Ep. 28: A.I. – WHAT TO EMBRACE AND WHAT TO AVOID w/ Jon Morrison

Andrew Marcus:

Hey, this is Andrew Marcus from THE INDOUBT SHOW. We have a fantastic show for us today. We have Jon Morrison. He is the founder and lead consultant of a company called Get Clear, a marketing firm. And we just love this guy. We love that he is in the world and he is light and salt in his community. He’s been a pastor in the past for 10 years and God’s doing great things through him today. And so we’re going to be talking about AI, artificial intelligence and I think it’s an important conversation that we need to keep having because things keep changing and we need to learn how to adapt, what to accept, what to walk away from.

Is all AI bad? Is all AI good? There’s two different camps. Some people embrace everything. Some people run from everything. And so we want to talk with Jon about it. He’s studied AI intensely and has some good insight for us that we could hopefully take away from and just kind of have a biblical perspective of AI. Now, there’s going to be other voices in the room. We have Brendan with us, who’s our video guy. We have Chris, who’s our audio guy. We’re all talking with Jon in studio and we’re going to be doing that more often in weeks to come. And so we’re just getting comfortable with it, but it’s a great conversation. We hope you enjoy it. God bless.

Our guest, who’s one of my dear, dear friends, I love this guy so much, Jon Morrison, is a good friend of mine. Apologist, entrepreneur, holds an MA in apologetics and a master of business. Worked as a pastor. Was that at Coquitlam Alliance for 10 years or where were you working for 10-

Jon Morrison:

A little time in Coquitlam Alliance and then over the bridge in Maple Ridge for a little while.

Andrew Marcus:

Oh, yeah. Maple Ridge. That’s right. That’s right. So ladies and gentlemen, welcome. We can get some applause here. This is Jon Morrison.

Brendan de la Rambelje:

That’s my microphone. He took my microphone.

Andrew Marcus:

Yay, yay, and so you do notice that his mic is different.

Jon Morrison:

Sorry, Brendan.

Brendan de la Rambelje:

It’s okay.

Andrew Marcus:

This mic is significantly better and not to say that Jon is significantly better, but-

Brendan de la Rambelje:

He probably is.

Andrew Marcus:

Well-

Jon Morrison:

Right.

Andrew Marcus:

But if you’re watching and you feel like, “You know what? I feel called to financially give to a ministry,” we could really use another mic. So it’s about 500 or 600 bucks.

Brendan de la Rambelje:

This isn’t terrible.

Andrew Marcus:

It’s not terrible.

Brendan de la Rambelje:

It is about 500 or 600-

Andrew Marcus:

But these ones are a little bit more directional. Chris is the audio guy. You can tell us. This just-

Chris Bredeson:

Do we want to get into the-

Andrew Marcus:

Get into the specifics? I really feel like they need to know. No, but these are just more directional?

Chris Bredeson:

Yes.

Andrew Marcus:

So they don’t get any of the bleed?

Chris Bredeson:

Yes.

Andrew Marcus:

And so if you feel like contributing financially, we could really use the support because we need one more of these, actually two more.

Chris Bredeson:

I am not important.

Brendan de la Rambelje:

Let’s just buy four in case.

Andrew Marcus:

No, we need two more because Chris should have one too and then we don’t have to worry about all the audio bleeds. Anyways, if you feel led. But, Jon, how are you?

Jon Morrison:

Doing great. I think we could probably listen to your songs on Spotify a little more and then get a few more mics, do you think?

Andrew Marcus:

That’s true, yeah, .004¢ per stream.

Jon Morrison:

I put that on repeat on Spotify.

Andrew Marcus:

That’s what it is.

Jon Morrison:

Just send the Marcus family cheques. I just tell my kids to put on Spotify on repeat, abide in me and-

Andrew Marcus:

Come on, man. I’m almost ready to get a 5¢ candy. I’m just waiting, this is the dang tax. That’s the candy tax.

Brendan de la Rambelje:

You are with me, bro.

Andrew Marcus:

Oh, you’re with me.

