#STRask - How Can I Convince Someone They Shouldn’t Rely on AI to Find Truth?

Episode Date: July 4, 2024

Questions about how to show someone that relying on AI for answers is a flawed way of finding truth, the role personal testimony should play in apologetics, and whether it’s sinful to not be more like Ray Comfort when talking to people you might not see again. How can I show someone that entirely relying on AI for answers is a flawed way of finding truth? What role, if any, should personal testimony play in apologetics? I feel convicted that I’m not sharing the gospel enough. Is it sinful that I can’t be like Ray Comfort when I’m talking to people I might not see again?

Welcome. If you're here for the Hashtag SDR Ask podcast, you are in the right place. That's a good one, Amy. I haven't heard that one before. If you're in the wrong place, we hope you stay. That's right. And give us a try. We do. All right. I'm Amy Hall, and I'm here with Greg Kokel. And we're going to start with a question from Gregory J.

Recently, someone responded to a post I shared on social media by mostly copying and pasting their reply directly from AI chat GPT. How can I adequately show that entirely relying on AI for answers is a flawed way of finding truth? Well, I don't know that it's completely flawed, and I'll tell you why. AI, don't forget the A, artificial. So it's not thinking. Somebody else had to put information in there that AI can use to put together for an answer to whatever. Okay. So the content that AI has comes from another mind.

Okay. So essentially, it would be like saying you shouldn't go to the Internet and find out what somebody else said about it and then paste it in. All right. But rather, what do you're thinking for yourself? I don't know. People do research. Here's the key, though. People think that AI tells the truth.

That's the problem. AI doesn't tell the truth necessarily. It's not a truth telling thing. AI doesn't tell the truth necessarily. It's not a truth-telling thing. It just responds to things that have been asked of it based on information that some other flawed human being has put in. And so you're going to get oftentimes politically correct answers to controversial issues. Go ahead and ask. I've heard some people talk about this.

I never use, what, chat GBT or anything like that, partly because it scares me. I think this whole thing is kind of frightening for a whole lot of reasons. But nevertheless, the information that is put in there is oftentimes flawed or biased based on the opinions of the person who put the, you know, basically put the information in to begin with or programmed the so-called artificial intelligence. And this particular piece I heard, they talked about all these things they checked up on and they got all of these not only flawed answers, but also very politically opinionated answers as if it were the truth. Okay, I can't recall what kind of questions that were asked, but, you know, people can just go ahead and put their own questions in that are, just to test this, questions that are, say, politically sensitive or where there's controversy. I don't just see what you end up with.

What was the question? It was actually a factual question about a president that—which question didn't apply to the president. I wish I knew exactly what it was. But it was something that historically couldn't apply to the president, that particular president. And what ChatGBT did is it just made up an answer and gave an answer that was totally incorrect. So the issue here isn't whether people grab things from AI and plug it in.

It doesn't matter the source. That's, in a sense, the genetic fallacy. The source is not relevant in most cases. Incidentally, just as an aside, almost every single fallacy has exceptions to it in which it's not a fallacy when it's happening, but that's another issue. It's not a fallacy when it's happening, but that's another issue.

The key here is that it is the question, is it true or not? Assessing the point. Is it a good point? Does it survive scrutiny, analysis, thoughtful assessment? And that's what I would be concerned about. If chat GBT, the AI, coughs up a really sound answer, it isn't unsound just because of the fact that it came from chat GBT. Now, this may be laziness on the part of somebody else. They may have looked it up and then adopted the point of view that they read in chat GPT and then pasted it for the sake of convenience into a response.

But the important thing is that the response is sound given the issue. That's what I would say here. I don't know. You probably have some other thoughts on it as well. But what troubles me in part about ChatGPT is it encourages laziness in people. Instead of doing an assessment to figure out whether an answer is a good one or to come up with a good answer, you just let somebody else do the work for you and then trust the answer and throw it in there. That's what it sounds like to me. That's actually my concern also, Greg, because I recognize the frustration this can cause partly because it's a very inhuman response.

His friend is taking himself out of the equation completely. All he's doing is copying and pasting. So there's actually no communication happening between the person who's making the claim and the person who's responding. And so his friend might be very good at copying and pasting, but you're not having an actual interaction with the person. And since you're making these points, I'm going to assume this is some sort of apologetic point. Since you're making the point because you want to reach the person, to have them do this is so frustrating and annoying. But I'm not sure there's much you can do about it if he continues to do it. So if you, for example, responded with some sort of a challenge and he just keeps copying and pasting, I don't know that you'll ever get through to him.

