Today's Issues continues on afr. Welcome back to Today's Issues
>> Today's Issues continues on afr.
>> Tony Vitagliano: Welcome back to Today's Issues. I am Tony Battagliano filling, in for Tim Wildmon, who's out this week. in studio with me, I've got Ed Battagliano. And, in the great state of Florida, we have Ray Pritchard tuning in from Zoom Land. And now in the studio, we have Steve Paisley Jordal. Welcome, Steve.
>> Steve Jordahl: Thank you. It's good to be here. Glad to be with you all.
>> Tony Vitagliano: Glad you're here with us.
>> Steve Jordahl: I didn't get an adjective, though.
>> Tony Vitagliano: you know, I used it yesterday. That's what it was. I've got my notes, because I'm terrified of being stuck without saying anything. So I've got some notes basically planned out here, and I have your adjective there.
>> Ed Vitagliano: And.
>> Tony Vitagliano: And I ended up using it yesterday.
>> Steve Jordahl: You could call me Sardonically. Splendorific.
>> Tony Vitagliano: Splendous. The stupendous.
>> Ed Vitagliano: Sardonically, though that means. Doesn't that mean, like, sarcastic?
>> Steve Jordahl: Sarcastically?
>> Ed Vitagliano: Oh, sarcastically.
>> Steve Jordahl: Sardonically is something different.
>> Tony Vitagliano: Well, we'll go. Stupendous. There we go. That one just came to me.
>> Steve Jordahl: Stupendous. Thank you. Thank you.
>> Tony Vitagliano: That one is not an insult, ladies and gentlemen.
>> Tim Wildmon: Please don't.
>> Tony Vitagliano: Please don't get those mixed up. Well, Steve.
>> Steve Jordahl: Yes, sir?
>> Tony Vitagliano: I'm sure there are other. Other, things to talk about.
>> Steve Jordahl: No, you guys. You guys covered the whole gamut of all the news, everything.
>> Ed Vitagliano: All right, I'm done.
>> Tony Vitagliano: I'll see you folks later.
>> Ed Vitagliano: Let's go to vows.
>> Steve Jordahl: Yeah.
President Trump signed an executive order on artificial intelligence on Monday
All right. why don't we start here? we have had, the, We've been talking about AI for quite a while.
>> Tony Vitagliano: We have. Yep.
>> Steve Jordahl: And yesterday, well, Monday, the president has, launched what he is calling the Genesis mission. And to say that this is a big deal, I think is selling, it short. he says, in his executive order, he compares this to the Manhattan Project, and others have compared it to the Apollo mission. It's the moonshot. This is the big deal. What he's doing is he is organizing America's artificial intelligence resources. private companies are going to be helping out all the government research, all the colleges, and, those kind of things. And, they're going to be basically pushing and pulling in the same direction. And, the purpose is to, unleash, I'm reading from the executive order, a new age of AI, accelerated innovation and discovery that can solve the most challenging problems of the century. And frankly, they're doing it because they're Afraid that the Chinese might beat us to the punch.
>> Tony Vitagliano: Bingo.
>> Ed Vitagliano: Yeah.
>> Tony Vitagliano: I think this is wise to work with these private companies. You've got some of these tech giants like Google, Nvidia, Microsoft, OpenAI to work with these companies, pull them together and use their, their research. And backed by the resources of the United States. The Department of Energy is a big backer.
>> Steve Jordahl: Yeah, they're driving it.
>> Tony Vitagliano: They're driving it. Yeah. So using our resources to basically beat China in the AI race. I mean you, you mentioned the space race. That was our, our accelerated attempt to beat, we wanted to beat the Soviets into space. Right? We wanted to, to beat them.
>> Ed Vitagliano: They beat us into space. We want to beat them to the do the moon. Yes, thank you. They.
>> Tony Vitagliano: Thank you. so this is our space race.
