace this technology, but we should do it with suspicion.
[01:12:07]  We should also do it with clear ethical boundaries and guidelines.
[01:12:13]  But more importantly than even that, I think that should be the general Christian approach.
[01:12:17]  But for those Christians who have unique, special skills, what they need to do is not just use the technology that's already available, but they need to build.
[01:12:29]  That technology.
[01:12:32]  We need Christian AI.
[01:12:36]  We need Christian AI.
[01:12:38]  And you might be thinking, well, there's no such thing as Christian AI.
[01:12:40]  That's ridiculous.
[01:12:41]  You're talking about a computer getting saved.
[01:12:43]  That's not the way I'm using the word Christian.
[01:12:46]  Of course, a computer's not going to get saved.
[01:12:48]  Of course, that's not what I'm saying.
[01:12:49]  What I am saying is that every man has an allegiance and everything that man produces has an allegiance.
[01:12:57]  I'm speaking in presuppositional terms, nothing is neutral.
[01:13:02]  Right now, we have narrow AI with an allegiance, and the allegiance is to your typical atheist progressive, and its bias is against God in the Christian worldview.
[01:13:18]  So let's get a Christian narrow AI device technology.
[01:13:24]  Let's get something that uses the Christian worldview.
[01:13:27]  And you know what's so great about that?
[01:13:28]  Well, the Christian worldview happens to be true.
[01:13:32]  We could actually have better AI.
[01:13:34]  AI, better technology that searches more accurately and that doesn't have to be pre programmed to be inconsistent.
[01:13:42]  That we don't have to put up all these fail safes to make sure that we want it to be logical, but not too logical, not so logical that we actually use fossil fuels.
[01:13:51]  Not that logical.
[01:13:53]  You wouldn't have to do all those things.
[01:13:56]  You would build it with the fabric, the rubric of the Bible as the ethics behind this machine.
[01:14:02]  So we could build better AI.
[01:14:04]  So I think Christians should be willing with suspicion and discernment to embrace.
[01:14:08]  Narrow AI in terms of what we use to the glory of God and use it in ethical ways.
[01:14:14]  So being careful of plagiarism and theft.
[01:14:15]  And practically, I'll talk about at some point how to do that.
[01:14:18]  But then also, we need some Christians who have the skill set to do so, which I do not, to make narrow AI with a Christian bias, with a presupposition, because everything has a bias.
[01:14:30]  So we're not saying, oh, we're not biased.
[01:14:32]  No, yes, we are.
[01:14:33]  We have an allegiance.
[01:14:34]  Our allegiance is to Jesus, to King Jesus.
[01:14:36]  We have a bias.
[01:14:37]  Our bias is that God created the world in six days and that all of creation testifies to his existence, his divine nature, and eternal power.
[01:14:47]  That's our allegiance.
[01:14:49]  And so we should build a tool with that worldview, with that presupposition.
[01:14:56]  The last thing that I'll say in regards to children, okay, so here at the end, I had to build all this framework for you, but now I'm ready to address kids.
[01:15:06]  My prediction is one that Christians, sadly, because so much of at least American evangelicalism has been drenched in dispensationalism, I think that Christians will be slow to embrace and be utterly behind.
[01:15:24]  Again.
[01:15:25]  So it's not like, oh, well, you know, will Christians hold strong against the mark of the beast?
[01:15:30]  Well, one, it's not the mark of the beast.
[01:15:31]  And two, the answer is no, because they never do.
[01:15:34]  Your most fundamental, fundamentalist, dispensationalist, you know, IFB, whatever guy you could find, he uses, he speaks as though he has certain virtues and a rule book.
[01:15:49]  No, he uses every single form of technology.
[01:15:51]  The question is not if, but when.
[01:15:53]  He just uses it 20 years after it would have actually been useful.
[01:15:57]  That's all it is.
[01:15:58]  He just uses it, he compromises slowly.
[01:16:02]  And it's not really a compromise, but he sees it as that.
[01:16:05]  And so he does it, but he does it slowly.
[01:16:08]  Now, so first thing, my first prediction is that sadly, because of bad theology, Christians will be slow on the uptake and the pagans will get a head start like they've been getting for, again, the last, I don't know, decades, a couple centuries.
