A new poll from Bentley University and Gallup finds that four out of 10 U.S. adults believe that AI does more harm than good, reports Yahoo News. This is more prevalent in younger age groups, as almost half of those 19-28 years old believe AI to be harmful.
Eight out of 10 believe that AI will reduce the number of jobs within the next decade.
Some fear the negative impacts of AI, especially on the job market.
Michael Grayston is the campus pastor at Life Family Church in Austin, Texas, and an assistant professor at Liberty University. He spoke on the “Washington Watch” program, saying that “we” need to walk in confidence that “we” are God’s masterpiece.
“Humans have turned around and said, ‘Okay, God made us in His image. I'm going to make artificial intelligence in my image.’ We shouldn't be very surprised that it's not perfect, right? It's flawed, and there are questions and a lot of anxiety that surround it,” Grayston said.
Instead, he said it’s important to focus on what God has called one to do, which, no matter the setting, is to honor him with excellence.
“We have to come back and focus on what we can control, not what we can't control, and that God has a plan for each and every one of us, and it's a beautiful plan. It's not a faulted plan, and we have to continue to pursue it regardless of the external circumstances,” Grayston stated.
AFN recently reported on a Barna Group study, which stated that 44% of “practicing Christians” use AI more often than 31% of adults overall. The Barna survey finds Christians use it mostly for general advice or educational purposes, but half say they trust AI with their spiritual growth.
That surprised Grayston who focused on a statistic relating specifically to pastors, where 12% are ill-equipped to discuss this with their congregation. He cuts them a little slack there as AI is still relatively new in the marketplace.
“The fact that the church itself hasn't been able to keep up with it isn't striking to me. But I love that there are groups of pastors who say, ‘I don't feel equipped, I need to get equipped.’ So that's what we need to do. We need to equip faith leaders to start having these conversations,” Grayston said.
Be careful with those chatbots
He warned that if someone asks a chatbot a theological question, the answer can come from any corner of the internet, and one can’t know if it was a spiritually guided answer.
Playing around with chatbots himself, Grayston shared what he has found.
“I've asked it some questions to just try to see the theological accuracy, and I'm finding a lot often that it's almost accurate. It sounds so sharp, like it looks really good in a soundbite, but it's not quite theologically accurate,” Grayston said. “And that's very confusing for folks who aren't seminary students. How am I going to discern what is true and what is not?”
He said that he encourages the congregates in his church to talk with their faith leader about these questions.
“They might not always have the right answer, but they have wrestled with it. They have prayed about it, and they want to wrestle with it with you to try to discern the right answer. You're not going to get that from an AI chatbot,” Grayston stated.
As for discerning the use for AI, he likened AI to a tool, something that is used for a task. Steer clear of it, he said, if it is being used to seek something more, “trying to fulfill something that God created deep inside us to need other human beings for,” such as a counselor, group leader or friend.
