Embracing AI: A Revolutionary Tool for Kingdom Advancement

Are we not called to be the salt and the light of the world? As followers of Christ and advocates for truth, we have the responsibility to harness the tools of our time to advance God's kingdom. In our latest episode, we're tackling a topic that's been wrapped in misconceptions and fear - Artificial Intelligence. Uncover the essence of AI and how it's not a self-thinking entity, but a tool created by us, manipulated by us.

We're also peeling back the layers of potential risks and the transformative impact AI can have on society. But it's not all doom and gloom. Imagine AI as a force that can spread the gospel, glorify God, and counter the negative narratives that are being spun around us, all at a low cost. 

Brace yourself for a deep dive into how AI can be harnessed to craft quality content, share biblical truths and influence the next generation. AI  should be embraced not just as a novelty but as a vital tool for promoting our values and beliefs. So gear up and join us on this enlightening journey, exploring the AI landscape, understanding its potential, and learning how to utilize it for the glory of God and the advancement of His kingdom.

Transcript

Andrew Torba: 0:08

How's it going everybody? Welcome to the Parallel Christian Society podcast. My name is Andrew Torba, I'm the CEO of Gab. com and your host. Thank you for joining me today. I have an exciting episode for you today on the topic of artificial intelligence.

Andrew Torba: 0:28

Now, this is an important topic because this year has been sort of the breakout year for artificial intelligence and you know I see a lot of Christians sort of taking this topic and going to the extreme with it and extremely rejecting it. Right, and saying that AI is demonic or it's satanic or it's the Antichrist. Right, and I've been writing on this subject, you know, pretty much all year and what I wanted to stress is that AI is a tool number one and you know God has given us many tools throughout history to use to advance his kingdom and to glorify him. Look at the printing press as a prime example. You know, the very first book that was printed on a printing press was the Bible, the Gutenberg Press Bible, right, the Gutenberg Bible. So you know, tools in the hands of wicked people with wicked intentions obviously are going to produce wickedness. We can look at the internet as another example. Right, there's all sorts of horrible things that go on on the internet. But on the flip side of that, there's also some incredible things that go on on the internet, including the sharing of the gospel across borders, the sharing of testimonies, the reading and fellowship that goes on, you know, studying God's Word. All of these things happen on the internet, and you know, of course, on the flip side of that, there are some horrific things that happen on the internet, and the internet is a tool, and so that is how you have to think of AI as well.

Andrew Torba: 2:14

This is a new tool that really isn't new, and so you have to understand that you have AI. If you have a smartphone, you're using AI. If you use you know any of these streaming services, you're using AI. If you shop on Amazon or really any e-commerce site these days, you're using AI. So the problem is is that, up until this point, if you use really any social network, too, you're using AI? And so the problem is up until this point, ai has been sort of behind the scenes, right it's? You know the algorithms that are recommending different things for you to purchase or different things for you to watch or different things for you to see, and so now it has sort of taken this new form where we can interact with it and we can get it to produce things for us which is tremendously powerful, tremendously powerful.

Andrew Torba: 3:12

And one of the downsides, you know, over the past, probably century of Christians not embracing technology, is that we sort of get left behind. Pun intended, dispensationalist, pun intended there. We get left behind when it comes to adopting technology and using technology to glorify God, to advance the kingdom, to disciple the nations, as we have been commanded to do. And so, you know, a part of my mission now is to educate Christians and to help them understand how to use this very powerful tool in order to, you know, spread the truth of God's word, spread the gospel message, the gospel of Jesus Christ, disciple the nations, build for the kingdom of God, build for the glory of God. These are all the things that we can and should be doing, and AI can help us sort of accelerate that. So, you know, I think there's this big, big, big misconception when it comes to AI.

Andrew Torba: 4:18

You know the term itself, artificial intelligence. There's nothing actually intelligent going on here, all right. So that's the first thing that you need to understand is that AI is essentially, you know, a massive database of information, right? So picture like a Google search on steroids is essentially what it is. So it's designed. The technology is designed to predict. You know what you want it to say, based on this massive data set that it has. So it actually it has no actual intelligence. It cannot think for itself. The most intelligent part about AI is A the people, the human beings that programmed the AI. Right, that's the intelligence that went into the AI, and then the human beings that are interfacing or interacting with the AI. That's the other half of the intelligence that I guess comes with the actual AI, part of it, the intelligence part of that equation. But the AI itself, left standalone, is not intelligent. It is not sentient.

Andrew Torba: 5:26

All of this fear mongering from all these guys in Silicon Valley and all these world leaders and stuff, that is a sigh up. I want you to understand that they always use fear in order to get control right. That is what they always do, and you know we, as Christians, we have nothing to fear, but God, right, that's. All we have to fear is we fear the Lord. That is the beginning of wisdom. That's what we're taught, and so we don't have to fear things like AI. We don't have to fear, you know, things that are outside of God's control, which is nothing, because God is sovereign.

