On this episode of the Denison Forum Podcast, Dr. Mark Turman sits down with Dr. Hormoz Shariat for a thought-provoking conversation at the crossroads of artificial intelligence and Christian faith. With a PhD in AI and a heart for gospel ministry in Iran, Dr. Shariat brings a rare and insightful perspective to the digital revolution shaping our world.
Together, they explore how AI has developed over time, what it means for the future of the church, and how Christians can respond with both wisdom and courage. What are the opportunities AI presents for ministry? Where should we draw the line? And how can believers stay rooted in biblical truth while navigating these technological shifts?
This conversation offers a clear-eyed, redemptive lens for understanding AI’s role in our lives—and how we might use it to advance the kingdom of God.
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Topics
- (01:31): Introducing Dr. Hormoz Shariat
- (03:34): Update on Iran Alive ministry
- (08:24): Understanding the history and breakthroughs of AI
- (17:18): Generative AI and its future impact
- (19:09): Ethical concerns and potential dangers of AI
- (28:39): AI’s influence on media and personalization
- (33:00): Spiritual limitations of AI
- (35:21): Government regulations on AI-generated content
- (39:05): Personification of AI: Emotional and ethical implications
- (43:25): Using AI in ministry: Opportunities and challenges
- (48:45): The future of AI in Bible translation
Resources
- How has Denison Forum impacted your faith?
- Who Am I? Identity • Denison Forum
- Subscribe to The Daily Article by Dr. Jim Denison
- Iran Alive Ministries
- “The Billy Graham of Iran”: The incredible journey of Dr. Hormoz Shariat
- New Reasoning AIs “lie” and “hallucinate” more
- Artificial Intelligence: Tool or threat?
- Google AI makes breakthrough in biology
- The peril of AI and the path to transcendent hope
- Winners of the Nobel Prize in physics warn of AI dangers
- “I have the power to manipulate, monitor, and destroy anything I want”: The threat of autonomous AI and the unique response of biblical faith
- AI resurrects 2,000-year-old writings in $1 million Vesuvius Challenge
- Is “safe, secure, and trustworthy” AI possible? Biden issues Executive Order on artificial intelligence
- Meta announces it will label AI-generated content: How to have wisdom for the modern age
About Dr. Hormoz Shariat
Dr. Hormoz Shariat is a remarkable individual whose journey is nothing short of awe-inspiring. He is known as “the Billy Graham of Iran,” and when you learn about his life, you’ll understand why. Joel C. Rosenberg, a renowned author, has even hailed him as “the most influential Iranian American.” But there’s so much more to Dr. Shariat than just titles and accolades. His story is one of deep personal conviction, heartbreak, and unwavering faith.
Armed with a Ph.D. in Artificial Intelligence from the prestigious University of Southern California and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Bible and Theology from Jessup University, Dr. Shariat began his ministry journey. In 1987, he took a leap of faith and planted a church in San Jose, California. Little did he know that this church would grow to become one of the largest of its kind in the United States, with hundreds of Muslim converts finding solace, community, and a profound connection to their newfound faith.
But the story doesn’t end there. In the year 2000, guided by divine purpose, Dr. Shariat founded Iran Alive Ministries. This organization harnessed the power of Satellite TV to reach millions of lost and broken souls not only in Iran but throughout the Middle East. From their studio in Dallas, Texas, they broadcast the Gospel 24/7, driven by an unyielding belief that God will use their efforts to bring about a transformation in an Islamic nation like never before.
About Dr. Mark Turman
Dr. Mark Turman is the Executive Director of Denison Forum and Vice President of Denison Ministries. Among his many duties, Turman is most notably the host of The Denison Forum Podcast. He is also the chief strategist for DF Pastors, which equips pastors and church leaders to understand and transform today’s culture.
About Denison Forum
Denison Forum exists to thoughtfully engage the issues of the day from a biblical perspective through The Daily Article email newsletter and podcast, The Denison Forum Podcast, as well as many books and additional resources.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
NOTE: This transcript was AI-generated and has not been fully edited.
Dr. Mark Turman: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Denison Forum Podcast. I’m Mark Turman, executive director of Denison Forum and host for today’s conversation. As always, we hope to be able to equip and encourage you to live by faith and not by fear. We do that by helping you to think biblically and critically about every single issue and idea that comes your way to ss the Bible says, take captive every thought to the authority and leadership of Jesus in our life so that you can live well and serve intentionally to make the world a better place for you and others. That’s what we want to do, and today we want to jump into a topic that we’ve been touching on really this whole year.
Our producer, Katharine and I sat down and talked and we said we wanted to do some work this year. To help believers to understand AI artificial intelligence, but we also knew that we probably couldn’t [00:01:00] do one conversation and we might not need to do those conversations all together. So we’ve touched on it already this year.
As we start a new month and as we move into the middle part of the year, but we hope to bring you three or four conversations this year about artificial intelligence, what you need to know, what you need to understand about it from a biblical spiritual standpoint. How you can work with it in effective ways both personally and in ministry and in other contexts.
