Today, I am so excited to bring you a special conversation, as part of the February series, “Faithful and Wise: Navigating AI as a Christian Business Owner.”  In this third episode, I am joined by Misty Phillip, best-selling author, speaker, and co-author of “Upskill or Die: Thriving in the AI Revolution.” Check out last week’s episode here if you missed it.

Interview with Misty Phillip

Alyssa: Misty is also a strong Christian woman with deep expertise in cybersecurity and AI. Today, we are going to talk about how faith and technology can co-exist without fear. I want to welcome you, Misty. Thank you so much for being here.

Misty Phillip: I love the opportunity to talk about faith and AI.

Alyssa: For those of you who may not know, Misty is going to share a little background on what led her to write Upskill or Die.

Misty Phillip: So, we met through Spark Media. I started Spark Media, which is the first Christian Podcast Conference to help Christians learn to podcast. I wanted to bring the community together, so I started a podcast community. A podcast network to help podcasters make money. We had a radio club collaboration, conferences, and a nationally distributed magazine.

I was doing all the things, and I got completely burned out, and my husband said, “Baby, come work with me.” And I said, you want me to do what? Like, I am not technical at all. So, I said yes to my husband, after about a year and a half of wrestling with the Lord, and making sure it was what He wanted me to do.

Finally, I surrendered Spark Media to the Lord and said yes to my husband. I came on, and the first thing I had to do was make a dictionary of terms because all of these tech people talk in acronyms.

There is something called a SOC, which is the Security Operations Center. And then there’s SOX, which deals with Financial Audit Focus (Sarbanes-Oxley Act).

They are two totally different things. One is the financial audit, the other has to do with the security center. But when you hear SOC think like one sock or SOX is a pair of socks, you know what I’m saying?

I just had to figure out what they were saying. The one place that I could really double down, which gave me a level playing field, was in AI, because in 2023, that’s when we really saw AI as we know it come on the scene. Before that, it’s been around since the seventies in machine learning.

It’s in everything that we do, whether we know it or not. Our photo editing apps, our phones, our maps, Netflix uses it to suggest to us what we should watch next. So, AI is everywhere, maybe just in the form of machine learning, but what we know is that ChatGPT became all the rage.  I started doubling down on learning about that, and that’s what led us to writing Upskill or Die.

My husband and I talk about what’s happening. He reads the news about four hours a day to just keep up. This technology is moving so fast.

I posted on Facebook asking my friends about AI.

• What do you think of AI?
• What is it?
• How do you use it?

And most of them responded with ChatGPT. I like it, don’t like it. Use it, don’t use it. And at that point, we had moved from Generative AI with the frontier models, which are Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Grok, and ChatGPT. We had moved from that model to Agentic AI. Agentic AI is assigning a task to an AI agent that a human would do and having it run autonomously. That is what will disrupt the market. I knew my friends who were sending their kids to college for programming degrees, that they’re not going be worthwhile. All of my friends who are authors, it is going to completely disrupt publishing, writing, copywriting, and the film industry; it is literally going to disrupt office jobs everywhere.

So, I knew that that was a book that we had to write. When God gave it to me, it was like a two-part series, and we’ve got that next part coming out, which is for the audience of faith, because how do we faithfully use it? I’m so glad you’re doing this series about using technology faithfully.

Alyssa: That’s right, that is really where our audience is. My audience here is Christian authors and speakers. What are some of the biggest fears you see Christians having, and which ones are valid versus which ones are exaggerated?

Misty Phillip: Yeah, so I think fear comes from a place of not knowing, right? You don’t know, and so that makes you afraid. Everyone needs to be educated on AI. They need to understand what it can and what it cannot do. So, AI is simply a tool in the hands of a good person; you can do good things. The problem is a very powerful tool in the hands of a bad actor; you can do bad things with it, too.

Especially in our cybersecurity business, we see AI used in ways that can defeat the bad guys who are trying to perpetrate cyberattacks, but the bad guys are also using it to cause more harm, and it’s at such a fast rate of speed that humans are going to have a hard time keeping up with it. Because AI just runs so much faster than we’re able to run.

Alyssa: That’s true. You often talk about AI as something to steward instead of fear. What is faithful stewardship like when it comes to using AI?

Misty Phillip: I think if you’re going to use AI, you need to use it like a personal assistant. So, for me, when I was podcasting full-time, I would use a system to put my podcast episode into a player, and it would generate show notes for me. Well, that saved me hours of time that could be better spent researching for my episode or actually recording episodes.

