‘Steward it well’: Christian tech entrepreneur says AI is inevitable, Christians and schools must engage faithfully

AI is a powerful tool that can be used for great good and great evil.

Despite the pitfalls, Christians should embrace and learn to use artificial intelligence, not avoid it because of the risks.

That’s the stance of Thomas Osborn, a tech entrepreneur who is pioneering AI technology for Christian ministries and schools.

“It’s like the parable of the talents,” he told The Lion. “Jesus gave three guys some talents and said, ‘Go prosper with these. Do something with them.’ Two of them did. One of them buried his in the sand because he was worried about the risk of investing that talent and look what happened to him.”

Osborn senses something of a moral mandate for Christians to embrace AI, which is rapidly infiltrating many aspects of daily life. Schools are a particularly tense area, as teachers and administrators wrestle with how to adapt to it.

About one third of Christian schools surveyed last fall were using AI at least somewhat, but another third were not using it at all, according to the Association of Christian Schools International, a major school accreditor. Nearly 1 in 5 Christian schools (18%) had banned students from using the technology.

“I believe AI has tremendous potential, but it’s imperative that we exemplify how to use it in a Christ-like, biblically honoring way,” says Dr. Larry Taylor, the association’s president and CEO. The association released a report on its findings with Cardus, a Canadian think tank, aimed at helping Christian schools dialogue about where AI might fit in their curriculum.

Osborn disagrees with those that ban, but he says, “The reality is it doesn’t matter: The banners are going to lose.

“I’m sure someone banned the abacus at some point because ‘the way you should do math is scratching in the dirt.’ Some people are scared of it but the world’s going to change radically because of it.” 

How AI works 

Many people don’t understand what AI is, or how it works.  

For Osborn, who has three decades in the technology sector including early consulting work for Amazon, it boils down to the manipulation of data. 

“You can use data right now to predict disease,” he says. “You can use data right now in AI to predict divorce. It works. It’s scientifically validated to work. We can use it to identify sexual predators. On and on it goes.” 

But with great power comes great responsibility.

“We should be using it,” Osborn says. “We just have to use it carefully and steward it well, just like anything else God gave us to steward.” 

The technology blends two simple concepts: computing power and libraries. 

The computing power is in a GPT, or generative pre-trained transformer, which can analyze large amounts of data and come up with predictive answers. If you type a question into ChatGPT, one of the most well-known AI programs, in moments it spits out answers. It can also take requests such as ‘create a five-day keto meal plan that excludes fish,’ knocking out the meal plan in seconds. 

It’s all about libraries 

GPT’s are powerful, but their results are based on the data they analyze. Open AI, which owns ChatGPT, has combed through the entire internet, but some GPT’s draw from much smaller “libraries” or LLM’s, which stands for large language model. 

Essentially, a GPT is limited by what it reads. Give it a library full of “junk” and its answers will reflect that. Let it read works of truth and beauty and it will mirror those in its results. AI follows the old ‘garbage in, garbage out’ principle. 

Osborn is an advisor to Bible Chat, a Christian general interest GPT that is free to use. The company is leveraging its technology to create GPT’s for Christian organizations, including a large Christian ministry and a denomination.

“We’re creating right now (a denominational) GPT,” Osborn says. “It’s going to be full of all the major stuff from all its major seminaries and all the big preachers they care about.  

“And we can ingest huge amounts of data very quickly: here’s the top 50,000 sermons from the top 1,000 (denominational) preachers over the last 50 years. Here’s the top 1,000 books published by their publishing house. Here’s the top 15,000 Bible studies we’ve done over the last 20 years, whatever it is.” 

Bible Chat’s doing the same for a Christian apologetics ministry that focuses on creation. Rather than a simple list of results found through a Google search, the AI will be empowered to give “a really smart answer that instantly is generated in context and in engaging ways,” Osborn says.  

This could look like a homeschool mom asking for ‘a story about dinosaurs and the Flood that is appropriate for a 5-year-old boy,’ or ‘a lesson plan for a teenager on the first week of creation.’ The technology could be ready in the next few months, according to Osborn. 

“You can contextualize it further,” he says, as the AI can tailor answers for a particular denomination or location. “‘Hey, my kids are from Alabama and they’re Southern Baptist. Can we get some of that perspective in there?’” 

Accessing Christian schools 

Its products like these that Osborn foresees being used in Christian K-12 schools. Christian universities are already submitting their libraries to be read by GPT’s, creating a bounded learning tool for their students. 

“We’re going to have Harvard GPT, Yale GPT, Biola GPT,” he says, the last of which is a Bible school in Southern California. “That’s coming very quickly.” 

Christian K-12 schools might be a little slower on the uptake. 

Fears that students will use it to cheat or circumvent the learning process are real, Osborn says, as are concerns it could diminish long form reading, a staple of classical Christian education, “to create the type of mind necessary to actually think critically and thoughtfully across lots of dimensions.” 

Teaching and thinking won’t go away, but AI can be part of the process. 

“My son had to do a research paper,” Osborn says. “I told him to use AI but he said it wasn’t allowed. So I had him type his topic into Google and it gave him like 50 websites, half of which were from advertising-based websites and other junk because people paid to get their stuff at the top (of the results). And finally he wades to some of the research he needs for his paper. 

“We went to Open AI, asked the same question, and it gave him a really tight, solid answer immediately that provided the research he needed with sources cited so that he could go do the work. Why in the world wouldn’t I let him use that tool that basically saved him from at least 20 minutes of wading through a bunch of garbage to get the answer only because his teacher said ‘no’? 

“Did he still have to write his paper? Yes. Did he still have to cite his sources? Yes. Did he still have to come up with the language in his own words? Yes. But the tool helped him tremendously. It’s stupid not to let a kid use a tool that’s a valuable tool.” 

Current and future change 

Christian schools are using AI primarily to automate tasks, help with lesson planning and customize learning according to students’ needs. It may take a while to open it up to student use (another primary usage is to detect student plagiarism) but Osborn reminds there will always be ways to cheat. 

“I had a rich buddy in college who paid someone to write all of his term papers. No one can stop that,” he says. “Yes, (AI) makes it easier for them to cheat, but we should be making even more of an appeal to the reason why they need to think through a logical structure, do their own original research and come up with answers. All of that’s still going to be there and necessary.” 

Homeschoolers could be a potential early adopter, since AI can cater to a student’s specific learning style and needs. Parents can use it to assist in subjects where they are weak and homeschools don’t have the same administrative or organizational burdens of a larger school. 

“Christians have been at the forefront of technological innovation forever,” Osborn says, citing examples such as the printing press, which helped spread the Bible across Europe, and modern Bible translation software, which pioneered aspects of AI. “I would argue that if the teaching world doesn’t embrace this a little bit, savvy parents will because they want their kids to have a competitive advantage and get ahead.” 

When called “bullish” on AI, however, Osborn disagreed.  

“No, I’m realistic,” he replied. “When digital cameras came out, all the pros I talked to were like ‘That’s terrible. It will never replace film. Developing film is an art form.’ Fast forward to today and how many professional photographers do you know who use film? And the ones that do charge a huge premium for it. 

“Technology has changed the way a lot of industries do things,” he adds, relating that naysayers once doubted people would buy clothes or shoes online. “Now Amazon rules the world.” 

Will Christian schools follow suit? Osborn thinks so. 

“It’s going to happen in the education space, in educational technology, for sure.”