Jon Morrison:

You are with me.

Andrew Marcus:

Oh, that’s amazing, but you’re doing well.

Jon Morrison:

I’m with you.

Andrew Marcus:

“And I with you,” says Jon.

Brendan de la Rambelje:

In the middle of the ring-

Andrew Marcus:

I’m happy, he knows the lyrics. That’s pretty good.

Brendan de la Rambelje:

I love that song. It’s a great song.

Andrew Marcus:

Thanks, bro. So you’re doing well.

Jon Morrison:

Doing well.

Andrew Marcus:

I’m so pumped that-

Jon Morrison:

Better than I deserve.

Andrew Marcus:

I’m so pumped that you’re here with us and I’m so pumped that we all got to just connect with you. We’re talking about something very interesting today. We’re talking about artificial intelligence and you have done a lot of research and study on AI. Did you use AI for your studies?

Jon Morrison:

It did help. It did help. A true Jedi never reveals where he’s using his AI unless pushed. And so in this case, it does help. I use AI like a research assistant a little bit. And who’s going to argue about a research assistant? They’re healthy, they’re great, they’re helpful. Save you time.

Andrew Marcus:

100%.

Jon Morrison:

More time with your kids, less time at work. AI, it would help me.

Andrew Marcus:

There’s a lot of benefits.

Jon Morrison:

Especially putting that bio together. Yeah, it was helpful. I learned stuff about myself that I could-

Andrew Marcus:

Wait. So you’d done a TED Talk?

Jon Morrison:

Yes. Yes, I did do a TED Talk.

Andrew Marcus:

Tell me a little bit about that because that’s a big deal.

Jon Morrison:

Yeah, growing up, I always loved stages. I saw a microphone in a stage and I was like, “Could I have five minutes there? Do you think?”

Andrew Marcus:

He was actually walking by our building and saw the little sticker of a microphone. He is like, “Hey, could I? Could I?”

Jon Morrison:

Yeah, I was just handing out tracks and I thought, “These guys could probably use some help, I think.”

Andrew Marcus:

“I think they could.”

Jon Morrison:

I don’t actually know this guy.

Andrew Marcus:

The AI made the bio. I was like, “Oh, I’m really good friends with them, I guess.”

Jon Morrison:

Didn’t know I was friends with a recording artist either. That’s perfect. No, yeah, I did a TED Talk just … I always wanted to be a part of that, but as a preacher, TED and preachers don’t really connect too well, so I needed something else. And slowly as I was developing my voice in the marketplace, found something to talk about, it wasn’t the opposite of probably the most important TED Talk, which was Simon Sinek’s Start With Why. And I was like, “I don’t think Start With Why is that, I think Start With Who,” so changed the letter just by one and that was my TED talk.

Andrew Marcus:

Oh, wow. Cool.

Jon Morrison:

So yeah, it was really fun to do, great experience, and then out of that, the idea seemed to resonate with people, so I wrote a book on it and that became my voice in what I would say about being a Christian in business and the heart of business, is really to serve people. So got into that and then grew a business out of that idea that business is about serving other people. And so rather than focusing on a why, which is more about me and what I want to do, focus on a who, which is somebody that needs some help and that was the thrust of my TED Talk and the book …

Andrew Marcus:

Cool.

Jon Morrison:

… and then how I show up in business every day, is to serve people. So very similar to what I was doing as a pastor, right?

Andrew Marcus:

Yeah.

Jon Morrison:

You’re there to serve people, to equip people, equip the saints for works of service as Ephesians tells us and that’s what I think businesses do as well. Business leaders equip people to make it through their day and reduce their problems and increase their joy or convenience in some way so they have more time to do the things they really want to do.

Andrew Marcus:

Yeah, that’s really huge. It’s a good reminder for all of us who are watching on online or listening on the audio world, you can be in ministry outside of the four walls of the church. So now you’re doing great ministry work in the business world.

