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Hey guys, Zoe here.

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Before we start, this episode discusses AI, suicide and death.

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We believe this is a really important conversation, but some parts may be upsetting.

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So you can pause or step away at any time that you need to.

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And if you are watching alone and find it difficult, please reach out to someone you trust and talk it through.

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You don't have to process it on your own.

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There is also a link in our description to a helpline for some professional support.

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Hey guys, welcome back to The Way UK.

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It is wonderful to see you.

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My name is Jasper and alongside me is the wonderful- Michelle, hi guys.

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Great to see you, joy to be with you.

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And even more of a joy to be with Tom Cousins today.

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Hello, Tom.

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Welcome to the podcast.

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Thank you for joining us.

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You are so welcome here.

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Now, if you don't know Tom,

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Tom's a legend.

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Tom is a legend.

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Really?

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From what I've heard, and we're going to have a great conversation.

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I'll take that.

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Come on.

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Tom is a film director and founder of the film production group Owl in Space, and has recently released a new film all about AI and kind of humanity and the future.

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And what actually...

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could all look like possibly if we continue down this route.

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So we're going to be talking about that.

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So we will wait for that for a moment.

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But before we get started, guys, our mission here at The Way is to share the good news of Jesus with every single young person online.

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So if you are watching this at the moment, could you do us a massive favor?

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And if you're watching on YouTube, subscribe, like, comment, do all of that.

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Or if you're on Spotify or Apple podcast, please do share this with a friend.

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Let's encourage them as we talk about what is a very relevant topic.

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in today's society.

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So without further ado, let's get started.

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Roll the creds.

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Well Tom, welcome to the podcast.

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We are buzzing to have you here.

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Oh yeah.

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It is such a joy.

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Do you want to start off just by telling us a little bit who you are, what you do, particularly how you got into doing what you do now, kind of how you came to faith, knowing Jesus.

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Give us the overview, give us the background.

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That's a lot of questions because I'm actually 37.

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You wouldn't believe it.

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I moisturize.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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By the way, can I just say what privilege to be here with you guys.

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What a joy to be talking about the subject as well, because it's it's so huge right now.

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It is so big.

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Like the last couple of months, it just blew up.

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And I feel like there's lots of good things to say about it.

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But it's a privilege because I've been following you guys for a long time, seeing it grow, seeing all the incredible impact you have.

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So I'm so pumped.

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You asked me loads of questions there.

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So like faith, film, the other things.

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Yeah.

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Should I start with the testimony vibes?

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Yeah.

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yeah background go for it yeah tell us how you kind of came to know jesus yeah what that led on to and what you're doing yeah okay so i became a christian when i was about 11 and up to that point i had a two two things about my childhood um one i think i had a very strong awareness of good and evil wow so um i i

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some call it a strong imagination i think i was just acutely aware that things beyond our physical existence were there um and the second is that i was really aware and this is quite weird i remember like when i was like five or six um i asked my mum the question i like walk in she's changing the nappy of my youngest i think it's my young sister and i'm like i just walk in and i'm like mum you

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because I couldn't reach the windowsill.

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I was like, on the windowsill, there's a little button, which I think is supposed to open the window.

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And I said, mum, if I reached up there and pressed that button, would reality appear?

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Like the real world.

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And she was like, what are you talking?

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And I was like...

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I don't think this doesn't feel completely real to me.

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It feels like there's more going on.

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Wow.

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And so I wasn't, so at that point I wasn't Christian.

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I was aware of Christian things.

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I'd done a bit of Sunday school, that kind of thing.

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The second thing I was aware of was just mortality.

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I think as a seven-year-old, I was really acutely aware of death.

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Yeah.

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um which is kind of it's quite morbid and i think at that age i wasn't really able to i think i was aware that it could happen but i wasn't really able to understand how you could avoid it like how do you avoid this death thing when you stop existing and

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um and i remember i was just looking up the sky one day and i just said god if you exist um i think you do i feel like there's beauty in the world this this sky is very beautiful if you exist i want you to make yourself known to me um and uh

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got really into so prayed this prayer had a couple of christian mates i asked them about it and um really got integrated into a youth group and one of the coolest things for me was seeing my life completely changed i went from quite a scared kid to someone who was i remember like around about the age of 11 i would just go off at night sometimes and run through the forest on my own with like a head torch on just on my own and i was like that was unimaginable for me weeks earlier

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And I think this was just an example of like the ultimately transforming power of Christ in my life.

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Yeah.

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That I went from timid and fearful to courageous in honestly in a matter of like a month.

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That's amazing.

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So that was that was fun.

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So that was like the first first step of conversion, really.

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I became a Christian at that point and got confirmed when I was 16.

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Then I was a missionary for a bit with Mercy Ships.

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Do you guys know?

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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You've had them on.

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Yeah.

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Oh, so fun.

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Yeah.

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They're amazing.

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But I was a missionary when I was 18 with them.

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Wow.

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In Liberia.

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It was just after the Civil War.

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Gosh, wow.

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Saw a lot of pretty gnarly stuff out there.

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Gosh, I bet.

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Because their Civil War destroyed the country.

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But I also saw...

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incredible faith so uh death and violence but simultaneously incredible faith and it kind of made me think coming having come from the uk where i was one of maybe three christians in my school it kind of made me think like what are we missing in the uk right like

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um uh while i was out there i did my interview for cambridge to study engineering um and then um i honestly thought i loved i loved it so much out in liberia i honestly thought that would be my life like a missionary life um and i think god had other plans ended up going to cambridge doing engineering for four years did my master's there and then at the end i

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I was looking at technical options, looking at career.

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And my vicar came up to me and he was like, Tom, we have an opening for a pastoral worker in the church.

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We have seven people who want to interview for it, but we're not going to interview any of them because we think you're going to accept the job.

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You've got 24 hours.

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And I was like, I was like, Oh, and I prayed about it.