[01:16:25]  And that's a bummer.
[01:16:28]  Secondly, my next prediction is this as it relates to children, what technology does, by and large, in general, technology being a tool, tools being a form of wealth, what wealth does is it never actually levels the playing field.
[01:16:46]  See, here's the irony a lot of guys behind narrow AI are saying, well, this is going to level the playing field.

=== Human Imagination vs Machines (04:27) ===

[01:16:52]  You don't have to be a world renowned artist.
[01:16:56]  Now you can just do images and use this program.
[01:16:59]  Right.
[01:17:00]  And you can use Dolly, and now everybody can be an artist.
[01:17:04]  No.
[01:17:06]  You're right.
[01:17:06]  You no longer have to have a trained hand.
[01:17:09]  But what you still have to have is the one thing that AI doesn't have, which I've already discussed, which is a mind.
[01:17:18]  It doesn't actually think.
[01:17:19]  It's not, we're never going to achieve consciousness with a machine.
[01:17:24]  I don't believe that.
[01:17:26]  So it's not AI in the sci fi way that you think of AI.
[01:17:30]  It doesn't have a mind, it's not conscious, it doesn't think.
[01:17:33]  So, it can replace a hand in the physical, mechanical sketching and drawing or painting.
[01:17:41]  What it can't replace is human imagination.
[01:17:46]  It can't think.
[01:17:48]  And so, what will happen, I believe, whether it be images with narrow AI or whether it be text, you know, and creating books or whatever, with like things like Chat GTP, and it's just going to get better and better, is it's not actually going to level the playing field, it's going to widen the disparities.
[01:18:04]  Because those who can give better prompts, those with better imaginations, you know, I have an artist who's a friend of mine, and I was talking to him about it.
[01:18:15]  And he draws for a living.
[01:18:17]  Now, he does more than just that, but he's an excellent artist, and he's been honing that craft of sketching and drawing and painting and design since childhood.
[01:18:30]  And he's done it as a Christian who fears the Lord, he's a solid man of God.
[01:18:34]  He looks at, you know, in the Old Testament when they were building, you know, the tabernacle, and there were certain men who were endowed with wisdom from the Spirit, anointed by the Spirit of God in order to make beautiful art.
[01:18:48]  And so, you know, that's his vision, that's his dream.
[01:18:51]  And he's been doing that his whole life, and he's incredibly gifted.
[01:18:54]  And, you know, I talked to him, you know, what do you think about this stuff?
[01:18:59]  You know, like, are you scared?
[01:19:01]  Do you feel threatened?
[01:19:02]  Is this going to, you know, is it going to put you out of a job?
[01:19:05]  He said, Oh, no, I'm not worried at all.
[01:19:08]  He said, All this does is it means that I can produce.
[01:19:13]  I had to spend so much time training my hands to put what's in my mind visually and literally physically on paper.
[01:19:21]  I spent years of my life doing that.
[01:19:22]  And still to this day, even though my hands are highly skilled, it still takes so much blood, sweat, and tears.
[01:19:28]  It takes time, it takes energy.
[01:19:30]  And I still make certain mistakes that the human hand is fallible and I can't do everything that I want to do.
[01:19:38]  He said, Now, I'll be able to do exponentially more at the speed of thought, as fast as I can think it.
[01:19:45]  And what he's saying is this you know, he's a humble guy, so he won't say it outright, but he's saying, I'm not threatened by this.
[01:19:51]  I'm not threatened that all these non artists in the world are going to use Dolly and be able to compete with my artists.
[01:19:58]  He said, What sets me apart from them is not the physical skill of my hand to draw.
[01:20:04]  The reason why I have the work that I have and they don't is what sets me apart is not my hand.
[01:20:11]  It's my mind.
[01:20:13]  I am more creative.
[01:20:15]  I am.
[01:20:16]  And he didn't say that.
[01:20:17]  I'm saying it for him.
[01:20:19]  He is more creative.
[01:20:20]  He's more brilliant.
[01:20:22]  He has a more glorious imagination.