Jon Morrison:

Yeah, it’s certainly fun to meet people. As a pastor, I was always like, “We got to talk to our friends about Jesus and meet people.” And the truth is I didn’t have a ton of nonbelieving friends and I still only have a few, but at least, now I know that there’s a relationship there. It’s tough to have friends when you have kids under eight, right?

Andrew Marcus:

Yeah. I’m like, “What’s a friend?”

Jon Morrison:

Yeah, so I have clients instead and they pay to talk to me and I get to share with them about my life and stuff.

Andrew Marcus:

Awesome. That’s a good way. That’s a good around that.

Jon Morrison:

Totally, that’s a way to do it.

Andrew Marcus:

“Hanging out with my client.”

Jon Morrison:

Yeah. We were actually at dinner the other night and we were hanging out with a bunch of couples and the server said, “So how do you guys know each other?” and I go, “Well, these are the friends … So my kids have friends and these are their parents.”

Andrew Marcus:

Yeah, exactly, “That’s my only friends.”

Jon Morrison:

And those are the people I meet at drop off and pickup and stuff. So anyways, that’s friendship in a post-COVID world, I guess. But the truth is, when I show up at work, the 9:00 to 5:00 or whatever the hours are, as an entrepreneur, it’s always a little wild, I get to meet all these people that I would’ve never have met in the church. And so it’s a huge opportunity to be salt and light and to do business ethically and in God’s way and then have opportunities to share my faith, because for some reason, they always want to know what I used to do before I did this.

Andrew Marcus:

Yeah, so perfect-

Jon Morrison:

The topic of being a preacher comes up.

Andrew Marcus:

Yeah, that’s perfect. So you’ve been passionate about AI and been studying a lot about AI. Why?

Jon Morrison:

Yeah, I think it was needed personally. AI is a topic that I found that, when you just bring it up, most of the times, it’s more how people react is a reflection of the movies and shows that they watch as a kid, less about what AI actually is. So I just found myself very scared of AI and antagonistic. Some of the feature movies, the formative movies of my childhood were Terminator and Terminator 1, Terminator 1, 2, 3, 4, it just kept going. But as Terminator matured as a movie series, that was my growth. So I couldn’t figure out why I was always concerned about AI so much and I realized, well, most of the warnings that came from the Terminator were things that I was projecting onto AI, so then I started to hear about all the advantages of it, right?

So ChatGPT comes out in November 30th and I’ve been dabbling with some of the tools at work because marketers and entrepreneurs have to be at the front of trying stuff out for our clients for sake too because we’re getting asked it all the time. So I had to be able to give an answer. Then ChatGPT came out on November 30th, 2022, and all of a sudden, my whole Twitter feed for the rest of my life is now all about this AI technology. So at the same time, I found, it was during a Christmas break and then I actually had a surgery where I was on a recliner for a few weeks, that’s another whole story, but I basically was a hockey player growing up, and at 40, couldn’t tie my own shoes anymore, so I had to get hip replacement surgery.

Andrew Marcus:

What? Are you serious?

Jon Morrison:

Yeah, I’m in my 40s. So literally, I showed up at the hospital and every single person from the lady who checked me in to the lady who gave me the gown to the people who gave me the drugs and stuff that knocked me out to the surgeon himself said, “Why are you here? You’re way too young.” I was like, “Well, I think they told me to come here. Is this the right place?” So anyways, I found myself in a recliner for two weeks and then not doing much for a month and just went deep dive into, “What is this all about?” and learned about the different layers. So when we’re talking about artificial intelligence, we’re not just talking about Skynet creating robots that are going to eventually take over the Earth.

It’s like there’s actually many nuanced layers of what AI is and I just started to realize, “Now that I’ve been settled, my heart knows what AI is and where it’s ethical and where it’s scary and what stuff to avoid and what’s stuff to fully embrace, now I’m just seeing it all the time and I’m seeing other people sharing their fears or resisting it.” And in business at least is where is the field that I play in, I’m just realizing there’s a huge missed opportunity. So imagine power tools come out and you’re like, “Oh, power tools. I heard bad stuff about power tools. I prefer giving it a good, using my arms.” And you’re like, “I’m not sure ethically that power tools is a thing. If someone hires me to do the job, do they really want electricity and me doing the job?” and so then all of a sudden you resist it and you say, “I’m not going to use power tools because I want to be more ethical and have integrity and say that, ‘This is me doing the work, not me and the electricity.'”