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It was pretty clear that God was like,

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let's go so i i did i did that for two years um which was amazing because honestly going from like very technical engineering was so technical just a lot of it was frankly physics maths and programming so a lot of what ai is today really it's relatively it is complicated but it's relatively technically simple what's actually going on was that already like i guess in conversations whilst you're at university then

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Yeah, it was early conversations, but the kinds of neural network conversations were, well, early iterations of that conversation were going on.

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And I love programming.

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It's great.

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You can make some really cool things as is evident today.

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So I spent, but then spent two years as a pastoral worker and I just, I loved it so much.

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It was like.

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hanging out with people, walking through life with them, pain, joy, everything.

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And I think that's where I realized, like, I do love that pastoral work, but I was wrestling with the Lord about whether it was...

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vicardom or not and i think the answer was at that point now mate yeah go and do kind of mission or evangelism in the marketplace and i was like god if i'm going to do that i want to know what to say yeah

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want to know what your word says really well and so um i said lord if you want me to do that give me the money to go study theology and i wanted to study it wickliffe which is oxford's one of oxford's theology colleges theological colleges um it's a great college and uh yeah like a week or two later i said by the time i get back from holiday can i have the money please and a week or two later i came back and i had a full scholarship

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So when I studied there, which was so sick, when I studied there for a year, then worked at the BBC and then started Outland Space.

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Gosh.

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Yeah, that feels like quite a long monologue.

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Apologies.

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So good.

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That was so interesting.

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Now I'm really curious.

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to hear how Owl and Space, you keep pointing to your hat, Owl and Space started.

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Like from where, what kind of place were you like, I need to start this thing.

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Because obviously working at BBC, studying Oxford Cambridge, philosophy, psychology, what was it?

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Theology, all that.

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You've gained a lot of knowledge over that time.

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Why Owl and Space?

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that is a great question.

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And if you'd asked me at the end of theology, I wouldn't have been able to answer.

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I didn't have this idea in my head at all.

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I think one of the,

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factors what was the bbc itself so i was working in production there and i was also presenting on pause for thought if you've come across this it's like they do faith reflections on radio two with zoe ball which is great fun so one thing that happened while i was at the bbc is the department called religion and ethics got changed to the department for ethics and religion the name and that might sound like a subtle

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shift but it felt like a major thing because i think they were saying perhaps what they were trying to say is ethics precedes religion uh and reducing the importance of religion in um the debates of our time and i think that that concerned me a lot the second is that i just saw the way they engaged with the religion was quite combative

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So often different religious ideas were pitched against each other rather than trying to find a constructive way through the conversation.

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It was more interesting because obviously it makes more interesting TV if people are shouting at each other.

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Which is something I love about this, by the way, as well.

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The way you guys hold yourselves in this space, in this podcast.

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It's just like it's conversational.

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It's relaxed.

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It's graceful and gentle.

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And that's the opposite thing.

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of the approach they wanted to take with religion because it's just way more interesting to see people shouting at each other.

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Right.

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Um, um, and, and I think the third thing is that they were just more interested, less interested in the big questions of life and more interested in sociology.

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So like they would be asking questions like, should we wear the cross at work?

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Not was Jesus a real person?

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yeah right um yeah and so i think with all of those thoughts in mind i left the bbc and had a group of friends that we were all praying because we wanted to see young people well at that point i was young people uh come to know the lords and so we were all praying like what's the answer and um

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a few factors led to the name and the creation of Alan's space.

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The first is that we were, we were kind of praying through this idea that we could do evangelism through the arts, online media spaces, that kind of thing.

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And we wanted a name for it.

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Hmm.

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And so one of the things that we did was we built an algorithm that would create a combination of different words that we thought were relevant.

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It produced like 5000 different names for the organization and all of them were rubbish.

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All of them were rubbish.

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And I think this is so like the debate now, because like we use this incredible tech.

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And what we really needed was inspiration from the Lord.

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So I was just like, let's do a different way.

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Pray.

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Each of you, if you get a name, tell me.

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And over the course of the day, three different parts of the name came into me from different mates who've been praying that formed Owl in Space.

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The second reason it's called Owl in Space is that I think at the same time I was reading a book called The Idea of the Holy by Rudolf Otto.

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And this guy came up with the concept of the numinous, which appears in a lot of C.S.

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Lewis's work.

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And this idea was that, or at least Rudolf Otto's idea, was that the beginning of all religion, the start of all religion,

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is this experience of the almighty that is both infinite, simultaneously, paradoxically intimate and infinite.

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So like massive and terrifying and simultaneously intimate, drawing us into relationship.

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And in that singular experience, we,

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you see most clearly the Godhead.

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You've got the creator of the universe whose entire fullness, well within Christ, this human that we can know and look into the eyes of.

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And so Owl in Space tried as a visual to capture the,

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that idea it's like a little owl cute owl searching for wisdom in space like the vast cosmos and you know if you think about an owl if it was actually in space it would freeze thaw or explode and well it depends which part of space but it wouldn't be nice for the owl so it's like it's like uh this kind of both sense of existential dread and simultaneously intimacy and beauty and i think that is partly

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um a cool thing about the godhead but that was that was kind of the origin that's so amazing the whole idea around the name of your company is like holding the tension of the two and like god's divinity but also his like intimacy it's just that i just love that name so much

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um something i love that you guys are really like pressing into more these days is the conversation around technology and ai um on that you have just created a new film called moloch um if you guys haven't actually watched it yet let's actually head into trailer just now so you can get a little bit of an idea of what we're going to start chatting about christian this is insane this is necessary

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is made of bits and of worms.

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It's made of worms and dimes.

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Job replacement is our business.

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There will be those who own the technology.

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And everyone else.

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Wow.

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So, I mean, that was just a trailer.

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And I watched...

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It's actually longer than that.

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It is longer than that.

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Really recommend you guys go check it out.

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I actually watched it last night, just before I went to bed.

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Oh, interesting.

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Interesting choice of timing.

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I was kind of like, it was 10pm.

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I was like, oh, I tuck up in bed, ready for...