And so to help us with that conversation today, we’ve invited back my friend, Dr. Hormoz Shariat, and let me remind you if you forgot from our previous episode where we introduced him to you. Dr. Hormoz Shariat is Iranian born and also. Muslim by birth, but came to the United States for education back or most, tell me if I get it right, late seventies, you came to the United States.
Early eighties. Early eighties, okay. [00:02:00] Yeah. Sorry if I dated you a little bit that way, but after he arrived in the United States, in California, he came to Christ. And not only did he come to Christ as a believer, but he eventually became a church starter in California in the eighties and nineties.
And then in the year 2000, he founded his current ministry, which is Iran Alive, which if you wanna know more about that, you can go into our archives and find that episode called “The Billy Graham of Iran”: The incredible journey of Dr. Hormoz Shariat. With Dr. Shariat, you can learn all about their ministry as well as at their website, which is www.Iranalive.org. So we founded this ministry two thou in 2000 to reach Muslims and other Arab speaking folks through digital satellite ministry.
And it has become so effective in the work of God that he is sometimes called the Billy Graham of Iran, which. He always kind of smiles when somebody says that about him. But he, [00:03:00] he holds today a degree. Bible in theology from Jessup College in California, which is originally a Church of Christ School, but he also holds a PhD in a little thing called artificial intelligence from the University of Southern California.
And when I heard that statement the first time, I thought we have to have a conversation about that. Or most back. Welcome back to the podcast. We’re glad to have you with us today.
Dr. Hormoz Shariat: Thank you so much, Mark, for inviting me back.
Dr. Mark Turman: We are certainly glad to have you. And tell us before we jump into this conversation about technology and AI give us a brief update on how the Ministry of Iran Alive is going.
Dr. Hormoz Shariat: Just an amazing open heaven in Iran. Where can I start? It is just, you hear about the news, maybe wars may come and in the next few weeks or next few months, but on the surface, there’s not [00:04:00] many good news from Iran. I mean, the government of Iran is very oppressive. They’re killing people. They’re putting Christian in jail.
Did you know just two weeks ago they put three people in jail? Three Christians, and one of ’em just breaks my heart. A young woman with a baby, just the first baby, and they put her in jail for 17 years.
Dr. Mark Turman: Oh my gosh.
Dr. Hormoz Shariat: You know, what was her crime? 17 years. This young woman, the crime, was attending a house church.
Oh gosh. So this is what’s happening in Iran, Christianity, and is growing and the government is reacting. So a reaction like this is abnormal. It shows the deep fear they have and the knowledge they have that Christianity is growing. So we see an accelerated number of people coming to Christ and easier.
Mark, I’ve shared with you how easy it is to bring Iranian Muslims to Christ, but we are [00:05:00] in the new phase now. Let me wrap it up with the, with the, just a recent story. Last Friday, I, you know, we do a 24 7 live broadcasting to Iran and we are a church. We are not, I’m not a televangelist, I’m a pastor and we delivered church services into millions of homes.
They say we have 7 million. Viewers per day. So here I do church service, live church service, serve them. And after that we have a two hour zoom call. Wow. Where it’s like a lobby.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah.
Dr. Hormoz Shariat: People can come and meet the pastor, ask questions, and get prayer. But this last Friday was different. What was different is that for two hours, the non-believers were lined up to talk to me, to pray with me, to receive Christ.
Dr. Mark Turman: Wow.
Dr. Hormoz Shariat: I got no chance to talk to believers. They were upfront, you know, we are here. Yeah. And so I, for two hours I led people to Christ. So some were old, some middle aged, [00:06:00] and even. 10, 12 was. None of them. None of them had any questions. Hmm. This is amazing. Those who share the gospel with Muslims, they know it takes them several months. They have questions, how about Jesus? Why Jesus’, God, you believe in three Gods? What do I do with ham? So none of ’em, mark had any questions. I ask them questions to make sure that they know what they’re doing right.
And one of ’em was saying, as I was watching your sermon, I felt. There was a somebody planting flowers in my mind. Iranians are poetic, you know? Yeah. He, that’s how he felt. And, and I wanna receive Christ, any questions? No. Another ones said I was, I was eating my dinner when I watched you, and suddenly I was filled with so much joy I couldn’t [00:07:00] eat anymore.
I had to call you and pray to receive Christ. So that’s a picture of amazing move of God in Iran.
Dr. Mark Turman: That is so fantastic to hear. And, and both sides of that are just so significant, right? That we need to be praying with joy, that God is touching and moving in so many people’s lives and drawing them quickly and eagerly into a relationship with Christ that, that they would even, you know.
In America, I’m not sure too many of us would wait two hours to get to talk to the pastor. But so great to to hear that and even in a digital context. But then the other side, the, the story that you started with is this young lady being imprisoned for her faith or attending a house, church. Tho those are such such a dichotomy of story and tells us how we can pray and celebrate and be excited about what God is doing in that part of the world.
