Matters of Life and Death

A new kind of artificial intelligence software has swept through the internet over the last year. Many are thrilled by the potential and power of AI which can generate by itself impressively creative text, images, sound and video. But others are sounding the alarm. Does this new generation of generative AI really pose a dire threat to humankind? What are the commercial and political pressures forcing tech firms to keep rolling out this unpredictable yet powerful software at breakneck speed? Will the Church’s role solely be to pick up the pieces of our broken public square and broken lives, or can we get ahead of the curve for once? And is all this not just a huge over-reaction to a flashy but relatively insignificant computing breakthrough? The Centre for Humane Technology’s video on generative AI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhYw-VlkXTU Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173 If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com  

More quickfire initial thoughts in response to questions from listeners. This week we discuss whether introverts are marginalised in the church, or actually disproportionately likely in the pulpit? We also consider how spirituality might play a role in healthcare, and in particular how Christian doctors could appropriately bring their faith into their surgeries. And finally, we wonder if a recent call by tech figures for a six-month pause on all AI research will actually mean anything. The article Tim mentions about chaplains embedded in general practice is here: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/doctors-order-chaplains-for-surgeries-r8xr2jgnk We’re going to start doing Q&A episodes like this a lot more often, in part to allow us to run the normal episodes in full over a single episode, rather than being split into two halves. So please do email us with feedback, questions, disagreements or any other thoughts to molad@premier.org.uk. Thank you!   Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173 If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

The non-religious are an ever-increasing segment of the population, in the UK, the United States and across the Western world. But what do they actually believe, and indeed not believe, in? In this episode we’re joined by evangelist and author Glen Scrivener to discuss the different spiritualities we encounter, especially among younger generations. Are all non-believers Richard Dawkins style naturalistic atheists, or is there a more complex and contradictory set of belief systems out there for those who don’t call themselves Christians? How should the church’s outreach shift to reflect the contemporary mores of Gen-Z and the pick-and-mix spiritualities they often espouse? And are modern social movements, whether ‘woke’ or ‘anti-woke’ functioning like religions without creeds? Glen's book from last year is called The Air We Breathe: How we all came to believe in Freedom, Kindness, Progress and Equality https://www.thegoodbook.co.uk/the-air-we-breathe     The Theos thinktank report on the non-religious: https://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/research/2022/10/31/the-nones-who-are-they-and-what-do-they-believe Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173 If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com  

In this second part of our effective altruism conversation, we explore the Christian sub-community within EA and ask whether the movement’s fundamental ideas are compatible with Christian tradition on giving. Is Christian EA a welcome challenge to our increasingly sentimental and selfish modes of charity, or has it actually missed the point on the nature of God? What can we learn from Biblical stories about compassion and giving, and what does truly Christian wisdom look like in this arena? Find out more about EA for Christians on their website here: https://www.eaforchristians.org/learn-more Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173 If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com  

A movement founded at the University of Oxford in 2009 has now captured the imagination – and the wallets – of some of the brightest and most successful across elite Western academic and business circles. Effective altruism, a 21st-century data-driven take on the philosophy of utilitarianism, claims we must give our time and money only to those causes which can be proven to increase the greatest amount of pleasure to the most people. Why has this eccentric community grown so fast, has it become unmoored from its original intentions, and what perverse incentives arise when we try to distil ethics into an algorithm? This Economist article asking if effective altruism has lost its way is well worth a read: https://www.economist.com/1843/2022/11/15/the-good-delusion-has-effective-altruism-broken-bad Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173 If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

In the second part of John’s webinar with Premier Unbelievable, he takes questions from listeners on everything from whether AI tech is inching us towards the end times to how families can stave off the destructive influence of smartphone addiction. Should the church be stepping up to both advocate for greater regulation of these technologies and help guide believers through the maze of chatbots and algorithms? Support Premier Unbelievable? and receive your 130 page e-book of John Wyatt & Lord Martin Rees' Big Conversation on Robotics, Transhumanism & AI: https://premierunbelievable.com/wyatt Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173 If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

We are taking a few weeks off over Easter but to give you something to chew on until normal service resumes, we’re uploading in two parts a webinar John took part in for Premier Unbelievable. Called ‘How to live faithfully in a technologically confusing world’, part one explores the staggering sophistication of the latest generation of AI chatbots and what ethical questions these might throw up for Christians. Support Premier Unbelievable? and receive your 130 page e-book of John Wyatt & Lord Martin Rees' Big Conversation on Robotics, Transhumanism & AI: https://premierunbelievable.com/wyatt For the AI article referenced on the show: https://www.premierunbelievable.com/articles/should-christians-be-concerned-about-the-rapid-advancements-in-artificial-intelligence/14631.article Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173 If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com  

God’s understanding of friendship is very different to the sexualised and suspicious framework society now inhabits. In this episode we take a lightning-quick tour through the Bible to consider what we can learn about friendship there – with God, between God’s people, and fundamentally lived out in the life of Jesus. What are the key themes which define a contemporary gospel-spared friendship today? Is it realistic to try to reimagine friendship in this way in the 21st-century? And what are the signs we should be looking out for which suggest a relationship may not be in line with this scriptural vision? Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173 If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

Somebody once said that in contemporary society we all want to ‘have sex with our friends, and be friends with our sexual partners’. There is a broad suspicion of intimate but non-sexual friendships, especially those which are intergenerational or cross the sexes. We are all supposed to be too cynical to believe that people might just be friends – surely it’s actually all about sex and power in some way? In this episode we try to unpick where the denigration of friendship came from in the modern Western world, and explore what impact this has on the Christian ideal of friendship. Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173 If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

To mark one year since Matters of Life and Death joined the Premier Unbelievable network, we have a special one-off episode answering some questions emailed in by listeners. We discuss everything from whether Christians should lean into the culture wars to resist growing social liberalism, to how far we might go in suffering to care for elderly family members, and even whether it would be ethical to create lifelike child-sized sex robots to give to paedophiles in an effort to deter actual child abuse. Thank you to everyone who sent in questions, we’re sorry we couldn’t answer them all! Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173 If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com