{"id":9527,"date":"2024-03-08T11:42:00","date_gmt":"2024-03-08T16:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/?p=9527"},"modified":"2024-03-08T11:42:00","modified_gmt":"2024-03-08T16:42:00","slug":"new-study-explores-the-uses-of-ai-and-the-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/2024\/03\/new-study-explores-the-uses-of-ai-and-the-church.html","title":{"rendered":"New Study Explores the Uses of AI and the Church"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_9536\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-9536\" style=\"width: 1200px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-9536\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/409\/2024\/03\/church-AI_credit-Adobe-Stock-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1200\" height=\"900\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-9536\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Adobe Stock<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Artificial Intelligence (AI) seems to be discussed everywhere now. From Google Gemini\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.msn.com\/en-us\/news\/politics\/google-gemini-ai-fiasco-reignites-concerns-of-political-bias-at-tech-company-dating-back-to-trump-s-victory\/ar-BB1j9XRZ\">race-swapping controversy<\/a> to prominent authors <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/legal\/john-grisham-other-top-us-authors-sue-openai-over-copyrights-2023-09-20\/#:~:text=A%20trade%20group%20for%20U.S.%20authors%20has%20sued,popular%20artificial-intelligence%20based%20chatbot%20ChatGPT%20on%20their%20work.\">suing AI companies<\/a> for illegal uses of their works, everyone seems to have an opinion about the uses and potential misuses of AI. One group that researchers are trying to get involved in the discussion? The Church. The Barna Group, partnering with Gloo, a technology platform utilized for connecting people to local churches, has released a study entitled \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.gloo.us\/ai-survey-results\">AI and the Church<\/a>\u201d to explore the uses of the new technology within faith settings. The survey was conducted from January 3-4, 2024 and interviewed 278 US Protestant pastors.<\/p>\n<p>Barna cited <a href=\"https:\/\/www.barna.com\/research\/pastors-use-ai\/\">data<\/a> that showed that a large majority of pastors (77 percent) believe that God can use AI. Pastors were also more supportive of utilizing AI for what would be \u201cimpersonal\u201d tasks, such as using AI in graphic design (88 percent), church marketing (78 percent), and monitoring church attendance (70 percent). Those numbers began to dip when AI\u2019s uses became more personal, such as communication (58 percent) and sermon research (43 percent). Only 6percent supported its use for counseling church congregants. Eighty-nine percent of pastors believed AI would have some sort of impact on human relations, with 56 percent believing the impact would be negative. Pastors were far less likely to think AI would have a positive impact than other US adults (five percent vs 21 percent respectively). The research also found that while most congregants were not concerned about their pastor\u2019s knowledge of AI, 56 percent of those in Gen Z would like to hear from their pastor on how to use AI.<\/p>\n<p>Gloo Chief Solutions Officer Brad Hill believes churches should be exploring the uses of AI more fully. \u201cThere is nothing new under the Sun, Ecclesiastes would say, and God is not surprised by AI,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/cmsedit.cbn.com\/cbnnews\/us\/2024\/february\/christians-need-a-game-plan-for-ai-and-the-church-and-these-guys-are-plugging-in\">said<\/a> Hill. He noted that AI has enabled Gloo to connect individuals to churches in a significantly quicker manner, taking a process \u201cfrom about 3-hours down to milliseconds.\u201d The company is investing $25 million to assist churches in implementing AI. Hill stated that churches need to be having conversations about the new technology. \u201cWe&#8217;ve really been trying to invite pastors into a conversation that they may or sometimes may not want to have because it&#8217;s understandable to the untrained eye that AI just feels like technology, and this is one more thing to learn.\u201d Ashley Ekmay, lead researcher, of the Barna Group agrees. \u201c[AI] is everywhere, it&#8217;s in social media \u2013 when you get on Netflix, it&#8217;s in your home \u2013 digital assistants.\u201d Despite AI\u2019s prevalence, the study found that nearly 67 percent of respondents had either no or beginner experience with it. Nineteen percent of church leaders stated they use AI on a weekly or daily basis. However, in a previous interview, David Curry, CEO of Global Christian Relief, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/lifestyle\/ai-church-tech-initiative-aims-bring-gods-power-those-need\">cautioned<\/a> against embracing the technology too quickly, citing how China has used AI\u2019s facial recognition technology to target Christians. \u201cThe thing about artificial intelligence, though, [is that] it begins to take case studies and learn and make its own assumptions. So that&#8217;s where we don&#8217;t know where this is going to lead. It&#8217;s algorithms on steroids.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Artificial Intelligence (AI) seems to be discussed everywhere now. From Google Gemini\u2019s race-swapping controversy to prominent authors suing AI companies for illegal uses of their works, everyone seems to have an opinion about the uses and potential misuses of AI. One group that researchers are trying to get involved in the discussion? The Church. The&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":664,"featured_media":9536,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>New Study Explores the Uses of AI and the Church<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The survey was conducted from January 3-4, 2024 and interviewed 278 US Protestant pastors.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/2024\/03\/new-study-explores-the-uses-of-ai-and-the-church.html\" \/>\n<meta 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