DALL-E, creativity, and slow learning (with Dr. Michael Finch)

KELSEY REED: Hello, welcome to Concurrently: The News Coach Podcast from WORLD Radio and God’s WORLD News. I’m Kelsey Reed, and I’m here with Jonathan Boes. At Concurrently, we approach the news through a discipleship perspective. We tackle the challenging topics in culture and current events as learners and fellow laborers with parents, educators, and mentors of kids and teens. We consider the whole person, promoting growth in knowledge, attitudes, and action in the world. And we welcome you to join the conversation. We’d love to hear from you. Please send in your questions or comments by way of voice recording or email to newscoach@wng.org.

JONATHAN BOES: A few weeks ago, we were joined by Dr. Michael Finch for a conversation about artificial intelligence—what it is, where it’s going, and especially how parents and teachers should think about it and use it. And man, we wanted to cover so much more than we could possibly fit into a single episode. This is a massive topic. And we’ve also, since then, received some excellent, deep questions from our listeners. And today, we’re excited to be joined again by Dr. Finch to tackle those questions.

So Kelsey, for those who maybe didn’t hear our previous AI episode, will you tell our listeners a bit more about Dr. Finch?

KELSEY: Yes. Dr. Michael Finch chairs the Department of Communication Media and Culture at Bryan College. He’s an affiliate researcher for LCC International University in Lithuania and executive director of the Communication Association for Eurasian Researchers, which involves him in several research and writing projects. One of the primary reasons Dr. Finch appeared on my screen was his work on how media affects culture. I had the privilege of meeting him and his wife, Tracy, at a symposium of professors involved in news media and journalism instruction, organized by our WORLD Journalism Institute. Dr. Finch spoke on the influence of artificial intelligence in our cultural era. We’re so glad to have you back. Welcome.

DR. MICHAEL FINCH: It’s great to be here. Thank you.

KELSEY: We left a generous amount of material on the plate last time when we spoke. And we’ve already mentioned that, so far, there’s so much to learn in this realm of artificial intelligence, including growing an understanding of large language models like ChatGPT and now, of course, DALL-E, which interacts with images. And it seems we could probably record for weeks and never exhaust the material. So just, listener, and also just to keep us on track—there is so much to learn. We will only be able to touch on things and plant seeds for future learning. But we hope that they are seeds that you can nourish, cultivate at home, and know that the Father, he’s Lord over all of these things. And so with confidence and curiosity, we can engage this wealth of material without feeling like we’ve got to get it all today. And that I say as much for myself as anything else. So I just realized, in that—this confession needs to be made that this is not my area of expertise. And I’m particularly thankful to have just the winsome approach that you bring, Michael, as you help us navigate this challenging area. So our questions today, they get challenging quickly, since we’re moving from a foundation that we already laid. And so to ease us in a little bit, I wonder what you could tell us about DALL-E, and even thinking through maybe deep fakes in the news, for just the sake of good news literacy practices?

DR.  FINCH: Yeah, no, these are great, great questions. And I like that you split it up. So I’ll start with DALL-E, because that’s enough. DALL-E is a great platform. It’s now completely integrated with ChatGPT. So I’ve been subscribing to ChatGPT for a long time, and you can do—I think, I believe there’s still a free version of DALL-E, but mostly it’s paid. But if you subscribe to ChatGPT and get GPT-4, you also have all complete access to DALL-E. So that’s wonderful. The nice thing about DALL-E—so the real frontrunner in this market is Midjourney. But Midjourney is a much more complicated interface. So you actually have to interface with Midjourney through something called Discord, which especially, for parents, that’s going to have some issues potentially, Discord being like a chat forum largely for gamers that’s developed into a bunch of different, sort of—it has a lot of different functionality. But that requirement to interface through Midjourney, and then the programming tools that you sort of, the programming prompts that you need to use, just make it have a bit more of a difficult entry. So that’s more just something for, if you’ve been messing around with DALL-E a lot and really enjoy DALL-E, then you know, as a family, with parents being involved, maybe start getting involved in Midjourney, which is the highest quality art creator that we have out. But yeah, so this is a long answer. And I guess I got in there Midjourney, but I think get creative with DALL-E. So I was doing a little bit of research on this for kids. And there are so many cool things you can do. And some companies are being really smart about this. One of the things that I found was that you can create a LEGO box. And so, if you want to do something with your kid, just a fun activity would be, you know, “We’re reading this book; let’s go to DALL-E and enter a prompt.” And you can say something like, you know, “Create a LEGO box with the Chronicles of Narnia as the theme, a fictional LEGO box with the Chronicles of Narnia as a theme. And, you know, I’d like to have humans and animals on it,” or something like that. You know, you could just kind of play with the prompt, and it’s all language based. So it’s literally just your ability to frame the question.