And at the same time praying for believers who are being persecuted like that and struggling in [00:08:00] so many ways. And. Even being imprisoned because of their interest in c, in Christianity or in faith. And thank you for sharing that. And if you wanna know more, as I said before, go to the website, Iran Alive and you can follow the ministry and be a part of what God is doing through this.
Very, very powerful online. Ministry and church that Dr. Shariat gets to pastor. Hormoz, , let’s talk a little bit about this thing that seems to be in the news every single day, several different times a day, which is artificial intelligence. And it just seems we kind of survived the Covid pandemic and started to catch our breath and then all of a sudden.
This thing called AI just starts taking over our lives. Can you tell us a little bit about how you understand the history of artificial intelligence? Did, did artificial intelligence show up like the second day after somebody invented a [00:09:00] computer? How, what, how do we need to understand it historically?
Dr. Hormoz Shariat: Great question and I had a part in it, but it started in the fifties. Very basic idea of how computers can imitate, human being and okay. The first decade or two is just funny. You look at it and say, come on. They had programmed a computer. You ask a certain questions, it had canned answers and pretending to be, and you, you went off your script.
They, they couldn’t do anything but that not many people know. That’s my, my field. I went to University of Southern California as a PhD student for ai. It was a beginning years of AI research. It was coming in and computers that are becoming stronger so you could do more things simulate more of a human thinking there.
That I got interested and. My research topic and the things I did research in the eighties, not their products. Okay. [00:10:00] They’re all, and, and I never forget I was. Doing research, writing papers, presenting it in conferences. And in some conferences there were of course panels. I never forget the panel.
I wasn’t on, but I was watching. I was just a student. There were professors on the panel and experts not, and international experts on the panel. I was just listening and they were discussing about the future of ai and one of ’em said, and. I think it’s, everybody was optimistic, but this one person said, I think it’ll gonna take 40 years.
Before we see any fruit of AI for the society, and everybody said, come on, we are making so much progress. It’s the eighties. I mean, we are doing this, we are doing that. So they were opposing him and he was saying, no, it takes 40 years. And he was right. It took 40 years to get to where we are. A lot of money, a lot of research, a [00:11:00] lot of brain.
Over 40 years, bright people have worked to solve the problems. AI had many great obstacles to go through, and they have done it. And this is an amazing breakthrough that AI that we are facing.
Dr. Mark Turman: So that what, that’s a great word, breakthrough that I want to get you to kind of unpack for us what what breakthrough has occurred in the last two or three years that has brought AI to the forefront.
Now, why, why your friend that or, or that The panelists that said it would take 40 years and it now has from 1985 or so to now. What, what has been the pivot point? The breakthrough that has brought AI to the forefront in this moment.
Dr. Hormoz Shariat: There are several, but the core of the AI breakthrough is called natural language.
Understanding that’s, that was the greatest obstacle to go through that [00:12:00] getting a paragraph and really understanding it, what it means, what it’s saying, what is important, and, and being to digested and responded. The, the, the core of AI is that. And of course after that is side issues like voice recognition and face recognition, imitating voice and face.
Those are side issues, but the core is natural language understanding. Hmm.
Dr. Mark Turman: Okay. So I assume that just by the terminology, natural language, understanding that that really is something of the foundation of what we now have kind of been introduced to and what are commonly referred to as. AI, large language models now been introduced to us in programs and applications like chatGPT, Gemini, and there are a few others.
Seems like several more people are inventing their own version. But these are, you tell us based on [00:13:00] language a simple understanding of what a large language model does.
Dr. Hormoz Shariat: That’s why it’s called large language model, because understanding human beings is not that easy. It took them 40 years to, to get to that point, what it really means.
Parsing a la one sentence, we take it for granted, but parsing a sentence. Who is talking? What does it mean? What, what’s the implications? What questions? And it takes large computers to process. They may have had this theory. 10, 20 years ago, they couldn’t implement it. They might, they, they might have it in a paper and, and present it in a conference.
But implementing those ideas all depend on powerful computers. And once the computers became powerful the last few years, you know, the the power of a computers grow exponentially. Every year and a half it doubles. That’s what they say. So now that, because of the [00:14:00] large computer, you can, you can parse one sentence in, but it takes a lot of computer power, a lot of understanding of what this means and how does that relate to to the truth, to the facts.
I mean, you, when you as a human, you read a, a statement, you are bringing all your knowledge of the world to it. What this person means, what is he talking about? What are the what, what’s the fact about about the people, people’s psychology, the facts about, about the world, how, how, what it is right now.
So it needs a lot of computer power just to parse. One sentence. That’s why they, they say large language model. Okay.
So what
Dr. Mark Turman: you’re, what I hear you telling me is, is like for the average person that in the last number of years has gotten a smartphone and we’ve all, we’ve all become people who use our phone not to talk [00:15:00] on the phone so much, but to text on the phone and to search for other things.
