Over the past few weeks, I have listened to numerous podcasts and read multiple articles about a future in which things that we pay for today become free. Numerous pundits are anticipating a “future of abundance” brought about by AI. What does this mean, and how can ministry leaders understand the impact of this on the religious sector? I am not sure I fully understand all of the ramifications myself, but here are a few things that I am learning.
A few areas that are most certainly "going toward free".
Perhaps the easiest way to frame this is with a few areas that are most certainly "going toward free" that we can all understand.
Example 1. Education.
Today you can enroll in courses from Stanford, MIT, and Harvard, all for free. These are MOOCs (massive open online courses). I remember twenty years ago when the MOOC phenomenon was all the rage. Today, you can find many course offerings from prestigious institutions freely available.
If you want to study the Bible, there are literally hundreds of options for you to do this for free. MOOCs have certainly made an impression on higher education. But anybody who has taken these courses knows, the quality of the educational experience is nothing like an interactive classroom experience can be.
AI... turns a MOOC into a personalized educational experience.
The difference that AI is making in this space turns a MOOC into a personalized educational experience. Online learning is fine, but online learning with the tutor who knows your learning style, understands how much of the content you already understand, and can tailor make on-the-fly educational experiences for you brings things to a whole other level. MOOCs could not provide the type of educator oversight that AI can.
In the next few months, we are going to experience a revolution in education which turns standard online learning into free individualized coursework. You will also be able to take a course with an entire room full of agents who will feel just like classmates to you.
We will all have a 24/7 tutor in any area that we want to learn about.
We will all have a 24/7 tutor in any area that we want to learn about. The large institutions are already beginning to deliver their content on these types of platforms—for free.
Seminary education will be affected by this change in significant ways. The concept of credentialing will necessarily undergo change. Student presence will shift.
Consider that the most successful schools today have launched significant online degree programs. These schools need to be at the forefront of adopting new AI-driven education, or they will not exist in another five years.
Funding models that rely on students paying for courses have already been under significant attack in the past decade or two. Responses might be to provide a higher quality in-person experience to try to attract these students into a paying program. Either way, theological preparation is an example of a ministry area that is going to head toward free because of AI.
Example 2. Your doctor.
AI doctors may already do a better job of diagnosing a patient.
Were you aware that in some areas of medicine AI doctors may already do a better job of diagnosing a patient than human doctors?
While certain specialist areas are still performed better by humans, the most likely doctor/patient interventions appear to be better met with AI diagnostics (if you want citations, use AI to produce a report for you on this fascinating topic). Not only is the accuracy higher, but in certain areas like imaging it is far faster.
We should expect the quality of care to significantly improve.
Let us assume that you work for a mission agency that runs small rural medical hospitals in a war-ravaged location in Africa. You can now already use a Starlink satellite to gain access to this global medical resource. Because a hospital of this nature mostly deals with general practitioner interactions, we should expect the quality of care to significantly improve.
How can costs drop?
As AI progresses, what the industry calls the “marginal costs” of performing these services is plummeting. The marginal cost refers to the fact that with software there is almost no additional cost if more people use it. Thus, an AI doctor, unlike a physical doctor, can be present anywhere in the world via the Internet.
There is a small infrastructure cost represented in the networks that carry the information, and there is the energy cost. But these are being spread out over larger and larger numbers of users.
Software is becoming less energy intensive.
At the same time, costs for both the infrastructure and energy are also falling. You might argue that energy is not getting cheaper. Even if the cost of, say, a gallon of gas is rising, its application cost can fall. This is because software is becoming less energy intensive. As AI gets better, it learns how to be more efficient and thus uses less of that gallon to perform more.
As the cost drops to free, it will further accelerate adoption among ministries.
As AI begins to program AI, this is going to accelerate. This is really where we are on the map. In the past month or two, the ability of AI to create software has really just now taken off. This is going to accelerate. As the cost drops to free, it will further accelerate adoption among ministries.
What will be affected?
If AI really does mean that things are “going to free” for ministry purposes, this is great news. I have never heard a ministry leader tell me they were over funded. On the other hand, most of us in ministry leadership suffer from a perpetual poverty mindset. This goes with the game when you are constantly fundraising.
I thought it might be fun to ask AI itself about which areas of ministry will be most affected by AI. We have a standardized list of ministry activities used for our research purposes. I asked Gemini to give me a percentage of how much influence AI might have, what the primary role might be, and what the potential risks are.
Highly people-centric ministries of evangelism, discipleship, and planting churches receive the lower scores for amount of influence.
This is an exercise to get me thinking about these areas. I am not sure that AI can really give us good data, but I do think some of these are right on. Note how the highly people-centric ministries of evangelism, discipleship, and planting churches receive the lower scores for amount of influence.
Again, I want to iterate that this is just food for thought.
But ministry is not digital.
The digital augmented the eventual human interaction.
We need to get away from binary thinking regarding the influence of the digital versus human interaction. This struck me last year when I was traveling among Muslims who had become Christians through dreams (more on this at this link). They researched those dreams online before they made contact with a person. The digital augmented the eventual human interaction.
I am rather old school and think that discipleship requires life on life, though I wonder how that is going to shift in our future. What gives me pause is the way that we have already changed our attitudes regarding digital tools. Every one of us walks around with a surveillance device in our pocket, something completely unthinkable twenty years ago.
Just before I sat down to write this article, I got a phone call from our internet hosting provider. They were calling out of courtesy because it appeared we had a problem on one of the websites that Missio Nexus operates. I spoke with this gentleman for about seven or eight minutes, and as the phone call wound down, I had a thought.
“Are you an AI agent?”
“Are you an AI agent?” I asked him.
“Well, in fact, I am,” he responded, “Would you like to provide some feedback on my service?“
That made me chuckle. I could not tell that he was an AI agent. I asked the question because I was thinking about this article. But if the conversation with an AI agent can be so good that I cannot tell without a direct question, imagine the impact on ministry interactions.
Because this is new to me, it just doesn’t sit well. But carrying around a surveillance device in my pocket didn’t sit well with me at one time, either. In a future where we are much more likely to accept digital conversation as legitimate, ministry will be transformed.
I know a lot of the popular press is scaring people about losing their jobs to AI. I too think we’re going to see a couple of areas in which there will be employment impacts. But ministry is much more of a human endeavor. In God’s wisdom, he invited us to participate. AI is not going to change God’s mind about this. How we engage, however, is most definitely going to change. How ready are you for its arrival?
Originally published on Ted's Substack, TedQuarters. Republished with permission.
Ted Esler is the President of Missio Nexus, an association of agencies and churches representing hundreds of mission agencies and churches. Ted worked in the computer industry and then served in the Balkans during the 1990s. He then held various leadership roles with Pioneers. He was appointed the President of Missio Nexus in 2015. He is the author of The Innovation Crisis. Ted has a PhD in Intercultural Studies (Fuller Theological Seminary, 2012).
