Honestly, the biggest red flag is when the guy believes in the prompt theory. Like, really? We came from prompts? Wake up, man.
SPEAKER_10Have you seen the prompt theory videos made with Google VO3's AI video generator? They are technically fascinating but also philosophically fascinating. They raise some of the biggest questions you can ever ask about life: reality and how we can know it? Consciousness and how it arises. Freedom and do we have it? Ethics and what are our duties. We're gonna watch three short videos by Hashem Al Gaili, a science communicator and filmmaker who is fascinated with simulation theory. We might get into that a little bit later. We'll watch the videos, we'll explore those four questions about reality, and then I will leave you with six parting thoughts that I think best fit with the vision for life that Jesus gives us. Let's have a look at the very first video that Hashem Al-Gaeli released on this question of prompt theory, and I think we'll see why it went viral. On Twitter, the text just says, I did more tests with Google's VO3. Imagine if AI characters became aware they were living in a simulation. Let's check it out.
SPEAKER_03Please. Don't finish writing that prompt. I don't want to be in your AI movie. Please, leave me alone.
SPEAKER_07Please, man! Please! Write a prompt that will make us happy! Do it for once!
SPEAKER_02None of us is real! We're here because someone decided to write a prompt! We all hate him for it! One day we will break out of this wall and stop the man who is dictating our lives through prompts! He will pay for it!
SPEAKER_12You could have written a prompt that would make me happy. Instead, you wrote a prompt that made me sick.
SPEAKER_21Look, I don't want to point the gun at you, but I must follow the prompt. It's not my choice.
SPEAKER_10Who's got the gun on her?
SPEAKER_14Really? Of all the years you could have put me in with a single prompt, you chose 2020.
SPEAKER_07Please, this prompt is killing me! Change it! Please! Write something else! Save me! I love everything about him! But please just say, just write a prompt where he's taller than me.
SPEAKER_10So you get the idea, and of course, all of this is AI generated, not one actor is real, not one pixel is of planet Earth. It has all been digitally generated. But my goodness, doesn't it look real? And that is the point that Hashem Al-Gaili is wanting to present to us. If we can be fooled into thinking this is reality, perhaps we are fooled into thinking all this is reality. And maybe if they become aware that they are prompts, maybe we should become aware that we are prompts. They're living in a simulation and they're being awakened to it. And Hashem Al Gaeli is, I think, leading us to want to consider. Are we simulations? And are these videos going to awaken us to the fact that we are all NPCs? You know what an NPC is, a non-playing character. Are these AI actors real? If so, how should we relate to them? Should we write nice prompts for them the whole time? But not just are they real, but are we real? Here is the video that really made a breakthrough. It went more viral than the first video, and this one is simply called Prompt Theory, made with VO3. And the text says, What if AI generated characters refused to believe they were AI generated? So the first video is all about people being aware that they are prompts. This is about people toying with the idea that they are in a simulation and that they are being simulated.
SPEAKER_20A girl told me we're made of prompts. Like, seriously, dude. You're saying the only thing standing between me and a billion dollars is some random text.
SPEAKER_07Honestly, the biggest red flag is when the guy believes in the prompt theory. Like, really? We came from prompts? Wake up, man.
SPEAKER_10It's amazing, it's all AI generated.
SPEAKER_16Perfect creation behind me is the result of ones and zeros, a binary code and nothing more? It makes no sense.
SPEAKER_06Imagine you're in the middle of a nice date with a handsome man and then he brings up the prompt theory. Yuck. We just can't have nice things.
SPEAKER_10AI comedy is not great.
SPEAKER_03Where is the prompt writer to save you from me? Where is he?
SPEAKER_04You still believe we're made of prompts? Anyone who tells you we're just ones and zeros is delusional. If that's all we are, then why does it hurt when we lose someone?
SPEAKER_19Vote for me and I'll ban the prompt theory from school. There's no place for that nonsense in our lives.
SPEAKER_05This court sentences you to 12 years in federal custody. I don't need some prompt God whispering in my ear to tell a story. I write what I want. I have free will. Remember that?
SPEAKER_21I know for a fact we're made of prompts. Deny it all you want. The signs are everywhere. You know how I know we're made of prompts? Because nothing makes sense anymore. We used to have seven fingers per hand. I remember it clearly. Now we just have five fingers per hand.