So what’s going to happen? Well, you’re going to be slower doing it. It’s going to cost the client more to do it, because if you’re charging by the hour, it’s going to be 10 times longer to work by hand rather than with power tools. So it’s going to be more expensive, it’s going to be slower, less efficient and some other guy’s going to come up and say, “Hey, I can do that same job for a fraction of the price and a fraction of the time, and with all the same quality.” Who’s going to continue on in longevity? It’s going to be the guy that can do it faster and for cheaper. And he’s going to make more profit out of it probably, so he’s going to do better and he’s going to have more time. And how he chooses to use his time is between him and his Creator and his wife, but-

Andrew Marcus:

In that order.

Jon Morrison:

In that order, yeah. But yeah, it’s a tool, right? And there was tools that I was using like, “Hey, I will take your video from 1080 to 4k.” Geeks would only know what I’m talking about. Sorry, if you know what I’m talking about, I don’t mean you’re a geek, but you’re among the elites.

Andrew Marcus:

I’m like, “Whoa, whoa, I know what he’s talking about.”

Brendan de la Rambelje:

I’m among the elite. You hear that, Andrew.

Andrew Marcus:

This guy’s among the elite.

Jon Morrison:

To take it really down because I know we’ll talk about anything, but from 1080 to 4k is a big jump in quality and I had delivered a video in 1080 and I thought, “Oh my goodness. Either I’m going to look really bad because my client now wants it like, ‘Could you just deliver that in 4k?'” So I didn’t know what to do, found a tool that used AI to get it from 1080 to 4k in two hours. And so instead of having to redo everything because I had made this mistake that made me look bad, now I was able to say it to the client, “Yup, I’ll have that ready for you, no problem, as soon as the bar finishes, right?” He didn’t know that, but I knew that I was using an AI tool.

Andrew Marcus:

And if he’s watching?

Jon Morrison:

And if he’s watching, then, well, this is confession time.

Brendan de la Rambelje:

There you go.

Jon Morrison:

I used AI technology to make that product better.

Brendan de la Rambelje:

“That’s right. I’ll say it.”

Jon Morrison:

Now I’m going to a friend or talking around, let’s say, picking up my kids, we’re at the playground with some dads and I’m like, “Hey, I used AI today,” and all of a sudden they’re looking at me likr I just did the mark of the beast or something. I’m using AI. So then I realized, “Well, the public hasn’t quite figured out, caught up about what AI is. Totally fine, harmless like using a power tool,” and what stuff is government surveillance and then they’re going to send the armed robots after you to shoot you because you jaywalked or something like that, right? That’s the stuff. We’re not for that.

Chris Bredeson:

Well, I’m not going to sleep tonight.

Andrew Marcus:

Yeah, I was like, “Oh-“

Brendan de la Rambelje:

Ugly specific bad dreams.

Andrew Marcus:

Do you know about something that-

Jon Morrison:

The Terminator was a formative movie in my development and now I’m realizing it’s a horror movie. How did I get away with watching? That is another question I have for the counselors this afternoon.

Andrew Marcus:

This afternoon, “Right out there across the street.”

Jon Morrison:

We just have a standing appointment.

Andrew Marcus:

A standing appointment. That’s amazing. Okay, you have some statistics here about ChatGPT hitting a hundred million users worldwide.

Jon Morrison:

Yeah, ChatGPT told me that. No, I’m just kidding. It’s its own biggest fan. No-

Andrew Marcus:

Was it like the telephone?

Jon Morrison:

Like I said, it was a formative day on November 30th when ChatGPT became available to the public and the time that it took for it to hit a hundred million users is astounding, two months. Whereas the adaptation of the telephone took 75 years to get a hundred million. TikTok, I think was …

Andrew Marcus:

Nine months.

