Business, Math, and Righteous Living with Dr. Benjamin Harris

Episode Transcript
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Zack Johnson (00:04):
Good morning.
It is October 30th 2023.
I'm with Dr Benjamin Harris.
Can I call you Ben after, fromnow on, during this show?
Yeah, Ben is fine.
Okay, I'm going to read yourbio and then we'll just jump
into a conversation.
How does that sound?
That sounds great, all right,and anytime you want to pause or
correct me or explain somethingin the bio.

Dr. Benjamin Harris (00:26):
I hope I can live up to what's written in
my biography.

So I'm here with Dr Ben Harris.
Ben Harris received his BSMSand PhD from North Eastern
University College ofEngineering.
He comes most recently fromBoston University's Metropolitan
College, where he taughtcourses in the applied business
analytics program.
Ben taught as a member of theadjunct faculty of for North at

(00:49):
North Eastern University Collegeof Engineering faculty since
2012.
His teaching experience coversa broad range of topics,
including probability andstatistics, decision making
operations, research,programming and analytics.
Prior to his academic career,ben worked in artificial
intelligence and machinelearning at a large technology
company, alongside teams at allstages of the business life

(01:11):
cycle.
His current learning andresearch interests lie in the
area of natural languageprocessing, nlp I've never heard
that acronym particularly inthe determination of argument
development and qualityassessment.
The introduction of largelanguage models LLMs is
transforming the business worldbefore our eyes, and Christian
business practitioners need thefoundation to withstand the

(01:33):
onslaught on unstructured datacoming from these models.
Did you write that?
I did write that.
That's beautiful, thank you.
He is a Boston native, loves totry new foods and spends lots
of time with his wife and fivechildren.
Ben, thanks for being here thismorning.
Glad to be with you, zach.
I'm really excited to have youon a Sattler podcast, no name,
but we could discover it today,who it might be today.

(01:56):
If you give us a cool name, youcould ask chatGPT to name it
for us.
Hey, we'll pull up chatGPT andsee what comes up.
I always start, do you mindjust telling us a brief history
of your life, how you got towhere you are now and then just
what you're doing at Sattler asyou sort of came into the role
recently?

Sure.
So I was born New England.
I'm a New England native forthe vast majority of my life.
Massachusetts home Went topublic school when I was a kid,
engineering school after thatand a number of twists and turns
and I guess my personal andprofessional life ended up at a
large technology company, butalways had an academic bend to

(02:37):
myself.
I come from a family ofacademics.
I would now be a thirdgeneration professor, so
eventually found my way tograduate school, to Boston
University where I was afull-time teaching faculty, and
now here to Sattler whichidentifies very much with my
worldview, which was a neatthing to find.

And what do you do at Sattler?
You're the official title, Iknow it, but….

So I'm the coordinator of the business
program here, okay.

And your bio.
It's interesting.
You have a mixture of sort ofpractice and academics mixed in
there.
How do you think about theinterface between higher ed and
the real world, so to speak,that some people make that
distinction in your mind?
I'd love to hear you talk aboutit.

Yeah, there's definitely a gap that
has always existed between whatis taught in the classroom and
then what you then do out in thereal world.
And if you went out and didsome research into university
hiring, you would begin to see alot of universities are looking
for professors of the practiceor different academic titles

(03:45):
that you may not have seenbefore.
For this very reason Is they'relooking for people to come in
and teach what the real world islike, and that doesn't devalue
the classic academic researchtracks.
But they're realizing well, thegap between practice and
academia is narrowing and that'sa necessary evolution, I think.

(04:05):
So that was what I was hired todo back at Boston University
because I had an industryexperience, and whenever
universities do capstoneprojects, it's the same thing is
they're looking for people whoknow really closely what it
takes to get somethingoperational in the business
world.

Okay.
Well, I saw at least one thingin your bio that's in the news
all the time of late AI,artificial intelligence.
I tell a joke my father-in-lawwhen I first met him.
He says I work in AI.
I knew he was from Pennsylvania.
He said, yeah, artificialinsemination.
So you have to distinguishbetween those two in some

(04:45):
communities.
I'm just kidding.
Can you tell me just what'syour relationship with AI and
sort of talk about?
I know we're at a Christianinstitution and there are a ton
of people talking about theintersection there.
Just tell me about yourrelationship with AI.

So it came out of, I guess, a professional
background in decision-making.
So artificial intelligence as amath subject has been around
for decades now.
It's only recently, oncecomputers became powerful,
readily accessible to mostpeople, and so the original task
was to do to make simpledecisions like a person would,
and so you would teach apredictive model.

(05:25):
To take an email in your inboxand say is this spam or not spam
?
That's kind of the archetypalfirst thing an AI student would
do.
Now, with powerful computersand computing capacity changing,
you can go on to Amazon WebServices or any other company
and rent a super computer for anhour if you want to It'll cost
you about a dollar and then doan incredibly complex

(05:46):
computation.
So AI has now moved intosimulating more and more of the
human decision process, but it'sstill fall short in many areas.
There's things that AI just isnot able currently able to do.

Where do those supercomputers live?
Where are they located, or arethey?

cloud-based .
They do have a footprintsomewhere, but they are, in
general, cloud-based.
You could just sign in througha browser and you take your
little job that you want to do,submit it to the cloud.
It get returned when it's done,but they're globally
distributed, these massiveserver farms that these
companies own.
I mean, my interface with itcame from business problems

(06:24):
dealing with decisions orquestions that were posed to me
and trying to find a way to havedata inform the best choice
that we could find, and so I gotexposed to it that was probably
10 years ago now and developedsome element of expertise in it
over my time in industry.

Should we fear it or embrace it?

That is an ongoing debate amongst computer
scientists and AI people.
My opinion is we should embraceit.
I think the sci-fi movieeventualities that people do
predict, I think, are far away.
I think, there's some majorhurdles that have to be crossed
prior to what we would callartificial generalized

(07:09):
intelligence.
That's the scary part.
The movies would say it's asystem that can create its own
consciousness, but there's somebig-time gaps ontologically that
we haven't bridged yet and Idon't see a way that we will
bridge.
But then again, people havesaid that every time just prior
to some development.
So my opinion is not to worry.

