Charting a faithful future for artificial intelligence

LOUISVILLE — The “Faithful Futures: Guiding AI with Wisdom and Witness” gathering gets underway Tuesday evening online and in person at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Minneapolis. Last week, Dr. Bob Johansen, an author and futurist who spoke at the inaugural conference in 2024, offered a talk designed to help people of faith to use artificial intelligence to humanize and re-enchant leadership.

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Along with Jeremy Kirshbaum and Gabe Cervantes, Johansen wrote “Leaders Make the Future: 10 New Skills to Humanize Leadership with Generative AI,” an updated book being distributed to those attending the conference in person. Together with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s Office of Innovation, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the United Methodist Church and The Episcopal Church are sponsoring this year’s gathering. Register to participate online here.

“I’m a humble futurist, but I’m also aware this is a troubling time, but it’s also hopeful,” Johansen said. “People of faith have a role to play in [the use of generative AI] but it will require us to reimagine what we’re all about.”

Johansen used to talk about a VUCA world, for volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. Now he and others foresee a BANI future, for brittle, anxious, nonlinear and incomprehensible.

Johansen interspersed his talk with three rounds of questions from online viewers. The first round dealt with how do we frame the BANI future with faith? The second was on how can you and the people you serve cope with and be resilient in an increasingly BANI future. The third was how do you want to be augmented for the future?

The BANI future and faith

The term “VUCA” was framed at the Army War College where Johansen continues to teach. Author Jamais Cascio coined the BANI acronym to describe a world “that will be fraught with tenson,” Johansen said. “How can you have faith in a BANI future?”

He offered examples of brittle, anxious, nonlinear and incomprehensible reactions. That last one includes voters across the political spectrum who “cannot comprehend why the other side behaves, believes and votes as they do.”

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Flipping it over, Johansen explored the manifestations of faith that will be effective in a BANI future. People of faith can combat brittleness with “a bendable faith, with resilient clarity stories, but nobody can have certainty,” Johansen said. An attentive faith, “with active empathy and kindness for people and communities,” is the antidote for anxiety. Johansen said a neuroflexible faith can overcome nonlinear thinking. He calls that “teaching our brains new tricks,” and said that most leadership teams he works with take improv courses “in a world where you can’t know a definitive way.” Finally, an interconnected faith is an answer in an incomprehensible world. He said his “signature line” is this: “The future will reward clarity, but punish certainty.”

“There’s no certainty in the BANI future. Faith is a lot like clarity, and certainty is a lot like extreme belief,” Johansen said, reminding viewers of Paul Tillich’s quote: “The opposite of faith is not doubt; the opposite of faith is certainty.”

“Faith will be a competitive advantage in this BANI future,” he said, and it ought to be “kind and calm, inspiring trust and courage.”

During the first question-and-answer session, Johansen said the single most important strategy for change in the BANI world is cross-generational work. “If you can’t work with kids, you’re going to be out of the game,” he said. “I’m not saying, ‘Just run a better Sunday school.’ I’m saying, ‘Share leadership.’ Create situations where young people, including teenagers, are involved in the leadership of the church and get involved in things more directly.” One advantage to that approach is that many young people grew up with gaming, “which is the learning medium of the future,” he said. They’ve also grown up with generative artificial intelligence and with immersive learning experiences in places like the Kahn Academy.

“I am really optimistic about young people if they have hope,” he said.

Helping the people we serve become more resilient

In the mid-1960s, Johansen played basketball at the University of Illinois. Coping with the BANI world is like the discipline and repetition required to shoot free throws well, he said. Or, as Bruce Lee put it, “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once. But I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.”

This is where ritual comes in, and the exercise of faith, Johansen said.

More than a decade ago, Johansen and his associates told United Parcel Service their drivers of the future would learn not by sitting through lectures, but through gaming. UPS used staff from universities including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Virginia Tech to develop training centers, including trucks and sensors that teach drivers in an immersive way. “Ten years from now,” Johansen said, “you’re all going to be gamers.”

How do we want to be augmented for the future?

For the past two years, Johansen said he’s used generative AI on a daily basis. He calls his customized version of ChatGPT “Stretch” “because I want it to stretch my thinking.”

“I don’t use it for answers, for finals or for efficiency, and I don’t trust it,” he said.

The term “artificial intelligence” was coined in 1956, “and they made a bad choice,” he said. “If they would have called it ‘augmented intelligence’ instead of ‘artificial intelligence,’ we would have gone much faster” at developing and adopting the technology.

Others have suggested names including “an innovative form of social collaboration,” “generative collective intelligence” and “collaborative intelligence,” Johansen noted. “You’re in the faith space when you’re talking about generativity” because “humans can generate meaning with kindness and clarity,” he said.

At some point, generative AI will be bigger than the internet, Johansen said. “The internet was just about connectivity. This is messing with our brains and it’s messing with a lot of infrastructure issues like energy.”

“We can’t just walk away from it,” Johansen said. “We have to learn from it and use it for better purposes.” He said he’s “delighted” that this ecumenical gathering “is engaging with the topic in such a deep way.”