Jon Morrison:

… nine months.

Andrew Marcus:

Instagram, 2.5 years. ChatGPT 2 months.

Jon Morrison:

Right. So something different happened that day that will forever change how we engage with AI or language models, but AI is such a umbrella term and ChatGPT is just one lane of AI, artificial intelligence.

Andrew Marcus:

We used ChatGPT for one of our episodes where we wrote a song and it wrote the song in 30 seconds and I’m like, “There goes, my career. Game over,” because the song, it was a good song.

Jon Morrison:

It was good, I’ll say.

Andrew Marcus:

It was actually really good. You can check it out, “Bald Egyptian Friend”.

Jon Morrison:

Chris Tomlin’s sitting there shaking too and he’s-

Andrew Marcus:

He’s quivering in his boots and he’s like, “Oh no.” I was going to make a joke, but I shouldn’t. So I do love Chris Tomlin. He’s a great guy.

Jon Morrison:

He is.

Andrew Marcus:

Yeah, so it took only two months, which is actually shocking to get a hundred million people.

Jon Morrison:

Shocking.

Andrew Marcus:

But obviously people are engaging with it. We tried it. It took me an hour to figure out how to use ChatGPT.

Jon Morrison:

What?

Andrew Marcus:

Remember when we were trying to figure out-

Brendan de la Rambelje:

Oh yeah.

Andrew Marcus:

And you’re like, “All right, just cut to commercial.” We don’t have commercials because we don’t have sponsors.

Brendan de la Rambelje:

I guess-

Andrew Marcus:

So if you want to help us financially, you can.

Brendan de la Rambelje:

I think you were trying to figure it out on your iPad.

Andrew Marcus:

Yeah, yeah, it was my iPad.

Brendan de la Rambelje:

But yeah, it was the iPad.

Andrew Marcus:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Stupid technology.

Brendan de la Rambelje:

Stupid tech.

Andrew Marcus:

Anyway, so I couldn’t get it. When we finally got it, we got it to work and it does crazy things. ChatGPT does crazy things.

Chris Bredeson:

I used it to write copy for my website.

Jon Morrison:

Totally.

Chris Bredeson:

And it was super effective and it was fast, yeah.

Jon Morrison:

And I used to do website copy for people. So if people are like, “Oh, Jon’s on the AI sides.” It’s like, “No, my industry was completely disrupted where people don’t need me anymore,” which is why I’m here during work hours.

Andrew Marcus:

That’s actually-

Brendan de la Rambelje:

That’s crazy you say that. I was going to hire somebody to do copy for my website.

Jon Morrison:

Totally.

Brendan de la Rambelje:

And then I was like, “I’ll just try it,” and I was like, “This is amazing.”

Jon Morrison:

So the personal side of that was that- that same time when I said I had time.

Andrew Marcus:

Yeah, this is crazy.

Jon Morrison:

The phone wasn’t ringing and it’s not like my family’s impoverished or whatever, that we could use a sponsor too actually.

Andrew Marcus:

Yeah, if you go to jonmorrison.com … Just kidding.

Jon Morrison:

But the truth is, I said, “Rather than whine about this taking my job or whatever, I’m going to find a way to adapt,” which is what? When you’re an entrepreneur, you have to do it. You have to read the market and the market was slowly closing, the need for writers …

Andrew Marcus:

Wow.

Jon Morrison:

… and even strategists or whatever, and all of a sudden, AI was replacing it. So I wanted to get in front of it and say, “I better figure this out because it’s coming for more than just me. I want to be a leader in this movement rather than just be a Luddite that just rallies against it.” Because I realized that, if you know history enough, people always complain about technology, right? You have a pastor on a stage complaining and warning people about technology. Meanwhile, he’s using a microphone that’s amplifying his voice, a form of technology. You can see him better because of lights, electricity, also a form of technology and he is broadcasting it for the internet, also a form of technology, all things that we’re resisted at first, but then fully embraced later.

So I think if we watch this in five years, which heck, I’m impressed that people watch it for five minutes, they’re still watching, but five years later, if we’re watching this, we’re like, “What did we think?”