(07:29):
But then you could find someoneon the street who might have
the opposite view.

Right, and we're joined here by Clark Gray in the
background.
Hi, Clark.
Clark mentioned that you saidsomething to some students about
particularly Christians and AIrecently, Do you mind?
I don't know if you rememberwhat you said about in front of
the students.
Do you mind resharing whateverthat was?

I think it was a title of a talk in the
process of writing called beinga Christian or being Human in
the Age of AI.
Being Human In the generalpremise just being to tease out
what makes us uniquely human.
We have the image of God in us,and there's something that's
not replicatable in siliconchips.

(08:13):
That makes us human, and AIsystems, whether they're large
language models or others, canreplicate some element of our
action.
They can speak, presumably, butthere's something that is yet
unique to us, and so I think Ispent a lot of my time thinking
about what are the limitationsof what AI can and cannot do,

(08:35):
and how do humans overcome thosethings easily where we don't
struggle with the limitationsthat AI does, so hopefully
pulling back the layers to findout.
This is actually what makes ahuman a human, and this is the
underpinning of why AI is yet toreach that kind of capability
that we have natively.

God made us that way, got it.
I'll switch gears a little bit.
Tell me about your family, andI know you have a family
somewhere.
There's someone around here.

Yeah, so we live in the Metro Boston area,
the husband to a wonderful wife,charlotte, and we have five
little children.
It's just 10, 8, 5, 3, and 1.
And so the Harris household isbusy, there's noise and chaos
continually, but we're reallyjust learning to be parents as
each phase goes on.

(09:25):
Our kids are uniquelyinteresting, each one of them in
every phase.
I was telling someone just thisweekend that parenting the
eight-year-old phase of onechild is a whole different thing
from the eight-year-old ofanother child.

Okay, they're just different.
Yeah, I've heard that the samething.
And then I bring up thequestion just because I know you
like to talk about this.
Your wife thinks you're a nerd.

It's true.

And mostly because you love mathematics, right?
Why is I understand?
I know you teach a Probabilityand Statistics course here and
just tell me about why you lovemathematics, why it's one of
your passions and why it's tospell, why it's not necessarily

(10:13):
a nerdy I'm just getting it'skind of nerdy.

It is, it's always going to be a very
exciting.

It's an exciting nerdy topic yeah.

So I think God gave us an ordered world
that we live in, that itoperates on patterns and laws
that we observe, and we havethese minds that discern what is
normal and what is abnormal.
And mathematics is really a setof tools to solve problems, to
make innovation and developmentfor the betterment of humankind.
And so I think the more that we, the more we know of the tools,

(10:43):
the more we can do in that.
And I think as you push furtherinto mathematics, you run into
things that can be potentiallyconfusing.
Mathematics shouldn't bepresented as a fully defined and
finished field.
You just have to learn it.
People are developing newmathematics all the time, and
they're learning that some ofwhat is built is limited.

(11:03):
Math can't do everything, itcan't solve all the world's
problems because it has its ownlimitations, and so you think
about the interface between mathand physics and the realization
that at big enough or smallenough scales there's, we're
beyond human limitation, andit's.
But the God we serve is not inthose limitations where he

(11:25):
exists in all these realms, andso I've always looked at
mathematics as just this it's aGod given ability to approximate
what God knows and then wonderat how much bigger and more
knowledgeable he is than us.

Do you want your kids to learn math, mathematics?

Absolutely I do why.
I think it's becoming more.
It's part of, I think, parental, but also just normal human
stewardship.
It's like you're to, whatevervocation you find yourself in,
to be able to operateeffectively in the ages to come.
I think you're going to needmathematics, and maybe you won't
be a professional mathematician.

(12:02):
You're not a, maybe not acontributor to the field, but
you will need to be an amateurpractitioner at a minimum.

So what are the if you're not going to be a
practitioner or an engineer, amathematician, a physicist?
What are some of the basicbuilding blocks in mathematics
and physics that you think inlike an average person?
I don't want to use that.
That average person shoulddevelop just to have sort of an
understanding of this languagethat's building so many things

(12:32):
around the world.

I think I would start from a very
practical standpoint.
If you're like if you wanted tolearn physics, I would say take
a watch a number of videos inmechanics.
Just how does the physicalworld work around you?
I wrote the train here thismorning.
What does it take physically tostop a train that large from
running into the end of thetrack?
There's the and theunderstanding, just a sense of

(12:58):
the forces involved, and thenmaybe appreciating the people
who spent time developing andbuilding these technologies that
we operate on.
We think of our cell phones andthey our entire digital
infrastructure is built onmathematics.
We know how radio frequenciesand waves work because of math,
and so, and again, you don'thave to become a cell phone
designer or a RF engineer, butwe can answer the question like

(13:22):
why don't I get cell phonereception in a concrete building
?
Well, it's because radiodoesn't penetrate the concrete.
And so when we, I think, themore we practically understand
and you realize you have a needto go learn more.
You can go dig a bit deeper,pick up the tools that you might
not have had, and just to havean appreciation of what we have
around us.
I think Right.

So I want to sort of cross this bridge between in
your bio you have a lot ofengineering and then you also
have business.
So there's not in a lot ofpeople's minds, there's not
necessarily a natural.
I mean, maybe there is anatural connection between those
two, but how do you think aboutthe connectivity between

(14:04):
mathematics, physics and thebusiness world and how do you
sort of bring that into the wayyou design the program and help
your students think aboutbusiness?
That's a hard question.

Yeah, that's fine.
One of the main, I think,advantages to mathematics,
physics.
Moving into something likeengineering, it gives a reasoned
sense of what is likely to workand not work.
I think that is what a goodengineer intuitively understands
over time.
They don't even really have tosolve a problem fully to
intuitively know I don't thinkthis is going to work.

