Show Notes
What does faithfulness look like when artificial intelligence is shaping our work, our decisions, and even our relationships?
In this episode of Nuance, Case is joined by Todd Korpi, author of AI Goes to Church (InterVarsity Press), to examine how emerging technologies are reshaping the workplace—and what Christian theology has to say about it.
As AI moves from the lab into everyday life, this conversation goes beyond short-term questions about tools and productivity to address deeper issues of human identity, public witness, and wisdom at work. Together, they reflect on how artificial intelligence challenges our understanding of the image of God, human relationships, and the pace and purpose of modern work.
Episode Resources:
AI Goes to Church: Pastoral Wisdom for Artificial Intelligence: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1514011247/
Todd Korpi’s website: https://www.toddkorpi.com/
The Anchor Forward Project: https://anchorforward.com/
Gloo: https://gloo.com/ai
https://jesus.net/home
Nuance is a podcast of The Collaborative where we wrestle together about living our Christian faith in the public square. Nuance invites Christians to pursue the cultural and economic renewal by living out faith through work every facet of public life, including work, political engagement, the arts, philanthropy, and more.
Each episode, Dr. Case Thorp hosts conversations with Christian thinkers and leaders at the forefront of some of today’s most pressing issues around living a public faith.
Our hope is that Nuance will equip our viewers with knowledge and wisdom to engage our co-workers, neighbors, and the public square in a way that reflects the beauty and grace of the Gospel.
Learn more about The Collaborative:
Website 👉 https://wecolabor.com
Get to know Case 👉 https://collaborativeorlando.com/team/
Episode Transcript
Case Thorp
So what happens when artificial intelligence isn’t just in the lab, but it’s in your inbox as it is in mine now, your office in your deal flow? What does faithfulness look like when algorithms shape our decisions, our profits so much in our pace of life. Well, today we’re exploring how Christians can live wisely and faithfully amid AIs rise at work. Welcome to Nuance where we seek to be faithful in the public square.
Today I’m speaking with Todd Korpi, author of AI Goes to Church. And he’s going to help us think about how faith intersects with this amazing innovation, how theology shapes our response in this age of automation. This book published by our good folks over at InterVarsity Press. Well, Todd, welcome to the show.
Todd Korpi
Hey, thanks for having me. Great to be here.
Case Thorp
So let me remind our listeners and viewers, please like, share this episode, leave a comment, it really helps us to grow and for others to know about our work. So Todd Korpi is an author, researcher, leadership consultant, and he’s written this new book, AI Goes to Church; it asks this vital question, how can followers of Jesus live and lead well when technology threatens to outpace our humanity? My goodness, Todd, so much is a buzz about this very topic. So, very timely book. I’m curious, what got you to this topic?
Todd Korpi
Yeah, so I had been doing, I lead a research collaborative and that’s a part of a collection of ministries exploring kind of the landscape of digital ministry in general. So the intersection of ministry and technology and that, you know, that part of that research was over the course of time when OpenAI launched ChatGPT and kind of propelled this AI conversation into the front of public consciousness.
What I began to kind of see, as I would see folks interacting or reflecting on responding to this new technology online and in conversations with friends and colleagues, was that we were often jumping to kind of short-term questions, things like, should my pastor use ChatGPT to create a sermon and things of that sort. And while those are important, I think that what my concern was is there are some more foundational, more significant, more long-term questions that are coming our way and that are already kind of hard upon our heels that we need to really wrestle through as the people of God in order to be able to respond faithfully to a lot of the dilemmas and questions and even opportunities that arise in light of this new technology.
Case Thorp
Yeah. So, I get what you mean when pastors just ask the short term. Most pastors in my experience really think about six weeks out, maybe three months out, because frankly that’s what church programming does to you.
Todd Korpi
I heard one pastor say that Sundays come along with an alarming regularity. Yeah.
Case Thorp
Well, exactly. So, and you used to be a pastor, so you know that rhythm. What do you think are some of the biggest rocks in ministry that not just pastors, but even people in their churches need to be aware of and how it intersects with, and particularly in the, let’s talk about the church bureaucracy as institution first, and then I want to get to some of the theological stuff.