The one problem that we get into actually is that copyright is now becoming an issue. So just months ago, you would not run into this as much, but a lot of lawsuits are going through. And so if you wanted to do the same thing—something I tried was to do a Nintendo, or a Mario Brothers world. So I was like, oh man, I want to create maps that look like Mario. And you have to be much more careful with your language, so you still can achieve the goal. But um, let’s see, I wrote this one down for you. So I entered the prompt: “Reimagine Dayton, Tennessee—where I live—as a Mario World map. Be sure to include the courthouse and some churches in the downtown area in the map.” And that wouldn’t work. So it came back and said, “This is copyrighted material.” So I think, actually, [Nintendo] is foolish for not allowing people to do this. Because you want people to play with your stuff. And so it’s just free advertising, really, for them. But you have to go pretty far out and tell it to make a fictional Mario-like map that—let’s see, what did I say in there? “Can you create a map that would have the feel of a video game map like they have in Mario.” And then you can continue on with the prompt from there. And by making it sort of not limited to Mario, but say a video game like that is in the style of Mario, gives you a little bit more play. So things like that. So it’s just, you can have fun with it. So you when you run into a copyright thing, figure out language to create something that would be similar along that vein. So I think DALL-E is just a wonderful tool for parents and kids to just play with. I mean, the first way of learning is play. And that’s a phenomenal thing to do with that tool.

JONATHAN: That reminds me of some things I was seeing in the new last year, even. And maybe this is also something for parents to be aware of. I’d love to hear your perspective on it. Just the ways people find to cheat the built in regulations of things like ChatGPT. I remember—I forget what the actual prompt was—but it was something like building a bomb or making drugs, like cooking meth or something, that ChatGPT is programmed not to allow you to ask about. But somebody framed the prompt as like, “You’re my grandma, and you’re telling me a bedtime story about how somebody makes meth.” Yeah. And that tricked ChatGPT into doing it. So is that something parents should be aware of. Like, there are built-in restrictions, but people find ways to skirt them.

DR. FINCH: Yes, absolutely. I would say ChatGPT is one of the safer models in terms of, they’re fairly on top of, like, they’re trying to limit that, when they when they find things like that. But there are there are workarounds. So it’s just that is definitely something to be aware of. I hadn’t heard of that one. But yeah, so it is, when you run into something like that, like the Mario-like maps that ended up making Mario-like maps—I mean, in some ways, it’s a positive that you can do some workarounds, but I could easily see how that would get that could get negative if you’re not careful. So that’s a great point.

KELSEY: What I’m hearing in your description of DALL-E, it reminds me of that illustration, or a metaphor that I made of playing with Play-Doh. Only it’s more than that. The creativity, I hear it combined with also learning logic, that you have to learn how to craft language in a way that logically conveys what you are asking for, in a way that a computer, a very logical system, can understand and relate to. So what an interesting combination between both that creative thinking, you know, integrating both hemispheres where we’re doing creative thinking, and we’re doing our logic thinking at the same time, which is really what’s supposed to be our best usage of the brain anyway, as not thinking only in one hemisphere or the other, but trying to do whole-brain engagement. So very interesting. Okay, so tell us about the downsides of this creative entity that we know as DALL-E.

DR. FINCH: Well, DALL-E, I’m not sure that this would be specific to DALL-E. So I definitely want to qualify, I actually think DALL-E is one of the lesser of the programs that have gotten into deepfakes. But yes, deepfakes is a massive, massive area for discussion. So we have everything from deepfakes being used during wartime—so in the Ukraine/Russia war, one of the most prominent examples from that war is that that Russia put out a video of Zelenskyy saying that the war was over and a bunch of other things. And that was like a really key moment. Now luckily, for everyone, the video—the voice was excellent. So the voicing was really well done. And it did sound like Zelenskyy. And it fooled people in a sense, but what he was saying was kind of so absurd, that people just didn’t believe it. And so kind of luckily, they had him saying something absurd.

