Wake Up, Look Up

Hello everyone, and thanks for listening to Wake Up, Look Up, a podcast where we connect events happening in real time to the gospel of Jesus Christ. I'm Zach Weihrauch, and in today's episode, we're asking the question, what must stay human? Now, this is prompted by a satirical kind of opinion piece I read by Alexandra Petri in the Atlantic called Now, thanks to Sam Altman, you never have to speak with your kids again. Now Petrie is taking aim at something Sam Altman, kind of the leader of OpenAI and ChatGPT, said recently in a, suggestion of how parents might utilize AI. He suggested that parents might use ChatGPT to create a personalized podcast every morning for their kids to listen to on the way to school that kind of drew from family calendars, their interest, upcoming events. And Petrie just makes the point in a humorous way, that what Sam Altman is replacing for parents is parents. That the whole idea here is that the drive to school used to be a time for human interaction, a time for precocious and curious children to ask questions ranging from m serious to ridiculous, and for parents to get to enjoy the human interaction that that supplies and actually build relationships with their kids through these kinds of conversations. Petrie says that Altman is trying to optimize and make more efficient parenting. But parenting isn't about optimization or efficiency. It's about love, it's about relationship, it's about communication. Now, the piece is humorous. You would probably enjoy reading it. You can check it out. This is not going to be an episode about whether or not parents should use AI or whether or not they should a podcast for their kids. It's more the larger point that I think Petrie is making, that in the era of artificial intelligence, when so many tools are at our disposal, so many shortcuts are available to us, there are some things that must remain human, some things that we must decide we're not going to give to artificial intelligence. Again, this is not an anti-AI podcast. I use artificial intelligence my life to help me grill better, to help me understand things that are broken around my house. There's a lot of good uses for it. But Petrie's point is there are some things that are sacredly human. You know, when I read this, I thought about Genesis when it says that, God created man in his own image, male and female, he created them. There's a stamp of God on people that just can't be replicated by artificial intelligence or any tool to come. Parents are the ones who should have those conversations with their kids. Not because their answers will be better or even more correct than ChatGPT, but because the bond of a father to a son or daughter, a mother to her kids matters. And it's something that can't be replicated artificially. Look, ChatGPT provides a lot of wonderful things, but it can't replace coffee with a friend. It can't replace interacting with someone over a topic you both find, interesting. It can't replace a good-spirited debate between two good-faith, intelligent people, people working through an issue. The fear of artificial intelligence to me is not even job loss or economic impact, because those things have a way of self-regulating. AI will delete some jobs, it'll create others, it'll change our culture the way a smartphone did. But we'll figure that out. The concern is the rapid diminishing of these human interactions, of our need for each other, of the kind of community that we were designed to enjoy. So I guess this podcast episode is really me trying to convince you to not just ask, what else can AI do for me? But do instead ask, what are some things I won't let it do for me? What are some people I won't let it replace? Some interactions that I would never think about giving to artificial intelligence. I mean, as an act of kind of holy defiance today, go for a walk with somebody, make a phone call, do something collaborative. Remind yourself that in the era of technology, people still matter. In fact, they still matter most. We were made in the image of God. A, God who is relational, a God who loves people. Let's enjoy technology, but let's not make it make us less human. Hey, thanks for checking out Wake Up, Look Up. For more content, be sure to visit the Christ Community Chapel app or website cccchapel.com.

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