5 Takeaways for Church Leaders from the AI Conference

Recently I attended the second annual AI Conference in San Francisco, CA. Similar to last year, it was an amazing time to hear from thought leaders in artificial intelligence. I learned so many things about where we are with artificial intelligence and where we’re heading next. There’s a good chance I was one of the only church-oriented attendees at the conference. I tried to learn as much as I could to pass this knowledge on to the church community. Basically, I went for you. In this article, I’d like to share my observations and how they may impact the church.

1. More People, More Sponsors

Last year there were probably about 500 people at the conference. This year there were well over 1,000. There were also around 20 company sponsors and booths last year. This year there were more than 100! This is a good reminder of the exponential growth in this field. Pastors and church leaders, AI is here to stay and is only going to grow with time.

2. Deciding WHAT to Build, Not How

Last year, the conference talked a lot about how to build things. They threw around terms like RAG (retrieval-augmented generation) and LangChain. I’m not a developer, so I continue to have only a rudimentary understanding of these frameworks. However, this year the conversation completely changed.

Instead of asking how things are built, we moved to what. Companies and developers assumed they could build almost any platform or app they wanted—but that’s not the hard part. Instead, the hard part is identifying specific problems AI can help solve, making sure it solves that problem while offering a great user experience.

Church leaders should be aware that new platforms will continue to be built all the time. AI technology gets better by the week. Over the next year, don’t lock yourself into one platform. Try to remain open to the release of new platforms over time.

3. The Future of AI Questions

As new AI apps and platforms launch, leaders in AI continue to prioritize dependability and security. One downfall of simply relying on one LLM platform like ChatGPT is its responses aren’t always consistent when you’re asking it to accomplish a specific task. Therefore, companies continue to figure out how to get consistent activity from their LLMs.

One other leader from Google shared how the future of important AI questions lies in philosophy instead of engineering. This leader explained how we need people to think through topics like ethics and what is good, over a thing that can make better choices.

In many ways, I feel that church leaders should find this encouraging. Pastors should know that security is a top issue for every company on the planet working with AI. Also, I found it fascinating that we’re at the point where we need to help our AI systems navigate moral decision-making.

Some may fear this means developers will purposefully build some bias into their systems. Although it’s true some bias is unavoidable, developers try to expunge as much bias from their models as possible, while making room for a person to ask ChatGPT to respond effectively from any perspective on the planet.

4. We Don’t Need AI Policies

In the church world, many leaders are pushing churches to develop an AI policy. Developing a policy like this is a great place to start if it helps your church feel more confident in its use of AI. However, a specific policy for the use of AI is not necessary. I recently wrote about this topic in depth.

The leaders at the AI conference echoed this sentiment. They suggested that organizations simply update their current policies to include the new nuances that AI has created. I totally agree with this. I would challenge a person to find one principle that only applies to AI and not anywhere else.

5. Helping AI to Think Like Humans

One presenter explained how current supercomputers process data in a super clunky way. They’ve been researching new ways to help AI networks solve problems more like the human brain. Human brains only activate the systems necessary to respond to whatever comes across their path.

For church leaders, I just thought this would be interesting to know. Once researchers figure this out, it will make AI even smarter, faster, and cheaper to use to develop new things. It’s another indication that more AI is coming.

BONUS: AI AGENTS

As a bonus, I wanted to share about AI agents. You may not know what this is yet—but it’s coming! Over the next year or so, you’ll hear about AI agents more and more. Imagine an AI agent as a group of specialized ChatGPTs in a room together, tasked to solve a problem.

For example, imagine you were preparing an outreach plan for your church. You could create one model that’s really good at searching the internet and seeing what other churches are doing in the area. Another model could identify what needs your community may have. Another model may be really good at looking through your church database to identify who may be the best people to invite to upcoming events, cross-referencing with local school schedules. You add one other model that will bring all these ideas together to determine if anything needs to be updated or tweaked. Finally, you wrap it all together with a model that takes in all the info and summarizes the results in a helpful way for the user. Together, that’s called an AI agent.

I wanted to let you know that these are currently being released to businesses and are coming to the church too.

Takeaway

The AI Conference was amazing. I felt like I went to represent the church and bring back as much as I could to share with others. Overall, I was reminded that we’re still at the beginning of our AI journey as humans. However, it’s truly amazing how fast this technology is developing.

Churches Looking for Help with AI

If your church is looking for help with AI, AI for Churches can help in two specific ways. First, consider signing up for our next AI cohort. Cohorts cost $99. We’ll gather a group of about 20 and meet once a month for 6 months. If you’re looking for more personal training, consider an AI Consultation. Your church can receive 2.5 hours of dedicated training, along with a personalized AI report for $395. If you’re not sure where to start, book a discovery call today.