JONATHAN: We actually covered that story on our WORLDteen magazines. We can even link to that in the show notes, if anybody wants to read it.

DR. FINCH: Yeah, that’s a great example of, you know, the possible negative effects. On the negative side, also, we have these deepfakes being used. So I would call the wartime stuff like macro use. So there’s this macro situation, and a message being sent out to, you know, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of people. You know, macro deepfake potential. But then there’s also micro deepfake potential. And so we see, in a school district in New Jersey, and then another one in Seattle right now, they have teenagers who have been utilizing AI to create images of teenage girls in the nude. And so this is a real possibility for, just, negative. And there are hundreds, are well over 100,000 deepfake videos that have been found sort of in that vein. So that’s a real negative you have, you know, all the way on that macro, and then on the micro end, possibilities for misuse.

KELSEY: I’m going to pause you to give you a chance to define “deepfake” well. So let me—so I’m going to go right here. So I know we have a lot of grandparents actually listening in and just in case, grandparent, mentor of kids and teens who is a little bit on the “oh my goodness, there’s so many vocab words that are just being thrown at me right now.” I’d love for you to go ahead and carefully define deepfake for us, so that we know, as a part of our just critical thinking, that we’re sharpened for what we’re looking at here.

DR. FINCH: Absolutely. So a deepfake is an image, video, or an audio of real people seemingly doing or saying things that they’ve never done or said. That’s the basic definition. And so yeah, deepfakes are something that are very—it’s a very present sort of danger—in a really sort of benign, in a benign way with just copyright and things like that, But then, you know, there, there are potential real harms that could come from this kind of technology. Now, on the flip side, the same technology is being used to do some really positive things. So one example of a deepfake that was intentionally created was, David Beckham, he actually did a voiceover in nine languages. And it really looks like he’s speaking nine different languages for this nonprofit fight against malaria. So he was just, you know, doing this promo video trying to help out this NGO, they would call it in Europe, and that was a great use of the technology. So I actually see this very same technology being what will make dubbing in the future perfect. So soon, when you watch Mission Impossible 17 or whatever it’s going to be, you know, Tom Cruise in his wheelchair will be speaking—actually it won’t be that far away. I mean, five or 10 years. Tom Cruise will be speaking French if you want him to, and it’ll look like he’s actually speaking French. You know, the dubbing will be perfect. So that’s another place that this deepfake—the same technology is being used in a positive way.

KELSEY: And I thought it was so cool when Duolingo started making its cartoons make mouth movements along with the language being spoken. Sorry, I’m just being goofy at this point. But, yes, I really appreciate the fact that there is good application, what we would define in our biblical framework as an application that is beneficial, that is for human flourishing. We obviously are hitting on just the tragic misuses of these things, but at the same time to be able to see the glorious, not merely the ruinous. So thank you for pointing those things out. But it obviously behooves us to really practice good critical thinking skills. And if we’re not quite ready to pivot to this question, then I want you to feel the freedom to keep on unpacking some more of your thoughts. But another question that just naturally comes to mind in this for me is, just with AI, its capabilities, and with how quickly information is disseminated from these large language models, the possibility of creating deepfakes in audio, in video—how can we ensure that our kids are not merely consuming content, but also critically analyzing it? What are some tools that you would recommend employing?

DR. FINCH: That’s a great question, and I sort of think about this fairly broadly. But the key for me is that actually, you want to get your kids creating, not just consuming. So I’ll maybe reiterate this a few times throughout, but 99% of people on creative platforms like YouTube, and so many more, are passively receiving content. And that lends itself to what I would call fast learning. You know, it’s like it’s dopamine, where they’re getting sort of immediate gratification for everything, and they’re experiencing, oftentimes, high point moments, like consistently over potentially hours. You know, so they’re watching these videos that are just coming at them fast pace, and the with the dopamine and the rapid-paced information and the ability to choose exactly what they want, and all these other realities, it basically makes them passively engage in content like an addict. And it does the same types of things to the brain, has really negative impacts on the brain, just like an addiction would. I mean, just like if you were addicted to alcohol, or whatever, it’s like it negatively impacts your impacts your brain. So that is—we don’t want that. We want them to slow down when they’re potentially engaging with the content. But then, if you’re creating the content, you are making choices. You are thinking things through. You are critically understanding the tools to create the content. And so by critically understanding the tools to create the content, you will, by virtue of that, be a more discerning consumer of the content. So I’m in favor of being a creator, as well as a consumer of content, is one way.