(14:41):
And if folks have gone throughdoctoral programs or PhD school,
that skill is just sharpened.
That's really what it does.
As you look, you can thinkabout a solution to a problem
and intuitively know whetherit's going to work or not.
That's what sharpens over time.
And, moving into the businessworld, oftentimes the cost of

(15:02):
development I'll say it this way, the cost of failure grows the
more time and investment you putinto a business idea.
And so if you can intuitivelyhave a sense whether it's going
to work or not early, that savesyou time and money regardless
of what you're doing.
And so I think some of thebetter product designers I know
have an engineering backgroundand when they transition to

(15:23):
business they just bring thatwith them.
Now that's not to say that theydon't need help from other
skill sets.
I've appreciated greatly peoplefrom a marketing or creative
skill set that.
It's just not a gene I have andI desperately need those people
to help get interface with themarketplace.
But from a product standpoint,really having an architectural

(15:44):
or a mathematical sense of whatworks, I think only helps a
business person.

Yeah, I agree, I studied OR once or operations
research a little bit and I wasfascinated by Q.
Have you ever do Q-ing theory?

Clark Wray (16:01):
And.

I was absolutely fascinated by how much a person
can steady lines just humanlines in the world, and I think
every time I'm in the line, Ithink about math, I think I'm
thinking about what's fastest,what line works, why did they
design it this way and what'syour favorite type of line?

So one that is, I'll say the question I
actually, as a math guy, I lovethat question and so one that is
right-sized.
I would say, like if you go tothe supermarket and you wonder
why are there 20 checkoutcounters, that drives me crazy.
Yeah, they're all empty, they'renot being staffed.
What's the efficiency in that?
But there's a system that isrightly built so that the Q-ing

(16:46):
model and I'm not assuming thatthe people who designed
supermarkets do Q-ing models butwhen you see a Q-ing model work
effectively, you realize, likehow did they get a thousand
people to check out of thesupermarket in 10 minutes?
Right, but you can.
It's a simple thing.
And the mathematics behindQ-ing is on the same page is a
fascinating idea, like therandom process that generates

(17:07):
arrivals at a system.
And then how do you effectivelypredict how people are going to
get it in and out of line?
It's simple.
We experience them every day.

Yeah, I think taking that I just took like an
intro to OR and the complexitybehind most things that we're a
part of is underappreciated inmy mind.
The other one that I alwaysthink about now is traffic
Especially.
We live in a city wheretraffic's okay.
It's not the worst globally,but it's not good either, but if

(17:39):
you can apply good OR goodmathematics, you can actually
really change a city's life andliveliness.
And I think that it applies thesame on the business end.
I'm assuming that you canactually apply these things and
make things better.

Yeah, and the industrial engineering field
where I was educated, and manyof those people transition over
to transportation engineeringsystems or civil engineering for
that very reason is they lookat flow systems of traffic, for
example roadways, and try anddecide you don't have the money
to expand every road by anotherlane, but you can do it
judiciously.

(18:15):
Where's the right systematicpoint of adjustment that's going
to relieve traffic pressure andhelp people's lives?

Got it All right.
We'll switch gears a little bithere.
Let's talk about probabilityand faith.
I know maybe I'm bringing thisup because I'm assuming that
many people have thought aboutthis.
When I think about statisticsand probability and faith, I

(18:41):
often think about certainty andpeople sort of dealing with
doubts in their faith.
Have you ever talked about isit okay to have doubts in your
faith system and that's sort ofa natural thing?
Do you walk anyone through sortof probability and statistics

(19:05):
and faith and the Christianity,or is that a topic that you're
not?

I need to think about that question for a
moment.
It's a good question.
Maybe, I would mathematically,not from a probability
standpoint per se, but from afinite versus infinite
standpoint that we as Christiansdo in our sinfulness and our

(19:30):
sanctification process.
We do experience doubts attimes Whether it could be
doctrinally or with some elementof assurance that we're
assailed by something around usthat we're intaking, or maybe
just be part of our growthprocess.
But the thing I remind onemyself of, but then people who

(19:53):
asked me about it, is that itisn't the strength of faith that
you're relying on, but it's theobject of that faith that I'm
me, a finite creature, andputting faith in a good and
loving infinite Father that Ithink doubts come to us when we

(20:14):
attribute some level offiniteness to the infinite.
He will get tired, or he'simpatient, or he's going to have
a bad day and we're just goingto get unlucky, whereas we know
Biblical is not true that hedoes not tire, he's unchanging,
he's a beautiful, he doesn'tslumber, he doesn't slumber, and
so he is a faithful executor ofhis sovereign plan, and so

(20:36):
that's what we can trust on.
So, from probability, you couldsee that as lying underneath
all that is In my doubts.
What's Is God going to catch meas doing something that I
shouldn't be doing, or what'sthe likelihood I find him on a
bad day?
But those are all based andbuilt on a misconception of what
Scripture reveals God'scharacter to be.

Right, when I was interacting with students, one
of the habits I tried to get outof people is to use the phrase
I'm 100% certain, and I'm tryingto get at this idea of
certainty versus confidence, andthat that's sort of a
probability statistics language,that it's okay to say I'm

(21:20):
confident about this and rarelycan we be 100% certain about
something, and then so there's agap between your confidence
levels and a belief system andyour certainty and that's, I
think faith is actually a goodword to sort of bind the gap

(21:40):
between those two.
And then I guess my question isthe other thing that I think
Christians should be doing oftenis updating their beliefs with
new information.
How do you have faith whilebeing able to update your
beliefs as you interact with theworld, as opposed to being,

(22:03):
I'll just say, sort of dogmaticabout?
I was taught this at two,therefore, it's true, and I
can't interact with newinformation as it comes in over
time.
Do you have any advice there?

I was about to say I 100% agree with you.
I'm going to avoid that phrase,because we were trying to avoid
that phrase.

