Beyond The First Drop: Giving A.I. A Second Chance

Giving A.I. a second chance can reveal its true potential, saving you valuable time and improving productivity.

When I was 5 or 6, my dad took me on my first roller coaster ride. I don’t know if I’d had too much theme park food before getting on or if I didn’t really understand what I was about to experience. 

All I know is when I got off that ride, I did not enjoy the experience. I loved spinny rides, but I vowed that day never to ride a rollercoaster again.

The Impact of a Difficult Experience

This made for some difficult experiences at theme parks in the years to follow when hanging with my rollercoaster-riding friends. Those friends would beg (harass) me to go on just one small coaster, but I could not let go of that first bad experience and the trauma I felt from it. My girlfriend (who eventually became my wife) tried repeatedly to get me on rollercoasters, and even though I was head-over-heels for her, she couldn’t convince me that I should ride again.

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A Second Chance

Cut to my early 20s – I was on staff at a megachurch in Ohio as a graphic artist/media producer. My boss, his wife, my girlfriend, and I all went to an amusement park together. Despite their constant encouragement to try again, I refused to get on coasters all day. Then, at the very end of the day, they finally convinced me to give it another try.

I nervously stood in the queue line, boarded the car, felt the butterflies while ascending the hill, and then came the hill. From then on, everything else was an exhilarating blur. When the train pulled back into the station, I was grinning from ear to ear. “That was awesome,” I said to my friends.

The park would soon close, but we quickly found one more coaster to ride – ushering in my complete return to coasterdom. My girlfriend and I would get married the following year, and we visited seven theme parks over the next twelve months. I rode every rollercoaster I could find, making up for 15 years of lost time.

The Incredible Benefits of Giving A.I. a Second Chance

So, what does this have to do with A.I.? Well, I’ve been having a lot of fervent debates with people lately regarding A.I.. The more I offer trainings, cohorts, and consultations around Artificial Intelligence, the more I encounter skeptics, critical of these tools and their use in the church. It is fascinating that many people will, at some point in the conversation, admit they’ve never actually used A.I..

Others have only tried to use A.I. once or twice and had a bad experience as I did on that first roller coaster. Maybe they were unimpressed because they didn’t know how to prompt properly. Perhaps it scared them a bit because of how good it could be.

Others have only ever stood and watched from afar like I did from outside the queue lines at the amusement parks. They’ve listened to the people who hate roller coasters or say they’re too dangerous.

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Rethinking Bad Experiences 

Let’s discuss those “one bad experience” moments with ChatGPT, DALL-E, or other A.I. apps. Sometimes, they’re bad enough that a potential user may refuse to get back on the train.

Maybe the GPT offered such a weak output (shallow and unimpressive), or DALL-E created images of deformed people with too many fingers. Or perhaps they felt that whatever it produced represented some inherent bias that might do harm to others. Maybe they were scared because the content was so impressive they feared they might become irrelevant with these A.I. tools readily available to anyone.

The thing is, A.I. can be quite unimpressive when you don’t know how to talk to it. While its utilization is very accessible for anyone, a novice can go from very vanilla/bland outputs to mind-blowingly exceptional outputs once they learn how to communicate with it.

Lean Into A.I. Technology

If you’ve never tried using A.I., or you tried it and walked away saying, “Never again,” I’m simply suggesting you give it a fair chance. Be braver than I was with rollercoasters, and give it one more whirl. Try to approach it open-mindedly and in an educated way.

One of my greatest regrets from childhood was letting one bad experience rob me of 15 years of riding coasters. I love them now. I challenge you to avoid making the same mistake with A.I.. Give it a real chance—experiment for yourself.

Finally, even with all that stated, we must still be careful about the roller coaster going off the rails. We must put guardrails in place to keep it on the tracks and to protect ourselves when it doesn’t.

The metaphor eventually breaks down here, but we must balance leaning into the latest technology while not wholly relying on it to do all of our thinking. There is a danger in us becoming overly reliant on this potent tool.

Ready to explore A.I.? Start by exploring 17 Valuable Ways Churches Can Utilize A.I. For Ministry Work. Pick just one—and be sure to let us know what you think!