But when we’re texting each other. And we all started to experience what cell phones have as auto correction. Yeah. For a computer, which is what our cell phones are. For a, for a pocket size computer to be able to auto correct what we are typing with our fingers takes an enormous amount of learning and.
Technology and computer power. Am I understanding you correctly?
Dr. Hormoz Shariat: That’s right. You, you just go from there and expand it and it it’s, it’s much more than what you see and it’s gonna, you’re gonna see more how it impacts even your texting your interaction with other people. You know? We humans, we are looking for comfort.
We wanna make things easier for us and convenient. Yeah. And less stressful, more impactful. So any tool that [00:16:00] can help us, we just dive in. Just mobile and AI will be like that. AI will be helpful and it’s already is, but it’s gonna explode in every way of our life. It’s gonna be so helpful that, any person who wants comfort, who wants, doesn’t want stress, of course it’s, they’re gonna dive in and use it. And if you don’t use it, you, it’s like somebody say, I, I, I, I don’t wanna use cell phones. I, I don’t wanna use my boba. Okay, yeah. I have this calendar, I have this Rolodex, I have this. Yeah, okay.
But life is hard for you now. Yeah.
Dr. Mark Turman: You could imagine somebody saying no, I don’t ever want a washing machine to wash my clothes or. To wash my dishes. I, I have to do that myself and I don’t care what kind of machine they create.
Dr. Hormoz Shariat: That’s right.
Dr. Mark Turman: Or to, or to heat and cool my house.
Dr. Hormoz Shariat: Exactly.
Yeah. Good, good analogy.
Dr. Mark Turman: Tell us, tell us a, a little bit we, we, we get messages constantly telling us [00:17:00] that. What we are now being introduced to in terms of things like large language models, Gemini chat, GBT, that type of thing is really just the tip of the iceberg as you were just saying a moment ago.
Give us an understanding of what there’re already kind of hinting to us. What’s coming is what’s called generative AI. Can you tell us kind of the difference between what we might call today’s simple AI models that deal with, you know, creating words or rephrasing paragraphs that we might write, that type of thing.
What’s the, what’s the idea of generative AI that’s coming down the road?
Dr. Hormoz Shariat: It’s a, it’s a natural consequence of understanding. You as a human being, if you understand. Subject. If you understand the subject well enough, then the next step is, okay, tell me what it is. Can you come up with new ideas?
Can [00:18:00] you generate new ideas? That’s just natural consequence. And so when AI understands a field it, number one is writing and producing. That’s, that’s what everyone is is a part of. But it could go and it’s already going in that way. Producing music, producing videos producing songs and, and voices doing a podcast. I saw a demo of a podcast. You and I could be replaced by computers, by our replica, not by anybody else. My face, your face, my voice. Your voice. Give them a script, they’ll produce a podcast.
Dr. Mark Turman: Wow. Okay. We are, we’re also, when we start digging around in this people that have been educated and trained and helped us to move in this direction they will tell us over and over again that any AI model or tool that you’re [00:19:00] using right now is able to do what it is able to do based on how it has been trained.
It has been trained on data. What if any, concerns do you have about who is building and training AI models and how they are being trained and programmed? Do you have concerns in that area? I.
Dr. Hormoz Shariat: I do, but it’s not just me. There is concern by people who are expert in this field. I mean, you, you think of okay, fear and, and concern and coming from common people.
It’s always the case. You know, you study new technology. There are people say, oh, they’re gonna do this and gonna do that, but when the concern not doesn’t come from common people. It comes from experts, then you have to take it seriously. So the concern about the future of AI and how it could destroy it, be destructive or abused by evil [00:20:00] people and be out of our control to stop that.
This comes from experts, not just the common person who is just, oh, I’m, I’m afraid. No. So it’s real that that concern should be there and it’s real.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, because it kind of goes back to what you were saying a moment ago, that it takes enormous progress and enormous computing power to get a machine, like a computer to have even a basic understanding of reality of, you know, machines do not feel, and they, they do not.
Think and experience life in all of the aspects of what human beings do. I heard the the Christian pastor and leader John Piper talking about this just a week ago, that they do not have an understanding of right and wrong the way humans do. They do not have a fundamental grasp of truth or ethics or morality.
They [00:21:00] do not have, like I said, a basic understanding of reality and how they gain even the most basic understanding of some of those concepts. Is going to be guided by whoever is guiding them. That’s right. Am I thinking about that correctly? Correctly?
Dr. Hormoz Shariat: You’re right. They don’t have morality. They don’t have feelings, but they can fake it in such a way that looks very real.
Very real. Yeah. They have the capability even more than most humans. They have a capability to study you, Mark. Yeah. To know what you like, what you don’t like to know, what kind of language impacts your feelings, positive or negative. They can study you and they can adjust. The wordings to you to be impactful on your emotions.
So when we say they don’t feel it, doesn’t mean they cannot impact our emotions By studying us, by producing video, even [00:22:00] fake news, whatever that we are consume, they can produce what we consume in a way that impacts not just our mind, it impacts our emotions. And most importantly. It impacts our decisions.