I assume also that other people are reading this since this is a post on social media. So ultimately, I'm trying to think if it's even worth trying to call him on the fact that it's AI. I'm not even sure it's worth it. Well, you might ask the question, is this something you picked up from AI or is this actually your opinion? Maybe that would help. Oh, yeah. That's a good way to get into like an actual human conversation. Yeah, because I understand the frustration. And it's somewhat like when people will say things like, well, my friend could refute you. Yeah, that's right. But they don't actually interact with you. No, I have books. I call that a phantom argument.

And the way to respond to a phantom argument is with a phantom argument. Okay, somebody says, well, I have friends that refute you. And you say, well, I have friends that will refute your friends. Well, of course, in this case, they're actually giving the refutation. That's correct. But again, they're just taking themselves out of the equation. So whatever you can do to personalize it a little more, to bring them in, to have them interact with the points. But you can't just refute it by saying that's just AI. I mean that's not going to refute it.

Right. As you pointed out. Yeah. Yeah. So whatever you can do, I think this is something I'm going to have to think about some more and have some experience with before I figure out how to make things personal. Because I'll be honest, this is something I try to do when people send in emails and they're angry and they have challenges. I try to connect with them as a human being. And sometimes I

literally can't do that. They just will not let that wall down and connect with you at all. And once it gets to that point, I don't even know where to take it from there. So if there's a way around that, I'm not sure what it is, but hopefully I'll figure it out sometime. It just this, this AI, I think is making people lazy, lazier, lazier, lazy, lazier, lazier, you know. And I think this is going to, it just, people are not thinking for themselves. It's one thing to do research and then put that together as your own ideas. It's another thing just to let a machine do the thinking for you. Now, of course, the machine doesn't think. It's somebody else's thinking that's gone into the machine,

the AI, that you're now retrieving. But that's not the same as doing research. It's an entirely different animal. Yeah, and your point about, a simple way to say it would be just because it's coming from AI, that doesn't make it true. And you could explain just what you were saying, Greg. All right, let's go on. It doesn't make it false, but it doesn't make it true either.

Right, yes, right. And that is part of the concern. People think the computer's smarter than me, and so I'm going to trust what the computer says. The computer doesn't say anything. It says nothing. What it does is repeat what somebody else has put in there. It can collate information in very clever ways, but it doesn't think because it doesn't have a mind. It's not conscious. Only conscious minds can think. We use kind of analogous language to describe, oh, the computer is trying to figure out the answer or it's doing the calculations or whatever. But we just we have to sometimes remind ourselves,'s doing the calculations or whatever. But we just, we have to sometimes

remind ourselves, especially in the age of AI, that the computer is not thinking. It's just a machine responding outputs as a result of inputs. And the inputs are by a human being. And that human being, insofar, pardon me, as they put information in there, could be mistaken about their information. And I guarantee you they're going to be mistaken at times. And that's why it needs to be assessed. It might also be worth keeping in mind. And again, it's hard to know if this is a social media person you know personally outside social media, or it's just some random person. If it's a random person, again, I'd probably just let it go.

However, if it's somebody you know, it's also a good idea to keep in mind that if they're going to AI, that means they feel like they're in a corner and they have to defend this view, but they don't know how. So they're feeling a little bit defensive. So that might be something to keep in mind as you're asking questions to give them room to think and to not put them into a tighter corner so they feel like they have to hide behind AI. You want to get them into a personal conversation where they're interacting with you as a human being. So whatever you can do to do that, that's what I would recommend. All right, here's a

question from Paul. Some people say telling your story of how you became a Jesus follower is the best way to share your faith. What role, if any, should personal testimony play in apologetics? Well, keep in mind that Paul gave his testimony twice in the book of Acts. He made reference to it, I think, some other times. And so, there's nothing untoward about doing that. It just has liabilities, all right? The liability is that the principal one is that we're not the only one who's had an experience that we think is from God. experience that we think is from God. It's standard for Mormons to do the same thing, okay? And what they do is they verify the legitimacy of their own convictions about Mormonism based on a feeling they had. It's called a burning in the bosom, and they justify it based on a misreading of James chapter 1, the first few verses. They think, okay, I need wisdom.