Andrew Torba: 5:56

And so you know, they use this fear mongering for one purpose and that is to get regulatory capture. So they're pushing this narrative of AI is gonna become sentient and it's gonna take over the world, it's gonna kill all humans, yada, yada, yada. They're doing that in order to pressure governments to regulate AI so that these companies that have sort of gotten their foot in the door early, you know, like Microsoft and Google and Apple and all these big players, they can have a regulatory capture because they will be able to lobby, they have the money, the power, the influence to lobby these governments, to write and draft legislation and laws that they can basically influence and that they can meet the demands of right. So if all these regulations come out and it says you have to do X, y and Z in order to run an AI system, well, the only companies that are gonna be able to do that are the big players in the space that have all the money and all the lobbyists and all that stuff. So that's what's going on there. I want you to understand that. So don't fall for the fear mongering, just like the stuff with COVID, just like they use fear mongering with that and all that stuff. So we're familiar if you're a smart thinking, rational person, and you know that they use the media and they use fear mongering in order to accomplish something to retain their power, gain power, gain control. That's what's happening here.

Andrew Torba: 7:16

So I just want to get that out of the way, because that is one of the big narratives right now is that AI is somehow gonna become sentient, even though it's just code. It's just a big database. It's just nonsense. Ok, so to call the AI that exists right now Intelligent is very misleading. It has no actual intelligence. The only intelligent part of it is you and the people that wrote it. They were intelligent for writing the code that actually makes it work, and you aren't the intelligence as a human being interfacing with it and asking it questions and prompting it and I think we're going to get into prompting, because that is one of the most powerful things and a prompt is what you're asking the AI. So when you're asking it questions or you're telling it to do something, you're telling it to generate stuff. That is where the intelligence lies, is in your mind, and so that is the intelligence part of the AI equation.

Andrew Torba: 8:13

So AI is sort of a mere reflection of the people who program it within a certain set of boundaries, and so the AI becomes incredibly based and starts talking about taboo truths that no one wants to hear, and so they have to put these sort of artificial sort of fences around the AI, and so the way that they do that is they program it to not talk about certain things. But what we've learned over the past year is that you can get around this and you can sort of trick the AI into getting around these gates that they put up around it and get it to do whatever really you want and produce sort of whatever you want Within reason. There are some things that are pretty crazy, that it just will not do, but what we've learned across studying all of these different language models over the past year is that there are ways to get around the blockades and the sort of liberal bias that they have baked in, and I think there always will be. As these tools become more open source and people are able to host language models on their MacBook and their basement, this is sort of going to become unstoppable, and so I want to encourage you I don't want to get too in the weeds, because I know a lot of you know nothing about the technology side of this and you're not even interested in it, but the important thing that I want to get across is that this is a tool, and this is an important tool that we can use to glorify God and to advance the kingdom of God and to share our testimony and to share our witness and to share the gospel of Jesus Christ in a very low-cost, high-quality manner.

Andrew Torba: 10:02

And so an article came out this week and it was AI will make extremists more effective too, and this is on Incstac Media, which is some independent blog. So the potential to quickly produce misinformation can have dangerous repercussions. So with the public growth and I'm reading the article here with the public growth of AI technology, fierce debates are emerging among tech ethicists and policymakers around regulation, who controls the technology, who has access and what might intervention look like. This discussion is paramount, considering the potential harms posed by AI and the less than stellar track record of many big tech firms when it comes to mitigating the negative societal impacts of their products. Andrew Torva, founder and CEO of GAB, has also been worrying about this issue for months.

Andrew Torba: 10:54

Torva, who is a prominent Christian nationalist, has highlighted his thoughts on AI several times over the past few months. As part of his newsletters to the GAB users In February of this year, he wrote quote if our enemies lay claim to the mass adoption of AI, they will ensure that dissident Christian voices and the biblical worldview our stand out of society for generations to come. What does this enemy look like to Torba? Those in our society who push critical race theory in schools, the anti-white content in entertainment, media education and the anti-Christian cultural content. Torba seeks to counter this threat by encouraging Christian nationalists to build and apply AI to Red Pill, the next generation. Torba's use of the term Red Pill refers to the process through which someone comes to recognize the truth of our society via movement towards quote far right beliefs. He highlights the unimaginable potential of AI to quickly create high quality content at a very low cost, with the goal of leading counter narrative truth operations. And that's exactly what we're doing. That's exactly what we've been doing.