Politicians say it .
I'm like no, Don't say that,Don't say it 100% certain.

I think what is just a really healthy
habit to cultivate isintellectual honesty and what we
believe and say.
And so when we construct anargument for, for example, god's
sovereignty or his immutabilityor his omniscience, I think
what is incumbent on us asChristians is to say this is the
clearly stated argument that Iam making.

(22:47):
Maybe you can't do this inevery conversation, but you have
in your head.
Honesty would demand true.
This is what would lead me toabandon this argument.
If X and Y and Z were proven tobe true, that's just honest,
and you could apply that tolower, to what we might call
open hand to doctrinal issues.
I'm of this conviction.

(23:09):
However, if these other thingswere proven to be true, I would
honestly abandon that.
And that isn't weak, that's nota lack of faith.
That's just an honesty as afinite being approaches the
infinite God and how do weunderstand him?
That we should be in taking newinformation, being exposed to

(23:31):
people from different who'velooked at the same text their
whole life and arrived at adifferent conclusion, and being
willing to walk a mile or so intheir shoes.
One thing I'm accused ofsometimes is when someone's
presenting a different could bea theological argument to me,
and maybe this is a fault ofmine.
I take it on almost nativelyand what I'm doing in my head is

(23:55):
I'm trying to try it out andI'm speaking as though I believe
it fully.
And my wife will say I'm sorry,did you change your belief in
something?
I'll say no, no, no, I'm justtrying this because I wanted to
take it to its logicalconclusion and when I get there
then I'll decide if this isagreeable or if this makes sense
to me or not.

(24:16):
But I don't think we should beafraid at all to learn something
new, to change something.
I think a sad, the pressurethat exists around us, maybe in
our church communities, is thatwhen someone changes their
belief on something, we'reafraid that they're abandoning
what we hold to be true.
And I think that creates thissubconscious pressure for many

(24:39):
people like don't question,don't doubt.
God has given us theseinquisitive minds to question.
And the thing like, if you lookat the book of Job, the friends
who gave these sort of packagedanswers to Job were condemned
by the Lord at the end of thebook and God had said to Job.
He said to Job's friends youhave not spoken rightly of me as

(25:03):
my servant Job has Now.
If you look at the book, jobdidn't say everything morally
correct, but he brought hisdoubts and his question to the
Lord.
We have a God who's able tohandle our doubts.
We're not going to surprise himIf we're questioning it.
If we're taking in newinformation and we're struggling
with it, that's okay.
Bring it in prayer, bring it inyour study of scripture, bring

(25:26):
it to trusted counsel and we'llgrow from that.
We want to be growing into aunified body of Christ, rather
than just saying I have mybelief in my doctrine is now
fixed until I die and I'm goingto be in my community that
agrees with me.
Pray, tell.
That's not true of us.
We should be growing and lovingeach other.

Yeah, I agree with that statement, the fixed set
of beliefs that I think a lot.
Maybe some of us who are raisedmaybe on more of the
conservative community sort ofdo approach life more like that
than your average human and ittakes a bit of time to be able
to interact with someone andentertained doubts.
I think that's why you're kindof getting it, put yourself in

(26:15):
the shoes, like, oh, let me walkdown this road.
My experience is that if youentertained doubts you actually
walk away with more, I would say, more confidence, more trust, a
little bit more hope in theoriginal set of beliefs than if
you had just refused toentertain them in the first

(26:36):
place.
I think there is some danger inhow far you go down that road
and where you surround yourselfand what community you're going
to surround yourself with.

Oh yeah, and you don't want to do it, you
don't want to walk that roadalone.

Right.

You want friends and family to walk it
with you and hopefully do wejointly cultivate these kind of
relationships.
That intellectual honesty is acherished thing.
But hey, if we're strugglingwe're going to go fully, because
we trust the Lord to return usto truth at some point, wherever
that leads us.
He's the God and author of alltruth, so we trust that he's

(27:17):
going to bring us there.
And one thing I wanted to sayis I did not grow up and
probably as conservative of abackground as I've encountered
here at Sattler- as a third gen,third gen academic.
You get the whatever lineagecomes out of the academy for a
while.
But it's like, and being hereat Sattler has forced me to

(27:39):
expose me to some new ideas andtraditions, and I have very much
appreciated it.
My wife asked me like how's itgoing?
What do you think of thestudents?
Like they're wonderful.
I so appreciate these thingsthat I now see with them and I'm
growing and evolving too.
I'm learning as I encounteringnew traditions and groups of

(28:01):
people and I'm thankful for it.

Amen, I wanted to talk a little bit about.
You'll see why I'm going to askthis eventually.
You spend a lot of time inacademia.
How much time in your training.
And it was all here in Boston,right, that's right.
Can you walk me through yourtimeline on what it took to get
the BS, ms and PhD at NorthEastern and tell us where North

(28:28):
Eastern is, for those of us whodon't know?

Yeah, so North Eastern University is in
Boston.
It's just inland from whereSattler is located.
It's close to the Museum ofFine Arts, if you want to spot
it on a map.

If you visit, I know someone who will take you
to the MFA for anyone listening.

It's a wonderful museum to visit.
It's been a great day trip andthere's some other museums that
are great.
So for education, so NorthEastern does a five-year
bachelor's undergraduate programin engineering, with some co-op
, these six-month internshipsbuilt into the program.
So I did that, starting in 2003.

(29:11):
I started my undergraduatestudies since I can probably
reverse calculate my age if youwant to, I'm not ashamed of that
, it's fine and then I happen tothis is not true universally I
happen to pioneer what was atthe time the bachelor's and
master's joint program at NorthEastern.
So I did those concurrently.
So I'd have my undergraduatestudies and then in the evening

(29:32):
I'd take graduate classes and beworking my way through a
master's degree.

You really are a nerd, aren't you?