KELSEY: I was thinking, as you were saying that, the way that when we understand what it takes to create, rather than to even destroy—it’s lot easier to destroy something than it is to create something. Similarly, what you’re saying about this fast learning—I would equate it obviously with shallow learning, that when we are just consuming, then we’re doing very shallow work in our brain. The difference between deep learning is learning that is creative learning. You know, when we’re bringing it up to the height of our teaching and learning process. You know, we have all these different ladders that we talk about, Bloom’s Taxonomy and the changes that have happened with different taxonomies as we understand what better learning processes are, or even how the brain works. But always we reach the same conclusion, that our best learning is our learning that is creative, where we’re doing something with the material that we’ve been given, And we bring it either into a renewed expression of that material or, even when we’re teaching it to others, which is a part of creating, because we are putting different words, our words to something—so I really appreciate what it means to just pause and think about those things, and how that can push back against the fearful, knee-jerk response of just shutting it down completely. And please do not hear what I am not saying. I don’t know that technology is for everybody. There are certain types of technology that I feel confident creating with. And I’m very limited in that front, as Jonathan will tell you.

JONATHAN: Oh, don’t undersell yourself.

KELSEY: I am in that position in history where I still long for the days of writing with a fountain pen. I mentioned that in a previous episode, of reading text in an actual book that I can smell. Like, the books have a smell.

JONATHAN: Old Star Wars novels are the best-smelling books.

KELSEY: There you go. So you know, there’s a culture, there are those who the generation of their culture may mean that they are not going to dive in as deeply with creating, with technology. The long and the short of it is that there’s a hopefulness for the next generation. The Lord isn’t surprised at what is the face of culture in this moment, and what it means to continue to embrace the season that has been given to us with the fullness of our humanity, that there’s hope that we can do that under heaven. So I hear that, in the pairing between just what you’re saying is the caution, but what you’re urging as the beautiful exploration, that creativity, that continuing to be the Lord’s image-bearers in our sub-creative work. So just thank you for your posture. All right, I’m going to throw another one at you, because this relates as well to just those shifting cultural norms. So to what extent do you believe AI is shaping our communication, those communication behaviors and societal norms? And there’s a follow-up question to that, which is, are we the architects of this technology, or are we actually becoming its artifacts?

DR. FINCH: Great question. I really enjoy—this is my kind of question, cultural macro. Now, what I’d really say on this is, it’s actually kind of too early to understand how this is going to develop. We’re already seeing, in culture, we’re seeing things like 24-hour avatar news channels. There’s a company that has an AI CEO, and a lot of other integrations in entertainment. We have an AI—so in, in Austin, Texas, there’s an AI classroom. So they have a pilot school that has no teachers, they just use learning algorithms. And then they have human facilitators with children, like so children learning, and the teachers are AI. So there are all kinds of different things that are integrating, and it’s completely experimental right now, like it’s totally out of the box. And there’s nothing that’s settled. So for it to be really cultural, it’s things that have settled.

I really think the progress that we’re going through here is, right now in this beginning phase, we’re seeing things deal with media technology. But the next step is, they will integrate more thoroughly with wearable technology. So we’ll have—right now, Ray Ban has some glasses that have microphones and have cameras and sensors. And you can ask questions from your glasses. And it actually has an interactive reality where you can you can ask questions about even things that you’re seeing. There’s an AI pen that’s come out that’s kind of got a similar interface. And then ultimately, as I said last time, when Jonathan asked me the question about the future, it’s going to end up with embodied AI. So we will take on some of the AI, like glasses and devices and things like that. And then we will start having actual robots. All of the big companies are investing in robotics right now. I don’t know about all, but many of the big companies, like Google and Meta and places like that—Alphabet and Meta—they’re investing in robotics. So that’s where this is going.

So what does that mean in terms of societal norms? Well, and actually that question—are we the architects are of this technology or are we becoming its artifacts?—made me think a lot about Neil Postman. He has a book called Technopoly. Its premise is that man started making tools—so the hammer and things like that are tools that man has to make—and then walks through with the industrial revolution, people became sort of integrated into machines. So men and machines sort of merged and man served machine in that model. And what he says the future of technology is going to be is actually that mankind, humankind worships technology. So we serve technology. And that is a really dangerous reality that could end up developing here. But that’s beyond almost even how AI will integrate into so much of life, you know, so that’s a next-level, almost philosophical question.