Todd Korpi
Yeah, I think one of the…probably the more significant kind of dilemmas or rocks, to use your metaphor, is that there’s kind of this question that people kind of inherently attempt to resolve as to whether or not they’re going to use AI or whether, you know, so and so should use AI or their pastor or whatever. And the reality is that regardless of whether or not you think you’re using AI, you are using AI.
Something as simple as browsing social media, that a collection that is in your newsfeed of content is curated for you based on an AI algorithm that has developed a profile on what it thinks will keep you coming back and keep your attention sustained. If you’ve ever chosen, pick whatever your preferred streaming platform is. If you’ve ever chosen from that section of “shows we think you might like,” the “we” there are the robots, that’s AI that’s generated based on your usage history and the data that it has on you. Something as simple as looking up directions on Google Maps is given to us by artificial intelligence. While we often think of AI or using AI in terms of the use of like chatGPT and what we call large language models or LLMs, we actually live in a world that’s shaped by AI.
And so the question really isn’t whether or not I’m going to use it, but how am I going to engage it faithfully, because it’s here no matter what. The other question that I think is really significant for churches and for Christians to really wrestle through is kind of stepping back from the practical benefits, but looking at some of the kind of significant questions that the way that AI is being used and being developed is going to raise theological dilemmas in the future. So there’s a massive boom right now of people of all ages using relationship chat bots of creating characters on apps like Character AI and Replica and finding really significant bonding, emotional ties with those bots because they’re hardwired to kind of mirror emotions and to empathize or that listening ear that’s never going to judge sort of thing. You also have this adjacent field of AI robotics, companies like Tesla and others trying to get to market robots that will do everything from organize a warehouse to do your laundry. We see very easily though how those two worlds, this type of AI that feels human and seems human in the way that it expresses itself and AI that is embodied that actually looks human when those two worlds converge is going to create a lot of really significant questions as to what is a human. And for Christians, for church leaders especially, but for any Christian, we need to be prepared for better theological answers to those kind of questions more than just trying to find the nearest proof text that seems similar so we can give someone a Bible verse and hope the conversation goes away. We need a really robust theology to respond.
Case Thorp
Well, dude, that’s what we’re all about. I’m glad you’re here because we like robust theology. And I want to come back to that. But you talked about the ethics of it and what should we do? So just last night, my eighth grade son shared how the teacher had got stood up in class and said, I’m sorry, but there’s three of you here who clearly used AI on your essays. He had not. And we talked about it some. He’s got two older siblings in college. And so he knows from their world how this is unfolding. Well out of the blue, (he had told me that earlier in the night), later in the night he’s laying in his bed, and I’m in his room when he went, “Dad, I’m so afraid of getting in trouble with AI.” And I said, “Well, did you use it to make your essay?” He’s like, “No, no and you saw it.” “I agree. I don’t think you did, you didn’t.” He’s even still afraid, it’s like look just don’t cut and paste, I said there’s a difference in doing research and getting some answers, just like you go look something up in a book. But I appreciated having that chance to help form him, teach him about this tool. And I know even for parents wanting to lead well and disciple well, that that’s really important. OK, go back though. What is a human? What is a human? And so the Imago Dei is a big concept in scripture that the image of God, that’s that Latin term, as you know, for the image of God that we bear in us. So how should a Christian think about, I mean, a machine mimicking intelligence? And is it carrying the Imago Dei or not when it really feels like it sometimes?
Todd Korpi
Yeah, and a lot of times when we talk about the doctrine of the Imago Dei, we tie that to certain characteristics. I grew up in church and I would hear, well, we bear the image of God because we’re sentient, you know, or because of, you know, particular attributes about us or our intelligence or creative capacity. Yeah, exactly. But the reality is, and the late Old Testament scholar, a good friend of mine, Mike Heiser, wrote a book called The Unseen Realm, in which he kind of unpacks and pulls at those threads a little bit, he talks about how, like, when we look at each of those reasons of, you know, someone bears the image of God because of sentience or creativity or et cetera, it quickly falls apart logically, because we bear those kind of characteristics in different ways.