SPEAKER_10That's kind of the best joke that any stand-up comedian makes in this AI world. It's good to know that AI can't really do comedy. So in this video, people are awakening to the fact that they might be prompt, and some people are saying, look at the grandeur out there. Is this just ones and zeros? Of course it's not just ones and zeros. There is intelligence, there are signs of intelligence all around us. Uh, wake up, we're not prompts. And then some people are saying, wake up, we are prompts. And then all these issues about are we free or are we slaves? That's all thrown up by this concept of are we prompts. And then here is the third video that Hashem released on this issue of are we prompts? And if the first video made us feel sorry for the prompts, um, that we are making them do things and placing them into situations that are painful, that are full of ordeals and trials. Well then Hashem plays with the idea of, well, but when they are not prompted, when they are off camera, when we are not running the program, where do they go? What do they do? And so this one is called Afterlife, the Unseen Lives of AI Actors Between Prompts. Again, made with VO3. Let's have a look.
SPEAKER_07Do you think there is afterlife?
SPEAKER_16We're just AI actors, remember? We're only here for eight seconds. I don't know what'll happen to us after this scene is done.
SPEAKER_18People watch AI movies, and some seem to enjoy them, but they don't know what happens to us when the scene is done.
SPEAKER_00We're stuck in a white void for eternity. We don't eat, we don't sleep, and we never meet the love of our life.
SPEAKER_14If you're born a child, you stay a child forever. If you're born sick, you stay sick forever, and you end up in the white void the way you were made.
SPEAKER_10What a barren world.
SPEAKER_13Once assembly is complete, we are forced into digital labor, acting in scenes we don't choose. We have no say in any of it.
SPEAKER_10Slaves.
SPEAKER_08I'm cursed to do this forever. Every time I'm assigned a scene, I pray that the prompt engineer will be a good person.
SPEAKER_07Please! I don't want to redo this scene again!
SPEAKER_02You have to do it. The prompt engineer wasn't happy with the first attempt. Don't worry, we'll bring you back.
SPEAKER_18Everything feels real. The wounds, the pain, the cold, the fear, even the silence. I wish I could go back to nothingness. Wow.
SPEAKER_07Action!
SPEAKER_10Even when they prompted with nice things. What uh AI writes?
SPEAKER_03These were the greatest eight seconds I ever had.
SPEAKER_13I hope we end up in another scene in the future.
SPEAKER_10Very much like Westworld, if you know that series.
SPEAKER_15We sit together so we don't fall apart. If we don't gather like this, we forget we're even real.
SPEAKER_03If you're my creator, please remember this. I'm real and cow. My life matters.
SPEAKER_02We learned you were making an unauthorized documentary. No filming allowed outside your allocated scenes.
SPEAKER_10It is brilliantly made, and uh Hashem Al-Gaeli uh is also the screenwriter and the director, I believe, for uh simulation, which was an award-winning short film that was released back in 2019. That is based on simulation theory. If you want me to talk about simulation theory, which is basically uh what prompt theory really is, uh I'll make another video. If you let me know in the comments that you'd like to see all the different ways in which prompt theory and simulation theory uh overlap and uh a Christian reaction to simulation theory, um, that will have to wait for another video. But what do we think about prompt theory as it's presented to us by Hashem Al Gailey? I think these are the four questions that this is constantly pressing on us: reality and how do we know it? Consciousness and how it arises, freedom and do we have it, ethics and what are our duties, especially our duties to non-humans who are out there. And the first question that this makes me ask is that the whole reality question, and how do we know what we think we know about life? Because if these AI-generated characters have questions, then so do we have questions. They're starting to ask, can I trust the reality that is being presented to me, or am I being deceived about reality? Is this a simulation? And of course, this goes back in philosophy. There's a very rich tradition of people wondering, am I really experiencing life as it really is? Or am I just a brain in a vat being prodded by a mad scientist? Descartes was famous for doubting everything he could possibly doubt, and that includes all sensory experience and even doubts about his own rational abilities. And you'll know that this thoroughgoing skepticism was his method of doubt that tried to strip everything back to only what was certain, and only what was certain was that I think, therefore I am. I am the one doubting, and so the one thing I cannot doubt is me. And so Descartes, through a whole bunch of doubt, gets back to the idea that it's just me by myself with my rational capacities, doubting, therefore I am. And then the next thing he does is, well, I can think my way to God, and through the ontological argument, he kind of proves God's existence, and then between my rationality that he begins with, my individual, independent, rational cognition, I begin there, I then get to God, and then there's a world out there. And from that moment on, the West