>> Steve Jordahl: I think a lot of people kind of view this as like I'm pulling for the cowboys over the Redskins or something like that. It's way more important than this because whoever controls and gets the jump on AI gets to set the rules for globally. And it also, it's not. We think of AI as kind of the chat GPT you ask it. It's a nice little fun toy to play with. Right. but it is, it's more than that. AI is going to be useful in all kind of things from medicine to military. And the military is where a lot of people have concern. I talked to Colonel Bob McGinnis who most of us, know as a Pentagon analyst, who's a good foreign policy, military kind of voice. But he has been writing on artificial intelligence. He has his first book that's already been published. It's called AI for Mankind's Future. He's got two more and these books, this one deals with AI as it is now and everything. But these books are moving toward the theological implications of artificial intelligence. How do we deal as a church? What happens? Anyway, I did talk to him and this is what he had to say about this MoonShot Genesis mission cut 14.
>> Dr. Josh Mulvihill: AI driven scientific discovery, has grave national security implications as well as the US technological leadership across the world. The intent is to really respond to what the Chinese are doing with their civil military fusion projects on all technologies, especially artificial intelligence. It's going to help us to write, it's going to help our medical community, it's going to help education, it's going to help retail. We're going to have the Alexis, but the Alexa is going to keep getting smarter. I do believe that we will eventually get to something like artificial general intelligence, which is smarter than we are and we can harness it.
>> Steve Jordahl: Yeah. That last is a profound hope.
>> Tony Vitagliano: Still have a ways to go.
>> Tim Wildmon: It's already smarter than we are.
>> Tony Vitagliano: Yeah. Ed, what do you think about Bob McGinnis's comments? Do you think there are do you think there are more benefits than drawbacks as we keep pressing forward, in the AI race? Or do you, what do you think this.
>> Ed Vitagliano: I think it's going to be like technology has always been, especially the last hundred years and especially maybe the last 25 or so, but certainly like when we use the example of the Manhattan Project. Nuclear weapons. We had to get nuclear weapons. Well, the, the Nazis were working on it. We got their scientists, and then we beat the Soviets too. But the Soviets got it. And now there's a, whatever half dozen nations, maybe more, that have nuclear weapons, but there was also nuclear energy. And so when you have new developments in technology that you can go down, maybe multiple paths, some are good, some are bad. I think that there are great potential. There's great potential for AI and the thing is about technological innovation. You can't put the genie back in the bottle. You've got to figure out a way to live with the technological jump that has occurred because you've got people, you got countries like China that are jumping in to the research, and are going to get there. And so you want to make sure. Same thing in space with the built with anti satellite missiles. it's one thing to put a satellite up. What if the Chinese start knocking them down?
>> Tony Vitagliano: Always measure countermeasure.
>> Ed Vitagliano: Yes. And I would just toss in, we don't have to go down this, this path necessarily.
Steve: Do you think churches will ever use AI produced worship songs
but when you mentioned Steve, theological implications. So yesterday, Steve, now we've been kidding around about this, but you asked AI some program to create a song about Ed Vitagliano, right. Using all the Italian tropes you could think of.
>> Steve Jordahl: That's what I said. That was the process.
>> Ed Vitagliano: So I was playing this for my wife. I sent it to my sisters. it was hilarious. Okay. But I told my wife Diane, I said, and I told my sisters this. I said, you know, the, the top song on the country charts was AI Generated. M. And my wife said what about. Do you think churches will ever use AI produced worship songs? And I thought that sounds demonic.
>> Dr. Josh Mulvihill: M. You.
>> Ed Vitagliano: You want. And the intent is for, for human beings to work with the spirit of God and rely on the giftings of the Holy Spirit to create songs that give praise to God. You can't turn that over to AI but these are the kinds of questions we're all going to have to ask.
>> Steve Jordahl: And that's what Bob is chasing.
Solomon Ray is an AI generated singer who is topping Christian charts
And, and Ray, I kind of wanted to ask you because we've been comparing this to the Manhattan Project and to the space launch. Maybe the Tower of Babel would be a good comparison.
>> Tim Wildmon: Ah. And how did that work out? I mean it looks so good. That was such a nice thing they built there, right?
>> Ed Vitagliano: Yes.
>> Tim Wildmon: I mean for a while there it gave us so much hope. Well, Steve, what do you think about the music of this fella, Solomon Ray?
>> Steve Jordahl: Well, fella in quotes.
>> Ed Vitagliano: Explain what that is.