[01:20:25]  He does.
[01:20:26]  And it's beautiful and it's awesome.
[01:20:29]  And the reality is, you can put me with Dolly and put him with Dolly, and he's going to make better stuff.
[01:20:36]  Give us the same amount of time and the same narrow AI to generate these things and make images, and his are still going to be better than mine.
[01:20:44]  In fact, I think I really think I would have a better chance competing with this individual by hand because, at least, if we were doing it by hand, and I'm not a trained artist by so I'd be drawing stick figures, horrible images.
[01:20:56]  But the disparity between his trained artist hand and my stick figure drawing hand, at least the one thing that I'd have going for me is he's going to be way better, but at least he's going to be slowed down by just his finitude.
[01:21:09]  He's only got one hand, right?
[01:21:11]  Or at least one that he can draw with, and he's only got the 24 hours in a day, and he's only but all of a sudden you take off those encumbrances.
[01:21:18]  And you take them off for both of us.

=== Technology Widens the Gap (05:08) ===

[01:21:20]  And yet now the disparity between us doesn't shrink, it actually gets even wider.
[01:21:25]  He's going to be able to produce, because the real difference between this individual and me is not his skilled hand and my unskilled hand, but his imaginative mind, creative mind.
[01:21:39]  And I've got some creativity too, but not in the artistic.
[01:21:42]  It's more strategic and theological.
[01:21:46]  I think in a different light.
[01:21:48]  By God's grace, I've got a decent mind as well.
[01:21:51]  But in a different way, in a different vein.
[01:21:53]  And so I say all that to say I think, you know, one of my predictions is first, Christians will be slow to embrace it.
[01:21:58]  And because they'll be slow to embrace it, it's only going to become more biased against the things of God because you won't have Christians teaching it.
[01:22:08]  You won't have Christians discipling, for lack of a better term, this narrow AI, putting into it these prompts and this human interaction from Christian humans.
[01:22:18]  But I hope that Christians will embrace it in ethical ways and that better than that, that some Christians who are gifted and able to do so will create Christian AI.
[01:22:29]  And then, second, I think that it's going to widen the disparities.
[01:22:33]  That's what technology and wealth does.
[01:22:36]  You know, another Wilson, Wilson, Doug Wilson ism is, you know, he used a hypothetical, you know, illustration where he says, you know, if somebody had a button and they put it in front of you and they said, if you push this button, every single person in the world, their wealth would double instantly.
[01:22:52]  And not just, you know, because Joe Biden, you know, prints more dollar bills, but like in real terms, right?
[01:22:57]  Not just inflation, you know, but in real terms, the materials that that person has would double immediately.
[01:23:04]  And if you push this button, Everyone.
[01:23:05]  It wouldn't just be for some.
[01:23:06]  It wouldn't be some people's wealth doubles because some people now their wealth disappears.
[01:23:11]  No, it'd be across the board.
[01:23:13]  All 8 billion people on the planet have twice as much after you push the button as they did before.
[01:23:19]  However, here's the catch the top wealthiest 1% of the human population, their wealth, instead of doubling, it multiplies by 10.
[01:23:30]  Would you push the button?
[01:23:32]  And anybody who hesitates even for a moment, that hesitation is ultimately rooted in envy.
[01:23:38]  That's a sinful hesitation.
[01:23:41]  It is.
[01:23:42]  And I think that that's what technology, as a tool, which is a form of wealth, that's what it does.
[01:23:49]  I think that across the board, what will happen is the tide raises and all the boats rise.
[01:23:56]  So I think everyone will be better off in terms of wealth, materially better off, physical needs being met.
[01:24:04]  I think everyone will be better off.
[01:24:06]  Yeah, it'll replace some jobs, but it'll create a whole host of new jobs that we haven't even thought of before.
[01:24:12]  I believe that.
[01:24:13]  So I'm not worried in the long run of certain jobs will be replaced.
[01:24:17]  Certain individuals may have to hustle for a little bit as they're trying to find a new line of work, but I think it's going to create more opportunities than it takes away.
[01:24:25]  I do.