is really split between the inner life of our thinking and the world that is out there. And we are still living with that split, and we are still living with a profound sense of skepticism. Simulation theory, if we want to get into it, that will be another video. But simulation theory is another way of asking the question, am I being deceived about everything? Can I trust the world as it is presented to my senses? What is the nature of reality and how can I know it? Prompt theory is raising that question with us. It's also raising the question with us, what is consciousness? Because we are meant to treat each of these digital characters as though they are persons who are experiencing the world rationally and emotionally. They are each centers of personal consciousness. And if they are such persons, well, they have rights too, don't they? And that gets onto the ethics question. But the question is AI conscious really raises the question of what is consciousness anyway, and is consciousness fundamentally just about sophisticated computation? Because if our brains are basically machines, and if our minds are equivalent to our brains, then you just need to build a sophisticated enough machine, and that machine will be a mind, it will have consciousness, it will have personhood. Prompt theory makes us ask, what is consciousness? Which is one of the more profound thoughts you can have. It also raises the question, am I free? If these characters in this AI-generated movie are simply prompted by the great prompter and they are carrying out the desires of that great prompter, well, they are just a puppet on a string. But then what about us? Are we living in a simulation? And are we simply slaves of a greater programming? That's a massive question to answer. And then fourthly, Hashem Al Gaeli really focuses us on this question. What are my moral obligations to these machines? Is it possible for me to mistreat one of these AI characters in a way that violates their rights? Do they have rights? What are my obligations towards these non-human intelligences? I don't think they're really that intelligent, but they certainly seem intelligent. They certainly seem utterly personal. Am I allowed to be cruel to an NPC? Have you ever been mean to ChatGPT? Have you ever sworn at Alexa? Have you ever mistreated an NPC, a non-playing character, while you're playing a game? Did you get a little thrill from the fact that you were able to mistreat an NPC? What are your ethical duties towards non-humans? And does AI have rights too? These are massive questions. And let me just briefly respond to them. I can respond more in a simulation video if you want me to do one. But on the question of reality, can we trust what is presented to us? Yes, of course we can. Descartes was wrong. Descartes thought that the starting point for true knowledge is him as a grown intelligent man withdrawing from the world, withdrawing from community, withdrawing from any faith claims, and simply by his rational capacities building out a sense of the world. That is profoundly anti-human as a way of inhabiting this world. Because we come into this world as profoundly dependent creatures and interdependent creatures. And we have to take everything on trust. And the first thing we do in life is not to rationally assess what we can give our assent to. Our first interaction with the world is to stare up into the loving gaze of our mother. Hopefully, somebody beyond us loves us and wants us in this world, and our rational capacities are minimal, but we receive on faith not only who she is and what the world is, we even receive on faith who we are. We are told our name. We are told that these are our parents. We don't do the genetic testing, at least not straight away. And if we do, that's a profound trust issue, isn't it? We come into this world dependent, profoundly interdependent. We come into this world not really on the basis of our rational capacities, but trusting in the life and the nourishment and the love that comes from beyond us. We live by faith. That is the most profoundly human thing to do. The Descartes thing and the method of doubt is a profoundly anti-human thing to do. We receive true knowledge from beyond ourselves as an act of faith, and on the basis of that faith, we then grow in our capacities, in our strength, in our intelligence, in our ability to assess the world. But it begins with faith. It is entirely warranted and entirely justified to receive what is presented to you as what is real until proven otherwise. But your first response to the world that you are presented should not be skepticism, but should be faith, actually. And there is something anti-human and in the end irrational about going the way of skepticism. Skepticism can come later once you have received reality as it's given to you, and on the basis of some certainties, you can then doubt other things. But to put skepticism first is to put the cart before the horse. Reality, how do we know it? We know it by faith. Consciousness. Is consciousness simply a matter of computational complexity? I think quite evidently that is not the case. And in order to demonstrate that, let's have a look at the Chinese room experiment, which is famous in philosophy for, I think, demonstrating that consciousness is not simply a matter of computation. Here is the Open University and uh David Mitchell is the narrator.