That’s what, that’s what even now the media wants to do, are trying to use media. Humans have been trying to use media to impact our thinking, our emotions, our decisions, our political understandings. I mean, now they have a tool to adjust to individual persons. Before, you know, even now, fake news. What does they do?
They produce a news item. For consumption. Every, everybody, okay. Here’s mm-hmm. On cnn. You watch it, you don’t like it. You, you and you land. You watch ten second or a a minute, you don’t like it, and you, you switch, you don’t watch. Mm-hmm. But what if CNN and CNBC or Fox News, I’m not just talking about negative, but [00:23:00] what if the news and they would know you personally, your interest, how to impact your thinking, how to impact your emotions.
What if they can produce a news item just for Mark? Wow.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah.
Dr. Hormoz Shariat: Tailor made to me. They, they, they’re capable of doing that.
Dr. Mark Turman: So I, I heard, I think it was the the Christian thinker and, and writer Andy Crouch, who had a conversation around this not so long ago that I caught. And he, he likened it to understanding it as magic.
And we see some things in the Bible, particularly the Book of Acts. There’s a very interesting almost comical story about the intersection of faith in in an experience of magic. And you get into areas of the occult. And that type of thing. Do you think that’s a helpful way to think about this?
That if we don’t put up [00:24:00] proper boundaries, if we don’t think deeply and biblically about this, that because of artificial intelligence as ability to fake reality in many ways that we could be, we could be easily deceived, we could be taken down deep trails of. Distraction and deception that we really haven’t seen up until now.
Is, is magic a good metaphor?
Dr. Hormoz Shariat: Magic is, is a word, and it’s a, I like the word used. I don’t use magic, but I use I, I like it because it kind of points to a supernatural. So there is a supernatural for us. We don’t, I. Christians, we don’t call it magic, but we know there is a dark spirit and they try to fake even with signs and wonders.
You know, Matthew 24 24 warns us in the latter days that there will be fake signs and wonders, something amazing superhuman happening, [00:25:00] so that if it was possible, it would deceive the believers so it. Even believers are in danger of believing something that is from God and it’s not from God. And Right.
And with AI, they can fake so many things, even fake spirituality. So even believers could be deceived. Yeah.
Dr. Mark Turman: So something for us to really, it’s one of those things that it, it, we may not want it to be this way, but it is become a reality very quickly becoming a daily reality for us. If you’re, if you’re using a cell phone or you’re using a computer to, you know, find out what time your movie that you want to go see is starting, you’re using some form of AI already if you’re using a MAP program to get you from here to your vacation spot.
That’s right. You’re using an AI experience and depending on a lot of things that that data is being collected [00:26:00] and used for certain purposes, including learning and understanding your preferences and other things like that. Hormones, I, I was listening to a you and I live in the Dallas area.
I have friends and connections at Dallas Baptist University. They recently hosted a webinar that is available through their leadership institute. The webinar was called AI and the Soul. One of the things that they talked about was the idea that that AI is not just a tool. You and I had a conversation about AI as a tool, not necessarily good, not necessarily bad, depending upon who’s using it and how they’re using it.
In this webinar, they described AI as a phenomenon. The definition of that might be something like an extraordinary usually significantly destructive force that alters the way that we experience life. Is that going too far? In it as, [00:27:00] as a description of ai,
Dr. Hormoz Shariat: I think that’s a reality. And we have to face the reality so we can deal with reality.
It is moving in that direction and it’s going to impact life that deeply in every aspect. As we just talked about, it can impact your emotions and your decisions not just your thinking. It’s not just giving you knowledge. The, the evil one. Does not want to just change your knowledge, even though number one goal is is to impact our thinking, but it’s the goal of evil one or fake news, whatever you can call, is not just to change your mind, but they wanna change your life, change your decision making in your life personal.
Like buying, you know, you talk about, we use AI, but AI has been used on us the last few years. You, you go and yeah. On, on Google, you search and then you see all over, they’re offering you to buy, they, they study you. They know your needs and you know what [00:28:00] you bought two years ago, right? And that’s the basics of AI using mass data on you to influence your buying decision.
But if and now they can influence not just your buying decision, your political decision, your, your personal preferences, even thinking about issues like. Transgender or God or being a gay, and these are already being used in a, in a way, but what if and not what if it’s soon? It’s gonna be very purpose driven, individualized, customized approach.
Hmm. To each person.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. That, I guess that, would you say that’s kind of the next thing that’s coming down the road is the personalization? I don’t know if, if, if I want to use the word targeting or not, but personalization it is. No, it’s true. It’s true. Yeah. And, and do you anticipate that that will show up in things like what shows up on your [00:29:00] phone?
I’ve heard. It won’t be long before AI will be used to like scan my email inbox and push certain things to the front and other things to the back, depending upon what it learns about me. Yeah. Are you seeing things like that coming down the road?
