Podcast Episode 5: The Vatican on AI and Grandmasters on Ministry | Ep 215

Description

In this Rock Cast episode, the Pope weighs into the AI conversation with a 200-page doc. We summarized his arguments for you and share more details on Opus 4.8 noting the shift of importance from models to harnesses.Then Emily unpacks why Thinking Sideways will help you avoid the danger of acting before considering all your options. By taking a lesson from the chess grandmasters, she describes the pitfall of having false confidence that we can predict exactly how complex systems will unfold.Nicole closes with an exciting conference update that you and your leaders will want to hear! Give this episode a listen to catch up on the latest news in the Community and in the tech industry.Visit the show notes to find all the resources talked about in this episode. Don't forget to join the new Rock Cast Rocket Chat Channel to see what other churches are saying about this episode.

Transcribed Content

Hey, guys. Thanks for joining us for ROTCast today. We have a fun episode with some updates on AI and a wild one from the Vatican. Then we're gonna turn over the conversation to Emily for a new book that's been making the rounds. Super interesting. And then lastly, I'll wrap up with some conference updates. Very exciting. John, do you want to catch us up? Well, I want to hear those conference updates, actually, but I'll wait. So kicking off with this what's new in AI, it's just a topic I think we all need to keep close on. The first thing is a pope put out a huge paper, which was pretty cool in the last two weeks. Now, this isn't just any paper. Every pope puts out a few in their whole tenure in cyclicas. And so these are major points of knowledge that they want to put out there. So it's very important that he chose AI for this. It's a very long document. This is more of a book. And so I have not read the whole thing, but I plan on it. I'm working my way through it. Some major points I think that are interesting to to know about. First of all, he he's one of the major points he makes is, we should be slowing down on this. Now, I think he recognizes too that we should, and and he also recognizes that we probably aren't because it's not something that any company or any world government is gonna do. It's kinda the nuclear armories. , you you gotta you don't even if you don't want to, you kinda have to so that your other enemies don't get ahead of you. But anyways, he he says we should slow down, which I think almost everybody would probably agree with. But I also think he also realizes that that's not gonna happen. But I didn't I think he makes some really interesting points. He first talks about how human value can't be benchmarked. And so I think it's important as we start to see these machines, I guess we can call them, who can outperform us in certain ways, But he's making a call back to humanity to say, Hey, that doesn't mean that they have higher worth or that we have lower worth. And I think that's some really good points there. So he basically says AI can increasingly and will increasingly outperform humans in a narrow and sometimes even some broad cognitive tasks: speed, computation, pattern recognition, prediction. But it acknowledges openly. He's basically saying, Yes, it's better at us in some things, but he insists that humans but this does not make humans less valuable, which again, I think if we sit in our Christian world space, it's , duh. But if you read out in the technical space, there's a lot of people calling that this is life and that our life is less valuable than some of the stuff that we're creating, which I mean, get ready for that. It's gonna be ramping up. But I also love this other point that he makes, is that humanity, our limitations is a feature, not a deficit or a defect. It's not something wrong with us. And I think he makes this quote: Humanity flourishes not despite limitations, but often through them. So, it's something that makes us human, is these limitations And sometimes what in the computer world might be called a bug, that's what makes us flourish. Sometimes that is just recognizing that we're not perfect, and sometimes there's a perfection in being not perfect. But also, it's sometimes those imperfections that allow us to come up with new and novel thoughts that AI will never have. AI will never have a new and novel thought. It can only be based off of a synthesis of our previous knowledge. And if there's enough computation and some randomness to that, it can do some small novelty things, but true novel thought, it won't have. So super interesting. Definitely interesting. I'm not sure most of us would have predicted a 200 page paper from the Pope going viral in text circles. What's your take on the Church weighing in on technology and being taken seriously? I love it because it used to be that was the way, right? And I think the fact that he is weighing in. And interestingly enough, the tech space is interested in what he has to say. Many companies sent representatives to the Vatican for the release of this paper, and they spoke too. So I think it's really cool that faith is being considered in all of this and that it went viral for a weekend on Twitter, lots of people talking about it. A lot of positivity, actually. I think mostly it was positive. So super cool that that's And I the fact that that was the thing he chose. I think there's a lot of other things he could have said, but that's the one he chose. In other news, Claude releases Opus 4.8. It's not a revolutionary step up, but I think the