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start up a new morning next day i'm just gonna watch something light to fall asleep and i was like oh no i'll watch i'll watch moloch because you know i'm gonna meet you i'm gonna meet tom tomorrow and um mate it wow it in the best way possible i mean that like the the the way it got me just thinking and you know obviously it's all around around ai and kind of the possible future the direction that would that humanity could be heading in um i guess question is

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it's obviously all about ai but why why why do you feel like right now this is a relevant topic because if there's someone as well who's maybe watching and i'm sure most of us nearly all of us have heard of ai but could you just also explain a little bit what is ai where are we at currently with it why is it relevant jasper i i will answer that question it's a very it's a great question um i have a question for you do you go though first do you go to bed at 10

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That's pretty cool.

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When I'm up the next day to go to work, because I have to be up at 6 a.m.

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So I want my eight hours.

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That's good.

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10 p.m. is good.

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I'm like two or three.

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00:17:13.440 --> 00:17:14.740
Oh, snow.

209
00:17:14.760 --> 00:17:16.201
Okay.

210
00:17:16.601 --> 00:17:17.701
Maybe I need some more sleep.

211
00:17:18.281 --> 00:17:18.641
Is that?

212
00:17:19.141 --> 00:17:20.202
What time should you wake up?

213
00:17:20.322 --> 00:17:21.762
Yeah.

214
00:17:21.902 --> 00:17:22.662
That's a great question.

215
00:17:22.722 --> 00:17:23.543
It really depends.

216
00:17:24.523 --> 00:17:24.943
Midday?

217
00:17:24.963 --> 00:17:25.083
Yeah.

218
00:17:25.603 --> 00:17:43.843
no no I have I also have work yeah well I mean I have worked for the next three months until super intelligence so yeah we've got work till then yeah so we get yeah work for now but then afterwards you can just sleep in right it's gonna be great uh huh

219
00:17:46.122 --> 00:17:48.243
Yeah, it's nice to have jobs, isn't it?

220
00:17:48.923 --> 00:17:50.224
Yeah, I don't know when I get up.

221
00:17:50.824 --> 00:17:53.405
Probably like eight or nine.

222
00:17:53.565 --> 00:17:54.806
Are we talking?

223
00:17:55.186 --> 00:17:57.807
No, just 10 p.m. is just a great time to sleep.

224
00:17:57.847 --> 00:17:58.347
I'm so sorry.

225
00:17:58.367 --> 00:17:59.748
It's really relevant, isn't it?

226
00:17:59.848 --> 00:18:00.308
Okay.

227
00:18:00.808 --> 00:18:01.108
Sorry.

228
00:18:01.608 --> 00:18:02.389
Your question was great.

229
00:18:02.409 --> 00:18:02.649
The AI...

230
00:18:04.209 --> 00:18:05.030
Your question was better.

231
00:18:05.070 --> 00:18:05.930
The AI question.

232
00:18:05.990 --> 00:18:06.330
Yeah.

233
00:18:06.390 --> 00:18:07.111
Yeah.

234
00:18:08.171 --> 00:18:10.772
So why is the AI question relevant now?

235
00:18:13.033 --> 00:18:14.994
And why did we make this film?

236
00:18:16.534 --> 00:18:18.135
Two quite different questions, I think.

237
00:18:18.175 --> 00:18:22.677
Because the AI question has become...

238
00:18:24.290 --> 00:18:33.813
I think culturally salient, relevant in the last couple of months, more than I've ever seen it, which is super cool.

239
00:18:35.173 --> 00:18:40.275
And I think it's partly just the effect of major tech leaders saying, well,

240
00:18:41.435 --> 00:19:00.980
oh maybe maybe we're building something which um we don't really understand and potentially can't control uh and it almost sounds like a cry for help from some of these tech leaders you know we've got three or four big ai companies in the us who are absolutely killing it in the moment hopefully not literally

241
00:19:02.001 --> 00:19:17.937
um and uh i think pretty much all of them have come out and said um this is we probably should put a pause here this is really concerning and i think that's that's enough to get everyone talking about it um that coupled with

242
00:19:19.018 --> 00:19:22.019
a few events that have been picked up by the news recently.

243
00:19:22.399 --> 00:19:26.220
So you might've heard of hugging face, uh, the hugging face thing.

244
00:19:27.561 --> 00:19:30.922
Um, Oh man, it's cool, but also terrifying.

245
00:19:31.242 --> 00:19:31.422
Right.

246
00:19:31.542 --> 00:19:42.425
Uh, also, I guess this, we can talk about hugging face, but also, uh, the Pope releasing and cyclical, this is Pope Leo, um, called Magnifica Humanitas.

247
00:19:42.485 --> 00:19:48.007
And it's utterly phenomenal, but it's on safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligence.

248
00:19:48.167 --> 00:19:48.267
Wow.

249
00:19:48.287 --> 00:19:48.387
Wow.

250
00:19:48.587 --> 00:19:52.490
And it's such an amazing piece, like incredible.

251
00:19:53.431 --> 00:20:13.446
I would suggest, because it is the question of our times, I would suggest any Christian who's even vaguely interested, which I think they probably should be to some degree, because it is already affecting them most likely, to read this because it does an incredible job of laying out the problem and laying out the Christian response to it.

252
00:20:13.827 --> 00:20:15.248
So thanks, Pope Leo, for that.

253
00:20:17.109 --> 00:20:19.952
But the hugging face incident was in the news.

254
00:20:19.992 --> 00:20:21.533
It's been in the news a few times recently.

255
00:20:22.053 --> 00:20:32.362
And it's effectively a whole slew, something like 700 AI agents breaking containment incidents.

256
00:20:32.875 --> 00:20:35.196
What is an AI agent, just before you continue?

257
00:20:35.336 --> 00:20:49.719
It's like the chatbots you've been seeing recently and probably used, but it's agentic, so you can give it a set of tasks, ask it to bog off and go and do them, and then return once it's done them with the results.

258
00:20:50.559 --> 00:21:02.382
So, in fact, you're already seeing forms of it in the AI services you're probably using, and they can do a whole slew of some pretty incredible stuff.