>> Steve Jordahl: Solomon Ray, you mentioned the country charts. This guy. The country chart was a specific chart which was kind of AstroTurf. They put money. It's, it's how many downloads were bought. No one buys downloads. So somebody decided to pay about $3,000 so that they could hit the top of this chart. Okay. However, there is Solomon Ray who has, is an AI generated artist and album that is now topping the gospel. The gospel charts. And these are the main charts.
>> Tim Wildmon: Right.
>> Steve Jordahl: and I. It's Ed has the question, which is can a machine write a spirit filled song? it has every single hymn and praise song, and Christian, contemporary song that's ever been written. And it looks at all those, it looks at the turns of phrases, it has a way to weight words and meanings and it can put together something that for all the world looks like you know, a theologically well sound song. It looks like a Christian song. now chatgpt or these, these apps at this point are making a whole lot of errors. You have to, you know, I would say that you might be able to tell if the theology is really squirrely. It's either you know, an Episcopalian song or it's AI well, here we go.
>> Ed Vitagliano: But, they deserve that.
>> Steve Jordahl: but it's going to get better and everything.
>> Tim Wildmon: So, so this guy has a picture, right? This Solomon Ray has a picture. I mean he's a nice looking guy.
>> Steve Jordahl: Is he in a dress?
>> Tim Wildmon: Listen, this is according to his. He has a Spotify profile. I mean this AI generated singer who exists only inside the computer's brain or however you want to say that. But his music is shot to the top of the Christian charts. And the Spotify profile calls him, quote, a Mississippi made soul singer carrying a Southern soul revival into the present. And that's pretty cool, right? And you look at the picture. If you just. What I'm saying is this is really good stuff. I mean, good in the sense of. Oh man, it's catchy.
>> Steve Jordahl: Yeah.
>> Tim Wildmon: Yes.
>> Ed Vitagliano: Well, let me just toss something out. I know we don't have to spend more time on this.
>> Tony Vitagliano: This is good.
>> Ed Vitagliano: but I do like these kinds of conversations. This question about. I mean the way you put it. Can, Can a. Can an AI program. I guess programs. The right way to say it.
>> Steve Jordahl: Right.
>> Ed Vitagliano: A program create a spirit filled song. you know, we are going to, we are going to get to the place where robotics combined with AI and combined with other technologies are going to produce what looks like real people.
>> Steve Jordahl: Yeah.
>> Ed Vitagliano: okay. And there's some question about whether guys who can't get girlfriends are going to date robots.
>> Steve Jordahl: Well, they're already falling in love with the chat. GPT. Yeah.
>> Ed Vitagliano: So. So you start going to the heart of what it means to be human.
>> Tim Wildmon: Right.
>> Ed Vitagliano: And what it means to have relationships. And in this case what it means to actually worship God and the Source. Listen, you remember back when when Christian rock hit the scenes with the Jesus people and to this day you have people who say no, you got a, you got a, you got a drum set and a electric guitar and a bass. That is not worship music.
>> Steve Jordahl: Right.
>> Ed Vitagliano: Right. You got to. Have. You got an X, Y or Z?
>> Tim Wildmon: Yeah.
>> Ed Vitagliano: You already have those arguments. Now what if AI or, or AI creates a sermon?
>> Steve Jordahl: Yeah. Well, and let me put this into the mix too, because we've already have. There's been several artists who let's just say real true artists who were not who they said they were.
>> Ed Vitagliano: like Millie Vanilla or something?
>> Steve Jordahl: Well, no, I mean like artists who proposed, to be Christian but their lives turned out to be.
>> Ed Vitagliano: So yeah.
>> Steve Jordahl: Bad or evil people who posed at some point. I was listening to a podcast that talked about the, the. This guy that used to be said he was a Satanist and became a Christian comedian and everything. But so we know you're talking about. Yeah, we already have songs that were written. When they were written, we all used them as worship songs and then the guy that wrote them turned out to be not who he said or she said she was.
Ray: It's hard to know how to answer some of these questions
Right. Does that take away now is the song invalid. And so does that port over to this whole.
>> Ed Vitagliano: That's part of the debate over Hillsongs worship songs. And, and some of those groups people say well I don't like the theology of that church. And. And others say, well the, the music.
