Artificial intelligence continues to dominate American lives, with new technologies transforming the way people interact with brands, the internet, and others.
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Nick Skytland, vice president of faith-based AI company Gloo, recently explained why his organization is on a mission to explore the impact of artificial intelligence and how it combats the Christian worldview.
Gloo recently launched Flourishing AI, a project that studies benchmarks for how faith is perpetuated and treated in the AI field.
Skytland argues that mainstream AI models, even when given faith-based prompts, default to popular or secular advice rather than Biblical or Christian guidance.
“Gloo is a technology company serving the faith ecosystem, and in July we had published some research that we called Flourishing AI,” Skytland said. “And it’s just a benchmark that’s really based on the seven dimensions of human flourishing, based on a lot of research that’s out there.”
Gloo focuses on understanding the Christian worldview and how this dynamic manifests through various AI tools.
“We truly believe this has the potential to be the first comprehensive framework of its kind to measure the alignment of AI to human flourishing based on a true Biblical worldview,” Skytland said.
The researcher said he tends to be a “half-optimist” and believes “AI is incredible” and holds a lot of promise. However, there are some caveats and concerns.
“I think what we really need to understand here is that AI has built-in biases,” Skytland said. “It has an inherently hidden worldview built in, especially for the average user.”
This is why Gloo has gone so deep into trying to identify what’s going on within AI frameworks.
“This is what we are trying to understand with the rise of AI benchmarks, uncovering structural biases and then thinking about what that means from a Christian worldview,” he said.
Because AI operates based on the data it is fed and trained on, it may not be able to express things through a biblical framework.
“This is…a very great technology. But as Christians, we should ask ourselves: ‘Does it represent my values?'” he said. “If not, how should I approach it? What do I think about it?”
Skytland said these issues are most evident when Christians ask AI questions about theology and relationships.
“Not surprisingly, faith and spirituality remain the most challenging aspects of all the frontier models we see,” he said. “This is a very important point, but we don’t just measure it in dimensions. We consider how our faith affects humanity.”
Despite these challenges, Skytland said he believes “the model is improving.” Despite continuing challenges, AI experts encouraged parents and educators, pointing to a “huge opportunity for Christians.” See what he said above.
Learn more about Gloo’s Flourishing AI Christian (FAI-C) Benchmark, which “assesses whether AI systems support human flourishing through a distinctly Christian worldview,” according to a press release.
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