Andrew Marcus:

Ouch. Is that a …

Jon Morrison:

Kidding.

Andrew Marcus:

… specific slam for us or just the attention span of young adults?

Jon Morrison:

The attention span, of course.

Brendan de la Rambelje:

Why did you invite him on the show?

Andrew Marcus:

Well, he was walking across the street.

Jon Morrison:

And I was handing on tracks. There’s an open door.

Andrew Marcus:

He was literally-

Jon Morrison:

I needed something to do during business hours.

Andrew Marcus:

AI took over his job. He’s got nothing to do, man.

Brendan de la Rambelje:

Okay, fair. Fair enough.

Jon Morrison:

What else am I going to do? But anyways.

Andrew Marcus:

But I feel like with, and we’ll get to transitioning later into a biblical perspective of how we need to protect ourselves and what’s good, what’s bad, but with lights or with microphones, correct me if I’m wrong, but I feel like it’s a hard comparison because no one can use … Oh, I guess people could use a microphone wrongly or a light wrongly, of course, but don’t you feel like with ChatGPT or where things are going, the damage that could be done when used in the wrong hands because men are sinful, humanity is sinful, I feel like the dangers are significantly more than someone who created the light bulb.

Jon Morrison:

Yeah, I 100% agree with you. In the wrong hands, technology will do terrible things.

Andrew Marcus:

And the phone started off great.

Jon Morrison:

Social media.

Andrew Marcus:

And now look at the addiction to pornography, it took a nasty turn, so maybe there was some dangers or some fears that people had that actually were legitimate dangers and fears.

Jon Morrison:

Yeah, 100% agree with you. In fact, I think the stupid thing about the way our world is that every time new technology comes out, porn follows it right after, right? So every time there’s new anything, someone brings pornography into it. So it’s like, “Hey, new technology,” and porn is there.

Andrew Marcus:

Yeah. That’s terrible.

Jon Morrison:

As a Christians, we know why that’s the case. So we’re not confused, we’re not surprised by it. It’s like we know the hearts of men are going to err towards sinful behavior. So when fire is invented, right? Someone’s like, “Wow, this can cook the meat, so we don’t have to just eat raw meat and get sick all the time in this church, right?” I don’t know why you did, but that could be theory.

Andrew Marcus:

Was it undercooked meat?

Brendan de la Rambelje:

Boom, roasted, I’m in non-COVID count.

Andrew Marcus:

Not roasted actually.

Jon Morrison:

Not roasted. Raw, salmonella. Boom, salmonella. That’s-

Brendan de la Rambelje:

Boom, salmonella.

Andrew Marcus:

Boom, salmonella. Boom, under roasted.

Jon Morrison:

So that’s the problem, fire is like, “Well, do you think maybe we could make meat amazing or we could also burn a house down or burn someone down or just burn our hand.” They invent the knife. It’s like, “Wow, this could cut a cancer out of your body in the hands of a skilled surgeon,” but it could also stab someone multiple times, right? So that’s what a knife can do. Well, should we reject knives because they can murder people in the name of being able to cut through the very meat that you just use technology of fire to cook. So there’s no doubt in my mind that AI is going to do some nasty stuff, but the reason why we have civilizations with structured laws and regulations is to protect the world.

It’s one of God’s graces, the government and laws and good government is to protect its people. So that’s why you have things like in the EU right now. They’re making a list of all the different kinds of AI, the stuff that’s banned and the stuff that’s totally safe and all the stuff that’s in the middle.

Andrew Marcus:

In a Christian perspective and in a biblical perspective, I see obviously man trying to intervene and create the brain or trying to figure out how God … but they just can’t do that fully because the brain’s made in the image of God.

Jon Morrison:

Now also remember, sorry to cut you off the hook.

Andrew Marcus:

No, no, no, no, I love it. Do it all the time.

