"The future is coming, and you're not in it."

That's what Rear Admiral Chester Cain (played by Ed Harris) says to Captain Pete Mitchell (played by Tom Cruise) in Top Gun: Maverick.

Cain's reasoning? Mitchell will be replaced by AI. "These planes you've been testing, Captain, one day, sooner or later, they won't need pilots at all."

Technological advances initiate a process of creative destruction, in which old ways of doing things give way to new ways, in the process displacing people who do things the old way. The Luddites, for example, were weavers whose livelihoods were threatened by the adoption of automated weaving machines.

The concern with AI is not merely that it will replace people's jobs, but that it will fundamentally redefine what it means to be human.

How should pastors respond to this concern? That's the question I ask Paul A. Hoffman in this episode of the Influence Podcast. I'm George P. Wood, executive editor of Influence magazine and your host.

Paul A. Hoffman is senior pastor of Evangelical Friends Church of Newport, Rhode Island, and coauthor with Sean O'Callaghan of AI Shepherds and Electric Sheep, published by Baker Academic.

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This episode of the Influence podcast is brought to you by My Healthy Church, distributors of Open When . . . Parenting through Foster and Adoption.

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For more information about Open When . . . Parenting through Foster and Adoption visit MyHealthyChurch.com.