Doug Smith's Blog

Because AI summaries are pushed on the world from on high, few of us ask the “should we?” question. Or stop to question the tacit beliefs we hold.

See a demonstration and decide for yourself whether GenAI is the research tool you're looking for.

A heartfelt plea to the developers of The Bible Memory App, asking them to revert their new AI feature.

A reflection on Jeremy Utley's advocacy for GenAI in the light of discipleship, epistemology, and whether we should trust Big Tech.

Renew.org just published my latest article regarding the use of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) chatbots like ChatGPT for ministry. It’s the tightest and clearest case I’ve made against GenAI so far. Too many of us are willing to jump in to new technology unintentionally, assuming the tool trope: it’s a tool, it’s how you use […]

Is GenAI a neutral tool that can be used for good or evil? Certainly not. We're the tools that are shaped by it, as usual.

Wise ministry leaders must avoid the temptation to use AI even if it seems to have huge benefits. Why? Read to find out.

Digital Discipleship. It’s the defining challenge of our age. We often think of “discipleship” as a churchy-religious word, but whether or not we’re any kind of theist we’re all disciples of someone or something. And today, most of us are discipled by our screens. My succinct definition of a disciple is someone who performs embodied […]

TL;DR We excuse our embrace of every shiny new Big Tech product with the tool trope: “technology isn’t good or bad; it’s a tool, it’s just how you use it that matters.” The tool trope is false. And especially in today’s popular LLM AIs, it’s deceiving, dominating, and dehumanizing. Read on to see why. Perspective […]

Meta, parent company of Instagram & Facebook, announced their new “Teen Accounts” today. The propaganda on that page is written to comfort parents by assuring us that they’ve heard the criticisms of Jonathan Haidt and the U.S. Surgeon General, they read the bad press, and they’re taking steps to avoid breaking the mental health of […]