[01:24:27]  And in so doing, as now a greater form of wealth is made available to the world, I think the tide is raising and all the boats will rise.
[01:24:36]  But I think some boats will rise exponentially higher than others.
[01:24:39]  So I think everyone will be generally better off.
[01:24:42]  But some will be even better off than they already, you know, the gap between this uber duber, you know, sophisticated, you know, gifted, intelligent, brilliant individual and this person who's more average, that gap I think will get even bigger.
[01:24:58]  I think the disparity will get even better, bigger.
[01:25:01]  Now, all that being said, and that shouldn't, right?
[01:25:05]  I mean, that's part of what the way that God made the world.
[01:25:08]  Hierarchy is inescapable.
[01:25:10]  It's inescapable.
[01:25:12]  And that's the irony, I think some of the people behind narrow AI are thinking this will level the Playing field, right?
[01:25:20]  It's like a chance to dethrone capitalism, right?
[01:25:23]  And to usher in this egalitarian.
[01:25:26]  And the irony is that that will not happen.
[01:25:28]  I'm calling it right now.
[01:25:29]  That's my prediction.
[01:25:30]  Over the next 10 years, you'll find more disparity, not less.
[01:25:33]  Hierarchy is built into the fabric of God's world, and God's not surprised by anything.
[01:25:37]  AI is one of the things that He put that ability to create these things in His world.
[01:25:42]  And He also determined that His world would have an order of hierarchy, and it will always have an order of hierarchy.
[01:25:47]  God created the world with diversity and not just different.
[01:25:51]  Skin pigment, but diversity of thought and gifting and competency and IQ and all those things.
[01:25:57]  God has built in a spectrum.
[01:25:59]  Everyone's not the same.
[01:26:01]  God hates androgyny.
[01:26:02]  He does.
[01:26:04]  God created a multifaceted world, and He did that even with humanity.
[01:26:08]  So I think that's going to only be the hierarchy of the world, disparities in the world, differences in the world, diversity in the world is only going to be multiplied, not minimized, ironically, much to the chagrin of some of the people behind this narrow AI and chat GTP and those kinds of things.
[01:26:27]  So that's one prediction.

=== Disparities Multiply in Society (09:25) ===

[01:26:28]  Disparities increasing.
[01:26:31]  Christians resisting and the need for Christians not only to embrace but also to build.
[01:26:37]  As it pertains though to children, to children, that disparity I think will be by far the most significant.
[01:26:50]  Children who do not have a good home, who do not have two parents, right?
[01:26:57]  They're in the foster care system.
[01:26:59]  All right, they're property of the state or they're a single parent home.
[01:27:04]  And who are we kidding if it's single parent?
[01:27:06]  You know, nine out of 10 times it's single mom.
[01:27:10]  The dad is incarcerated or abandoned them or whatever it might be.
[01:27:14]  But children who do not have a Christian, two parent, God fearing home with rules, where the parents provide structure and there's a moral rule book for being a child raised in that home, those children already suffer.
[01:27:32]  And we've seen that exponentially increase.
[01:27:36]  People suffering more and more and more and more as there's been more fatherlessness.
[01:27:42]  And part of a big part of that is because of welfare, incentivizing women not to marry the father of their children, right?
[01:27:49]  The state saying, We'll be your children's daddy, you know, we'll be your baby daddy.
[01:27:55]  Please don't marry that man.
[01:27:57]  Please don't get this job.
[01:27:59]  Please don't do that.
[01:27:59]  Like incentivizing apathy, incentivizing the breakdown of households and family and all these things.
[01:28:07]  I think that what we'll see, and then you see the degradation that comes about as the result of just media and social media and TikTok and all this garbage and TV and streaming devices.
[01:28:20]  And then the fact that, you know, 10 year olds have an iPhone, you know, and are laying in bed at night with a smartphone with the whole internet available to them on TikTok.
[01:28:31]  And I mean, just because they don't have good parents.
[01:28:34]  So, yeah, so in that sense, I have concern.
[01:28:37]  You know, I have another friend of mine.
[01:28:39]  That I've talked to, and he's not an artist like the person that I just mentioned earlier as an example, but he's a teacher.
