Let’s talk about Artificial Intelligence (I)

A large part of my working day is now spent in conversation with a machine.

I’ve been working like this for several years now, using the major conversational AI assistants – Gemini, ChatGPT and Claude – which have gradually become part of almost everything I do, from writing to audio transcription, translation, image generation, video editing, or that much less glamorous but equally necessary task of opening an Excel spreadsheet crammed with nested formulas, cross-references and columns that nobody can remember who created or for what purpose, and managing to extract something from it that a human being can understand. At this stage, practically my entire workflow runs through a system built on a combination of AIs.

All Evangelical Focus news and opinion, on your WhatsApp

Over this time, I’ve seen them change from one quarter to the next, both in terms of what they can do and the way in which one ends up working with them.

There are pastors who use AI to organise the outline of a sermon, to expand on an idea that fell short on Thursday evening, or to put together the Sunday service

My situation may be more intense than that of most people, as I consider myself a regular—even advanced—user of these tools. But this is no isolated anomaly: artificial intelligence is already part of the day-to-day work of many churches, even though we hardly ever talk about it.