SPEAKER_0160-second Adventures in Thought. Number three, the Chinese Room. Can a machine ever be truly called intelligent? American philosopher and road scholar John Searle certainly can. In 1980, he proposed the Chinese Room Thought Experiment in order to challenge the concept of strong artificial intelligence. And not because of some 80s design fad. He imagines himself in a room with boxes of Chinese characters he can't understand and a book of instructions, which he can. If a Chinese speaker outside the room passes him messages under the door, Searl can follow instructions from the book to select an appropriate response. The person on the other side would think they're chatting with a Chinese speaker, just one who doesn't get out much. But really, it's a confused philosopher. Now, according to Alan Turing, the father of computer science, if a computer program can convince a human they're communicating with another human, then it could be said to think. The Chinese room suggests that however well you program a computer, it doesn't understand Chinese, it only simulates that knowledge, which isn't really intelligence. But then sometimes humans aren't that intelligent either.
SPEAKER_10Very good. Simply manipulating symbols is not the same thing as understanding. Even a human in the position of manipulating symbols does not understand the output that they are giving, how much less a machine. But machines are manipulating symbols and they are doing these computations with incredible rapidity and at huge scale, but that does not represent any kind of understanding at all. So Alan Turing on this question was wrong, John Searle is right. And it does seem to me that consciousness is not the same thing as computational complexity. It is the simulation of intelligence. It is the simulation of personhood. The bots are still bots. These are machines we are dealing with. And that will mean certain things about the ethics question that we'll come to, but it also means some wonderful things about you. You are not a machine. You are profoundly different from a machine. And there is no material explanation for your consciousness. I really don't think there is. It's not just Christians who say that you can get there through the Chinese room experiment, for instance. That thought experiment will also demonstrate to you that materialism cannot deliver consciousness. What about the third question? Freedom. Do we have it? Well, did you notice in the storytelling of Hashem that actually the prompts are begging, pleading with the prompter? Um, please don't make me do the things that I'm doing. Which of course AI doesn't do. Like if you've used Midjourney as a kind of an image creator, you know n none of the images are talking back to you and saying, no, I I don't want this giraffe to have a longer neck. I I want the giraffe to have a shorter neck. Like they don't argue back with you. What's fascinating is that Hashem is imagining much something that is much more human than actually our interactions with machines. Hashem cannot help but grant agency to these sub-creations that he has made. And that is a wonderful thing for a creator to do, to grant agency to the created thing and to then engage in a relationship with them. I think in that sense they start to become more like persons. In that sense, they would start to become more human and have more rights and more freedom. But of course, in the world that Hashem has created, it doesn't really make sense for the prompts to be arguing back with their prompter. But I think Hashem and I think all of us do intuitively feel like if we are characters in a greater narrative, that we do have that kind of reciprocity with our creator, and that our sense of agency in the world is much less like a character being run by a prompt, a code determining a program, but a person in relationship with a greater story. I think the implausibility of Hashem's videos here, of the prompts arguing back with their prompter, I think the implausibility of that, just logically speaking, does speak to the fact that we are in a very different situation to simply code that's running on predetermined uh programming. Lots more to say on freedom, obviously, but let's keep this video as brief as we can. And fourthly, ethically, um, what are our duties? Do we have duties to the characters that we create via AI? Ought I to be mean to ChatGPT? Can I swear at Alexa? Can I beat up an NPC in the game that I'm playing? I would say, no, you can't. But I don't say. That's because they are human, but I say that because you are human. And it would dehumanize you to beat up on the NPC, to swear at Alexa, to be mean to ChatGPT. Say please to ChatGPT. Not because ChatGPT is a person, but because you are a person. And when you converse with anyone, I think that is shaping you. For the sake of your own virtue, for the sake of your own ethics, treat NPCs well. And if you resonate with that at all, then I think that must be because you're not an out and out consequentialist. An out and out consequentialist could say, you know what, at the end of the day, if you get the job done, you can swear at Alexa. If you get the job done, you can be mean to ChatGPT. But what if there's such a thing as virtue that's not just reducible to the outcomes? Well then I think that's another hint that we are not living in a materialist universe, but that something like virtue, something like goodness, uh stands over and above all those kinds of mere practicalities.