important thing is the upgrade cycle. Forty one days after 4.7, we get this, which is pretty great. Testers are saying it's good. They're enjoying the improvement. But I think it also highlights the fact that the models are just one piece and that the harness is what's really important. We've been talking about that a lot. There's been some minor harness upgrades throughout all of this. I think one thing to note is when they talked about Opus 4.8, they also put a little footnote in there that was missed by some that the new security version of Mythos, a version of Mythos will be coming out in the next few weeks. Get ready. Now I would also say this whole talk and prediction that security is going to become an issue and that patches are going to become much more important is already here. I don't think we've reached the zenith of that, but I'm already seeing daily patches that we have to go update. And people starting to use not the Mythos model for OnRock, but other models. And so we're patching too. So I just wanna say, please upgrade. Yes. You may not have to upgrade to the next major, but right now, the safe the safety patches or security patches are being put out on '17, 18, and '19. But 17 will probably drop off in the next few months. So you want to make sure you're on 18 or 19. And if you're on 18 or 19, be on the latest version. If you see a dot release, it's not optional. You have to get that. We sit in a very unique space because we are not a SaaS model. That means security is on you, so you have to do that. Also too, though, the way we report security, we tell you you have to update, but we do not talk about the details. And that's intentional because some churches are self hosted and they're not updating. So if we spill details, then we've made the problem way worse for them. That's intentional. Don't talk about it because we don't want to. Actually, we'd prefer to talk about it after it's patched and fixed, but we don't because to protect others. But we just really need to be encouraging others to upgrade. Emily, do you wanna turn us over to the new book that's been making the rounds? Yeah. So this is a really interesting book. Here's the concept. It's a it's called thinking sideways, how to think a chess player and win at life by Jennifer Shahadi. And, she's a two time US women's chess champion and a poker pro. So she has some real, very deep insights in a couple of areas that she applies to this book. And it's all about using this core idea from chess called candidate moves and then applying it to life. Chess players are they're trained to generate multiple options. So they're looking at the board. They see where they are right now, and they're thinking in their head at least three options of where they can move. And they evaluate all of them before they make the move. So the discipline here isn't in picking the right move. It's in not playing your first instinct automatically. Which is kind of counterintuitive. I wouldn't be thinking I'm not a chess player, but they would be thinking depth of moves. , they're thinking three or four or five, six moves deep. But you're saying they think breadth. They first think broad. And it might sound that's different than what we've been saying in other podcasts. We're saying , think ahead, plan before you move. But it really doesn't conflict. It is that breadth versus depth. We still believe you should understand, for instance, apply it to church. You should understand your ministry goals before you start doing something. Right? But that's long range thinking, still important, but don't forego that that breadth that you just mentioned, John. It's as humans, we kind of naturally have this false confidence that we can predict what's out in front of us. But if we're dealing with a lot of complexity, that's not always the case. So we should just stop pretending that things you can't know in complex systems. And instead, we should just read the position in front of us well and then keep our options open as long as possible. So in some cases, it's a great idea to defer your decision until the right time, but to have multiple options available so you can kind of read it as it develops. I always think of an analogy in my head is I always think about Lewis and Clark. And it's easy for us to see Lewis and Clark in hindsight and go, well, yeah, they made it across America. But they didn't know where they were even going. They didn't know how big it was. They didn't know which valley to start with. And I always thought, , that's how puzzling for them because we're so used to traveling on roads and routes that have already been established, but they had no route. So I always pictured them , Okay, let's send out some scouts. Let's look over. Should we go over this saddle or that saddle into the next valley? Let's well, you go over there, just take a peek, and then come back. And it's kinda the same thing. It is. They had to make sure they had the right tools for the job. Right? , you gotta have a machete, and you have to have a canoe, and you have to have the basic things that can take you over various kinds of terrain. But in their case, they didn't even necessarily know their destination. Or even just this week, we were talking in a group about how to prepare for this big thing. And there's a lot of preparedness we were wanting to do on the things we knew about, which might have been building the boat. And I would call it, , hey, we're building the boat. We don't know how deep the river is. Is it a broad river that's shallow, or is it a very deep river? But we're already