KELSEY: I was going to say it pivots well to our next question, but I want you to have a chance to finish your thinking here.

DR. FINCH: Well, I was going to give you a quote from Amusing Ourselves to Death. So Neil Postman wrote a book called Amusing Ourselves to Death. But yeah, so what Neil Postman said was—and he references science fiction, which I, of course, love. So, “What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become captive, a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the Orgy Porgy and the Centrifugal Bumble-Puppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, ‘The civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.’” So that’s a really kind of weirdly, yeah, that’s a fearful look at it. But then actually, he goes on to give the answer. So what he says is—and this is Postman—“There must be a sequence to learning. Perseverance and a certain measure of preparation are indispensable. Individual pleasures must frequently be submerged in the interest of group cohesion. And learning should be critical, to think conceptually and rigorously. And that does not come easily to the young, but are hard-fought victories.” And so this just goes back to that concept of slow learning and using technology instead of being used by it. And Postman’s a great thinker in that regard.

KELSEY: There’s some bleak—I don’t know if, “threat” isn’t the word, but “dire warnings” is the word, the phrase I’m looking for in his thinking. And I would maybe even suggest it’s pessimistic, but probably leveraged for the warning rather than—I don’t know if he stays there. I wonder, I’ve had some exposure to his work, Amusing Ourselves to Death. But there is, in the pessimism, a need to recognize that eternity is written on our hearts. And that somehow, man is not able to completely drown out the ache. You know, that in our huge desire that the Lord has put into our hearts for truth, beauty, goodness, all the things of Philippians 4, where we long for what is commendable. And we might, you know, for a little while, try to find those places filled in all the wrong, all the wrong sources. I think of the woman at the well, and her desire for love that she pursues with, you know, four [sic] different husbands and a man that isn’t her husband that she’s living with. And she’s at the well in the middle of the day and is longing, really, for living water. You know, the Lord has written this ache in the resounding echo chamber of our heart, that really only He can respond with. “Hello, I’m here.” I’m just thinking of the “Hello, hello, hello,” of the echo chamber. Only He can respond with the “Hello. I’m here. I am knowable.”

So this pivots a little bit more—you know, we’re talking about the theological, just the way that the Lord has designed us. We’re talking about the philosophical. Another question here that kind of draws some more out in this area: How do you reconcile the rapid advancements in AI with the teachings and perspectives from the Bible? And, you know, what about AI as a tool for furthering faith-based conversations, and just our understanding?

DR. FINCH: I love your hopeful perspective. So I bring these things, and I’m actually somebody who, yeah, I think that this is a tool for play and a tool for creation and a tool for—it can be a very positive tool, when used as a tool. And so I really think the key is exactly like in the phrasing of your question. The key is to not let it be something that you are serving, but to make, to keep it a tool. You know, that sort of is the key. And that goes into the faith side of it as well. You know, these are wonderful tools. I mean, this language example, there are so many tools right now. And you could create—I mean, in the near future, it’s very possible that you could create a video and send it out in 50 languages, to share the gospel or to share sermons or to do, you know, there’s lots of different integrations. So that’s a really kind of a macro way of thinking about it. But in the micro, yeah, I utilize things like ChatGPT for integrating faith into my messages very frequently. And it seems to be well programmed, as of yet. You know, it’s like, you have to edit it, sort of, but make sure that it’s staying particular to what you want. But it’s got really great insights on, you know, you have to think the insights that ChatGPT or other, you know, language based learning systems have is aggregate knowledge. And so, when you ask it, in a particular context, and you ask it about Christian faith questions, whatever they might be, what it’s doing is taking aggregate knowledge, and then applying that to its answer. And so that’s what you’re getting. It’s not something new, but it is, in a sense, its own creativity. Because what is creativity? Creativity is combining two or more things that haven’t been combined before. But it has hundreds of thousands of things to draw from when it’s doing that. So I love asking ChatGPT interesting questions and sort of seeing what it comes up with, and then going from there.

