Is AI Good or Bad?

On this episode of the Christian Business Advantage Podcast, we’re starting our series on Artificial Intelligence. Today, we’re exploring and important question for Christian business owners to ask themselves: Is AI good or bad?

Last month, we did a whole series on content repurposing. If you missed it, you missed tips on how to use content repurposing to work smarter and not harder in your business marketing efforts.

For today’s episode, I did a lot of research! I felt like I needed some varying viewpoints and good definitions to fully cover it. Back before I changed the name of the podcast from the Virtual Assistant Advantage Podcast to the Christian Business Advantage Podcast, I did a series on AI from the perspective of using it as a virtual assistant. But this is going to be more from the perspective of a Christian business owner, author, speaker, or coach. The question is should we be using AI? Is AI good or bad?

I’m going to be referencing a lot of websites today because I like the way it was stated and I don’t want this to be just my opinion. I want to cover varying viewpoints. I want to encourage you to do your own research and explore these articles for yourself.

What is AI?

Artificial Intelligence is a very broad reference and can include many different things. For today, I am focusing mainly on tools, like ChatGPT. ChatGPT came out in November of 2022 and is a common AI tool. It is used by those of us who work online and spend a lot of time writing.

In a later episode, I’m going to be sharing some AI tools that I have found to be useful so be looking out for that. For today, let’s talk about what AI is.

A Forbes article titled, Is Artificial Intelligence Good for Society, used the definition for artificial intelligence that was used in the National Artificial Intelligence Act of 2020. They defined it as “a machine-based system that can, for a given set of human-defined objectives, make predictions, recommendations or decisions influencing real or virtual environments.”

Is AI Good or Bad?

AI has been used in many industries for decades but with the recent release of a very popular language processing AI called ChatGPT, the general population has access to AI tools in a way that has never  been possible before.

The article titled, AI: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly, reported that within the first 4 months of the release of ChatGPT, over 100 million people used the software. I thought it was very interesting to say the least. The truth is that there is both good and bad points, ideas, and thoughts about using a program such as ChatGPT. And there are other forms of AI being used that are obviously more sinister and can be used in negative ways than just this writing software.

AI is a Tool

Kate Lucky explored the implications of Artificial Intelligence for Christianity Today and reported her findings in an article titled: AI Will Shape Your Soul. In her research for the article, she engaged with ChatGPT on the subject of ChatGPT.  ChatGPT wrote of itself, “as an AI language model, I don’t possess  personal beliefs, emotions, or consciousness, including the ability to have a soul. AI systems like ChatGPT are currently designed to simulate human like conversation and provide useful information based on patterns and date. They do not possess subjective experiences or consciousness.”

And that’s why it’s so important to realize that AI is a tool. It’s not a human replacement. In fact, as I was doing research, I found this article on LinkedIn by Steve Bremner who is an author, publishing coach, nonfiction audiobook narrator, and missionary. He stated, “If you are writer, you are not in danger of being replaced by AI, but rather by someone using AI properly and efficiently.” That’s what we as writers should do! It can be a great tool for writers!

Another writer by the name of Patricia Bradly said,  “AI will never be made in God’s image and can never replace the creativity God put in writers to tell stories.” She went on to say,  “AI’s technology, a tool that a writer can use, like atomic energy, is neither good nor bad.”

The Good

Think about ways that AI can be good. Here’s some ideas that I came up with:

1. It can help you streamline processes like cleaning up a blog post or transcribing a podcast episode. In a few weeks I’m going to talk about the fact that there are programs like descript that are truly helpful in cleaning up audio and video files and written content using the power of AI. It is a tool.
2. It can be used for brainstorming. One of the articles talked about the fact that sometimes we get writers block and we don’t know what to say next. Maybe you were trying to determine a character for your book while you’re writing your fiction novel. You can use it to create some ramifications or ideas about a character.
3. You can use it if you need to make quick reference to something in your writing. For example, if you’re trying to figure out how many Tuesdays are left in the year. AI can tell you quickly.
4. I’ve used AI to find quotes from reputable authors that I can use on my social media.
5. You can write something, for example, I’m working with a client who is writing a series of launch emails for a book she is launching. She wrote the email and wondered what AI could do to make it sound better so she put her email text into AI and she was able to make it sound more engaging.

That is the power of AI! It has the potential to be a good and useful tool.

The Bad

But can AI be bad? I’d say it depends on how the tool is being used. The same can be said for the internet. If you’re listening to this podcast, you are probably someone who uses the internet regularly. If you ask yourself: “is AI good or bad,” you can also ask yourself, “is the internet good or bad.” I think we can agree that it is a useful tool, just like AI. Some of the things that I thought about that could be bad is that we might use it for…

1. Cheating
2. Being Lazy
3. Asking unethical questions or making unethical requests
4. Have it do all the work

That’s some of the things that we as Christians don’t want to do. I have children in high school and college. AI and ChatGPT have been a topic of conversation in our home. I encourage my kids to make sure they are doing the work; not letting AI do it for them. Teachers can use AI to determine if AI was used in the work being turned in. We have to determine, morally, what we should do.

AI and Theology

An article in FireBrandMag.com that talked about theological and ethical dangers of using AI in religious settings. The article “explores concerns related to playing God, ethical dilemmas arising from AI decision making, dehumanization, and loss of human dignity. The impact on religious practice and the potential of distorted theological concepts.”

AI can be used for bad. This kind of AI software is probably more advanced than ChatGPT if it’s playing God. That is why I am okay with using ChatGPT for writing, but I do have boundaries around using AI, especially in other areas of our lives.

Future AI Topics

That is what I have to say on the topic of AI and whether it is good or bad. Next we’ll talk about the pros and cons of AI, some pro tips for using AI, and powerful AI tools.

I know this series is more controversial than what I’ve done in the past. However, it’s a relevant topic that I think we can benefit from discussing.

STAY CONNECTED

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