It's true, it's a compliment.
I've embraced that title now, soI take it as such.
It's a.
That's just who God made me.
So yeah, 2008, 2009,.
I completed my bachelor's andmaster's, respectively, both in
industrial engineering.
One was just classicengineering.
My master's was in statisticsarea and I went to I originally

(30:03):
started a PhD program.
Just after that I figured outthat I'm not quite ready in my
life to do a PhD because ittakes a lot of focus and intent
right.
I was advised this.
I didn't listen to the adviceat the time that doing a PhD to
put off doing real life is a badidea because you it takes drive

(30:23):
and a focus to finish it.
And I didn't have that.
And so I was in Ann Arbor,michigan, for a for about a
semester.
I came home and started a job,began job at a tech company and
a few years in actually it waslike a year or two and I applied
for a PhD program and fundingthrough the company and was
denied because I didn't reallyhave a problem to solve yet.
And I said to myself you knowwhat, that maybe I should listen

(30:46):
this time.
And so I listened.
I worked for a number of moreyears, came up with a really
good problem set that I thoughtI said I can really do work in
this area and went back, appliedfor the same program and was
accepted into the fundingpipeline for doctoral studies,
came back to Northeastern,started my doctorate in 2013 and

(31:06):
graduated in 2017.
Yeah, and then I had acommitment to the company after
the fact.
I had to because they hadfunded the program and so they
wanted some return on theirinvestment, and so I paid off my
commitment to them and thenbegan looking okay, what else
might I do professionally?

And then in all your years in training or
learning, whatever you want tocall it I know some people don't
like that.
We're training.

I don't think it's that bad.
I think it's appropriate.

Was your Christian worldview on the sides
strengthened, threatened throughbeing in a… I'm not sure what
the academic environment wasthere at BU.
I'd just love to hear you talkabout that a little bit.

So are you talking about both, when I was a
student or in my original sortof faculty role?
Maybe both, yeah, as a student,I think it was strengthened.
But looking back, I think itwas strengthened in a youthful
sense of, you know, as a youngman, unmarried and figuring out
how do I have this faith thatI've been given?

(32:18):
Is it really on solid footing?
Like, what am I reallybelieving?
Am I fighting sin in acommunity of faith?
What am I supposed to do?
And so I began to put feet tothe ground and work with teams
of people that I grew with loveand respect.
In those years and this wasjust in the beginning of when a
lot of anti-Christian animus,necessarily, but there was

(32:43):
always this tension on campusbetween communities of faith and
just the prevailing tides ofculture that always existed.
And so I think back then we hada tendency to overinflate the
tension of like that we're on abattleground, that you know I
have my enemies and we'refighting the good fight.

(33:04):
And you know, in years sinceI've seen that it doesn't help
anyone to conflate the conflict.
Really you want to just behonest about.
There is a battle going onright, there's good and there is
evil, and the battle lines havebeen drawn, but we fight these
battles in love and care forpeople.

(33:25):
So I didn't really get that asmuch as an undergraduate.
Now, in the intervening years Igot married, began to have a
family and so hopefully myperspective, you know, matured a
little, ended up at BostonUniversity as a faculty member

(33:45):
and Boston University I thinkthat the news would portray a
secular university as sort ofthis battleground where anyone
who's a Christian is sort ofpicketed at their doors and
things.
That's sort of our assumption.
In my experience that wasn'ttrue.
That, you know, especiallyBoston University is such a
large place and while it startedas a Methodist seminary in its

(34:06):
early history, I think aslargely by their own admission
is left a lot of thattheological backing behind.
And yeah, we didn't see the youknow, the day-to-day
door-to-door conflict.
That might be portrayed in someplaces, but it definitely.
You knew the risks beingevangelistic and out front.

Really faith.
And so I guess I want tocompare and contrast that to
present day, let's just say thisweek or the last month where
I'm eagerly reading the newsabout, specifically about, I'll
say, conservative donors comingon the news after some
demonstrations and sayingconservative people need to pull

(34:52):
their money away from fundingsecular institutions, who
usually this is kind of tied toIsrael and Hamas type thinking.
But how do you think aboutthese things?
Particularly, it seems likeengineering is a safe field.

(35:13):
It seems safe to me.
I'll just say that.
But then let's go to anotherinstitution and you're looking
at the humanities, liberal arts,politics.
It seems a little bit morethreatening.
And so how do we think about usas Christians?
Where do we want to tackle,where do we want to place
ourselves and where do we notwant to place ourselves?

(35:34):
And do we need to be creatingnew institutions like Sattler?
Do we need to be saying, allright, that's kind of off there,
let's go do our own thing, beneighbors, yet not sort of draw
some sort of distinctionsbetween us?
I'm just trying to givecommentary between your
experience in BU and the currentenvironment.
You just get.

(35:55):
People are looking into Boston.
Being like that place is crazy.

Right, and I would agree with your earlier
comment that engineering and thehard sciences, I suppose, are a
bit of a safer environment,because in mathematics I guess
maybe this is one reason I likeit is what is true is true there
isn't really too much of adebate about mathematical truth.
The truth in the humanities mayvary very broadly, and so I

(36:23):
think I mean one of the thingsthat drew me to Sattler was a
renewed focus on discipleshipand actually students being
concerned about righteous living.
Right, because a century agomost American colleges had codes
of conduct that you had to livein a righteous way.
They were still holding on tosome element of theological

(36:44):
backing and you hadupperclassmen who would disciple
, in effect discipleundergraduate students, and that
was the expectation, and bothin my college, my collegiate
experience, and then working atBU, that has largely been
abandoned.
There's no, as long as you'renot violating the state law of

(37:05):
Massachusetts or some policy ofthe college, there's no real
restriction on what you do, andthat's been presented as freedom
.
But the question I would ask isyou look at the people who are
being created by theinstitutions and they may have a
skill set and that's what theywent there to gain.

(37:25):
But who have they been builtinto as people?
And I looked at Sattler andsaid I agree with the mission
that you're trying to build thewhole person.
You're going to give themskills or expertise in something
as they go to begin a vocation,but not just that.
You've cared for their soulright and that you want them to
come out with their faithstrengthened, not weakened, in

(37:46):
the collision environment.