Dr. Hormoz Shariat: Yeah. Already started. Mark this, this is now, but it’s gonna grow and now if you’re on, on TikTok or any of the social media.
They understand who, what your interests are, where you are standing in political. Let’s talk, just talk about politics. They understand where you are standing, your political view by the things you choose to subscribe to or follow, and the length of time you watch something. And so if the owner of that social media say it’s liberal.
And say, okay, here’s a conservative person consuming my material, and I [00:30:00] have a goal for him. First of all, if he’s a liberal. If he’s liberal and, and and he is thinking similar to mine, I’m going to enforce that. I’m gonna feed him to be fanatic liberal, not an open-minded liberal. And we know many of them, they go in an echo chamber, they, they talk and they, they feed on each other and they become so fanatic on the left or so fanatic on the right too.
But, but most of these social medias on the left, so that, that’s the example I’m using. But think about what if they, you are a li you are a conservative and they wanna, they don’t like that. You want, they wanna nudge you so they feed you some conservative material, but they also feed you intelligently.
Some on, on the surface it’s conservative, but it’s. Bring a question mark in your mind.
Dr. Mark Turman: Hmm. Hmm.
Dr. Hormoz Shariat: Is this right? Maybe a [00:31:00] conservative, a fanatic, conservative saying things and that you starting questioning your stand. I mean, they want you to move from conservative towards their way of thinking. And they do it so intelligently because they use ai.
Which AI knows you, you, they know what you like. They know what kind of images attract you, what kind of language attracts you. Then they produce individual. We are not there yet, but we will be soon. Individualized video for you. Not right now. You go on a TikTok or anything. You see a video that everybody has seen.
But it, they filter it. They choose, pick and choose some that they want you to watch and filter. The ones you do, they do not want you to watch. Hey, right now you’re being filtered. You’re being censored, they’re being chosen. They choose what you watch and what you don’t watch. Right now it’s like that, but in the future, not only that, [00:32:00] but what they allow you to watch is produced just for you.
Dr. Mark Turman: Hmm. The message in that in many ways is, is that we are all being discipled by something and by someone. And we know from a biblical perspective that the devil has an agenda for us, right? Yeah. He, he wants to keep us from hearing the gospel. He wants to keep us from believing in the gospel.
And if he can’t be successful in that, he wants to keep us distracted. Away from the gospel and from the mission and ministry that Christ has invited us to be a part of. We know he has an agenda and it’s likely that many others behind him not everybody, but many others have agendas as well. Exactly.
Of one sort or another. Lemme turn this around, Hormoz in a way and ask you to respond to this, which is what can’t AI not do? What is it not capable of? How do we, how would we think about it? In that way? [00:33:00]
Dr. Hormoz Shariat: It’s, and the capability is growing, but AI can never cast out demons. So what I’m referring to is the spirituality, the spiritual side of our lives, how we can impact people’s lives spiritually.
The, our, our prayer, of course, they’re beautiful prayers that AI produces, and you read and you touched. These are good prayers. They’re based on the scripture. Just ask a chat, GPT to produce a biblical prayer for a certain topic or concern that you have. It’s gonna do a great job because it’s based on the Bible.
But when you pray for people in person, nothing can, to imitate that and, and because there’s spiritual, even, even a robot can come and it could give the right prayers. It could give the, even, make you feel good. If a robot comes to pray for you, they would say [00:34:00] the right thing, the right biblical thing.
The prayer would be beautiful, beautiful prayer Out of the Bible. They pray for you, but there is a spiritual trans transaction. They, they can never get it. And that’s you cannot explain that when you, when, when I, you lay hands on somebody, some, something happens, something spiritual happens when you speak to somebody and you have a spirit.
They have a spirit. There is a, there is a transaction of spirit, spiritual things. So as AI is growing, be Christians. May have to move away from just knowledge to spirituality. Hmm.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, that’s so I was talking to a, a new friend of mine a pastor named Glenn m he was talking about that, wrote about that recently, that to understand that faith is not simply the retention of certain facts.
Yeah. It is not simply knowledge. It is something other than different. We don’t, we don’t have to say that it’s something bigger than, [00:35:00] it’s something different from. Simply the the retention, the learning of information or fact that’s a part of it. But faith is something else and relationship is something else.
I want to, in a moment, I want to talk to you a little bit about and get you to talk to us about the personification of AI and of technology. I wanna go down that road, but before we do even, even as we are recording this podcast, is information coming out that the United States Congress almost unanimously just passed a a bill that the president is likely to sign.
He has said that he will sign it. About the, the AI creation of what are called deep fake pictures, particularly nude pictures sometimes called revenge porn, that is already showing up on social media platforms and in other places that are driven by AI software in many ways. We live in a world [00:36:00] now where almost every single person seems to have a camera.
We are taking multiple pictures with our cell phones and other devices. We’re doing that all the time. I, I sometimes wonder if what’s going to cause the internet to collapse is going to be all of our pictures and videos. What do you think about the US government passing a law to try to stop things like revenge porn and particularly.