Of course, they're not asking for wisdom. They're asking for a feeling that they take as the Holy Spirit's sign to them that the Book of Mormon, which isn't very theological, is God's book, theological, is God's book, and that is their entree into Mormonism, and then they end up accepting all the other theological stuff from the other books. Well, this is a problem, of course, because we don't assess truth by feelings, and that's the way they have learned to do it. But the problem is, is if we give our testimony, and as if this is the end all, so to speak, of verification or justification of a religious view, well, LDS folk, they have their testimony. New Age folk, they have their testimony. And different religious people can give different experiences that they've had that they think justifies their view. If your ability—it's not a bad strategy. In fact, when I first became a Christian, one of the things that I learned from my discipler—and this was a result of his own exposure to Campus Crusade for Christ, which was fine.

They call it CRU now. a result of his own exposure to Campus Crusade for Christ, which was fine. They call it CRU now. But one of the things that you learn to do is to give your testimony. In fact, I still have a copy of the testimony that I wrote that he critiqued. I still have it. I have the physical thing. And it has all his marks on there, but it has, you know, you break it down, two minutes this, two minutes down, two minutes this,

two minutes this, two minutes this, and whatever. And it is a useful tool. It just has liabilities. Your Christianity isn't true because of the experience you had. But there's nothing wrong with relating, here's what God has done in my life, because that goes in a large way to the existential element in all human beings, the personal desires they have to connect with God on a subjective level. And when we talk about, well, here's how that looks for me, this is what happened, that's fine. In fact, I have a talk where I give my testimony. But I mentioned there the liability as we're not the only ones with testimony. So that would be the concern I'd have. I think one thing we have to be careful of, we don't want people to hear when we give our testimony, I really like this. This made me happy. This will make your life better.

If your testimony is geared towards God made my life better, or you're communicating somehow that this is Christianity, some sort of a means to an end, or some sort of just a preference, you just have to be really careful because that's how people are coming to this discussion already. They're already thinking of religion in terms of what makes me happy, what's good for you, what's good for me. So you have to— Ice cream, not insulin. Right.

You have to be really careful the way you're explaining your testimony so that you're not communicating that. But I think there are certainly ways you can use your testimony to communicate two things. One, good theology and the gospel primarily, and also the fact that it's true. So if I'm talking about my own sin and the fact that Jesus, and the fact that Jesus, I realized Jesus had died on the cross for real and that he had paid for my sin. And you're actually using your testimony to point towards the gospel, the objective gospel. Not only the objective gospel, but the fact that the gospel is true.

And you're pointing outside of yourself and showing people who Jesus is with your testimony, as long as I think you're—as long as your focus is on that, I think that's fine. You know, I had another thought about Paul's testimony because he didn't just say, I got saved. He explained the details. First, his past as a very committed Pharisee, and a Pharisee of Pharisees, he describes himself in Philippians. So he was hardcore. These guys are challenging him about his commitment to the Mosaic law, etc., etc. And he said, look, I've been where you—I was even persecuting the way, okay, the Christians. And then he talks about a supernatural encounter he has. Then Jesus spoke to me on the road to Emmaus. And it wasn't like a liver quiver.

It was Jesus spoke. The people around him could hear the sound. Now, they didn't hear the words, but they could hear the sound. It was a third-person public, in some way, supernatural intervention, which then caused him to go blind. And then another Christian came and prayed over him, and he regained his sight. So there is a huge evidential element, not just an experiential element, in his testimony. And he's pointing towards Jesus in the midst of that. It's not just—it's just— there's a lot of content in there. So I think there's definitely a way to do that.

By the way, I'll say one thing, too. I'm going to need to talk more about this on the air today. I broke down and saw Jesus' Revolution last week, okay? And actually uh really enjoyed it a lot it brought back a lot of memories but at all one of the memories that it brought back is one very powerful subjective element to that whole movement so here you've got uh lonnie stanley main character there um baptizing somebody and the guy comes up out of the water and and Lonnie looks at him and says, how do you feel? How do you feel? As if getting baptized is supposed to produce this feeling that connects you with God. And there were a couple other elements like that.

And it totally misconstrues, I think, the underlying point. Sometimes there's feelings, sometimes there's not. And yet that was a hallmark of the Jesus movement, feelings, feelings. There were a whole lot of people who lost their feelings and left Christ, which shows that their concept of Christianity was quite shallow. But nevertheless, that's a little bit of a concern here. Let's take a question from Ian Dwyer. As an 18-year-old who often feels convicted that I'm not sharing the gospel enough but can easily use the street smarts method, is it sinful that I cannot be like Ray Comfort even though I may not see people again? Oh, I'm glad you asked that question. I know Ray.