Clark Wray (37:51):
Yeah, I'm just going to be an ongoing joke.

And then so with righteous living.
Let me take that to a littlebit of a point here.
We obviously have a lot of ourstudents and a lot of our
community have some sort ofpassion problem.
I really care about throwingmyself into solving this problem

(38:14):
.
You go around campus.
It's different things fordifferent people Church planning
in Bangladesh or running afamily business in Kansas that
does well.
How would you pair the pursuitof business and righteous living
with being able to tackle apassion problem that people have

(38:37):
so that we can sort of?
I don't think all businessneeds to be redeemed, but in a
certain sense we do have a taskof redeeming the field of
business to make it more thanjust a money making endeavor,
and lots of people talk aboutthis in different ways.
But let's say that there's agroup of students choosing a

(38:59):
major pool of them.
What would be your pitch tothem on why business is a very
feasible avenue to add to yourtoolkit to tackle the problems
you care about?

I think it gives you a very direct
application of being salt andlight in the world.
When you take on any vocation,you're now going to have to be
involved with an organizationthat lives and operates on some
amount of money, whether it'shigh finance or you're working
in a nonprofit sector.
You're working in anorganization and you have people

(39:36):
, and so having at least abusiness background that exposes
you to the idea of howbusinesses are built and
operated allows you toeffectively walk in and out of
the hallways and offices of thatplace and look to apply your
faith in a way that you're knownfor your living love for your

(39:56):
fellow man there.
You're not just seeking to belike a ladder run climber.
That's sort of the picturethat's presented If you get into
business.
You're just looking for thenext promotion.
I think the Christian worldviewshares that.
It's good to get promoted forexcellent work, but your goal is
not to just rise to the top.
Your goal is to make Christknown and loved by the people

(40:17):
around you.
So having actually the business, literature is fairly unanimous
in its conclusion that thosewho live with integrity, however
broadly defined in a businesscontext, tend to do better.
There might be short-term gameto violations of morality,
deception or greed, but in thelong term those businesses tend

(40:41):
not to succeed.
The ones that do succeedoperate on high levels of
integrity by their owndefinition.
We would look at that and say Ican apply scriptural principles
to this, and that's true.
We don't want to assign thoseto a business that doesn't
adhere to them explicitly.
So I think business is a goodgeneral framework for thinking

(41:04):
about solving the problems ofthe world, with the scriptures
on our chest and the love of Godgoing forward from us.

Okay, I like it.
And then do you talk aboutmoney with your students at all?

We do.

How do you… what should… this is a massive
question.
What are the guiding principlesbetween our relationship with
money, maybe as a businessmen,and then add on the Christian
lens to it?
I ask this selfishly becausethere's a sermon last night
about Christians and money, andhow much to accumulate versus

(41:44):
sell everything we have versusaccumulate this much and be
investors.
Do you have any guidingprinciples that you think about?
I do.

I think Jesus said it well when you
cannot serve both God and money.
So we would say there's thereal temptation for money to
become an object of worship inand of itself and we would
condemn that outright.
I think rightly so.
But ultimately I would sayfollowers of Christ are going to

(42:13):
have unique roles in God'skingdom.
Some might be business people,some might work in non-profits,
some might work primarily in thehome, raising children, and
those will have differentrelationships with money.
And so ultimately, everyfollower of Christ is
accountable to the Lordthemselves.
You operate in local communitiesof faith, but your conscience,

(42:34):
in conjunction with the HolySpirit, has to be clear with how
you view and work with money.
And so someone can have a realconviction of I have too many
possessions, I need to sell them, but someone else may have a
different conviction on that,based on what their obedience
looks like.
And we're not to, as Christians, to judge or condemn one

(42:56):
another for that.
We're to live an understandingand just maybe learn something
about hey, was it wise to buysuch an expensive car?
And there may have been areason, but it also might be a
good sanctification challengefor someone.
So we can lovingly bring thosequestions to the fore, and again
this goes back to theintellectual honesty of here's
how I've built my theology ofmoney.

(43:17):
I think the scriptures are clearthat we're not.
Our goal is not accumulationright, because we can't take it
with us, but if, whatever webring in, we're able to steward
in such a way that we get to seeGod's kingdom flourishing
around us, that's a good thing,and so I would say having few
possessions is not in and ofitself inherently righteous, but

(43:40):
also having the converse isalso true.
How are you?
All that I am is a stewardwhile I'm here, am I stewarding
well, and how?
I'm accountable to the Lordhimself?

Yeah, and I think about it all the time and I was
laughing because we're built onthese three Cs right, core,
christian character and cost andwe made this announcement about
exciting things and how we'redealing with cost and a student
came up to me afterwards and hesaid it sounds kind of like
kingdom socialism.
I was like, oh, that's not theright, it's not what I want to

(44:11):
go with.
But how we deal, interact withmoney kind of changes the way we
build institutions and how werun them and I think a lot of
students will end up facing manyof our students end up having
this sort of pull over.
What do you do with money?
And it's probably it's an ageold question, but I'll move into

(44:34):
another field here what books,magazines, literature, podcasts
have shaped you in the past?
And then what continues toshape you today?
Are there any resources thatyou like to talk about with
people, that something that sortof changed you or that you give
to people, or something likethat?

Yeah, that's a good question.
I think I was having thisconversation this weekend with
someone that I prefer bookswritten at least a generation
ago.
I feel like modern and this isnot a blanket condemnation, but
I feel like a number.
There's been a trend in writingrecently to make it with the
goal to make it broadlyaccessible, and in that you sort

(45:17):
of lose some of the clarity andthe mental strength that it
takes to tease out complexarguments If a book is too.
If someone says to me, read thisbook, it's a quick read, I'm
like I don't really want it.
I want this to be hard becauseI know that I will get lazy if
I'm not reading things thatchallenge me.
And so I like podcasts.