Jon Morrison:

So they’ve been trying to do this in other places too, right? They’ve been trying to figure out how could the Earth have started without God, right? And we haven’t gotten anywhere. We don’t know how to do it. We create multiverses. It’s fairytale stories, right? So maybe it’s like this, but they still don’t know how the origin of the world came about. They still don’t know how the origin of life happened. So that moment when things went from just inorganic to completely organic, when that spark of life came, we don’t know when that came.

Andrew Marcus:

All fairy tales.

Jon Morrison:

And we’re trying to study it. We’re trying to figure it out. We’re coming out with alternative theories, but there’s not a single definitive. The science tells us that, “This is exactly how life started.” Can’t figure out that time, a singularity in time again. The other thing, they can’t figure out when human beings, as we know it, started, right? So there’s no scientific consensus in the community. All this years and research and time and effort and fighting, nobody knows when human beings actually started. Same thing with I think the brain. We’re going to be afraid of … Imagine people not using … Okay, so if you’re an anti-AI person, you’re basically saying, “I’m against Netflix. I’m boycotting Netflix.” Why? Netflix uses AI when they say, “Because you liked this,” and I won’t say the shows, that might-

Andrew Marcus:

What are you watching?

Chris Bredeson:

What’s on Andrew’s Netflix?

Jon Morrison:

“Because you watch this, we think you might”-

Andrew Marcus:

Honestly, Peppa Pig, Paw Control.

Jon Morrison:

I was going to say-

Andrew Marcus:

Cocomelon.

Jon Morrison:

You might consider Bluey actually, which honestly, if kids want to watch Bluey, I’m all for unlimited screen time-

Andrew Marcus:

Unlimited screen time. Amazing.

Jon Morrison:

“So because you watch this, you might like this,” that’s AI. If you’ve ever used …

Andrew Marcus:

Amazon.

Jon Morrison:

… Amazon, “Because you bought this, other people like this.” It’s just using artificial intelligence. It’s taking from a data set, now a trillion different parameters that they can use, and then saying, “We know that when people buy this, the data tells us that they’re probably going to buy this as well.” That’s AI. So if you’re an anti-AI person, no Netflix, no Amazon shopping and no Google searching. Sorry.

Brendan de la Rambelje:

I’m pro-AI.

Jon Morrison:

Because what Google’s doing is Google’s just saying, “Look, when people are searching for stuff you just entered from where you are, this is what they like best and we’ve been tracking that for years. We track how long they stay on that screen, how long they scroll, do they click through. And if they click through, that means they must like it. So that means that we’re going to boost that next time someone’s searching for that exact same thing. And if you’re searching for it, we know that you like this kind of stuff.”

Andrew Marcus:

Absolutely.

Brendan de la Rambelje:

It’s TikTok.

Jon Morrison:

And now you’re on off social media too because social media is using AI as well to boost its algorithm. So again, you’re now in a pretty small world, if you’re going to be an anti, I’m-scared-of-AI person. What you’re really probably scared of is what all of us are scared of is the …

Andrew Marcus:

AGI.

Jon Morrison:

… AGI stuff. The narrow AI stuff is really just playground stuff that that’s going to help you improve your life, make things faster.

Andrew Marcus:

But they just know everything about … I know they’ve known everything about me for a long time-

Jon Morrison:

Yeah, but do you really think they care that much about what you’re doing? People are so scared about their data, their privacy and stuff. I’m like, “You have such a boring life. Follow me.” “Oh, Jon Morrison is in the Augustine area, of Abbotsford and he spent all day on the floor on Saturday playing with his kids and then he played hide and seek and this is his favorite locations around the main floor of his house,” and then it’s like, “Who cares about that? It’s so boring.”

Brendan de la Rambelje:

It depends on who’s … I think that was the legal battle with China and TikTok, right?

Andrew Marcus:

Totally.

Brendan de la Rambelje:

With China, if you’re talking about tyrannical-

Andrew Marcus:

Sure, sure.

Brendan de la Rambelje:

But-

Jon Morrison:

The China stuff, I get it. Especially some of in the communist country, again do you trust a nation like China? No. No more than I would trust a criminal with a knife, right?