So, I think if we use it as a tool that can help in productivity, as opposed to putting personal information into it, such as asking it questions about our physical health, looking at it like a companion, and asking for spiritual advice. Those are things that should be done in community with a pastor, with a friend. The problem comes when we become isolated, we’re locked in, and we’re just using AI, and not getting human input, or we’re putting information into AI because it’s collecting data about all of us.

Why do you think they need all of those data centers so that they can store all of that information? So, I think we need to be wise about the ways that we use it, and I think that is the stewardship.

Alyssa: That makes so much sense. I am like you, I use it like a personal assistant or to help me brainstorm and stuff like that. Why is it important for Christians to engage with and Upskill in AI, rather than to ignore it altogether?

Misty Phillip: So, if we ignore it, we’re abdicating our right to have a voice in its development. I think that is why we need to understand it and be educated on it. We need to use it to advance our skills.

Not only that, in the corporate world, companies whose people know how to use AI effectively to run agents and use agents, those will be the people who keep their jobs. So, I don’t want anybody to lose their job to AI. I want them to be trained and aware, but they also can’t abdicate their voice in this technology that is radically changing the world.

Alyssa: That is so true.

For the Christian business owner who feels overwhelmed or behind by AI, what encouragement would you offer?

Misty Phillip: You’re not behind because it’s only been around since 2023. In Upskill or Die, at the back of the book, I think it’s one of the best parts; we tell you how to incorporate it into your daily learning.

I think we should always be learning that part, and actually, I’m in the middle of developing a course for believers on AI, because I think that is going be really important for us to be thoroughly educated and understand what it is and what it’s not, and how we can use it in various ways.

I think as authors, I’m going pick on authors for just a second, because I am one. So, you know, they don’t like the fact that their hard work has been put into this body of information that other people can draw from. But really, there’s nothing new under the sun.

We stand on the shoulders of giants. When we create our ideas, we’re not just creating them from nothing. It has come from our lived experiences, from things others have said, and from what others have written. So really, I think that we don’t let AI write our books, but we do use it as a resource.

One of the ways that I was able to use AI with my newest book is that once I would finish a chapter, I would put it into AI and ask it to critique it. Then, when the whole book was complete, I asked it to complete an editorial review of the entire book.

So, all along, I was putting it in there. I was taking what it said, for suggestions and improvements, deciding what I thought was valid, and what wasn’t.  It might give another example, and I’m like, “Oh, that’s a really good idea.” What is another example I could add? So, there are ways of using it that are more about not turning over our agency and our human thinking, but using it to supplement our productivity.

Alyssa: Absolutely. So, I want everyone to read your book and also to know about your new book that is coming out.

Can you tell us how they can learn more about Upskill or Die and your new one?

 

Misty Phillip: The new book is “The Trojan Horse of the Digital Age: Why Christians Must Discern AI.” It provides a biblical framework for parents, pastors, and really anybody who wants to understand how to use AI, and it’s all backed up with a biblical framework, so we don’t have to face AI with fear. God has told us not to have a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and a sound mind.

So, they can go to mistyphillip.com, and that’s where all the information about the Trojan Horse book is. Sign up for the launch team. I need as many people as I can to get this message out there and on the launch team. We’re going to have a lot of prizes, and you’ll get early access to the book and lots of fun stuff. So, I would love for people to join there, and they can get all of that information on both books and everything I do at mistyphillip.com.

Alyssa: I encourage you to go over there, because that is really how I have kept up. I follow Misty on social media, and that has helped me to learn some more. We have also been friends for a long time now, and that has helped me as well. I am excited about the new book!

Well, I want to thank you, Misty, for taking the time to be with us, to share your expertise, and to encourage these Christian authors so they can use AI without being afraid.

Misty Phillip: Thank you so much for having me. I want to leave them with this one fact. Get in the Word of God, stay in the Word of God, because we have to know what is true.

Please subscribe to my YouTube channel, where I’ll be sharing the podcast in video format this year.

Check out last month’s series: January Series of Video Marketing.

STAY CONNECTED

Subscribe to The Christian Business Advantage podcast on your favorite podcast app.  New episodes release every Monday.  Also, Follow Me on social media:

Facebook

Instagram

I would love to have you over in the Facebook group, the Christian Business Advantage. If you’re not a member, hop on over to Facebook and join us!