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In this episode of Wake Up Look Up, Pastor Zach explores the growing ethical challenges surrounding artificial intelligence after a controversial story involving AI-generated fake quotes in a published book. As AI becomes more integrated into everyday life, this conversation asks an important question: Does technology simply make it easier to compromise our integrity?
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What is Wake Up, Look Up?
Check out new episodes of our daily podcast, Wake Up, Look Up, with Zach Weihrauch as he interprets what's happening in our world through the lens of the gospel.
Foreign. Hello, everyone, and thanks for listening to Wake Up Look Up, a podcast where we connect events happening in real time to the gospel of Jesus Christ. I'm, um, Zach Weirock, and in today's episode, we're asking the question, does AI make sin easier? And this is prompted by an incredibly interesting article I read recently on the New York Times, uh, about a guy named Steven Rosenbaum. Now, Stephen Rosenbaum wrote a book called the Future of Truth. The book is a warning about artificial intelligence and misinformation, which is ironic, because recently it came out that the book depended on artificial intelligence to write much of it, including fabricated or misattributed quotes. In other words, the book has AI quotes attributed to human people, things they never actually said. In other words, in a book about how AI was going to change the truth, Rosenbaum used AI to say things that weren't true. And in true American fashion, resisting any impulse to take responsibility. Rosenbaum admitted he used ChatGPT and Claude for the writing. And then he says this. I love this. And he may have used synthetic quotes, which is a really fancy way of saying false quotes, which is a slightly fancy way of saying, you lied. He lied. He doesn't say that. He says he used synthetic quotes. Public figures are coming out who are quoted in the book and going, hey, wait a minute, I never said that. Which, of course, is kickstarting a larger conversation about the role of publishers and have to make sure that the things they're publishing are actually true. In the era of artificial intelligence. Uh, look, I have been on record on Wake Up Lookup to say, artificial intelligence is the future. There's no point in shaking our fists at it, raging against it. It's going to be part of our lives, in every area of our lives, and it is going to pose temptation to cut corners and to do things without integrity and in every area of our lives, including writing things that aren't actually true and then taking credit for them as though we actually did the writing. And so it's just a good time to pause for a second and say, as Christians, we don't have a utilitarian view of ethics. In other words, lying isn't wrong because I might get caught. That's not what makes lying wrong. It is true that I might get caught. It is true that. That I might suffer the consequences. It's also true, theoretically, that I could get away with it. Lying is wrong because it is counter to the nature and character of God, who does not lie, by the way, who also being everywhere and knowing everything, sees us every time we lie. The writer of Proverbs says it this way. In Proverbs 12:22, the Lord is detests lying lips, but he delights in people who are trustworthy. In other words, what makes lying bad is that God doesn't like it. It's not what he's about. It's not what he's for. What makes integrity good is God does like it. It is who he is. So when we lie, whether we use artificial intelligence or not, our chief problem is not that we've broken some rule or not that we might face some consequence, but that we have actually offended and put ourselves at odds with God. And this is such an important point, uh, not only for ourselves, but how we teach future generations. I tell my kids all the time, look, it's entirely possible you can lie and get away with it. I'll never catch you. I'm not that smart. It's possible you can turn in a paper that you didn't write. You can give answers on a test that you don't actually know. It is only becoming more possible and in the era of artificial intelligence. But your problem isn't whether or not the teacher will couch you, whether or not mom or dad will catch you. God sees. God knows. And this way, lying, and again, we've all done it, is a form of functional atheism. It is saying, if no human being catches me, then I got away with it. And therefore saying, because there is no God who watches and knows and sees what the Bible tells us that. That the root of wisdom is the fear of the Lord, the understanding that there is a God who knows and sees, and that integrity and lying are fundamentally issues with him and not anyone else. Look, where has artificial intelligence tempted you to lie? To pass work off as your own that isn't actually your own. No one's suggesting you don't use it. We're all using it. We're all going to use it. But integrity, Integrity matters to God. The God who has always been and always will be, long after ChatGPT is a distant memory. So here's an integrity check for you and for your children. Do you believe God is watching? Do you believe he cares? And does that matter to you? Hey, thanks for watching this episode of Wake Up. Look Up. 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