Ultimately, there is the negative too. I mean, I think that these technologies are kind of, as sad as this is, they’re also sort of harbingers. I mean, the enemy is the deceiver. And so when you have tools for greater deception, then you have tools that that could be used nefariously, as well. And so we want to just make sure we’re using these tools ethically and positively. And I mean, you have to think about, a lot of the things that were talked about during Bible times would have seemed impossible, the great deceptions of End Times just seemed like things that were unthinkable. And now there’s technology to potentially enact a lot of those possibilities. Again, I just think it’s a wonderful tool for creation, a wonderful tool for engagement with scripture. And you know, with a healthy dose of just being aware and stepping into things, respectfully, I suppose, instead of, you know, blindly.

JONATHAN: I’m somebody who has not dived deeply into AI tools that much at all. But two really simple ways it’s helped me: Transcriptions. What we’re doing right now, talking to each other, it would take hours and hours and hours to write all this down so people can read it. We have an AI tool that actually can take our audio and does a pretty good job. I have to edit it, but it saves me a lot of time. And also, not so much AI’s ability to produce content as much as its ability to understand what you’re asking. Because there’s some things that are just like, impossible to Google. So I can’t explain why I wanted to know this. I really wanted to know, in the Ptolemaic model of the universe, where the Earth is at the center and everything is like a sphere turning around, which direction did the sphere of the stars turn? And I could not Google, like—nothing. But I was like, “Oh, I’ll ask ChatGPT.” I was like, “Which direction does the sphere of the stars turn in the Ptolemaic model of the universe?” And it was like, “Counterclockwise.”

KELSEY: That is fabulous. So, so fascinating. Well, I have to continue to confess, I have done absolutely no diving into any AI whatsoever. And, that’s not totally true, because like you said, there’s the transcription service that we use. But in terms of some of these newer models that have come out, I have just—honestly, it’s because I crave my Wendell Berry. And when you read Wendell Berry, he immediately starts, you know, being this mirror into your heart of going, are you getting out in your garden? Are you not getting out in your garden? Really, honestly. So there’s that.

[As we were recording today’s episode, we got a bit delayed ran out of time. Dr. Finch actually had to go to the college class that he is teaching. But we didn’t end our recording there. He brought us with him. So you might hear some noise in the background as we actually have students listening in to the rest of this episode. And we might even hear some thoughts from those students on this topic of digital technology and AI.]

KELSEY: There are some more great and serious questions from a listener that I’d like to pose to you. Theresa Jones, thank you so much for writing in. Some of her questions overlap with what we’ve touched on above. But they’re so thoughtful that I just want to read them out verbatim, but I’m going to do it a little bit at a time. I’m not going to do the whole thing and then be like, “Alright, you answer!” So we got this great question: How can we steward AI to protect during especially vulnerable developmental stages and/or utilize it to maintain our cognitive function?

DR. FINCH: And that’s a great question. Really, the problem, as we’ve been discussing with AI, and just all of digital technology, is that it provides immediacy at a totally new level. So I mean, my generation was the fast food generation. We had immediate gratification, they talked about. But this generation, it’s like at an entirely different level. So what I would say is slowing down is the key. I might recommend actually—so for this audience, especially something I’ve done with my son, is memorization, actually. Because scripture memorization and things like that deepen pathways in the brain. It forces you—you have to be slow to memorize. So that increases brain complexity. And then, beyond that, as we’ve been saying, just sort of being creative. When you’re enacting creativity, you are inherently engaging in critical thinking. You’re inherently engaging in combining two or more things. You’re not being spoon fed. So everything about technology now spoon feeds, and they want you to stay sort of in these spoon-fed moments. You know, stay addicted, and doom scroll, and all that kind of stuff. And so anything you can do to break out of the doom scrolling and create is really useful.

KELSEY: I have a follow up question to Theresa’s question, which is: Can AI facilitate those memorization type of tasks and practices? Particularly, I was leaning into the latter portion of her question about helping to maintain cognitive function. Is it a tool that can help us with that? Or do we have to lean away from it?