>> Ed Vitagliano: Really brings me into a place of worship. Let Me just toss this out and then I don't want to talk about it necessarily. But, what about if you can't find a pastor? You have an AI person on screen. You already have multi campus churches where the pastor's on screen preaching an AI generated sermon. Yeah, I mean this is kind of bizarro world, but can you be ministered to by the word of God preached by a quote unquote pastor who doesn't really exist?
>> Steve Jordahl: I don't know. But if you accept Christ under that, when you die, you go to the metaverse, not to heaven.
>> Tony Vitagliano: Ray, help us navigate some of this. How should Christians approach?
>> Tim Wildmon: We're just on the front end of this, Tony. We're just on the front end and it's coming to us like a tidal wave. Right. It's coming at us so fast. It's hard to know how to answer some of these questions. But, I will tell you this, let me throw this out to the panel I was doing.
>> Ed Vitagliano: So you're not going to answer it?
>> Tony Vitagliano: It's bringing so many questions. I'm going to bring it out there.
>> Tim Wildmon: Yeah, I'm going to throw another one out there. Just muddy the water even further. the two places I go, I go to chat and then I go to Grok, which is the Twitter version. Right. And I was talking to Grok, I guess, and this is some months ago, but I was working on a sermon series on Genesis 4 and 5. And I find it very interesting, to use a bot, I guess is what you call use Grok and say, okay, what did Martin Luther have to say about this passage? What did John Calvin have to say? Get, unbelievable amount of information, really, really fast. And also, I found Grok's good for sermon titles. Very, very. I spent a lot of time thinking about my sermon titles and Grok will come up with a dozen in a millisecond. And so, I said, I'm going down here. I just imagine I was coming down here to Florida, Word of Life, Florida to just speak on this in the spring. And I'd been going back and, and back and forth, typing my questions in and getting the answers. At the end, Grok said, you know, Ray's gonna be great, gonna do fine. And I guess they kind of program those bots to be very encouraging. You're gonna be fine.
>> Ed Vitagliano: People are gonna love you're doing.
>> Tim Wildmon: That's right. It's very affirming. Right?
>> Steve Jordahl: Yeah.
>> Tim Wildmon: And at the end it said, grox said, I'm gonna be praying for you.
>> Steve Jordahl: Oh, no, no.
>> Ed Vitagliano: Are you kidding?
>> Tim Wildmon: No, no. Yes, that's exactly right. That is exactly right.
>> Ed Vitagliano: That's bizarre.
With AI, Christians are going to have to rely on the word of God
>> Tony Vitagliano: So, to whom?
>> Steve Jordahl: Yeah. So how.
>> Tim Wildmon: How?
>> Steve Jordahl: I don't know. Our Elon, who art in heaven?
>> Tony Vitagliano: I think. I think, with AI, Christians are going to have to, as we have had to for centuries. we're going to have to rely. It sounds Sunday Schoolish and cliche. You're going to have to rely on the word of God. Christians are going to have to be devoted to searching the Scriptures for themselves. So if you think about it, we've had similar, you mentioned like the AI pastor or you go into, you know, consulting AI for Christian counsel, you know, or AI producing Christian, worship songs. We've had these, I feel like we've had these moments of transition in different eras already as Christians, and I'll just use a few, here in America. So shifting from, shifting from smaller congregations, smaller communities to larger churches, you know, mega churches, you know, led by, one person, you know, the pastor. And you know, that is not necessarily the model that was laid out, in the NewSong Testament for the early church. So Christians have had to figure out, okay, we have this one person who we're every Sunday listening to in his sermon, and we're, you know, what he's telling us. And we have to decide, will we accept what he tells us wholesale, no questions asked, or will we go and turn to the Scriptures for ourselves to discern and judge what this figurehead is saying, whether it's biblical or not. I think something similar to that is, is the mindset we're gonna have to develop as, as Christians and dealing with AI. Can you use AI to help you with your sermon? Absolutely. if, if you go to AI to, to get a devotional for the day, you know, give me a devotional on, you know, Acts, chapter 13. I, I'm just throwing that out there. And it gives you one. As a Christian, you have, you have the ability to just. You can either accept it wholesale that what this AI and the people who programmed it is telling you is true, or you can turn to the Scripture and go see for yourself and study for yourself and discern as to whether what it's telling you is in accordance with God's word or not. I think we're coming up on something similar now. There are, farther reaching implications to me. and some of these questions, obviously I'm not answering, 100%. But the word of God always has to be your foundation. You should always be going Back to that. No matter how far the technology advances, no matter if there's an A.I. paul, that you can go talk to, you know, with a generated face and ask them questions. If that, let's say if that AI Paul starts telling you something that you might not think is biblical, you need to go read your, the Bible, see what Paul actually said.