(45:38):
I like some world view podcasts.
I listen to Alamolers, theBriefing fairly frequently, but
I also want to and I tell thisto my kids too.
They ask to listen toaudiobooks all the time.
I have nothing againstaudiobooks, but I challenge them
like pick up a paper book,right, because I think we're
even seeing modern research thatsuggests that opening the pages

(45:58):
of a physical book doessomething more to your body than
listening or reading any bookand have a Kindle right.

One of those Kindle too.

But there's something different about
reading a book.
So authors that have helped methink so Francis Schaefer was
one in the 20th century, dorothySayers was another, even folks
like Richard Foster Celebrationof Discipline, things like that
to just.
I may not agree on everydoctrinal point with these
authors, necessarily, but ifthey make you think about how do

(46:29):
I follow Christ more closelywith what he describes, right, I
think it's a good push, and Ithink even reading, like reading
books that are flat out inopposition to what your
worldview might be, is helpful.
Right, you pick up books byatheist authors Richard Dawkins,
amongst others just to see okay, here's what is being presented

(46:51):
in the world around me.
Right, I don't think we shouldfear that kind of writing and
reading, as though in some senseit might infect us.
Right, we want to read this, beable to tease it out, bring it
to the Lord and say what do Imake of this?
Right, even this writing seemscompelling in my missing
something.
And bring it to other people tohelp us understand that we just

(47:12):
know the world around us.
Right, people who walk into ourchurches are going to be
exposed to all these things, andI think it's our responsibility
to have a reasoned view of abroad section of the world that
we encounter.

Yeah, we used to send out a marketing email in on
the bottom.
I researched the phrase.
I could say I don't agree witheverything here, but I still
think it's relevant to the meatsfed out.
The bones is what.
We reserve the right to presentthings to people and say I
don't agree with everything inhere, but there's some things
that are valuable in here aswell.

(47:46):
Is there a specific?
You can say no this.
Is there a specific book inthose authors you mentioned that
you sort of returned to or yousay would shape you or not
necessarily?

I think, yes, I would say the.
It's not a specific author,maybe a specific genre that I
return to often and it'sprobably by historical biography
reading, biographies ofoftentimes for me Christian
figures in the past.
I'm still working my waythrough the biography of
Jonathan Edwards and it's a long, voluminous tone, but it's

(48:25):
insightful.

Is there a title for that, or is it just the
biography of?

Jonathan Edwards.
I think it's just calledJonathan Edwards.
Marsden is the author.
But just reading again, notvenerating or idolizing these
people, but understanding whattheir lives were like.
This is the environment theygrew up in, and how is it
differing from the environmentthat I see, but still seeing
some of the same challenges orworld conflicts that we

(48:53):
experienced today.
Nothing new under the sun,right?

Very, very true.
Very lamentations, verylamentations of you.
And then we have this pearl ofwisdom here at Soutler where,
over time, different of ourfaculty and students get up and
get to give like a nugget, apearl of wisdom.
Have you given one of the?
I've not given one yet.

(49:18):
Have you thought about what youmight say if you were to give a
pearl?
You don't have to spoil it.
But what are some nuggets ofwisdom or pearls of wisdom you
like to weave, or, if anything,it's hard to come up with
something clever right on thespot.

So no, I've not given one yet.
It's on the top of my emailinboxes.
Here's the link to sign up togive a pearl.
I still should do that.
I think the I guess one topicthat has come up recently, both
in my local church community,has been the phrase like unity

(50:01):
in essentials, diversity indiscussion and non-essentials in
charity and love and all thingsthat we and followers of Christ
didn't have.
You know, I think our record ofcharitable love for one another
has been speckled over thecenturies that you know, we

(50:23):
Christians of various flavors,have not been able to get along,
and the extreme of that is justthe abandonment of truth and
the pursuit of ecumenism, whichis not the goal right.
The gospel is should always bevalued and never tampered with.
But how do we, how is our lovedisplayed so compellingly that,

(50:44):
you know, even someone who's notin Christ would look at a pair
of Christians who disagree onsome major points but both
wholeheartedly adhere to thegospel.
How do they love each other sowell?
And so I think what it?
You know, if I were to give apearl quickly, it's how do we
cultivate that love and gracefor one another, even if someone

(51:04):
disagrees with us and theymight, and their disagreement
might prey on our insecurities.
Right, I think they're smarterthan me.
I think they're.
They might think less of me ifthey knew what I, how much I
understood of this topic, thatwe would be content with their
identity in Christ and be ableto talk about things we just
don't know as well.
I think that's sometimes thechallenges that people.
People get onto a specificquestion that they're

(51:27):
considering deeply, and they dofor a while, and then expect
someone else to have beenconsidering it by the for the
same length of time and depth,and people feel out of their
depth all of a sudden and sayI'm not comfortable with this,
whereas I think our biblicalmandate is to you know, extend
grace and, if we don't knowsomething, to be open to saying
like I don't know.
I think that's the probably theleast, sadly, the least said

(51:49):
phrase in the whole round ofthese.
I just I don't know.
Because we want to think thatwe know and prove to people that
we know, our pride gets in theway of saying that I'm confused.
I've learned from a dearbrother-in-law of mine, who's a
very smart guy, that he's got.
It's been very helpful for himin his career to be able to say
I don't know something.
I think we should cultivatethat.

I love that pearl.
It's actually you should giveit.
Our first ever graduationspeech was an extended pearl on
that very idea, on the abilityto say I don't know or I don't
know.
Let me get back to you on whatI think.
Give me some time to go readand think about it.
And there's this running joke,particularly with someone
studying biology, that they'llshow up back home and someone

(52:34):
gets a cut.
Hey, can you stitch this upLike there's actually a
perceived gap between what youcan do and what or what you know
and what you can do and beingable to be like.
I have no idea how to stitch upyour finger.
I'm not.
I, yeah.