We now believe zoologists kind of hypothesize that there are certain animals that are probably sentient, like dolphins and octopi and stuff.
Case Thorp
Real quick, let me stop you there. Define sentience, I know, but for our audience.
Todd Korpi
Yeah, so sentience of being aware of my own existence. Like my golden retriever, Carl, is a great dog, very smart. He’s not really, at least as far as we can tell, probably aware and can contemplate his own existence. He just likes bacon, you know? But increasingly, as we’re understanding animals better, that question of different kinds of animals actually being somewhat self-aware of their own existence is up for debate.
And then we also look at various attributes of how human beings, to some capacity more and some capacity less, bear certain characteristics, whether it’s, I tend to be fairly creative, there are others that are not. Does that mean that I bear the image of God more than someone who’s not creative? I would say no. And so when we look at…and John Walton, who’s an Old Testament scholar at Wheaton College, Carmen Imes, who’s an Old Testament scholar at Biola, do a wonderful job in two of their books on discussing how when we look at Genesis, when we look at the creation story itself, a lot of times we jump to the mechanics of how we were created. But the author is actually telling, or is aiming more at answering the question why we were created. So it’s not a question of material origins, so much as it is what John Walton calls teleological origins, which is just a big word referring to our purpose, our function here on earth. And so when God says, let us make humankind in our image, and God bends down and gathers the dirt with his own hands and breathes the breath of life into humanity with his own breath. That term image is the same Hebrew word that’s used elsewhere for idol. And the whole point of an idol, whether it’s carved from stone or wood, to be something that calls to mind the deity for which it was created. So when you look at that idol, you think of the God that is supposed to represent. And so in reality, God is creating his imagers, his idols, so to speak, to be his representations. What he’s saying is the function of humanity to be human is to reflect the image of God to creation. And so that calls to mind then this idea that to be human is to image God. To image God is to be human. But that designation is something that God himself, we see in the creation story, actually is the one that makes that pronouncement. So we don’t have the authority to say this is human or this is not. As much as we would love Commander Data from Star Trek and his eternal quest to be human to achieve that, ultimately that’s an authority that rests with God alone.
Case Thorp
So good. And yes, I believe it to be true. And in the real pastoral situation, I know how hard it’s going to be when you have a humanoid type robot helping you with your laundry and having conversations with you like chat GPT can. We’re filming this just after a big news event with a young person that committed suicide after seemingly being led in that direction by AI. My mother just called me in panic and said, don’t let the kids on AI, especially our 14 year old. And I get her fear in that. But I know I’ll have a pastoral conversation with someone who will say, well, you know, my bot, whoever he or she may be named, told me X, Y, and Z.
So take us into that moment. What should I say, Todd Korpi? What should I say?
Todd Korpi
Yeah, and I think that those questions between pastor and parishioner of navigating the issues and complexities of forming strong bonds with artificial intelligence are going to become more significant. I think questions of soteriology of can my household robot get saved or does it…
Case Thorp
Will they be in heaven with us?
Todd Korpi
Right, does it count if it prays for me and then things of that sort. Inevitably, because this is the way technology goes, questions of the intersection of humanity and sexuality with robots is an inevitable question. That is going to be a question of pastoral concern. And we see that even in the relationship bot space now. You can pay premiums in some of these features to have a romantic relationship with these bots.
So we need to have one, we need to be able to separate those kind of uses from kind of a broader use of AI. Can I use, is, you know, saying don’t use AI because this happens is kind of akin to saying, you know, don’t, you know, fill up your car with gasoline because some people use it to start fires. We need to kind of separate that out a bit. I do, however, the more this goes on, the more we see use cases like the one that you cited, I think that there is a legitimate case to be made of restricting relationship bot type access to people that are under a certain age, not allowing that to take place because things as simple as friendship and belonging and stuff are still so in their infancy and in their formation. I had a conversation with my 14 year old yesterday of navigating the complexities of relationships and stuff.