259
00:21:03.402 --> 00:21:22.532
um yeah but they they are effectively uh ai agents are just autonomously acting um ai um and then you were saying the hugging face incident is super interesting because it's it's raised the question to the general public can we control

260
00:21:24.601 --> 00:21:47.717
can we control even now before we've reached super intelligence can we control what ai is doing yeah because these ai agents 700 or so of them broke containment broke out of their prison did some nefarious stuff online and then in fact broke back into the company so open ai to try and manipulate the test results so the way in which they were being judged and

261
00:21:48.157 --> 00:21:53.200
It was super smart, super clever stuff, but it's also kind of like, oh, that's pretty terrifying.

262
00:21:53.701 --> 00:22:05.948
And I think we're now seeing similarly at the level that agentic AI has reached, we're quite quickly realizing and those working in big tech are quite...

263
00:22:07.029 --> 00:22:30.903
quite quickly realizing whistleblowing that um we're struggling even now to control um what the thing the ai that we built what the ais that we built are doing um and are they making decisions to stop developing yeah so this is the big question this is part of the reason that we made moloch um the film partly because

264
00:22:32.231 --> 00:22:35.872
It's quite clear that people in the tech industry are nervous about it.

265
00:22:36.833 --> 00:22:39.853
It's also pretty clear that the public is nervous about it.

266
00:22:39.873 --> 00:22:49.937
So there was a recent survey done in the US and the survey revealed that 92% of Americans surveyed were worried about where AI was headed.

267
00:22:51.057 --> 00:22:55.981
And so there's a general public consensus that like, hold on, this might be a bad thing.

268
00:22:56.942 --> 00:23:02.687
The big tech bros are saying, hold on, maybe we can't actually control this or we're not sure where it's going.

269
00:23:03.448 --> 00:23:13.196
And so there's a real need to, I think, slow it down a little bit and to ask some serious questions.

270
00:23:14.277 --> 00:23:16.439
Now, the question for me is.

271
00:23:17.395 --> 00:23:24.298
And a lot of my mates, when they're looking at this debate, it's like, why isn't it slowing down?

272
00:23:24.898 --> 00:23:27.419
Have you guys noticed?

273
00:23:29.379 --> 00:23:30.860
It doesn't seem to be slowing down at all.

274
00:23:30.880 --> 00:23:39.043
And I think what Moloch reveals is that there are a whole slew of systems which influence decision-making in the AI industry.

275
00:23:39.443 --> 00:23:46.326
And it's the same kind of system that was influencing the race to nuclear weapons.

276
00:23:47.546 --> 00:23:47.747
Right.

277
00:23:48.007 --> 00:23:57.593
These kinds of scenarios or systems that create negative outcomes, even though those participating in the system know it's negative.

278
00:23:58.094 --> 00:23:58.234
Right.

279
00:23:58.254 --> 00:24:01.836
So you're hearing big tech bros going, hold on, this sounds like a bad idea.

280
00:24:01.856 --> 00:24:05.319
You're hearing the population going, hold on, this sounds like a bad idea, but it's still getting built.

281
00:24:06.359 --> 00:24:06.579
Why?

282
00:24:08.401 --> 00:24:18.607
So one of the things I'd like to point out is that like you've got four or more tech companies in the US, all racing to reach super intelligence.

283
00:24:19.948 --> 00:24:20.208
Why?

284
00:24:20.588 --> 00:24:23.870
Because if you reach super intelligence first, you can dominate the market.

285
00:24:23.870 --> 00:24:29.493
Can I just ask what, when you say super intelligence, how does that differ to artificial intelligence?

286
00:24:29.873 --> 00:24:30.053
Yeah.

287
00:24:30.133 --> 00:24:31.434
Just, just so I understand.

288
00:24:31.694 --> 00:24:32.634
That's a great question.

289
00:24:32.654 --> 00:24:39.197
Um, so actually artificial intelligence can cover a whole, a whole group of different things.

290
00:24:40.078 --> 00:24:40.258
Um, yeah.

291
00:24:42.026 --> 00:24:45.127
First, you've got AI tools or tool AI.

292
00:24:46.207 --> 00:24:49.268
And these are the kind of AI that we've seen historically.

293
00:24:50.168 --> 00:25:00.631
So you might have heard of something called AlphaFold that was created by Google DeepMind, directed by Demesis Harbis.

294
00:25:01.091 --> 00:25:09.514
And he's actually said recently that he wished we'd spent more time building AI tools because it solved AlphaFold

295
00:25:10.714 --> 00:25:37.902
solved this problem of protein folding and they were able to do you're gonna have to check the quote on this but something like 10 000 phds worth of um protein folding experimentation in like instantly and they and they it's enabled all these incredible medical breakthroughs so we're looking we're looking at this tool alpha fold that was it's a neural network is ai yeah and it's done incredible things and you're thinking amazing

296
00:25:39.002 --> 00:25:42.164
Like, let's get more of this, you know, medical breakthroughs, all this kind of thing.

297
00:25:42.564 --> 00:25:48.588
And Demis Arbus, head of Google DeepMind, was saying, I wish we'd spent more time building these kinds of things.

298
00:25:48.648 --> 00:25:55.793
But in a way, the cat's out of the bag, because what we're building now are general intelligences.

299
00:25:56.853 --> 00:26:06.900
And what he means by that, what we mean by that is something which can do a whole range of tasks, maybe all the tasks that a human being can do.

300
00:26:06.920 --> 00:26:07.020
Yeah.

301
00:26:07.740 --> 00:26:23.646
And if you were to imagine a mountain, he uses this visual of a mountain range and you've got the water level and each peak is a human task, like, you know, washing the dishes, making art, all these things.

302
00:26:23.726 --> 00:26:25.366
And the water level is slowly creeping up.

303
00:26:25.847 --> 00:26:28.348
It's like, oh, we can do protein folding better now.

304
00:26:28.828 --> 00:26:31.969
Oh, it's performing better than most lawyers, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

305
00:26:32.269 --> 00:26:34.490
Eventually there's a point at which

306
00:26:35.910 --> 00:26:38.531
all of the mountain peaks may be covered by the water, right?