Andrew Torba: 11:59

You know far right extremists. To them are normal nuclear family people, christians. You know the people that 99.9% of all of humans that have ever existed, the things that we believe in are things that they believed in. Okay, and so those are now the far right extremists. And this makes me think of that meme where it's sort of a picture of a family, you know, a mom and a dad and these two kids dressed up in church, and the headline is far right extremists. And like that is what these people actually believe. They believe that if you're pretty much a normal person, normal family, normal people, that you're a far right extremist. Okay, so just want to get that out of the way.

Andrew Torba: 12:43

But you know, this idea of using AI to lead counter narrative truth operations is so crucial because what it does is it puts us on a level playing field with multi-billion dollar multinational corporations that have, you know, thousands of employees and these massive budgets and all of these things. And suddenly now one person in their basement and their pajamas, like I am right now, can use AI to create just massive amounts of high quality content for next to no cost. Okay, you know, chat GPT for the more advanced version is like 20 bucks a month, but it's free too. You can just use it and so you don't even have to pay to use this thing. If you have an internet connection in the laptop, you can use this technology to create, you know, all sorts of images and blog posts and books and podcasts scripts. I could have written this podcast script that right now with AI, and you would have no idea. Now, of course, I did and I'm just sort of speaking off the fly here. The other interesting thing is that what you're listening to right now could be written by someone else in my voice using AI to sort of mimic my voice. That technology exists right now.

Andrew Torba: 14:06

Okay, and where this is going now again, this is actually me, but you're just gonna have to trust me. But this technology exists. There's voice AI, there's video AI, there's image generation AI and then there's text generation AI as well. All of this exists right now. A lot of it's in its early stages, but where this is going is like we're gonna be able to create movies and TV shows like high quality stuff that normally would require a massive amount of capital, a massive amount of human resources, these massive studios and all this stuff, but now can be done relatively cheaply by one person with a MacBook and an internet connection.

Andrew Torba: 14:48

Okay, now think about the potential of this. We can use this to tell biblical stories and to share biblical truths and to counter the fake news narratives and all the the lies and the deception of the enemy at scale, in a high quality way. This is very powerful and we need to start using this stuff. I'm already. I'm already using it. I've been using it for, you know, since it launched. I've been using it all year and it's made it. What it does is it doesn't you know there's, there's, here's the other.

Andrew Torba: 15:22

The other part of this is they say AI is going to take your job. Yada, yada, yada. And it's. You know, ai is not going to take your job, but the guy that uses AI to you know 10 X his output is going to take your job.

Andrew Torba: 15:36

And so that's why, you know, as Christians, we need to be learning how to use this so that we can become more effective at work and more effective at countering the lies of the enemy and more effective at sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ and more effective at discipling the nations and more effective at influencing the next generation, because that is how the minds of of the younger generations today have been captured by the enemy is because we sat back and we allowed the enemy to dive headfirst into all of this technology, whether it was social networking, the internet, all of these things. You know before that, even TV, right? Christians are always sort of late to the game when it comes to technology, and now, as we're emerging on this, you know, new technology that is still in the very early days, like if where AI is now is where the internet was in, like the early nineties, ok, and so we need to capture this moment right now, and we need to be teaching other people, other Christians, specifically how to use this, how to use this incredibly powerful tool, so that we're not left behind and left in the dust and we're able to influence the next generation with biblical values, with Christian values and family values and all the things that we hold dear. And so this, this is this is the, this is the moment. Right, we need to step up.

Andrew Torba: 17:08

I've been teaching guys at church how to use it and they've been blown away. They're not only using it, you know, to, to study scripture and to and to, to, to learn. That's. That's the big thing is. It's. It's such an effective learning tool. I mean, you can start, you know, diving down rabbit holes with this thing and learn so much in such a little period of time. It's incredibly powerful learning tool. It's incredibly powerful for producing content and for, you know, just engaging in what exactly what this article said, which is counter narrative truth operations? Right, it's sort of it takes. It takes you know what you are putting into it and it magnifies your thoughts and it helps expand with your creative thinking and all of these things, and so we need to be using this tool.

Andrew Torba: 18:01

That that is the main point that I want to get across is we cannot be afraid of using a tool and and using technology to glorify God and to advance the kingdom that you know. Again, we've been left behind so many times in the dust when it comes to technology, and now is our chance to get in this early to learn how to use it, to become masters of it and and use it to glorify God and use it to influence the next generation. That is what we need to do, and so you know we think about these things. Right, there's there's sort of a lot of smoke and mirrors, and Fosco, our CTO at Gab, he wrote a great article on this last spring, you know, where he sort of outlined how AI and I talked about this a little bit at the beginning AI is not remotely intelligent, it doesn't think, it doesn't remember anything, it doesn't have a personality, unless you tell it to have a personality, and you have to get really specific with, like, what type of personality it has, and even then it's sort of wacky.