That’s a very human to human thing that I think the presence of a relationship-oriented AI bot can disrupt in a way that’s potentially unhealthy.
Case Thorp
So interesting and just like anything else for church leaders, we’ve got to start discipling in this direction, if not accelerate the work that we do that way. I like what I hear in you is it really is not so much the black and white clear easy answers but it’s wisdom and wisdom is such the way of Scripture.
It’s interesting in a very rule-based conservative Christianity when I teach in my Sunday school class about the Paul’s ways of wisdom and that sometimes it is gray, but what is wisdom? It’s truth applied contextually and that helps open a lot of eyes. It scares people at first like what? But then the more we work through it and see it in the Word.
Talk to me about wisdom in the workplace. So for someone, and whatever, I mean, I guess it’s so random and different per industry, but are there any consistent principles for how a Christian leader can think about their approach to AI?
Todd Korpi
Yeah, I think a good rule of thumb, and this applies cross-contextually, regardless of what kind of vocation, whether you’re in church leadership, marketplace, is to, as a rule of thumb, any time you go to consciously integrate some sort of AI application in your life, the company that’s developed it, that’s selling it to you, that’s promoting it, is going to front load all of the benefits. And that’s great. There are a lot of really great benefits to using certain AI applications. But take a moment and pause and reflect on what do I stand to lose or to give up by integrating this into my life?
Case Thorp
Hmm, sure. Which we did not do with email and now, you know, it just overwhelms us.
Todd Korpi
Yeah, I mean, Wendell Berry wrote an essay back in, I think it was ‘86 or ‘87, entitled “Why I Won’t Buy a Computer.” He, long story short, he had this workflow where he would type out his manuscripts on this old typewriter from the 50s that he loved and cherished. But then the next step in his kind of writing flow would be to sit down with his wife and go through the manuscript and she would kind of act as a sounding board and, asking tough questions, tell him the parts that didn’t make sense and all that kind of stuff. And all of that to say is his conclusion was, in a nutshell, I don’t wanna give up this intimacy that I’ve built with my wife in this routine by outsourcing it to a computer. So when looking at the pros of the computer, and I’m not saying we shouldn’t use computers, we’re currently using one right now to record this podcast, but thinking through, okay, that computer is going to make life so much faster and more efficient, but there are components that I might stand to forfeit in my life that I’m not willing to give up. So that’s one kind of rule of thumb to ask. I think as a general rule, any sort of AI application that removes us further or creates distance between us and other people is, generally speaking, an unwise use of AI, anything that removes us from direct access to the scriptures or direct communion with God, I think is generally speaking, an unwise application of AI. But there are also a lot of applications that automate the boring bits of life and work that actually give us margin to spend more time with people and with God.
Case Thorp
Sure, good point, very good point.
Todd Korpi
I think, to your point though about the example of email, email promised us when it first came out that it was gonna make our lives easier, more efficient, no more inner office memos, all of that kind of stuff. But I’ve yet to meet a person that said email has given me back so much time in my life, right?
Case Thorp
Well, the problem is it’s free. If we charged a penny per email, the whole thing would change. I’m serious.
Todd Korpi
Yeah, absolutely. But I think that that calls to question this this idea I talk about in the book that every new technology essentially promises to alleviate the burden of the curse of toil that we see in Genesis 3 and our own kind of rebelliousness ends up causing us to come back and to return to that toil and just our lives get faster and busier and more disconnected. And so I think AI stands to save us a lot of time, to give us a lot of margin back. So I think we need to, especially as the people of God, really in the areas where we can, and we have the liberty to do so, rethink our relationship with work, of actually using the scale, the pace, the efficiency of AI to actually work less, to spend more time creating and making meaning in the world, spending time in our community, spending time in nature, in the presence of God, of not simply just being a slave to the task list and just filling up with more because we can do more faster than we used to before AI.