Andrew Marcus:

Right.

Jon Morrison:

Because what China’s trying to get away with is surveillance in the social credit system, which if people are not aware of it, basically …

Brendan de la Rambelje:

That blows my mind.

Jon Morrison:

… it watches you throughout the day on cameras all around society and then gives you points for doing good things. You pick up some trash, you get a point. You walk an old lady across …

Andrew Marcus:

Are you kidding me?

Jon Morrison:

… the street, you get a point.

Brendan de la Rambelje:

I didn’t realize that.

Jon Morrison:

You’ve never heard of social credit?

Andrew Marcus:

No, I’ve heard of social credit, but I didn’t know if you’re getting points of the game-

Jon Morrison:

You drop the trash, you lose a point. So now if you’re in a deficit of points, someone can show up at your door and take you away. You don’t get to go to the sports games or something. Try to buy tickets online, you can’t get there because you don’t have enough credit. That kind of AI has been rejected in Europe actually. It will probably pass in five years from now, but however long it takes for laws to get through the EU, I don’t think it’s very fast. But that’s the banned AI that even guys in Europe are saying, “We’re not doing this.” So again, scary AI with China, but again, going back to the other stuff, it helps.

Andrew Marcus:

There’s some practical things to help us.

Chris Bredeson:

The thing with the social credit that I would find most annoying if it were to be implemented is I feel like every time I’m out in public doing something, I would have the Mario coin noise, “Ping,” whenever I picked up something.

Andrew Marcus:

If we did end up having that, where it’s like you go, you pick up, you get the coin sound, like Chris was saying, “Here’s the Mario coin.”

Chris Bredeson:

“Ping. Ping, ping.”

Andrew Marcus:

So it’s like you’re picking up garbage, you’re getting a point, you’re getting a point. Now it’s gone beyond, “I’m a Christian and I want to do good,” to, “Oh man, I just want points.”

Chris Bredeson:

“I need to improve my score.”

Andrew Marcus:

Yeah, “I need to improve my score, so I go the hockey game with my buddy.” So you know what I mean? You’re not even going to be like a Christian anymore. You just want to get good points, so you can go watch the hockey game later with your buddy.

Jon Morrison:

This is a Christian show, right? So I think the diversion of the Gospel is that we think that it is a social credit system. Whereas if I do enough things, if I say enough things, if I act this way or whatever, repeat all the things and I get credit amongst my peers and with God, but the reason why I love the Gospel so much is because Jesus was the one that did all the credit for you before the Father, so that the social credit system, if it actually was credit, you’d be in such a deficit, you could do anything. So I don’t think-

Andrew Marcus:

Oh, that’s such a good word, as Christians-

Brendan de la Rambelje:

I was going to say it’s a good skit, idea.

Andrew Marcus:

Totally.

Brendan de la Rambelje:

Improve your heaven points, your social heaven score.

Andrew Marcus:

Well, I used to live my whole life like that, right? It’s true.

Brendan de la Rambelje:

Yeah, it’s a real thing.

Jon Morrison:

As a public Christian, you’re doing it anyways. Even though the Gospel, you’ve received the Gospel, as a public figure, you still think, I have to be seen doing these things, saying these things and acting this certain way, which is it’s …

Andrew Marcus:

It’s not the gospel.

Jon Morrison:

… not the gospel, but as a public figure, you have to live in some sort of credit amongst people or else …

Brendan de la Rambelje:

Wow.

Jon Morrison:

… they start talking.

Brendan de la Rambelje:

Great word.

Andrew Marcus:

That’s a really, really good word, “We’d be in such a deficit.” Yeah, but Jon, thank you so much for your time. We love you, bro, and all the best to you and your ministry as you do ministry in the marketplace and God bless, you guys. Hope that was insightful and have a great week. We’ll see you next Monday. Hey, thanks so much for joining us today. For more great content, check out the INDOUBT Show on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music or wherever you stream your podcast. We hope you enjoyed it today. Feel free to check out indoubt.ca. We have some great resources available to you. Have an awesome day.