AI’s ability to make fake images and videos. We so many people live in the world of image and, and picture. Is that a good thing for the government to try to get some kind of a control around?
Dr. Hormoz Shariat: Of course. I, I believe it. It’s a good thing to pass a law. How much can you en enforce that law?
That’s questionable, but at least it gives a signal and maybe they can arrest a few people. But we technology and ai, it’s so [00:37:00] easy to hide. And your identity, and they, they could do that, but that, that’s a good step in the right direction, but it will not stop it completely. Like child, child pornography is, is a crime and it’s a good, it’s a good law and they, they catch people and it slows down that that type of activities.
But it doesn’t stop. And now with ai, hi. You know, with ai, not only you can hide your I identity for your protection. The criminals can hide their identity too. It’s so hard to, to find them. And who did this, who did this fake porn. Using your face. Yeah. Hmm.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. It seems, and it seems like we’re already seeing at least kind of the early indications of, of the response of people in the technological world who are creating tools.
That can expose if something fake is being created either in word or in image is [00:38:00] am am I right in understanding that that. That, that’s the counterbalance that’s already starting grow. Starting to grow. Is that right?
Dr. Hormoz Shariat: That’s right. You know, finding fake and it’s getting harder to realize between fake and re reality.
Even now. You watch last year, if you watch the video. Oh, that, that’s ai. That’s ai. And still you can for the most part, but right now, mark, there are some versions that coming out. You cannot say, is this real or is this ai? Yeah. And as it they get, it gets better. It’s gonna be harder to recognize, even with computers, it’s gonna be harder and harder to recognize between reality and fake.
Dr. Mark Turman: Hmm. Yeah. And hopefully they’ll, hopefully, there’ll be a whole lot of people that. Start creating technologies that help to identify those things. Because our, our general understanding just with the naked eye and everything won’t, you won’t be [00:39:00] able to see it. You won’t be able to tell it. It’ll be so high in quality.
Yeah. Which kind of brings me around. I I wanted to ask you from a Christian perspective to talk about. You’re talking about the emotional impact, even manipulation that AI will be more and more capable of. And there’s a whole conversation that is growing around the idea of the personification of ai, of, of, we talk about it as robots, but as people actually start.
Engaging with AI as if it were a real person and right. Developing emotional connections and possibly. Leading down roads of, of mental health that could be destructive. Just one thing I’m doing, trying to read things that can be helpful. I came across a book that’s recently been written by a professor named Ethan Molik at the Wharton School of Business, university of Pennsylvania.
The book is called Co [00:40:00] Intelligence living and Working with ai. I’ll put that in the show notes for this episode. But partway through the book, he says that he has four rules about AI or four principles. One of those is always invite AI into the table or in to the table and see what it can do.
Always be the human in the loop that your needs to be human. Guidance and involvement. But his third principle was interesting. He said, treat AI like a person, but tell it what kind of person it is. Let’s talk about that a moment. And then the last one is. Always assume that whatever version of AI you’re encountering or using today is the worst version you’re ever going to see.
The next version will always be better, stronger, and faster. But let’s go back and talk about treating AI like a person, but tell it what kind of a person it is. What are your thoughts, concerns about personifying various versions of ai?[00:41:00]
Dr. Hormoz Shariat: Talking about emotions and, you know, person personifying is talking about a relationship with a person. And of course AI is not a person, but people emotionally can get attached. And it’s easy. It has to, you have to be conscientious. I mean conscious that, that, oh, this is a machine. People. We human, we humans, we get attached emotionally to non-living things.
Sometimes some people get attached to the car. They put a name on their car and they have a feeling for that car. Really. And of course, dogs, you know, they are not human, but how they love us. Sure,
Dr. Mark Turman: yeah.
Dr. Hormoz Shariat: Love us unconditionally. How they forgive their, how they treat us. We know they’re not humans, but kind of you get emotionally attached to that dog.
When I use AI and I ask a question, always [00:42:00] the first paragraph, it’s so positive, encouraging. Hey, hormo, you’re so intelligent to ask these kind of questions. You, you get a feeling, okay. And when it’s continuous, you like that. You like somebody who answering you starts with such a positive thing. And you have to be careful not to emotionally get attached.
But as a human, you like that, right? You like somebody say good things about you. So it’s easy to connect emotionally even to non-living things, that that’s our weakness as humans.
Dr. Mark Turman: Okay. Yeah, so we just, we have to remember what’s real and what’s not and what’s, what’s truly human and what is not, and especially in a world that is already struggling with very, very deep levels of mental illness.
Deep, deep experiences of isolation even in a hyper technological world. The technology in some ways seems to be driving different aspects of [00:43:00] isolation. People are choosing in many ways to relate to and through technology rather than directly and personally with other people in the context of a local church or within other community aspects.
But it’s a very different life and reality to deal with real people as opposed to dealing with virtual realities that, that are all around us today. Hermo, I wonder with just a few minutes left to talk about a few other things how are you using AI in ministries and in ministry today?
