In 1985, I attended a pastoral staff meeting that included the church’s music director. He was also responsible for the church’s small bookstore, which included several music LPs.
For those under age 40, an LP is a vinyl record—used to be the only format for developing a music library, and the process was rather involved.
It began with hearing a piece of music—say, on the radio or at a live concert or perhaps on television. After noting the name of the song and the performer(s), the next step was to go to a brick-and-mortar store that sold LPs. There used to be entire stand-alone stores for such purposes! Musicland and Tower Records are relics of the distant past.
The store carried thousands of record albums—12-inch vinyl discs as well as smaller 45 rpm records that contained one song on each side. They were divided up into music genre and further divided alphabetically.
Hopefully, the store carried the performer you’re looking for…as well as an album with the song or piece of music you wanted! If not, well…try another store…or wait, come back another time, and hope they’ll get it in. Well, you could special order it, maybe, and in a couple of weeks, you could pick up your selection.
Unbelievable, isn’t it?
By the way, it’s interesting to see that LPs are making a modest comeback! I was in Kohls recently, checking out after-Christmas sales, and noticed a narrow wall display offering several models of phonograph players (machines used to play LPs!).
Anyway, back to the staff meeting.
The music director suggested we stop purchasing LPs for the bookstore. Sales were down, he noted, and everything was trending toward CDs. He recommended from here on out, the bookstore purchase only CDs.
I pushed back. CDs were much more expensive than LPs—new-fangled technology always is! Surely, I reasoned, people wouldn’t want to spend the extra money! I knew I wouldn’t! I would stick with my trusty record player, thank you. Besides, I didn’t even own a CD player.
Then he made a bold prediction: “In five years,” he opined, “no one will be selling any records. Everything’s going CDs.”
“No way,” I countered in mild disbelief.
Mine was a fairly typical response any time new technology comes along to threaten the status quo.
In spite of a recent resurgence among the niche retro crowd, LPs have largely become obsolete.
And CDs have almost completely been replaced by digital downloads on phones and other devices.
What’s next???
Clearly, I’m not the person to ask.
But we’re experiencing the same very understandable pushback against the latest tech marvel—AI, or artificial intelligence.
To be honest—no surprise here—I don’t know much at all about this tech frontier…have only read a bunch of scary stuff, including the rise of AI-generated scams. The technology can actually duplicate your voice, then create a scam phone call to a loved one, claiming you have an emergency and need money fast. And the other party has no idea the caller is fake! Sounds just like you!
So, probably along with you, I’m quite leery of this new “advancement.”
Then I got an email from “Joe at Pastors AI” offering to create an AI generated “chatbot” from a previous Sunday morning sermon. The email sender seemed legit, best I could tell, so I bit on the offer and allowed him to create a sample.
He took my sermon from New Year’s Eve that’s posted on our YouTube channel and, less than 24 hours later, sent me the following link to the finished “chatbot” (I honestly don’t even know how to define “chatbot”!).
Joe’s email went on to explain:
You can ask the chatbot any question about the sermon. Here are some resources automatically generated from it:
To put it mildly, I was stunned with what the fake brain created. I have no idea how this technology works, but it does raise some interesting questions, doesn’t it?
• Can this be used to make me say something I didn’t actually say…or intend to say?
• How could this be used in helpful, wholesome, positive ways for the cause of Christ and the work of the ministry?
• What other dangers are inherent in the technology that I can’t see…yet?
• As CDs displaced LPs, and digital downloads are replacing CDs, what will AI render obsolete in the next 5 years?
• More importantly, what are the theological implications of all of this? What is God’s view of the technology, in general? Is this a modern-day “Tower of Babel” thing?
I’m sure there are a great many more questions raised by this new technology. What are some of yours?
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In the past, I was on top of new technology as it came out to see if it would replace something I had. In my last years of employment, I worked in IT and several of the projects were on the cutting edge and it was exciting to see several come to life. I haven’t paid that much attention to AI as I don’t know how it would benefit me, at this time in my life, but we use it every time we call a business and attempt to talk to resolve an issue. As far as what it did for your sermon, that is amazing, but the cynical side of me is concerned about if it could twist your words.