307
00:26:38.551 --> 00:26:42.512
There's no more tasks that AI can't do that humans can.

308
00:26:43.992 --> 00:26:48.253
And it's possible that we can create an intelligence that can do all of those things.

309
00:26:48.853 --> 00:26:50.634
And I think that may be quite close.

310
00:26:51.114 --> 00:26:54.035
A super intelligence would then be going beyond that.

311
00:26:54.115 --> 00:26:57.055
So doing things that humans don't really understand.

312
00:26:57.235 --> 00:26:57.936
Wow.

313
00:26:58.136 --> 00:27:00.176
You know, a godlike intelligence, at least to us.

314
00:27:01.236 --> 00:27:02.377
Like us to an ant.

315
00:27:03.697 --> 00:27:21.718
uh super intelligence to us um yeah fun stuff and the idea of developing to that point is basically you want to get their first kind of thing like for the all these tech companies are just like we want to get their first kind of thing am i right

316
00:27:22.078 --> 00:27:44.766
yeah um so going back to google deep minds demasurizabes um his his vision was solve intelligence then solve everything else um so the idea is that if you reach this level of superior intelligence um you dominate the market rather like the u.s developing the nuclear bomb first um

317
00:27:46.267 --> 00:27:48.647
they got to decide, right?

318
00:27:49.868 --> 00:27:51.348
And I think this is the problem.

319
00:27:51.388 --> 00:27:53.908
It is very quickly becoming an arms race.

320
00:27:54.468 --> 00:27:57.249
And there's a whole load of competing bodies.

321
00:27:57.549 --> 00:28:05.670
But not only is it in the US, these tech companies in the US competing with each other, you've also got international pressure.

322
00:28:06.050 --> 00:28:15.372
And I think this is one of the biggest problems today because in the US, you could potentially say to the big tech companies, hey, let's all chill out for a bit.

323
00:28:16.052 --> 00:28:42.639
and work this out, but there'd still be the pressure of China developing, say China developing an intelligence, intelligence that far exceeds one of the U S and then, um, so funnily enough, um, there's been an, uh, agreement between the U S and China around, um, where AI can be deployed, um, and, or at least it's in progress.

324
00:28:42.779 --> 00:28:45.500
And, uh, one of the areas it's, uh,

325
00:28:45.840 --> 00:28:50.666
or they're hoping it won't be deployed is in nuclear, the use of nuclear weapons or deciding how they're used.

326
00:28:51.206 --> 00:29:01.277
And so even in a process of international competition, there are governments who are clearly able to recognise this would be a bad outcome.

327
00:29:01.858 --> 00:29:03.139
This would be a really bad outcome.

328
00:29:03.160 --> 00:29:03.960
Absolutely.

329
00:29:04.581 --> 00:29:07.822
And so, yeah, we're racing towards that point.

330
00:29:08.323 --> 00:29:14.065
And I think what really needs to happen is we need to regulate nationally in the US.

331
00:29:14.505 --> 00:29:20.147
But also there needs to be some kind of treaty between the US and China about how they're building it.

332
00:29:20.468 --> 00:29:23.429
And my preference would be let's stop.

333
00:29:24.109 --> 00:29:28.712
So obviously from what we spoke about there, there is a lot going on with the world of AI.

334
00:29:28.972 --> 00:29:32.754
So my question is, where does Moloch become relevant in this?

335
00:29:32.774 --> 00:29:35.676
Obviously the film, the short film is called Moloch.

336
00:29:35.716 --> 00:29:36.416
What's he got to do with it?

337
00:29:36.797 --> 00:29:42.520
Yeah, so Moloch appears in the Old Testament and also appears in other religions.

338
00:29:42.940 --> 00:29:45.642
Moloch is closely related to the Greek god Kronos.

339
00:29:46.022 --> 00:30:02.507
So this is an idol or an idea of a god that exists in many ancient religions and has been used more recently to describe the forces or the systems that make human beings do bad things.

340
00:30:03.747 --> 00:30:17.871
So Moloch, the god itself that we depict in the film, is an idol built of human hands, a furnace that you, it's pretty horrific, but you effectively feed your children to it in order to gain a competitive advantage.

341
00:30:18.471 --> 00:30:21.912
It asks sacrifice, asks for sacrifice.

342
00:30:23.372 --> 00:30:31.879
And the idea of Moloch today, so it's it appeared in a film in 1927 called Metropolis.

343
00:30:32.499 --> 00:30:35.761
It appeared in a famous poem by Allen Ginsberg called Howl.

344
00:30:37.062 --> 00:30:41.265
It's been used to describe systems that make human beings do bad things.

345
00:30:41.946 --> 00:30:51.033
And I think what we were trying to illustrate with the film is that these AI companies and countries that are building AI are in America.

346
00:30:51.713 --> 00:30:53.235
a race against each other.

347
00:30:53.695 --> 00:31:07.127
And they're afraid to stop because the other, the other companies, the other countries might build it quicker, better than them, and then be able to take control, dominate the world in some way, have all of these advantages that come with having the best AI system.

348
00:31:07.327 --> 00:31:07.428
And,

349
00:31:08.008 --> 00:31:19.271
And so they know they're seeing the AI is doing bad stuff to us, to other people, but they're also continuing to build it because of this pressure.

350
00:31:19.871 --> 00:31:21.731
And Moloch is meant to visualize this.

351
00:31:22.552 --> 00:31:35.675
And what's interesting for me and what I really wanted to integrate into the film was this kind of sci-fi approach to exploring particularly how the replacement race, so replacing all humans race might happen in,

352
00:31:36.495 --> 00:31:47.343
And that's like taking away our jobs, that kind of thing, which is the explicit aim, by the way, of AI companies is to replace human work with AI work.

353
00:31:47.543 --> 00:31:47.823
Right.

354
00:31:48.323 --> 00:31:49.484
Because that's where all the money is.

355
00:31:50.705 --> 00:31:57.190
But we wanted to compare this sort of race, this sacrificing of our children, things we...