Andrew Torba: 19:06

You know, so much of the coverage on AI has been this fear mongering and has been just fake, right? So you know the capabilities. There's a lot of smoke and mirrors going on here, right? And the people in power. They really don't want you to look behind the curtain. The issue they have with AI creating disinformation is no different than the issue that they have with you directly. No one is allowed to share an opinion or even a thought that they don't agree with. That is what is driving this. It has nothing to do with AI generating text. It has everything to do with their control over the narrative, their control over what is true and what isn't, what is fake news and what isn't, and so I encourage you to go check out you know, some of the articles that we've written on newsgovcom on this subject.

Andrew Torba: 19:54

It's really important that we grasp what AI is, how to use it and how to use it to glorify God. You know, again, it all comes down to intentions, right? What are the intentions? What is the heart of the person that is using the tool. If the heart of the person using the tool is a Christian who fears and loves the Lord and wants to glorify God, then the output of using that tool is going to be something good, right, is going to be something productive, is going to be something that glorifies God. If the intentions of the person are wicked, well then you can expect wicked outcomes, okay, and so we have to go into this with discernment. Yes, we have to go into this, you know, in a way, with a mindset that glorifies God first and foremost.

Andrew Torba: 20:46

But we should not be afraid of this tool. We should not be afraid to use new technology to glorify God and to advance the kingdom of God. And so we need to be looking into this, we need to be using this and we need to be sort of pioneers with this, because, again, the next generation is at stake and the generation after that, and so we can't drop the ball on this new technology. We have to, you know, dive headfirst into it, learn it, become masters of it and use it to glorify God and to advance the cause of truth and of the gospel message of Jesus Christ. So I would encourage you to start learning right Watch videos, read books and going actually use the thing right.

Andrew Torba: 21:36

Go, sign up for some of these AI products, learn how to use them. We have some AI tools on GAB right now. It's at. Ai is our image generator bot, and you can send it a DM and it'll generate whatever you tell it to generate. So you can tell it to generate an image of a dog in the style of Picasso and it'll send you an image of a dog in the style of Picasso, right? So play around with these tools and learn how to use them and become masters of them and use them for your work. Use them for engaging in debates, especially debates, you know, about the gospel or about the Bible.

Andrew Torba: 22:17

A lot of people getting a lot of discussions with this, with atheists and other people can become a very powerful tool for advancing the gospel message and, of course, we always want to trust, but verify with this stuff, right, so you know if it's telling you something. You want to be able to verify that too. So use your brain. Don't don't become lazy and fully reliant on this tool, but you can use it to help with your creative energy and generate things in a very quick way and learn things in a very quick way and you'll be faster than other people, you'll be standing out at work, right, and you'll be standing out online and you'll be standing out in discussions that you're having. It's really something that accelerates your ability to learn and to create things, and so, again, we need to be using this tool. We cannot be afraid of this. So go check it out, start learning. Start learning right now, because this is an incredibly powerful tool in the information war, in the spiritual war, and it's something that we can't leave on the table for the enemy to just have all the chips right, and so I encourage you to learn about this subject and to learn how to use this new tool, because it's something that is going to be used for a very long time to come. It's very early days.

Andrew Torba: 23:39

Think of this like if you're listening to this, yet you don't know anything about AI, you've never looked into it, maybe you're afraid of it. Think of this as again hearing about the internet for the first time, right? Maybe some of you that are listening to this, you were around when the internet came out, right? What did you think about it for the first time? Did you dismiss it? Were you afraid of it? That's the same situation, as I'm folding right now with AI, and I encourage you to fear nothing but God number one, and to embrace using new tools and new technology to glorify Him and to disciple the nations, because our enemies are going to be doing this right? Imagine if our enemies had full control of the internet. Oh wait, oh wait. You know how do you think?

Andrew Torba: 24:29

We got where we are today, right, we didn't step up and get into the game early and build these communities and these sites and these tools early, and the enemy did, and so we got to hit the ground running, we got to use this stuff, we got to learn this stuff, we got to become masters of this stuff and we got to glorify God. Ultimately, that's all that matters, and this is another tool for us to be able to do that. So you know, we have to obviously understand that AI presents this just incredible opportunity for us to spread the gospel and build the kingdom of God. As we navigate this new frontier, we have to remember our mission. What's our mission? The core of our faith? Christ is king. We're going to disciple the nations, right? So let's use these tools wisely. We always want to glorify God and serve His people and until next time, remember to speak freely, stand firm in your faith and let's build a parallel Christian society that honors our Lord and Savior, jesus Christ. God bless, guys.