The Church Has Something to Say About AI. Are We Saying It?
This Substack post from Holy Post Media came across our Ministry Forum feed last week, and we thought we’d bring it here for a bit of conversation.
It’s called “This Is Not a Drill,” written by Nick Skytland, who was part of a series of meetings between researchers at Anthropic (the company behind Claude AI) and Christian leaders… there’s some pretty alarming stuff in here.
If you've been following the evolving conversation around AI, you've probably heard about the race to develop increasingly powerful models, the safety concerns, and the very real questions about what happens when this technology advances beyond our ability to understand or control it.
Nick gets into all of that in the post - researchers leaving their jobs over safety concerns. AI companies developing models they don't feel are safe to release publicly. People working at the forefront of this technology acknowledging that they don't have all the answers, while the pressure to keep building continues.
But there's another part of this article (and it’s the reason we’re resharing it with the Ministry Forum community) Nick puts out a call to church leaders to get off the sidelines and get involved in the conversation.
Researchers are starting to recognize that you can't just build enough rules and safeguards to account for every possible situation an AI system might encounter. Instead, they're exploring what it means to develop something closer to character. To train models around ethics, wisdom, values and good judgment so they can navigate situations that nobody thought to write a rule for. Things the church has been talking about for thousands of years.
Some of the smartest people working in technology are turning to theologians, pastors and Christian leaders to help them wrestle with these questions. The church has something important to contribute here, and we can't afford to sit on the sidelines while these decisions are being made.
We've had plenty of conversations about how churches might use AI. But what about the role of the church in shaping the larger conversation? What would it actually look like for faith communities to be involved in these discussions? What would it look like for YOUR CHURCH to be involved in these discussions?
We’d encourage you to read the article: “This Is Not a Drill” by Nick Skytland on Holy Post Media. And then, let's talk about it. What's your gut reaction? Do you agree that the church has a role to play? Are these conversations already happening in your congregation or ministry spaces?