Case Thorp
Yeah. Man, you are speaking my language. In fact, I’ll do a little commercial. If you go to our website, wecolabor.com, you can sign up for a five-day e-devotional. So for five days, we send this to your email box. And we have one on work versus toil. And to clarify to the audience, so work is that beautiful gift given by God prior to the fall in Genesis 1 and 2.
So Todd, I often share the example that before I really had some good education and training in this, as a good Southern evangelical, I thought that God needed a friend. That’s why He created humans. Because, you know, I was supposed to have a relationship with Jesus. Well, He wants a relationship with me and we’re friends. But then you look closely at the text there in Genesis 2, and it’s God needs someone to till the garden.
And tilling the garden is a good thing. It is a needed thing. And there’s dignity in that. There’s co-laboring, hence the name, The Collaborative for us. But then toil is that hard work that comes after the fall, the thorns, the thistles, the ground being hard. So I’m preaching the choir with Todd. I’m helping catch up everybody who’s listening to us. But then I, to what you say, I feel like AI is that, ooh, tempting piece that my research paper could be less toilsome because I could steal somebody else’s information and pretend it’s mine. I had a conversation with a college student who was like, what? There’s no big deal about, you know, God doesn’t care if I use AI. I’m like, no, no, no.. You’re stealing and you’re presenting it as yours. You’re lying. And it just never dawned on them to look at it in that bigger picture. What are some stories you’ve come across for how this works out in people’s walks?
Todd Korpi
Well, I think one is to use the example that we talked about earlier of using it in like writing or in educational spaces. And I’m a college professor. I teach Bible college students as well and at the doctoral level. There is a legitimate concern for being able to help students use it appropriately. I think there is kind of a reactionary impulse to then try to police it. And I think that that’s, while understandable, I think it’s short-sighted because for…
Case Thorp
As a faculty, do y’all deal with this and talk about it?
Todd Korpi
Yes, absolutely. We actually carefully developed, specifically at the Bible college that I teach at Ascent College, we developed an AI use policy that is very nuanced and gives, also gives the professors a lot of freedom to be able to use it within their classes at the level of their comfort. For me, I actually, in most of my classes require its use. And for a couple of reasons. One, I want to walk with them in the instructions and in the process to learn how to use it wisely. Things like developing a works cited page, you can create a flawless works cited page for your paper in a matter of moments. But as a result, I tell students, I’m expecting you to use AI to check your works cited. So I’m to mark you down if I see mistakes because you need to not only use it, but then to check the work itself. Things like, you know, I expect them to use it appropriately for research, but as a result in their papers, I expect an increased depth in the interaction. And that’s also a way of knowing whether or not they’re just kind of taking and cutting and pasting chat GPT, or whether they’re actually interacting with the material, because large language models are good at like, synthesizing large amounts of information, but like a depth of theological reflection is not a capacity they really have at this point. And so I want that human depth in how they use it. And the reason for that is because not only do I want them to leverage its strengths, but I also want them to, I want to prepare them for a workforce that is quickly becoming permeated by the use of AI. And especially in the short term, the folks that are in multiple sectors that are really going to be set apart and as attractive prospective employees are going to be those that can use artificial intelligence effectively and well. That comes with the appropriate checks and balances of, you know, citing its use, being transparent about that and all of that kind of stuff. But I think it’s important to recognize like, the ethics on a lot of this are still very much kind of in a state of flux and evolving. I went, when I actually, often tell the story, like when I first got into high school, which was in 2000, everybody would come home after school and pirate music off of Napster, you know, on the internet while doing their homework. By the time I left high school, that was a big no-no. And so, but it was because our ethics had evolved as a society to, and had created kind of a critical mass that looked down on that kind of behavior. And so I think that we’re going to see a similar sort of evolution over the next several years with this subject as well.