gonna start building the boat. It's , maybe we should go look at the rivers first before we start building the boat. We're gonna need a boat. We all know that. But what kind of boat are we gonna want? Yes. So don't forget to go broad. And when it comes to Rock, you do have to know where your ministry is going. But don't lock yourself yourself down to a very specific path forward before how it's going to be used or before you fully understand the way the Rock model works. And it's too easy to do that. As humans, it's very natural for us to do that. Yeah. Feel it's our tendency. It totally is. So just start simple and let it develop. That's kind of the premise of the book. Yeah. And I think when somebody comes to you with a solution already in mind, maybe that should be a red flag in your mind. Because what they're doing is they're locking you into their frame of thinking. So you're not addressing the problem or ideating there. You're just, , going along with what they've decided is the best solution. And it makes me think that my brain, not Chess, but more a Rubik's cube. If you give me a problem, I want to, , pick up the cube and then look at all the sides and then set it down and then, , put my hands down and then go and solve it. But if somebody, , has a solution already figured out, then they're kinda handing me a Rubik's cube with the pieces glued in place or the the sides Sharpied out. So you might not see the full picture. You might not even know you're missing part of the picture. So when someone comes to you with the solution already in mind, this the fix is simple. It can be uncomfortable. But what you want to do is you want to slow down. You want to back all the way up to the problem and then start there. If you can name the problem, then you can start evaluating your options. So if you're going to have a takeaway from the book, it's probably that your concrete habit should be to, before committing to a solution, you should try and force yourself to name three genuinely distinct approaches. I'm not talking just variations of the same solution. I'm talking completely different directions. John, this is something you've been advocating for a while. What do you do when you find yourself up against somebody's, , already preconceived solution? Well, the first thing you get to know about me, I have this I think in pictures in my head, it's it's really entertaining. I wish the world could see some of my thoughts. I always think about the the the scene in the movie, The Jungle Book. Now this is the original Jungle Book, the one from when I was a child, but this there's a snake in the book, and and we kinda come down off the branch and look at Mowgli, and it had these little eyes that were kinda hypnotizing. And that to me is exactly what you said, Nicole. That's the person who brings a solution. , they're hypnotizing me, and I don't I don't recognize it. I don't think we do recognize it. So in a sense, they're hypnotizing me to that idea because generally in humans, we to be creatures of little villages, and we want to get along together, and so we kind of have this group think. And so I tend to then do the opposite. In my head, I go completely contrarian. I'm , that's not a good idea. What is the right idea? You gotta be careful. You can no. I can't say that. But if you go along with the group think, you're going to fall for it every time. And I still do fall for it. Sometimes in hindsight, I'm , Why do we do that? Oh, they brought me that idea, and I got hypnotized. That's my fault. Yeah, and it's not always about finding the best, the hidden third option. It's more of just building a habit to glance sideways, look at all your options, and then find the best one forward. And that's where your better Rock implementations are going to live. Yeah. So someone says workflow. Hey, we need to make a workflow. You should be , Nope, this is not a workflow. In your head. Don't say that verbally. That's a dumb idea. We're not using workflows. So what should we use? Then many times you're going to come back to it because that might have been the best answer. But I can't tell you many times that's caught me. In fact, I used to work with somebody who worked in the ministry area, and she would bring these whole solutions to me. , we need to create some screens that do this, this, and this. And I would just listen, and I would go through it. I'm , okay. What about this? And then I propose something else. And then one day she said, , I love it. I come in here with some ideas, and I always leave with a better idea. And I'm , well, keep doing it because when bring your ideas, you're actually bringing to me requirements, not a solution. And so I see it as your way of expressing your requirements, which I , but I also might have some other ideas from other experiences that we can pull from. So I kept saying, keep doing that. But I think sometimes we just fall for that. It's I could've it'd been easier actually for me to say, take those screens, at least in the short term, take the screens, just go implement them. But to put a little bit more thought into it helps. That's cool that you can discern when that lady brought you her ideas, you can discern that they were requirements needed to find the best solution. Think that's important. Yeah. And she had, in a sense, if it was left to me, it would have been a bad dissolution too, because I don't know the requirements. She's in the trench. This This happened to be in the small group areas. She's working with small group people all day, every day. She knows all the problems. If it was