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A few weeks ago, my friend Matt sent me an ad that had just come across his social media. It was for a new app called Text with Jesus.
The app uses AI – that of ChatGPT – to message you as Jesus (or, if you’re willing to pay for it, other biblical figures from Adam and Eve to Moses to Jesus’ mother Mary to, and I’m not kidding here, Judas).
I’m sure you won’t be shocked to learn that I have strong feelings about this (as did Matt, hence the text).
But before I share my thoughts with you, I want you to consider this with me.
Is this technology good or bad? Or maybe better yet: if we were in debate class and you got assigned one side or the other to defend, what would you say?
How would you argue that Chat-JesusPT is good? How would you argue it’s bad?
I bet you could defend either side. I bet if we polled the congregation, we’d have a mix of reactions already.
So… how do we know whether this new innovation is good or bad?
This is a vital question when it comes to technology, and because technology is always evolving – faster and faster!, we need a way to think faithfully about technology.
Let’s explore what technology is and how we learn to evaluate it well. We’ll see that we can learn to ask good questions about tech. We’re not going to suggest that technology is the enemy of God. We are going to suggest that technology isn’t morally neutral, and we should be careful and thoughtful about the technologies we employ.