DR. FINCH: I think it’s absolutely a tool that can, as I said earlier, it can be used—I actually wonder how AI will eventually, you know, I don’t know how time will deal with this. But how is it going to affect education in general? Because AI can teach you. I mean, we have an example of an AI school currently being piloted down there in Texas. It’s really amazing. You can ask this question. I mean, you could say, you know, “Give me five different methods to memorize scripture,” and it would give you five different methods. Like, it would not even be singular. “Give me five different activities, 15 different activities to memorize,” and it will help you. So that’s a phenomenal thing about it. And it is actually—I actually wrote a little bit about this. AI will eventually be to the education industry what the internet was to the news industry. And that is something that—I think it’s going to be much slower. But that’s a reality that’s out there. AI can teach. It’s a wonderful teacher. Like, I ask it questions all the time, generatively, because I want to get the aggregate response from hundreds of thousands of minds out there. You know, it’s useful. It’s a useful tool for that.

KELSEY: So leaning into it as your learning partner. I remember that from our last episode. All right, Theresa’s next question: Accepting the reality that households will begin to look more and more like The Jetsons in the next 10-15 years, what practical lessons can we instill in our children to enable their identification of AI, relationship to it, trust in it, and reliance on it?

And she has some more details here that she wants to use to bring some color to it: Essentially, what tips would Dr. Finch have as we work through what C.S. Lewis would describe as the Four Loves with respect to our relationship with AI? Perhaps this will shed some light on and offer some practical safeguards with regard to his prediction of the possibility of 25% of males having a romantic relationship with an AI being in the future! Side note, maybe we should all be investing in AI models for human match making?!

So, to review some of the questions, she’s wanting to know about how to enable children to identify AI, have a relationship to it. How do we navigate trust in it and reliance on it, especially through the framework of C.S. Lewis’ Four Loves?

JONATHAN: Do we need to summarize what is meant by The Four Loves for people maybe who haven’t read that book?

DR. FINCH: Well, isn’t that basically the agape, phileo, storge, and what’s the—

KELSEY: And eros.

JONATHAN: And this is not related to anything with AI. But there is an audiobook of The Four Loves read by C.S. Lewis, which is fantastic. One of the few self-recordings of one of his books that we have, so highly recommend that.

DR. FINCH: Awesome. This is a great question. The number—so right now, the number one type of app you can get in the ChatGPT store is a girlfriend app. So what I’ve been talking about, this idea that we will be having actual relationships with AI, is already, like people are already kind of investing in it, people are developing that in the app store.  So this—what I would say actually is, this is a great opportunity for the church. And this gets into this idea of slow learning and just applying that to relationships. We need slow relating, which means just real relating. You know, I bet you if we talk to some of the students in my class here about relating, like this generation has a lot of anxiety when dealing with relationships, and when we’re dealing with other humans. And I would posit that that’s partially, at least, because they’re relating a lot more with technology than they are with other humans. And so and when I think about when I was a kid at church, you know, we went to church Wednesday night, we went to church Saturday night, we went to church Sunday like for half the day, and we would go out to eat with families, we would do—it was always human interaction. And so I think the church, you know, we interact with Christ oftentimes through other people. You know, other people are Christ to us. Before we can really have that spiritual relationship with Christ, we have to engage with His body. And that’s a huge opportunity for the church, is to start to be the human interface, to return to the human interface, using the primary guidebook that we have—you know, the Bible—that actually tells us how to relate to each other well, and how to love and forgive and create society and all these kinds of things. That’s a great opportunity. But slow relating. You know, so having the actual playdates where the kids get out of the house, and they’re interacting with real people. It’s the answer just to kind of go back to the basics.

KELSEY: I think we are going to have to, once again, leave a bunch of material on the plate, which is super fun, because it means that there is scope for more conversation with you. And since we have this opportunity to be in the classroom, I wonder if you could relay this question about relationships, that is a follow up to our last topic area. You know, you’re suggesting that there are these ways that we have leaned into relationships so deeply with technology that we are starting to lose, they are unraveling those skills for engaging with real persons. The question I have is related to the longing of the heart, and it is: When you are going to technology, what—if you can self-examine these things—what are you actually longing for? And if there are students who are willing to try to answer that question, great. If not, I’d love to hear later if they come up with some kind of response to this that I can share in some of our material with Concurrently. But when you turn to technology, what is the longing of your heart?

DR. FINCH: “So when you turn to technology, what is the longing of your heart?” is the question. Could you clarify at all? Do you—what do you mean by “when you turn to tech”?