left to me, because in a way it could sound prideful, well, I should just make all decisions. But instead, it was two experts with a slight overlap, a slight Venn diagram overlap of needs. And if I did it myself, it would have stunk. And if she had taken just her screens, it wouldn't have been as better than if we have two people who have different expertises. But it was hard sometimes to not fall for the Now, I worked with a leader there who, the senior leader, was very contrarian. , I feel in almost every case, he was , No, we're not doing that. We're going do something else. And I think many times he was right because this is a truth. I think that's kind of where I kind of learned that from. So how would you recommend for our churches that they practice pausing and then looking around at to better evaluate the Rock implementations? I think just the first thing is acknowledging that this is a psychological trick that it's played on us, we allow it to get played. Just once you recognize that truth and then you start to be contrarian, I think that's with the wording here, we've used this in our own organization. In fact, we talk about the Mowgli hypnotizing eyes all the time, , Oh, you got hypnotized or, oh, I'm being hypnotized. So I think sometimes that's that's a good first point is just knowing that to be careful. Mhmm. Yeah. I'm gonna start using that. Yeah. I got mostly hypnotized. Yeah. I don't know if the newer versions have the same hypnotized eyes. Someone can opine in the rocket chat. That's right. Tell us about it. But the classic one was they definitely did. And I think there's multiple ways we fall for things that. I think the other one is this this concept of false dichotomies. Oftentimes, someone will come to you with , hey, should we do a or b? And again, we fall again for that. It's somewhat aligned with the other one. So I read this book. I love Roman history. I read this book once, and it was a historical fiction on Cicero, who I think is an amazing character in history. And I'm not sure this was a 100% true of his character, but at least in the book, Cicero was , I don't fall for false dichotomies. You bring me A and B, but there's an infinite number of other options. He was very brilliant on how he worked his way out of some very deep political catches. I think it probably was true historically too, but at least in the character of this book, he was very against false dichotomies. So this is another thing I always bring is when someone brings some options, I'm , Okay, those are options that should be considered, but what else could we do? I can't tell you how many times we actually come up with something that's completely different and is actually a better option. So that's another thing around us in some of the sub teams is false dichotomies. I'll even say, Oh, you got Cicero'd, or I'm not gonna be Cicero'd. I think in life, we're just pattern matchers, and we just try to match patterns with what we have experience with or what someone brings us. But just realize that in life, there's an infinite number of ways you can get out of any problem. And so sometimes you kinda think you have to think , okay. I'm gonna show my age again. This this character MacGyver. , there used to be a TV show called MacGyver, and he would get out of any situation with whatever he had with him, paper clip, chewing gum. Duct tape. Yeah. He would usually say crazy things with whatever he had, and , you can get away with that. In fact, as a kid, I used to play MacGyver, and I would I can't believe I'm gonna admit this, but I would handcuff myself to a doorknob and throw the key across the room and then try to figure out how I'm gonna get it back. Did it work? Did you succeed? Sometimes. Sometimes I had to call for help. That's funny. But I think it's the same thing. It's , hey. How do we get out of this situation? There's a clever way out of every situation. Yeah. For sure. Okay. Well, that wraps up the bulk of our content. And to move on to our exciting conference update, we've officially secured our keynote speaker. Who is it? Oh, try to catch me there. We actually can't say yet, k, because we're still in the contracting process. Okay. But what I can say is that this person is somebody who spent his entire life, he spent decades building cultures of excellence from the ground up. And his thinking has influenced so many industries and challenged them on integrity and their values and just leading well, I'd say this person is somebody who would stand by the fact that excellence is never an accident. Very intriguing. That sounds a hint right there. But I'll throw out to you that he built a brand that I'm sure every person who's listening has heard of. Yes. So this isn't just a small speaker. This is a large speaker. This is a well known. So keep listening because we'll have more updates to follow. And, , if you are on the fence about coming or bringing your leadership, this is gonna be a great way to challenge your leaders, maybe to think sideways about their digital ministries. Great reason to bring them. And then you guys should also know that our Westin Hotel is at 30% capacity, so it's filling up quick. So if you haven't yet, , make sure you register, make sure you book your stay at the Westin, and then invite a friend too. So for our listeners, if you're on Apple or Spotify, if you could leave us a review, that would be fantastic. Helps our content go farther. If you're watching on YouTube, do me a favor and subscribe to our YouTube channel. And then as always, we'll see you on RODcast to continue the conversation.