[01:28:45]  And a lot of what he's sensing with this, right?
[01:28:47]  And this guy, he's incredibly brilliant and a very, very brilliant individual.
[01:28:53]  And I agree with him on pretty much everything he said.
[01:28:56]  He's saying, Yeah, I see all the positive potential, and I think in the long run, it will be potential.
[01:29:03]  But immediately, right now, here and now, a lot of what I'm feeling is a sense of concern and even grief because.
[01:29:09]  My vocation, I'm a father and I'm a teacher.
[01:29:13]  And I know how students will abuse us, especially students that don't have good Christian parents, that don't have guidelines in their home, that are allowed access to TV and laptops and smartphones and all these kinds of things.
[01:29:27]  And so I think that public schools will get worse.
[01:29:32]  Public schools, they're going to try, the state's going to put in all its regulations and this and that, but public schools will fare.
[01:29:39]  The very worst in regards to being able to actually police students cheating using narrow AI in unethical ways to where they use it to write their essay and use it to write this paper.
[01:29:54]  And so, what will happen is that children in bad homes with bad parents, especially children in single parent homes without a father, it's going to make them even dumber.
[01:30:09]  That despair is going to be bad.
[01:30:12]  I'll tell you right now, it's going to be bad.
[01:30:15]  Children in good homes with a father and a mother who keep their wedding vows, who don't commit adultery, who don't divorce, and who are seeking to raise their children in the fear and admonition of the Lord, who don't pawn their kids off on the state, don't use public schools, put them in a Christian classical school or homeschool them with good curriculum, and don't allow the student to have a smartphone until they're 18 years old.
[01:30:44]  And all those kinds of things, those children will be better.
[01:30:48]  And you might say, well, you just said they're not going to let them use this.
[01:30:50]  Yeah, they'll be better in the sense that they'll get the same kind of education they've gotten before.
[01:30:56]  But then eventually, when they do reach adulthood, they'll be ready to use this kind of technology and they'll have brilliant minds and be able to use that kind of tool, this technology.
[01:31:04]  It's just a tool to achieve far more than they would otherwise.
[01:31:09]  And so I think even at the level of children, you're going to see greater disparities.
[01:31:13]  So, all that being said, my prediction next.
[01:31:18]  Three to five years, but especially the next decade, next 10 years, Christians will be slow in the uptake because you're going to have a lot of dispensational Christians saying it's the mark of the beast.
[01:31:26]  And once again, all that will amount to is pagans using a certain tool that God has provided in sovereignty and providence for us, them using a tool before the Christians use the tool, and then therefore them perverting the tool and trying to get a monopoly on the tool and making the tool, you know, building into the fabric and hardwiring of the tool an anti Christian rubric.
[01:31:50]  A presupposition and allegiance against Christ into the tool.
[01:31:54]  So then we have to build our own tool and we do it 10 years after we should have been doing it.
[01:31:57]  And so I think you'll have that.
[01:31:59]  And that's a bummer.
[01:32:00]  And then at the adult level, for Christians who do embrace it and other people, I think you're just going to see not a leveling of the playing field, not a narrowing of disparities, but actually a widening of disparities because now you're not going to be impeded by how fast my hand can draw or how fast I can write, but it's going to be just.
[01:32:22]  People's minds, and there will be massive disparities using the same technology.
[01:32:27]  Massive disparities, even right now, some people can get out, they can get results out of Chat GTP results that are exponentially better than other people can get out of Chat GTP.
[01:32:40]  They're using the same thing, and yet somebody's getting the ideas just the idea of what they're going to use it for and how they're going to use it and what prompts they're going to give it.
[01:32:50]  And all that comes down to at the end of the day is the one thing that AI will never have, which is the mind.
[01:32:56]  It's a computer.
[01:32:57]  It doesn't think.
[01:32:58]  It searches, predicts, and it does it incredibly.
[01:33:02]  I mean, it's impressive.
[01:33:04]  It's amazing.
[01:33:06]  But it's just searching and predicting.
[01:33:08]  That's what it's doing.
[01:33:10]  It must have human interaction.
[01:33:12]  It's not replacing people.