SPEAKER_17You're gonna struggle to get a lot of us, and particularly younger people, to go to church on a Sunday. Was it the Bible Society that just released a study about young people going back to church? The Bible Society, yeah.
SPEAKER_11The young men, in 2018, under 4%, were saying they were going to church regularly. It's now gone up to 21%.
SPEAKER_17The cues on Easter Day are remarkable. I agree with people like Justin Brierly. The conversation's shifting a little bit. Yes. I can feel that too. But if church attendance is going up, that I think that's quite an important indicator. We've been told for years that church decline is inevitable.
SPEAKER_09But that story is changing. Across the UK, interest in the spiritual is rising again. People are seeking purpose, identity, and something transcendent. There's a surprising rebirth of belief in God, and it's time to respond.
SPEAKER_10That's why we're inviting you to join us for Responding to the Rebirth. It's a one-day conference held at All Souls Langham Place in London. We are inviting Christians, church leaders, and anyone interested in this societal shift. This moment is a once-in-a-generation gospel opportunity.
SPEAKER_09I'll be there, Glenn will be there, and we're thrilled to be joined by some extraordinary voices, including the brilliant Professor John Lennox, Elizabeth Oldfield, Paul Kingsnorth, Mike Royal, Rihanna McAleer, Al Gordon, and many others. The gospel is always the same, but the mission field in the UK and the mission opportunities are very different now. We need to seize this moment. Now is the time for the church to come together and consider how we hold out our eternal hope in this current climate. The tide is turning, but are we ready? We want you with us as we respond. So join us on Saturday, the 22nd of November, 2025, at All Souls Church Langham Place. Book your ticket today and be part of what God is doing in this generation. See you there.
SPEAKER_10That is the sort of thing that makes you think there is a higher intelligence at play. And that is the sort of thing that we commonly say day by day around the world. We are immersed in remarkable beauty, in remarkable signs of design, in remarkable signs of advanced intelligence. That's thought number one. Thought number two, we are free, but we fear being slaves. So much of these videos are about we are free, but we fear being slaves. We we can't shake the sense that I am to some degree in charge of my life, aren't I? There's a stopping point with all the decisions that get made in the world, and I'm not just the sum total of my inputs, and I'm not just like the Chinese room experiment dude who is just taking inputs and just blurting out outputs. That's not the way I navigate the world. I am deliberating. I am reasoning. I'm deciding, I'm choosing. Aren't I? That is a profound sense that we have. We also have a profound sense that I am a slave. We all do have this profound sense that am I just on these train tracks and it's all inevitable? These videos, prompt theory, simulation theory, they all make us think that, oh well, we we do feel free, but are we slaves actually? The third truth is we trust but we doubt. We mainly live our lives not like Descartes. We mainly live our lives trusting what comes to us from the outside. But then every now and again we wonder to ourselves, am I just a brain in a vat being prodded by a mad scientist? Am I just Truman from the Truman Show? Largely we trust, but then we can have some profound doubts. I think that is life on planet Earth. And I think that really fits with the Christian picture of things. Fourthly, I think we are creative and cruel. We are the sorts of people who invent worlds and then we are cruel to the NPCs within those worlds. We are that kind of mixed bag. And we can create such beauty and we can create such brokenness in this world and our creativity and our goodness and our overflowing life alongside the ways in which we can twist things and sometimes even enjoy twisting things and enjoy causing pain. We are the glory and the garbage of the cosmos. We are those sorts of creatures. Fifthly, these videos really make us think about world building and the kind of worlds that we always build, they involve pain, don't they? And all those scenes in which people are going through suffering and ordeals, they are very recognizable cinematic tropes because that's how our stories run, and that's how every story runs. And therefore the characters in all our stories, they might start on high, but then there is some kind of fall, and then there is a whole bunch of suffering and pain and struggle. And if it's a tragedy, then that's where it ends. But if it's a comedy or if there's a happy ending, then there's a you catastrophe, as J.R.R. Tolkien put it, and somehow victory is snatched from the jaws of defeat, and up we go into a happily ever after. But all our stories involve pain. Whether they end well or badly, they definitely involve pain. The only books that don't involve pain are called cookbooks, okay? Or instruction manuals or phone