AI Series: AI, Pastors, Work, and Formation

Artificial Intelligence is inescapable in todays workforce and is impacting both the marketplace and the church in significant ways.

We begin this three-part series on the intersection of AI and faith, theology and work with a conversation between host Jeff Hoffmeyer and Stephen Presley. Stephen is an author, professor and senior fellow for Religion and Public Life at the Center for Religion Culture and Democracy. Together they discuss the importance of considering how AI is impacting our lives and our souls.

On efficiency and formation:

“One of my concerns is if we’re just trying to get better and better and better, what is it that we are trying to become? What kind of person, or what kind of people, is scripture calling us to be? Efficient is not the only virtue that scriptures are calling us to be.”

On how technology asks us to improvise:

"So our institutions are facing remodeling through a whole variety of technological advances, and that improvisation is built on the assumption, like I use the image of a jazz player, where only someone who is skilled in jazz can know how to pick up an instrument and just go. If I were to do it, it would not sound. Well, the assumption there is that it is Christian virtue, Christian mores, Christian assumptions that are guiding the performance. So I think the same needs to apply to any new technology, particularly the implementation of any sort of AI, AI programming or any of that that underneath it, you're still dealing with questions of virtue, questions of morality, questions of spiritual formation."

Download the episode transcript.

"Is AI Changing the Work of Pastors?" article in Common Good

More from Stephen Presley

• Stephen Presley's Website

• @sopresley on X

• @stopresley on Instagram

Recommended Further Reading

• The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt

• Alone Together by Sherry Turkle

• Slow Productivity by Cal Newport 

• Stephen Presleys Recommended Readings