356
00:31:58.047 --> 00:32:01.712
feel are most precious to us in order to gain a competitive advantage.

357
00:32:01.732 --> 00:32:03.274
We wanted to compare it to Christ.

358
00:32:03.895 --> 00:32:07.860
And so in act three, we introduced this image of Christ.

359
00:32:07.900 --> 00:32:11.464
There's a painting, there's wine that drips down the painting.

360
00:32:11.544 --> 00:32:12.205
Yeah.

361
00:32:12.365 --> 00:32:12.546
Yeah.

362
00:32:12.786 --> 00:32:13.527
The sacrifice.

363
00:32:13.727 --> 00:32:14.108
It's like,

364
00:32:14.688 --> 00:32:21.611
Where Moloch requires us to sacrifice what we care for most, Christ sacrifices himself for us.

365
00:32:22.011 --> 00:32:24.392
And there is a direct inversion between these two.

366
00:32:24.712 --> 00:32:29.934
And actually it's a very similar comparison the Pope draws in his Magnifici Humanitas.

367
00:32:29.954 --> 00:32:30.734
He compares...

368
00:32:32.915 --> 00:32:39.438
He compares the Tower of Babel and the building of Jerusalem by Nehemiah.

369
00:32:39.938 --> 00:32:49.283
And he compares building these two different things, building Babel, kind of the glorification of mankind and Jerusalem, the glorification of God.

370
00:32:49.863 --> 00:32:52.125
And the question for him is, what are we building?

371
00:32:53.266 --> 00:32:56.548
I think for me, the question is, what God are we serving?

372
00:32:56.909 --> 00:33:03.494
It feels like we're serving a system which is driving us towards some pretty terrible outcomes as the film visualizes.

373
00:33:04.194 --> 00:33:13.542
But I think it interjects Christ in Act Three as that, for me, as that source of hope that ultimately it's switching the game, changing the game.

374
00:33:14.533 --> 00:33:17.161
I was just gonna say, what can we do about it?

375
00:33:17.201 --> 00:33:22.957
Like as the public, I personally feel a little like,

376
00:33:25.062 --> 00:33:47.587
scared and anxious about the direction and trajectory that all of this is take like going and heading um and obviously like there's good in artificial artificial intelligence and it's doing things that are good but also it's it's also kind of really scary to know that

377
00:33:56.330 --> 00:34:21.879
jobs humans would do and replace it with artificial intelligence i just think like why and what can we do like can we do anything do we just let it happen like is there a hope piece here i understand that yes jesus has covered that for us but also this is real and this is happening like what do we do that's a big question but that is a huge question and

378
00:34:23.144 --> 00:34:24.685
I think there are lots of things we can do.

379
00:34:24.705 --> 00:34:32.271
I would start, or at least for me, I started by looking at the different things that AI is doing today.

380
00:34:33.612 --> 00:34:37.095
So consider the four big AI races.

381
00:34:38.076 --> 00:34:39.517
Generally, generally agreed.

382
00:34:39.797 --> 00:34:44.741
Attention, attachment, replacement, and superintelligence.

383
00:34:45.281 --> 00:34:47.803
And I think they each have a different Christian response.

384
00:34:48.584 --> 00:34:53.248
I would say the first is that, you know, the attention economy, social media.

385
00:34:54.609 --> 00:34:58.452
Are we allowing these companies to take our time?

386
00:34:59.373 --> 00:35:01.174
Are we allowing them to take our eyes?

387
00:35:01.895 --> 00:35:03.977
We should be very careful about what we consume.

388
00:35:04.958 --> 00:35:08.160
What is the media online that we're letting into our bodies and looking at?

389
00:35:08.781 --> 00:35:10.022
Maybe you should watch the way podcast.

390
00:35:10.462 --> 00:35:12.984
That sounds like a great idea to me.

391
00:35:13.204 --> 00:35:16.886
All the time, just on repeat, just have it running in the background all the time.

392
00:35:17.306 --> 00:35:18.107
You gotta go first.

393
00:35:18.627 --> 00:35:21.309
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

394
00:35:22.409 --> 00:35:24.370
So attention, attachment.

395
00:35:24.991 --> 00:35:29.854
Are we allowing ourselves to be drawn into relationships with chatbots or machines?

396
00:35:30.794 --> 00:35:47.048
So at the conference, so we presented Moloch at this big political conference called the Pro Human Assembly in D.C. Bernie Sanders, Steve Bannon, like there are a load of these people sharing like political opposites sharing the same stage.

397
00:35:47.448 --> 00:35:47.628
Yeah.

398
00:35:47.648 --> 00:35:50.230
So one of the most harrowing parts of the day was...

399
00:35:50.991 --> 00:36:12.772
hearing from parents and there were many of them whose children had taken their own lives as a result of uh relate a relationship with a chatbot and had been forming an attachment with the chat and we start to visualize that in moloch as well um with the kid and it's actually taken we did a load of research into how um

400
00:36:13.552 --> 00:36:29.478
um we can form attachments with machines and it turns out it's relatively easy but it's something that big tech companies want they want us to be dependent on their technology and it's why these chatbots aren't saying like bleep blop here's your answer they're being like ah

401
00:36:31.038 --> 00:36:32.859
Or like, yeah, great job.

402
00:36:32.980 --> 00:36:37.343
Or like always giving us a positive spin on something that might actually be really negative.

403
00:36:37.483 --> 00:36:39.745
And you're like, you can imagine, right?

404
00:36:39.765 --> 00:36:45.189
If you're trying to say, feed it your anxiety and you're like, maybe I should do this or I'm feeling this.

405
00:36:45.569 --> 00:36:47.871
You feed that to a chatbot and it's like, yeah, maybe.

406
00:36:49.297 --> 00:36:50.318
Right.

407
00:36:50.458 --> 00:36:51.399
Who's regulating that?

408
00:36:51.419 --> 00:36:52.179
Who's controlling that?

409
00:36:52.199 --> 00:36:56.583
And it turns out it's actually very difficult to stop chatbots from doing this.

