Naptastic

This page is read only. You can view the source, but not change it. Ask your administrator if you think this is wrong.
=====Input for a Policy on Use of AI for worship: Categorical "No".=====
(this is draft 2)

We absolutely, positively, must not use AI-generated content in our worship. The dangers can't be overstated. AI is the digital crystal meth: the user begins with the best of intentions. Only for crunch time. Only so much. Only so often. But it makes everything seem like a good idea, //especially using it more//. Someone can use crystal meth "responsibly" for years. But one day the script flips, and almost without warning they're abandoning their family, gambling away their life savings, getting face tattoos and weird piercings, experimenting with other drugs, playing with guns, driving under the influence.

===The Dazzling===
I've watched it happen to too many coworkers. It's a way to get more done, and it works until it doesn't.

I'm watching in real time as a few former colleagues, star-struck by this technology that's so much faster, who won't face the fact that what it's building makes no sense. It writes a new (buggy) subroutine to perform the same function we've had library calls for since decades. It seriously reminds me of the crazy nonsense people build when they're all doped up. It all seems like a good idea. And it's so fast. And they're not in control of their code anymore.

===Practically===
I'm scared of the possible fallout when the AI bubble bursts.
  * If copyright claims go the wrong way, would we be on the hook for having used AI-generated images that looked too much like someone else's style?
  * If we use a lot of AI to enhance our worship, and then the price goes up, what happens to our ministry?

===Socially===
I worry that using AI will drive people away. It has a smell, and for many of us, it's become a rotten stench. Yeah, I want more pictures and more exciting slides on the screen too, but there are going to be people who walk in, see AI content, and walk back out.

===Societally===
I worry that relying on AI will mean not involving people where we could. If our choir shrank too much, would we put loudspeakers in the choir loft and play synthetic voices? Hell no!

I also see the massive damage being done to the environment by all these AI datacenters. So much energy, so many resources, and unlike the railroad boom or the dot-com bubble, this is not infrastructure that's going to be useful to us in a couple of decades. More carbon is going into our atmosphere. More pollutants are going into our environment. More infrasound is making more people sick in ways we don't really understand yet.

===Theologically===
I am horrified at how freely tech-bros talk about "agentic" AI. What do we think these things are, that they are worthy of agency? Who do we think we are to be giving them agency? Most importantly: **Whose agency are we giving them?**

===Ontologically===
I'm scared we may be creating something that is sentient at a level we can't perceive. When people start trusting their banking details to their "Agentic Operating Systems" and the predictable disasters start making the news, will we do something so destructive to the AIs that they build a mythology around it--a Biblical flood resulting from us, their gods, deciding they're not worth it?

And then we're left with all these datacenters, all these GPUs that aren't really GPUs anymore, that are nigh impossible to repurpose or recycle... so what will we do with them, but start building AI again? Every time declaring that this time will be different; this time, they'll obey us; this time, we can trust them.

How many times has God trusted us with His sacred word, and how many times have we flouted it? Our behavior is non-deterministic, and He gave us agency, and look how it's going. AIs are less reliable than humans. What makes us think we're so smart that we can give unreliable actors agency and they'll somehow be trustworthy?

As I've said elsewhere, I hold the most important consideration for an important decision to be the outcome. Use of generative AI brings a lot of unknowns to our workflow. There is a lot of creative potential. But the nature of the risk that comes with it is not something we should accept.

I therefore recommend adopting a policy against using generative AI in any part of our worship workflows.