Case Thorp
So to date myself, we would dub cassette tapes. You had the double deck and you’d put in the real one and you’d record it on the other one and you’d make a playlist of all your favorites. Those were the days. You know, I was very disappointed recently. There’s a consultant that I’m working with in The Collaborative on a project and I had worked hard on something and was presenting it to get his expertise and feedback. And I got an email, one paragraph, absolutely chatGPT. And I’ve worked with it enough that I know the rhythm. My gosh. And it was over the top. And this is excellent. And blah, blah, blah. And the three parts structure to the sentences and the adjectives. And like, it just was not authentic.
Todd Korpi
Yeah, you can speak its language for sure.
Case Thorp
Even if I had not understood it to be AI. And like, I’m really struggling. A trust has been broken. And I’ve even questioned, am I wasting my money? I’ve questioned, do I tell him?
And I’m still working through that, but what I hope to do with at least my kids is to help them know how, you’re doing with your students, how to use it well and appropriately, and then where the danger zones are and how it does compromise human relationships, or it can.
Todd Korpi
And I think having grace in the process too, like I’ve seen some, and I actually cited an example, a story of a student that not one of my students, but someone that I knew who had an example where they had written a paper, you know, just fine, but had run it through Grammarly to check its grammar. And it got flagged as being AI plagiarism and was a whole big deal with the school because the school had basically taken the results of plagiarism checker as gospel when there’s recent stories of that same plagiarism checker saying that it had like, I think it was a 65% certainty rate that the US Constitution was AI generated. So I think using those kind of tools as like a guide to create conversation, but that conversation, and that’s what I do with my students is like, if I can tell that it’s been chatGPT-generated and there’s no engagement, there’s no, it’s just lazy, then I have a conversation and then we, we go from there depending on, you know, kind of where, how the response is. But yeah, I think, now I will say this, on the, the telling something as being chatGPT-generated, the whole M dash thing, the presence of M dashes, that gets all the craze, but I swear that we’re going to look back and see that the use of the word moreover has just skyrocketed since chat GPT.
Nobody used moreover until ChatGPT came around, but everything is moreover this and moreover that. So that’s a surefire tell as well. Yeah.
Case Thorp
That’s awesome. Okay, so I did some adjunct college teaching for Palm Beach Atlantic. They have a satellite here in Orlando. And this was before AI, however, there was Grammarly and other things that you ran the paper through. And so these two women in the course had turned in papers and both of them came flagged to me, the instructor, so I look at it and they actually had two paragraphs that they cut and paste from Wikipedia and they both had them. So clearly they had done their papers together and they had both cut and paste these deals. So I go to my supervisor, the Dean, I’m like, all right, tell me how to handle this. Cause I’m not in it every day like you are. So he gave me some great advice, which is I went in and we met and I said, I need your help with something. And I put out their two papers and I printed from Wikipedia the two paragraphs and I put them out in front of them. And I said, how did this happen? You know, it wasn’t a direct question of did you cheat? It was, how did this happen? One of the young ladies looked at me and went, they copied my paper. I was like, okay, now come on, come on. Well, she actually put that into Wikipedia after she wrote the paper, you know? Yeah.
Right. Well, it needs to say they would never admit to anything. And I said, well, I’m afraid I’ve got to write this up and push it through the system. So the Dean handled it and took care of it. But, yeah, it’s that you’re right. The ethics are really in flux right now. And so I would try, I mean, I try to, err on the side of caution or being too revealing.
I don’t know about too revealing the word, but just very transparent so that I mean that’s where that faith bumps up against the technology to be true to my Christian values of honesty in a world of dishonesty and suspicion.
Now, this isn’t our first time as humans to experience this radical technological change. I can imagine when books came along, there was an uproar or confusion. I mean, in our lifetimes, just with Google search coming along and people thinking, the age of the book is over.
Take us back to some technological shifts in humanity and where we saw the disruption and then the settling out.
Todd Korpi
Yeah, so it’s funny that you say the thing about the disruption of books. And I want to say it was Plato. It was Plato or Socrates, one of the two, was famously vocal in his concern about the advent of the book because it removed the direct human contact of oral discussion and argumentation.
So something as, I mean, we revere physical copies of books now and, and yeah, come on now. And always, always and forever.