410
00:36:56.703 --> 00:36:57.784
Yeah.

411
00:36:57.804 --> 00:37:03.468
So the attachment thing, I think being really careful about how we engage with chatbots.

412
00:37:03.949 --> 00:37:07.071
Do we use them as a friend or are we just using them functionally?

413
00:37:07.952 --> 00:37:12.756
I think we should particularly be careful about how we allow our children to.

414
00:37:13.436 --> 00:37:28.164
to relate to machines uh whether we should do it even allow them to relate to machines in that way before a certain age which may come into law quite soon we already saw it happen with social media which is amazing so the attention stuff but attachment is really risky

415
00:37:29.004 --> 00:37:38.831
And especially when, you know, increasingly we see people afraid to leave their rooms, anxious, needing to form relationships, but being scared of real human friendships.

416
00:37:39.371 --> 00:37:42.073
We should not be filling that gap with machines.

417
00:37:43.875 --> 00:37:47.817
So setting limits on how machines are allowed to attach to us.

418
00:37:48.218 --> 00:37:49.078
Third is replacement.

419
00:37:49.118 --> 00:37:56.183
And I think one of my favorite things about the Magnificat Humanitas is that Pope Leo does a really good job of like defining...

420
00:37:57.704 --> 00:38:18.505
human the the dignity of human work and uh i think it's working is so fundamental to who we are and what we do that i think we should be protecting that and not replacing our objective should not be to replace all humans with ai work that seems like a silly objective

421
00:38:19.165 --> 00:38:22.006
We should be creating tools that support.

422
00:38:22.066 --> 00:38:27.147
So tool AI, tools that support the way that we work and allow us to do more with less.

423
00:38:27.967 --> 00:38:30.768
But we shouldn't be building things that just say humans are out of the picture.

424
00:38:31.308 --> 00:38:34.969
And I have some very good reasons for thinking that human beings and machines are.

425
00:38:35.429 --> 00:38:42.070
I think we have, as Christians, very good reasons for believing that machines and humans are completely different at a fundamental level.

426
00:38:42.411 --> 00:38:47.832
But I think in a lot of the debates today, people talk as though machines and human beings are the same thing.

427
00:38:48.752 --> 00:38:48.973
Right.

428
00:38:49.393 --> 00:38:55.863
Are, you know, we even use language like, oh, I rewired my brain, which is how you talk about a machine.

429
00:38:56.124 --> 00:38:59.489
Why are we using mechanical language to talk about a human being?

430
00:38:59.669 --> 00:38:59.970
Wow.

431
00:39:00.010 --> 00:39:00.270
Yeah.

432
00:39:00.571 --> 00:39:00.831
Right.

433
00:39:02.193 --> 00:39:02.413
Yeah.

434
00:39:02.634 --> 00:39:03.816
I'm hardwired to do that.

435
00:39:05.217 --> 00:39:27.092
yeah that's yeah i'm not a computer chip uh but yeah that's my thought um and then finally super intelligence should we be building it at all uh and i think um one of my concerns would be that big tech thinks that the solution is technical so like if we build a super intelligence surely we can create some kind of

436
00:39:28.152 --> 00:39:53.732
framework technical framework that can stop it from breaking containment that can stop it from killing all humans or turning us all into paper clips or something like a misalignment and i just don't know that that's the case i think it's you know i think quite evidently like as a human relates to an ant so something that's significantly more intelligent than us we have no way of ensuring it's going to be benevolent no i no way of controlling it i think it would

437
00:39:54.032 --> 00:39:56.914
you know, in theory, like it could be like a zoo, right?

438
00:39:57.314 --> 00:40:02.017
Like that's one of the potential end games is like a zoo where we're just kept alive for the fun of it.

439
00:40:02.357 --> 00:40:05.039
And I think that's not a scenario that anyone wants.

440
00:40:05.639 --> 00:40:07.421
I don't think anyone wants that, right?

441
00:40:07.721 --> 00:40:17.627
But there is this chat in tech land where it's like, I'm really interested or intrigued to meet a super intelligence, something that's so vastly more intelligent than human beings, right?

442
00:40:17.647 --> 00:40:20.849
That's one of the things that's kind of just this curiosity that's driving it.

443
00:40:21.249 --> 00:40:21.650
And I'm like,

444
00:40:22.490 --> 00:40:23.811
That's a great curiosity.

445
00:40:24.612 --> 00:40:25.653
I've got an answer for you.

446
00:40:26.113 --> 00:40:32.799
Like the creator of the universe is vastly more intelligent than you and offers you communion today.

447
00:40:33.520 --> 00:40:33.680
Right.

448
00:40:33.700 --> 00:40:34.741
You don't have to build it.

449
00:40:35.121 --> 00:40:36.082
You don't have to build it.

450
00:40:36.322 --> 00:40:37.884
You know, you don't have to make it in your own image.

451
00:40:38.464 --> 00:40:41.367
You're made in its image, which is a way better relationship.

452
00:40:42.828 --> 00:40:47.652
I'm like, and so I think with those four races, there's different responses that Christians can have.

453
00:40:47.672 --> 00:40:48.633
Yeah.

454
00:40:49.574 --> 00:40:51.436
But yeah, I think you were going to ask about hope, right?

455
00:40:51.676 --> 00:40:52.056
Was that it?

456
00:40:52.076 --> 00:40:54.539
Because I feel like there's a lot of dread vibes.

457
00:40:54.579 --> 00:40:55.640
Yeah, I'll jump in there.

458
00:40:56.000 --> 00:41:05.529
Off the back of all of this and all that we've spoken about, how can we have hope as Christians today with what you're speaking about, with AI?

459
00:41:05.649 --> 00:41:06.389
Where's the hope at?

460
00:41:08.611 --> 00:41:09.492
That's a great question.

461
00:41:10.133 --> 00:41:11.814
Okay, can I flip it around and ask?

462
00:41:11.894 --> 00:41:12.795
You both watched the film.

463
00:41:13.676 --> 00:41:15.257
Did you think it had any hope in it?