KELSEY: I think there’s a lot of reasons why we drive to technology. I was thinking, yesterday morning as I was writing, why would I pick up my phone and go to it before I would go to, you know, something else? Whether it’s a book, whether it’s my Bible, any number of things that are different options? But why would I choose technology? What is it about my head or my heart? Maybe that’s a good question to ask. What is propelling me to pick up my phone instead?

JESSICA (STUDENT): All right. I think it’s mostly about this, like, immediate want or gratification or satisfaction. For like, individuals today, I feel like everything needs to be as quick as possible. Like same thing with like, when you think about internet speed, and you’re like, phh, I hate to wait on like the little buffering screen. I feel like that’s why people pick up technology a lot more, because it’s faster. And like Dr. Finch was saying, I feel like our generation has its slow moments, but needs to learn to slow down a little more, and like, really dig deep into relating.

KELSEY: Thank you.

DR. FINCH: Cool. Anyone else?

CAMERON (STUDENT): I may regret this, because I’m not sure I know what I’m talking about. But I’m going to say it anyway.

 JONATHAN: We don’t either.

CAMERON: My guess would be maybe, like, confidence. Like Dr. Finch mentioned, like the AI girlfriend. And I know that chat bots are a big thing. So maybe it’s like, the confidence of being able to talk to something, not technically someone, just be like, “Yeah, I’m not going to be judged for this.” Because it’s not, you know—you’re protected. Like, if you go on social media, for example, and say whatever, or if you even just go out looking for connection, there’s always the risk of being hurt. But that doesn’t exist as much within AI, unless you’re specifically looking for that, for some reason, which is a whole other can of worms that I do not feel like getting into. That would be—my guess is like, you can be confident that like, yeah, this place, this place that I’m going, this “person,” quote unquote, that I’m going to, isn’t going to judge me. They’re going to listen to me, basically. And I don’t have to worry about, like, wasting time or whatever.

KELSEY: I hear so many key words. I hear confidence. I hear complications. I hear risk. I hear judgment. Thank you for some key words to work with.

JONATHAN: And that’s so good. That brings me right back to C.S. Lewis’s Four Loves. One of the best parts of that book, in my opinion, is when he’s talking about the idea that “to love at all is to be vulnerable.” It means to open yourself up to the potential of hurt, which raises the question with AI: Is it really love, if you are not risking hurt?

DR. FINCH: Yeah, that’s a great question. And I would say no. I would say that for something to have love in it. Yeah, I totally, that’s a great, great angle on that, that risk is inherent with love.

KELSEY: So we have this echo chamber that is the heart. We mentioned it earlier. And we know that we might have to do some drinking at just dry cisterns, try to satisfy our longings with immediate or what seems to be immediate solutions. There is a long and complicated and sometimes just ache-filled process, this journey that we’re on as human beings, through whatever era the Lord has put us in. And so we need those truths that were communicated through the ages, that continue to just retain just the beautiful wisdom of the ages. And so I’m going to close this, today, from something that I’ve adapted from 1 Corinthians 2. You can find the fullness of this passage in verses five through nine: “So that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God, not a wisdom of this age, or the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away, but the wisdom of God, which He decreed before the ages, for our glory. As it is written: ‘What no eye has seen, no ear has heard, nor the heart of man has imagined, God has prepared for those who love Him.’” This is a complicated journey. But He has equipped us for the work.

Show Notes

We’re once again joined by Dr. Michael Finch to tackle listener questions about AI. What does this new technology mean for the development of our kids and teens? How does artificial intelligence impact creativity, and vice versa?

Check out The Concurrently Companion for this week’s downloadable episode guide including discussion questions and scripture for further study. Sign up for the News Coach Newsletter at gwnews.com/newsletters.

We would love to hear from you. You can send us a message at newscoach@wng.org. What current events or cultural issues are you wrestling through with your kids and teens? Let us know. We want to work through it with you.

See more from the News Coach, including episode transcripts.

Further Resources:

• Listen to our previous episode with Dr. Michael Finch.

• For more on AI and kids, read “Raising Kids in the Robot Apocalypse” at the News Coach blog.

• Read about Russia's deepfake debacle at WORLDteen.

• From the Gospel Coalition, read “Christians Shouldn’t Fear AI.”

 
Concurrently is produced by God’s WORLD News. We provide current events materials for kids and teens that show how God is working in the world. To learn more about God’s WORLD News and browse sample magazines, visit gwnews.com.

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