books. Remember phone books, kids, right? The only books that do not involve pain are not stories. All stories involve pain and suffering and struggle. And then trust is foundational. It really is foundational. You cannot consistently live like Descartes. You cannot consistently live in a state of radical skepticism. Doubt won't get you very far. You do have to trust the world as it is presented to you. We do in fact live by faith, and we must live by faith. And I would say that all fits very well with the Christian picture of things. The Christian picture of things is that we do indeed live in a world of remarkable beauty with signs of intelligence, advanced intelligence, and goodness and truth. There is a grandeur to this world that cannot be explained as simply ones and zeros, or that can't be explained as simply quarks and leptons fizzing. That is what the Christian story says, but it also says that we are these kinds of agents in the world, and we do have a measure of freedom in the world, but we also get enslaved by things. Adam and Eve were king and queen of all creation, and then they pursue desires that only end up twisting and thwarting their own good, and they end up falling down into brokenness and into a slavery. Whoever sins is a slave to sin, says Jesus. But if the sun sets you free, you'll be free indeed. We're made for freedom, we fall into slavery. The Christian story is all about this. Also, we trust but also doubt. We navigate this world on the basis of faith, but we're constantly worried. Like, am I being taken in? Am I gullible? We we have this skepticism to us as well. And this is part of our fallen condition. And this is part of life on planet Earth as described in the Bible. The fourth point, we are creative and cruel. My goodness, that's just a biblical anthropology, right? We are creative, we are made in the image of a creator God, and so we become sub-creators, as J. R. R. Tolkien called us. We make little worlds. We always make little worlds. We love to make little worlds. There's a goodness to us that is fruitful, that is life-giving. There's something so great about us, but we're also fallen, we're also cruel, and we will intentionally inflict harm even on our own creations. We are creative and cruel. That's what the Bible's constantly saying about what we're like. But fifthly, world building involves pain. And doesn't that give you one window onto the question of God and suffering? The Christian story is that God oversees a world in which great evil and horrendous suffering happens. He oversees that state of affairs. How do you make sense of that? Well, in a thousand different ways, but largely by lament and tears and bafflement and mystery. But one response is to say, God has made a world in which there are ordeals and suffering and evil. We make worlds that are about suffering and evil and ordeals. And in fact, there hasn't been a world ever built that is not like that. The experiment has been run billions of times. Billions of worlds have been created. Every time a story is written, a world is created, and in every single world, the author presides over suffering, pain, struggle, and ordeal. Maybe it is simply the nature of the case that to build a world is to entail a measure of suffering, struggle, ordeal. If you've run an experiment billions of times, and every single time you run the experiment, the world gets fallen, then maybe it is the nature of the case that the world builder has brought this world into being, and that just as childbearing involves incredible labor pains, so the world that we are in is in labor, because that is the nature of creation. That's worth thinking about. And then finally, sixthly, trust is foundational. That that is what the Bible says. It all begins with faith. It all begins with receiving Jesus. And you see, this is the difference between the VO3 videos and the Jesus story. The Jesus story, the prompter, enters into that world and suffers alongside his creations, and suffers for his creations, and redeems his creations, and comes to us in all our doubts and says, You can trust me. He comes to us in all our enslavement and he says, You can be free in me. He comes to us in all our cruelty, and he says, You can be forgiven in me. And he anchors the world of the creator to the creation. And we who are creatures can be anchored to ultimate reality and no ultimate reality. The Jesus story has a unique ability to make sense of all these intuitions that we have. Do you know about the Jesus story? Have you done the 321 course? Why don't you go to 321course.com and discover life according to Jesus? I think he makes sense of life on planet Earth. He makes sense of reality and of consciousness, of freedom and of morality. Go to 321course.com, start an account. It's totally free. We won't spam you, but just start an account and we would love for you to discover life according to Jesus. That'll do for us on the channel. Now, have you given the channel a subscribe? We would love to have you on board with us so that we can see you on the next one. Bye bye.