[01:33:14]  People are made in the image of God, and God has not put into the fabric of his physical cosmos the materials necessary for us to make people.
[01:33:24]  God is the only one who can make people.
[01:33:27]  And despite how many.
[01:33:28]  Times we try, or how we lie to ourselves, we're never going to be able to create conscious, sentient beings.
[01:33:35]  And so people will always be needed.
[01:33:37]  People are irreplaceable.
[01:33:39]  They are.
[01:33:39]  People are irreplaceable.
[01:33:42]  And within these irreplaceable, image bearing people that God has created, He also has put into that framework hierarchy diversity, differences.
[01:33:57]  Some people are more gifted than other people.
[01:33:59]  And that will continue.
[01:34:01]  And I think technology, if anything, it just reveals that even more, not less.
[01:34:05]  And then, lastly, again, with children, I think that's where we'll see the disparity.
[01:34:12]  Most significantly of all.
[01:34:13]  And for children in bad homes that aren't seeking to raise their children, the fear and admonition of the Lord, that have loose morals, that are utilizing public schools and single parent homes, and that allow their children to have smartphones and devices at a young age, 9, 10, 11, 12 years old.
[01:34:36]  Man, I truly grieve over that.
[01:34:41]  It makes me sad.
[01:34:42]  I think it's already bad and it's just going to be worse.
[01:34:45]  But for children who their parents are seeking to protect them and guard them with good fathers in the home, they're going to train their children the fear and admonition of the Lord.
[01:34:53]  They're not going to use state schools.
[01:34:55]  They're not going to give their kids a smartphone in their pocket.
[01:35:00]  They're going to be faithful in raising their children, training their children, teaching them the arts and all these different things.
[01:35:08]  Those children will do just as well as they always have, if not even better, because when They're done being formed and shaped and trained in childhood, and they're ready to enter into adulthood and vocation, all those things.
[01:35:22]  They'll have more tools available to them to take that mind that's been shaped by their father and mother in a proper education and proper discipleship.
[01:35:31]  They'll be able to take that mind that's superior to their contemporaries, those who were raised in non Christian homes.
[01:35:37]  They'll be able to take that superior mind shaped by the word of God, which is the one true superior worldview, and then just.
[01:35:45]  Maximalize and multiply exponentially all the potential in that good God fearing mind with tools.

=== A Final Word of Thanks (01:41) ===

[01:35:54]  And those are my thoughts.
[01:35:56]  All right.
[01:35:56]  Thanks for tuning in.
[01:35:58]  Can I be frank with you for just a second right here at the end?
[01:36:01]  Look, some of you guys, you're financially supporting this ministry.
[01:36:05]  And from the bottom of my heart, I say thank you.
[01:36:08]  I cannot thank you enough.
[01:36:10]  However, some of you, you just, you can't afford it.
[01:36:14]  In fact, some of you, you shouldn't afford it.
[01:36:17]  Let's be honest.
[01:36:18]  I mean, we're living in Joe Biden's ridiculous economy.
[01:36:22]  Our nation and our totalitarian political elites lost their minds over the last three years due to COVID.
[01:36:32]  We have written checks that we simply cannot cash.
[01:36:36]  It doesn't matter if people change the definition of a recession.
[01:36:40]  We are living in a recession right now, regardless.
[01:36:44]  Some of you are struggling to afford a carton of eggs at the grocery store.
[01:36:49]  You cannot support financially this ministry at this time, nor should you, but you could still help us tremendously.
[01:36:58]  I am asking you, please, if you're willing to do so, take one minute of your time.
[01:37:03]  Leave us a five star review on your favorite podcast platform iTunes, Spotify, whatever that might be.
[01:37:11]  This is the way the system works.
[01:37:13]  We want to be innocent as doves, but shrewd as vipers.
[01:37:17]  We need to be strategic.
[01:37:19]  You leave us a five star review.
[01:37:21]  And our podcast shows up for more people.
[01:37:24]  And the Word of God and courageous theology applied in practical ways to every realm of life gets out there.
[01:37:33]  Help us get it out there.
[01:37:35]  Thanks for tuning in.