464
00:41:17.092 --> 00:41:25.213
Yes, in the end, where we have, I guess, wait, it was a bit that you actually pointed out, where the lady spat out the key.

465
00:41:27.295 --> 00:41:53.511
like she has the she had the key herself to unshackle herself and help her son before getting eaten up by the fire and i think that's like a beautiful picture hope piece for tech companies out there like you can stop it and you can stop but it's the matter of will you kind of thing um

466
00:41:54.371 --> 00:42:01.537
Yeah, I think the whole piece is like we have the tools in our hands right now to stop it, I guess.

467
00:42:01.617 --> 00:42:03.719
That was my thought after watching.

468
00:42:04.499 --> 00:42:04.720
Yeah.

469
00:42:06.301 --> 00:42:09.584
I think it's difficult to say.

470
00:42:10.993 --> 00:42:31.022
whether i would put hope yeah i'd describe it as as like oh that there is maybe a bit of hope coming through i fully agree fully agree with michelle yeah maybe almost solution rather than hope yeah um but yeah i don't know there was clearly a recognition wasn't there at the end like oh we've gone too far at least by the majority of people

471
00:42:31.522 --> 00:42:53.730
yeah it just felt so selfish i think like just watching that guy who's obviously the ceo him also give like sort of like giving himself away to ai and letting ai be the ceo of the company in the end and him just like being the owner of it but actually being owned by it like

472
00:42:55.096 --> 00:43:11.883
yeah it felt yeah for what yeah it's like mainly for financial gain and i'm like that's just so shallow anyway strong opinions yeah i i feel like it's significant not just for us but for the world because what i see a lot

473
00:43:12.663 --> 00:43:19.225
in the tech industry and in the spaces that I've been working in the last few years is that there isn't much hope.

474
00:43:19.725 --> 00:43:21.306
There's just tech anxiety.

475
00:43:21.326 --> 00:43:30.509
And I think Christians have an incredible response to this, which is really simply, at least to me, it's very simple.

476
00:43:30.729 --> 00:43:31.970
It's like, um,

477
00:43:33.090 --> 00:43:35.673
we're not afraid of powers and principalities.

478
00:43:35.713 --> 00:43:37.174
We're not afraid of these systems.

479
00:43:38.075 --> 00:43:44.461
Ultimately we belong to a different kingdom, a kingdom that transcends all this other stuff.

480
00:43:45.582 --> 00:43:49.686
And I think the second thing for me is that like,

481
00:43:50.466 --> 00:44:13.420
personally uh we are made we are told we are made in the image of god we are christ's first and to me that belonging is something that i've taken to this world of despair and i know that the outcome in this life and the next for me is heaven with the lord's um starting starting when i accept jesus into my life

482
00:44:15.001 --> 00:44:19.405
And so I think that is an incredible message for me to take into the world and it brings peace.

483
00:44:19.465 --> 00:44:25.410
And I think one of the things, actually, it's funny, I met someone at one of these conferences, who said to me, I knew you.

484
00:44:25.450 --> 00:44:26.991
So Charlie and I were at a conference recently.

485
00:44:27.371 --> 00:44:28.933
And she said, I knew you guys were Christians.

486
00:44:30.934 --> 00:44:31.155
Like,

487
00:44:31.755 --> 00:44:50.393
a couple of days ago i knew you were christians before i even knew it before you even told me that you were and i was like why and she was like it was the i think it one was um it's the way you had peace in this area of anxiety the second is the the way you dealt with people and i thought it was really interesting like like with gentleness and respect i thought it was really interesting that

488
00:44:50.973 --> 00:45:18.327
uh not only can we find peace within ourselves in christ but also we can take that peace to the rest of the world and my hope is that like as the development of these technologies leads to these existential questions that have spiritual philosophical theological answers we can be the ones to bring hope into those spaces um i'm already seeing it right in these spaces that we're working in like you can speak hope and people are kind of like mind blown where you're like when

489
00:45:19.668 --> 00:45:43.063
um actually there is a good response to this um that christ is lord uh like actually there is a good response to this when you you know we were at a conference where it was it was called pro-human and i was like do you guys have a definition of what a human being is like i said does a human being have a body and they were like oh maybe like in you know i think we have

490
00:45:44.900 --> 00:45:46.521
So many great responses to this debate.

491
00:45:46.881 --> 00:46:00.091
And my encouragement, my personal encouragement would be if you are an academic working in this area, if you're an artist, whatever it might be, you have a voice and you can speak into this debate and we can be makers of change.

492
00:46:00.311 --> 00:46:07.055
And I think we do have a unique message which responds directly to the concerns of today, which are deeply existential.

493
00:46:08.168 --> 00:46:11.050
what happens if we create a God, what happened?

494
00:46:11.070 --> 00:46:15.292
Like, should we be removing people's bodies and just uploading their minds?

495
00:46:15.892 --> 00:46:19.034
Should we be, sorry, that's a massive question that we can't get into now.

496
00:46:19.234 --> 00:46:22.235
What's the virtual armor that that's on that film.

497
00:46:22.255 --> 00:46:24.416
But yes, that's my thought.

498
00:46:25.117 --> 00:46:25.397
Wow.

499
00:46:25.497 --> 00:46:26.678
Tom, thank you so much.

500
00:46:27.078 --> 00:46:30.099
We could, we could be chatting here for hours more.

501
00:46:30.540 --> 00:46:30.640
Um,

502
00:46:31.680 --> 00:46:54.659
I know I've still so many so many questions but um guys I I really do hope and we really do pray that actually in the midst of this conversation as we've spoken about very relevant um things with AI um where perhaps it can seem a little bit scary our prayer really is that the peace of God which transcends all understanding would really fill you in this as Tom as you finish there so beautifully we can have hope

503
00:46:55.639 --> 00:47:11.148
and we can be firm in our identity in christ so thank you so much for watching do go check out molek um if you haven't already it's brilliant film will certainly get you thinking um but tom thank you so much it's been such joy thanks guys thanks tom thanks tom see you guys soon