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, who will train the next generation? This is prompted by an article I read recently in the Washington Post. An opinion piece actually about the role of AI in of all things animation in creating cartoon-oriented content. what was interesting is that the writer was saying that you might think animation would be a field that would be anti-artificial intelligence because they would be worried about a day down the road where maybe studios don't hire people to do the work, they hire artificial intelligence instead. It turns out animators are often at the front end of using technology. They've got no concern about the role. They still think their own creative genius is going to be a necessary part of the process. Instead, what animators are mostly concerned about, and I found this so interesting, are the entry level jobs. Because here's what's happening. Studios are keeping seasoned animators, but they're using artificial intelligence to create a ton of content so that senior animators become what they call slop janitors. Their job is to go through the AI-created images and content and sort out the good from the bad, the passable from the unpassable. The problem with this is the senior animators are saying, well, wait a minute, doing these kinds of things is how I got my start. It's how I learned the industry, it's how I sharpen my skills. in other words, when I retire, where's the next senior animator coming from? I found this interesting not so much because I care about animation, but because I think this is a real concern from artificial intelligence across industries. Increasingly, regardless of the industry you work in, it's going to be cheaper and make more sense to give entry level jobs to artificial intelligence than to give it to people. If you're a law firm, for example, why pay young people to do doc review if you can just feed it into artificial intelligence? Why hire a young copywriter if you can just use AI to create it? Of course, the downside to that is that will mean in every industry we are not actually raising up the next generation. Eventually there will be a significant talent gap for many things because people simply weren't given the chance or put in an environment to develop. In other words, we're thinking individually about short term financial gain, which I get, but we're forgetting about long term societal value. The question is, do we have a Responsibility to the next generation. Do we have a responsibility to our industry, to our organization, to our country to be raising up young people? Well, that's a larger question than maybe the scope of this podcast. But as a pastor, when I read this I thought this is one thing we cannot do in the local church. You know the Apostle Paul, when he's writing to a young pastor to kind of tell him how to set up a church in 1 and 2 Timothy, in 2 Timothy 2, here's what he says to Timothy. He says, entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others. In other words, he was saying to Timothy, Timothy, you have a responsibility that just as I poured into you and developed you and gave you opportunity to pour into, develop and give opportunity to, to other people to raise up the next generation of leadership. Paul understood that the long term health and long term efficacy of the church, the center of the kingdom of Christ, was going to be contingent upon the discipleship and equipping of each generation to come. In other words, we have a spiritual responsibility to young people to get them ready for their day for when they are leading. I think we might have that in our workplace, I think we might have that in our families, a similar responsibility. But at least in the church, we, we cannot grab hold of technological shortcuts at the expense of generation formation. You and I have to understand it is often harder to teach people how to do what we do. It makes things a little messier, it makes them take a little longer. But it really isn't about us and it really isn't about our short term wins, at least not in the church. It's about long term viability. We bring people alongside not because it's efficient, but because it is productive for the long term role of the church. The next pastor, the next Bible study leader, the next door greeter is going to benefit from the time they spent in connection to the current one. And so this is a challenge for you. You and I must invest in the next generation with whatever we're good at for the good of the kingdom. Even if in the larger world we will have a talent gap. Let's make sure in the church we have a generation ready, formed and willing to lead into whatever's next for the church in our country. Hey, thanks for checking out Wake Up, Look Up. For more content, be sure to visit the Christ Community Chapel app or website ccchapel.com.

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