>> Steve Jordahl: Didn't the real Paul actually say something similar? If we or someone else preaches you a gospel that's contrary to this, Let them be. Yeah, let them be cursed or however that played out. Check the scripture. Paul himself, who wrote the scripture, says check the scriptures.
Bob and Guinness mentioned something called, um, artificial General intelligence
I also wanted to I know we can, we probably spend the rest of the time on this, but I wanted, Bob and Guinness mentioned something called, artificial General intelligence. At the end of this, as we may be getting there, and it's the definition I think we need to know right now. Everything. AI is a specific task. We give it a task, we ask ChatGPT a question, it gives us the answer to that question. one application might be to diagnose diseases, from. It's a task that specific thing was given or plan a traffic pattern for a city. It does tasks. Artificial general intelligence has some different features. It will be able to perform any intellectual task a human can, not just those narrow, specialized tasks. It can take knowledge learned in one domain and apply it to a completely different domain. It will be able to learn new skills or concepts without being specifically trained for those tasks. It can reason abstractly, solve novel problems and plan long term. It can operate in an unfamiliar situation and environment, and it can enhance its own ability over time. That is artificial general intelligence. We're not quite there, at least publicly, but we're getting there. And that's when it becomes smarter than us. And that's when we start wondering who's going to be driving who.
>> Tony Vitagliano: Well, and so with AGI, I mean some of the more positive aspects I see definitely of these advancements in AI is you could have an AGI who could find a cure for cancer. I mean to me that's a positive development from something because this AI, it's just day in and day out, like you mentioned, referencing across different studies, referencing across different fields, combining all of its combined and reasoning and reasoning and it could develop a cure for cancer. To me that is a, an example of where a positive direction this could go for sure. So yeah, I don't want us to be, I'm not trying to, you know, we don't, we want to balance. Scaring people from AI and saying that it's. That it's evil and, you know, that it's, you know, a form of the beast. and we also want to balance, you know, encouraging people that it is a. There will be positive developments.
>> Steve Jordahl: Every time. Every. I'm sorry, every time I interview somebody on this, I asked the same question. Are we headed towards a Star Trek world or Terminator world?
>> Ed Vitagliano: Yeah, that's a good way.
>> Tony Vitagliano: That's a good way of viewing it.
>> Ed Vitagliano: I read it.
>> Tim Wildmon: what's. What's the answer?
>> Steve Jordahl: Everybody's.
>> Ed Vitagliano: I don't think anybody knows.
>> Tony Vitagliano: Give us another question to throw on top of it.
>> Tim Wildmon: Right.
>> Ed Vitagliano: I read an article just a year or two ago that put this forward. Now, how about this as an idea? They said, if we ever get to the AGI. Artificial General Intelligence. Why do we need politicians? Hey, you just had. You just asked the computer what we should do about our. You mentioned traffic patterns.
>> Tony Vitagliano: Oh, yeah.
>> Ed Vitagliano: It's going to do all the research. What do we do about this? The fishing off the, coast within our own borders. And you don't need politicians because the AGI is going to be smarter and less influenced by money.
>> Tony Vitagliano: We needed a convincing case on why we need AI. There's. There's one of them.
>> Ed Vitagliano: Yes.
>> Tony Vitagliano: That's a quick way to get politicians, to legislate AI out of existence. Why do we need you again, folks?
It is Thanksgiving week and we hope you have a very happy Thanksgiving
that's all we have time for today. It is Thanksgiving week. We hope you have a very happy Thanksgiving. Remember that we always have something to be thankful for and that our contentment should flow from our love for Jesus Christ. Thank you for listening. And we have more great programming ahead for you.
>> Steve Jordahl: Tony, you did a great job this week.
>> Ed Vitagliano: Praise the Lord.
>> Tony Vitagliano: Thank you, Robert.