I've had lots of interaction with Ray over the years. We have a great relationship. I've worked with their organization, filming for them on tactics, in fact. And I think he does great at what he does. And I frequently get asked questions like, how does your method compare with Ray's? Well, it's different because Ray's not me, and I'm not Ray. We're different individuals, okay? Ray. We're different individuals, okay? Last time I went over to their enterprise over there in, I'm trying to remember where, Bellflower, they had me do some filming, and somebody dropped a word to Ray, who lives not too far from there, and he came just to say hi, and when he said hi,

he handed me a tract, okay? It was funny. It was a new thing he had going, but he's even given me a tract. It's just the way he does things. Okay? And so, that's not my style. I don't use tracts, even though it's a tract that was actually figured into my own gardening process that led to my salvation in late 1973. So, we just have different styles, and I don't think anybody is required to adopt the style of other people. Some people are more aggressive. I tell folks when I teach this that I'm not like Ray. I'm not on the plane trying to talk to every person I know about Jesus. It's just not my personality. I actually don't think that that's the way the New Testament characterizes Christianity anyway. It does say in Colossians 4, make the most of your time, okay? You know, take advantage of

the opportunities that are given to you. So, we should keep our eyes open for opportunities, and generally those opportunities can either be created or abetted in a certain sense with a question. Use your questions that way. And that kind of gets you going. It allows you to test the water somewhat. Lots of times I've used questions and it's gone nowhere. Other times, I didn't really want to engage a person, but I did take a few steps to ask a question about something that seemed obvious. And that generated a circumstance where something fruitful took place spiritually. So I think it's a mistake for people to feel guilty or anything like that because you're not as aggressive as some other guy like Ray. Ray is very aggressive, you know.

And so, you know, don't make that—I think that's an inappropriate comparison. Now, if you never are looking at any opportunities to talk with others, that's probably a difficulty, a problem where you should be thinking otherwise about that. But the first line in the Street Smarts book is, I have a confession to make. Evangelism is hard for me. That's the first line. And it's true, for one. But I wanted also to touch base with a whole bunch of other people that feel the same way and either feel guilty about it and or are just out of play.

There's a way to make the job easier. In fact, the chapter that title is making a job. The title of that chapter. Amy's looking at me like, did he just say that? The title of that chapter is making a hard job easier. So I understand the difficulty there is, especially for some personality types to engage. But that doesn't mean we don't have a responsibility to do that. Just think, if everyone that we encountered had the same idea before we became a Christian, we wouldn't get the message that was necessary for us to become Christian.

But there are different personality types, and I don't even know what your style is, you know, because we never talked about that. But some people are just more ambitious and more aggressive. John Noyes is quite aggressive, for example. And he loves to evangelize. You know, he just loves talking about Jesus. But there are a variety of different personalities, which is fine. It's important to keep in mind here that not only are we all different who are telling people about Jesus,

but the people who are listening to us are all different. And I honestly think that there's a purpose in the way God has created us and the way that we do best at sharing the truth. Because if everyone was preaching the gospel the way, exactly the way Ray Comfort preaches the gospel, I think there are a lot of people that would not respond to that. That's nothing bad against him, because I think if everyone was doing it the way you were doing it, there's some people who wouldn't respond too. It's just that people are different and they respond to different things. And I have friends who have come to Christ in all sorts of different ways, through tracks, through listening to the radio, whatever it is.

There are people respond to different things because they have different personalities and they care about different things. And there's nothing wrong with that. So as you pointed out, don't use this as an excuse to do nothing. But be okay with the fact that you find the way that you do it best and you go for it. You know, this reminds me of something I say, though, in the ambassador talk, and I just gave it a couple of weeks ago. Some people have as their witnessing technique, so to speak, is just to be really nice people. And then people will ask them, why are you so nice and what's different about your life?

Well, I actually think that that kind of query, that question from the nonbeliever is really rare. I think it does happen in some cases, but here's the difficulty with that approach. If you are just being really nice and you're not communicating something about the truth in a nice way, your personality is nice, okay, but you've got to have substance. And the problem is you'll never be able to outnice a Mormon. Mormons are the nicest people in the whole world. And if this is your technique for witnessing, you've got very stiff competition. We have to distinguish ourselves and our message from other nice people that have a different message,

especially a theologically destructive message like the LDS have. It's just not true. They're wonderful people. I don't want to take anything away from them as individuals, characteristically they are, yet at the same time, they're deeply deceived, and that's what matters. And so we have to go beyond just being really nice people. Well, thank you, Ian, Paul, and Gregory. We love hearing from you. Send us your question on Twitter with the hashtag STRask, or you can go to our website at str.org. We look forward to hearing from you. This is Amy Hall and Greg Kokel for Stand to Reason.