Last Week, Tech Lite — This Week, Tech-Heavy
Tristan Harris is currently the co-founder and executive director for the Center for Humane Technology, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to align technology with humanity's best interests. He left his work at Google in 2016.
In my research, I found that Tristan Harris gives counsel on ethical use of technology and believes that those who built these platforms have a responsibility now to change them. He says, “How and when and where is yet to be determined, but what's clear is that it will take enormous public pressure to save us from what digital media has become. It has been suggested that religious and spiritual groups, with their emphasis on community and ethics should be a loud voice in this call to action.”
That engaged my thinking. Should there be a role in churches whereby a newly formed office of ‘director for technological safeguards and ethical standards’ (this name I made up) is instituted and instruction is given to parents and teens alike? I wonder. How about Sunday School classes with teens and parents navigating tech together according to a biblical worldview. I admit that this is a far-fetched idea! It is difficult for most families to keep up with the fast-paced perils of technology; however, the dark side of social media has been exposed. If we don’t keep our kids safe and know the inherent dangers, there will be slow gains with books that encourage us like “The Tech-Wise Family.”
Is technology playing God in your life? Are its nudges gaining more traction than the Holy Spirit? Tristan Harris used to work in a control room which steered the shaping of thoughts and feelings of a billion people around the world. Their hidden goal was to determine the best way to know how to get people’s attention. Wait a minute! This sounds like we’re being manipulated with algorithms that are perfectly aligned to do so, but I’m sure you knew this.
Tristan Harris’ TED Talk is informative; access it on YouTube, if interested. Jonathan Youssef recently hosted Dr. Kristen Davis on his podcast, Candid Conversations (episode 216). She completed her doctorate dissertation on Christianity and Artificial Intelligence – dispelling the myth that AI would one day disprove the existence of God. She defines AI philosophically and technologically. I encourage you to listen to her. She entertained the question: How should Christians approach the subject of AI? As for my thoughts, I call AI the new behemoth on the horizon. She is knowledgeable, but not an alarmist. I like that approach.
Have you watched “The Social Dilemma” on Netflix? I don’t have Netflix, but I have read excerpts and have watched short clips from it. I learned these three points from “The Social Dilemma” released in September 2020:
Institutions are becoming aware of the dark side of social media. What is being done about it?
Efforts are being made to ban TikTok in America. The CCP, the originator of it, does not serve it up to their teens. That should be a huge red flag for us Americans. (They have a different version of TikTok for their teens).
Parents are realizing the devastating effects of social media on their children – life-threatening.
Everything I’ve said up to now is perhaps repetitive information. In trying to remain current and informed, I read articles related to education and what’s trending. One recent article spoke about AI. When someone emailed me recently and said that he had gone on ChatGPT to learn how to _________, I was clueless. Since then, I have tried educating myself. ChatGPT stands for Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer and was developed by an AI research company, Open AI. It’s a large language model.
This morning, I texted my 35-year-old tech savvy son and asked him to request a 500-word essay from ChatGPT on “The Pros and Cons to Artificial Intelligence.” In less than five minutes, I received the essay he had sent me from his account. It gave an introductory paragraph, five points on the pros of AI and five points on the cons of AI. It offered a conclusionary paragraph. It was perfectly written, grammatically. Basically, it said we need to approach with caution and ethical considerations. I was stunned! My son offered to set me up an account when he comes home. For now, I think I’ll pass.
Furthermore, I am interested in knowing how AI will be used for educational purposes for middle and high school students, so I requested from my son a similar essay from ChatGPT on the “Pros and Cons of AI in Education.” Again, a beautiful essay written with clarity and grammatical precision; however, I don’t have the knowledge base to know if its content was accurate. Interestingly, there were five pros and six cons.
On the other hand, I believe I can spot errors in biblically based content. For example, on Axis, an individual asked ChatGPT to write a fake Bible verse related to Jesus accepting trans people. Its response was proof of AI’s ability to generate believable text, even though it was incorrect. A non-Believer looking for an answer to this biblical question would be misguided and inaccurately informed. Go to https://youtu.be/xCNA_zixi_E?si=-3c_iNw-Rb5COIEj to watch a 7-minute video explaining this, if interested.
Upon leaving RDS, it might be prudent to ask your school of interest to explain their thoughts on using AI and where they stand on possible implementation and application of safeguards. I would venture to say that while their exact protocols may not yet be conclusive, I can almost guarantee they are having conversations about this subject, currently.