Case Thorp
Dude, look at behind you and me, come on.
I still get newspapers and people look at me so strange, but I love the smell of the field. It’s my way to my little routine.
Todd Korpi
Yeah, absolutely. So we see that, but we see how throughout history, whether it’s something we see, kind of the the way certain technologies become so native to our existence that they disappear, something like the roadway system, which when Paul was sending letters to the churches around the Roman world was a revolutionary roadway or technology, the Roman roadway system. Now we don’t think of roads even as technology, even though they very much are. When we look at things like the printing press and the telegram and radio and television, when we see actually this very interesting thing in relation to Christianity, because the church often kind of gets a bad rep for being behind the times and all of this kind of stuff.
That may be true for the carpet in your trip to sanctuary or something like that, but as it pertains to Christian mission, so evangelism, missionary work, Christianity is often on the very front lines innovating in forms of technology. So, telegrams early on were used to communicate internationally for global missions agencies during the great century of missions.
You think of Oral Roberts and Catherine Coleman and Billy Graham who were early adopters, and controversially so, to technologies like radio and television. Yeah.
Case Thorp
Sure, television. Well, here in Orlando is the headquarters for Cru, with the Jesus Film and very aggressive in that. And one of the passions I have for The Collaborative is we do these podcasts, not just for the viewer or listeners experience, but we are producing content that goes online that is good, that is theologically robust, as you say, biblically appropriate, because these AI models scrape the internet.
A friend of mine at a very prominent nation, if not international publishing house, talked about how their mission is shifting because their content is not behind a paywall. And they are very focused not only on the media receiver of the content, but how to produce something that when AI pulls to answer that question for the Muslim sitting in Saudi Arabia about Jesus, it’s going to be pulling as best as it possibly can the doctrinally correct information.
Todd Korpi
And to some extent, that practice has existed in kind of backend forms of artificial intelligence use like SEO, where like, I mean, the title of my book was recommended to me by the publisher for the purpose of being able to be optimally searched on Amazon and other websites and stuff. And so, but yeah, I mean, I think that it’s going to rapidly change the way that we do those sorts of things. But I think that there’s something, for me at least as a writer, there’s this artistic shape to writing. I feel like when I’m, especially when I’m in a flow of writing, it feels like painting. And there’s an element of that that is so enjoyable and so kind of central to who I am that to give that up to AI or to outsource that, or even to some extent to even introduce AI applications into that flow feels like a of a violation of that art, you know, and I wonder, and I don’t know for sure, but I do wonder if there is going to arise this increased value in it while we have just this influx, this inundation of artificially produced content, that there’s going to be this separation from content to writing, you know, to the art of writing and even a differentiation of value between the two. I don’t know, we’ll see.
Case Thorp
Well, just like those monks who did calligraphy to rewrite this, to copy the scriptures. You know, I’m a writer along with you and we’re going to be those outdated monks. I hope not. I don’t know. All right, Todd.
Todd Korpi
But we still value calligraphy. That’s still like even today, those that can write like that, I’m like, that’s a boss right there. I love that. Right.
Case Thorp
Boss, you sound like my 14 year old. All right, Todd, this is incredibly helpful. I want to pause here. We’re going to pick up next week as we talk more about digital discipleship and public witness in this AI world. So friends, thank you for joining us. You can find his book, AI Goes to Church, wherever books are sold. You can learn more at Todd’s website, ToddKorpi.com. That’s Todd K-O-R-P-I.com. You can also go to Anchor Forward to learn more about the work that he and his wife do in organizational development. We will have these links in our show notes as well as some of the other books and thought leaders that we’ve talked about here. Well, I’d like to thank our sponsor for today the Stein Foundation. I encourage you to share and send this to a colleague that might be interested in these topics. Go to our website wecolabor.com Drop us your email and I’ll send you a copy of Zeitgeist, our latest journal that was written by real people, right, not AI, about faith, work, and culture. Join us next week for part two of AI Goes to Church. I’m Case Thorp, and God’s blessings on you.