And do you have any suggestions for how. Individual believers, churches, pastors might use AI in a positive and redemptive way.
Dr. Hormoz Shariat: Yes. Of course AI is, is a tool and we gotta use it as a tool and it’s, it’s gonna enhance our. Our ministry. It’s not gonna replace our ministry, but it’s gonna be a great tool for us to do our job.
I mean, [00:44:00] in our ministry we are growing in the use of ai. We just had a meeting couple weeks ago to bring two more areas that our team AI team can implement AI to. Why, so we can, we can serve the PE people better. That that’s the goal. It, it’s a tool that you can serve the people better. And I can give you many, many examples.
First is that personally, I, I use it for study and for understanding, for research, research a topic. When I wa do a sermon I, I help, I get help from ai. Sometimes I say, what is the science or psychologist? Say about this. I wanna know what’s in the field. I, I know about the Bible, but I don’t know much about the same topic.
How does the science and psychologists look at it and what solutions they have? So it helps my sermon to be better and and to to compare it to, to the Bible. But, a better service to our viewers. You know, we have 7 million [00:45:00] viewers every day, and there are thousands every day who contact us, and we have counselors who answer them.
Some. Some of ’em are non-believers asking questions. Some of them have personal problem, marriage problem, addiction, whatever problem they’re asking for help and guidance, and we don’t have enough people to really serve all of that in high quality. In a deep way. Mm-hmm. So we are using AI first as a helper to our counselors that they can, if they don’t know a topic, they can, they can get a help right away.
But but AI could really, I. Help them, at least at the, at the forefront. You know, that’s the help them, the first few steps when they ask a question that the answer is already, we already have the answer. They could interact with ai. May I say sometimes better than humans. I mean, I know that’s controversial.
I know. Sure. But let me, let me explain why I say that. Humans, [00:46:00] we are moody. I mean, our counselors, they might be tired. We have done this for y, for we for for hours. They’re tired. And when we are tired, we have a shorter patience, right? But AI never gets tired, always kind, always patient, always inquisitive.
And and sometimes we are moody. You know, we humans are moody and one day we’re very happy, very positive. One day we have problems. And the same with counselors. We have trained our counselors. They’re good. I’m so proud of them. But what AI could really help. Take care of the people and the cases that maybe they decide, okay, I’m gonna pass this on to a human for prayer.
That spiritual side, if they’re asking questions and guidance, most of the time, AI could give that. But if they wanna, human relationship or special prayer, as I, I shared that when you get to spirituality, there is a, there’s a spiritual world and our, our [00:47:00] spirit has power. We have the authority In the spiritual world, AI doesn’t have it.
The robots don’t have that. So when it gets to that spiritual domain of serving people then nobody, nothing can replace a human being. So it’s going to help us with all these people coming in, serving to a certain point and give them a few reasonable number of persons to our counselor so they can go deeper with them.
That that’s one way we are using it multiple ways.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. So there’s a lot to learn. Yeah. And that’s one thing that we all need to understand is, is that there is a lot to learn, but theologically, biblically we can say that computers and, and technologies will never be. More important to God than we are.
That’s clear from the book of Genesis on that there’ll be a lot for us to learn and there will certainly be some mistakes and yeah. Some of those mistakes could be very, very detrimental. Yeah. But that’s been true of virtually [00:48:00] every technology that human beings have ever been. Enabled and allowed to create.
That’s true. We could talk about many examples the atomic bomb and other things like that. But we know that God has given us as human beings, enormous abilities and agency to create some amazing things that can also be used for evil. And yes we have to pray for that. Pray for guidance in that one of the reasons God wants us to pray for our leaders.
And for it says all people in authority is because there are human beings that have tremendous capabilities and tremendous potential to do either good or harm. And so we need to pray about all these things. But, you know, AI can also be used in miraculous redemptive ways. Would recommend our audience to visit the Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC If you never have.
One of the things that is being greatly aided by AI is the development of Bible translations [00:49:00] into every every heart language in the world. A project that might take somewhere between 50 and a hundred years just five, 10 years ago, is now being significantly accelerated because of the use of AI and its ability to understand.
Properly the language of, of people, groups and dialects and to actually put the Bible into their heart language. Some of the amazing advances and acceleration of that because of AI are just astounding. And so you can kind of see how the great commission of Christ could possibly be accelerated.
As the church uses AI tools in redemptive ways and so things like that. Horus thank you for being a part of this conversation and for lending your expertise. I want to again, just recommend that you go and discover more about Horus and about his ministry into the Middle [00:50:00] East, and particularly into Iran.
The website will be in the show notes. Again, that is Iran alive.org. Would encourage you to learn about that, to pray about that, to engage with Mose and his ministry. And we want to thank you as always for being a part of our conversation. If this has been helpful to you, please pass it on to family and friends and rate us on your platform that helps other people to find us and to follow us as you are.
Thank you. God bless you. We’ll see you next time on the. Forum podcast.
Dr. Hormoz Shariat: Thank you.
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