We've.
I've run into that from time totime.
You know, when you, when youhave a PhD, you can officially
put the title doctor on things,and people who aren't from, who
don't know you well, are likeyou're a doctor.
Aren't you Different kind ofdoctor?
Sorry, I'm not gone to medicalschool, so you do not want me
stitching up your finger.

So if the plane was going down and or if someone
was giving birth on the planeand they said, is there a doctor
, you wouldn't stand up.

I love.
I love that you asked thatquestion, because I've actually
delivered three of my children.

No way yeah.

So of three of my five children, you have
to say some so the so in our,you know, our the process of
pregnancy and birth, the mywife's labors have just gone
fast and we've we've, because ofthat we tend to have home
births now, like we just can'tget to hospital in time.

(53:38):
And so they, the early ones,came so fast that the midwives
couldn't even get there on time.
And the first, the first childthat was born, this was our
second, our now eight year oldhe was.
You know, I had even called themidwives on the phone and said,
hey, can you come?
I think the baby's coming.
They said, yep, we're on theway.
And they were not there in time.

(53:59):
And my wife looked me in theeyes and said this baby's coming
.
Like, what are we going to do?
And so now I had.
I had been told three things to.
You know, if you ever have todeliver a baby, need to know
three things.
One is get mom load to theground.
Two is don't let the baby'shead hit the ground.
And three is don't worry at allabout the umbilical cord.
Now, I should provide you withthat.
That's not medical advice, I'mnot a medical doctor, but just

(54:21):
if you're.
If you're in that situation,there's three things that you
know.
And then get medical actualcare right.
You want everything to be caredfor, but that happened with my
my eight year old, the five yearold and the three year old.

My level of offer you has skyrocketed in the last
two minutes.

Well, you, you happen to pick a medical
situation, that most medicalsituations.
I've not had any experience inthat one.
I actually have.

Well, we should, we can talk.
I was.
I did a gap here in college andI was in Mozambique and we were
getting a field hospitalhospital open that had been
closed down after a flood.
And the first day that thisfield hospital opened there was
a.
At the end of the day, therewas a woman laying on the road

(55:08):
and someone pointed her out tome and said there's a woman
laying on the road screaming inagony.
And so me and another guy ranup and she was laying on the
ground with a baby.
She had just given birth on theroad and I was like I'm not a
doctor.
And then I saw, I screamed forhelp and a Portuguese, a

(55:31):
Portuguese doctor, ran over andyelled out she's having twins in
Portuguese.
So I sat there and helpeddeliver.
I wasn't, there was a doctorthere and I just helped and I
was like I'm never going to dothis ever again and it was
miraculous, sure, sure.
I was like I'm never doing thisagain.
So, with my own life, I'm likewe have to be in five minutes of
the hospital because I don'twant to do that ever again.

(55:52):
So, man, I don't even know,clark, what else do I ask about
that?
Yeah, it's good.
Yeah, it's good.

It's my awe and respect for my wife grew in
those days, seeing that I'mlike thank goodness that God
made you able to do that andstrengthen you for these things.
Like I play a very small role,but you've carried this child up
to this point.

After watching your wife give birth, I tell
everyone I'm like women are pureheroes.
They're amazing, it'smiraculous.

The physics of it.
Studying mechanics, I'm like Idon't quite get it.
I still don't get it.
I've seen it now a number oftimes.

There's not a mathematical model that explains
it.

It's whatever it is, it's God
ordained, yeah so you definitelythink our experiences form us
and that's why that medicalpiece I have seen in the past.

All right, so you want to be on a plane with Dr
Harris?

Only if you're super pregnant, anything
else Nope.

Are there any other questions you want to that
you thought we left out thatyou'd like to chat about, or any
other hobby horses you haveright now.

Not really, I think the things I've picked
up around Sattler's campus overtime of the.
We live in New England here andso you get to spend time like
your diversion time, where youhave the mountains close by.
When you're up here andspending time enjoying God's
creation, new England's a uniqueplace.
My wife and I like to hike asmuch as we're able to to spend

(57:27):
time together.
Yeah, just something I'venoticed about Sattler's student
community is they love doingthings together, which is unique
to me, having come from anumber of institutions that
people might say like, yeah, I'mgoing to be on my own by myself
this weekend, but the studentshere it was last week in class

(57:47):
everyone was so excited to go toa concert.
Maybe universally, everybodywas excited to go to the same
concert.
The whole college is going, itseems.
What concert.

It was a Beethoven concert.

And I was like that's great.

I knew it wasn't like Taylor Swift.
I was like make sure you say itwas Beethoven.

And I love that.
And I'll get to brag on thestudents too.
As a student in my statisticsclass and statistics is not
known for being an excitingsubject I do the best I can to
make it exciting, but every dayI walk into statistics class and
there's a student in thereconsistently playing classical
music maybe it's Beethovenpracticing stats problems.

(58:31):
I asked him the other day whatdo you do?
And he says I'm doing theseproblems and I've been teaching
for a long time.
I've never had a stats studenton his own time be practicing
the statistics problems.
And so you know if, given theopportunity, I will brag on the
diligence and the care of thestudents for being here.
So that's, you know, that'sunique to me and I feel blessed

(58:55):
to like just interact with them.
It's my privilege to give whatI have to you.
If you want me to teach yousomething, I'll gladly do it.

I sympathize with you.
I taught stats here and you doeverything you can to have
people enjoy it and walk outexcited.
And stats it's hard in 101.

Yeah, but then your first stats class is
hard, yeah, but at the end ofthe day you realize you need it.
This helps you make sense ofthe world, because you're going
to, you know information getsthrown at you and you're like I
don't know how to tease this out.
I don't know if this is true orfalse or what to make of it,
but if you've got some intuitionfrom a class maybe stats you
can make sense of the news.

Finally, Well, and that's why actually we can.
I know we're approaching anhour here, but my personal
instinct is that to live todayand not know how to deal with
some of the claims that arethrown at you all the time now,
study show, research shows youname it XYZ.

(59:58):
It's about politics, it's aboutfaith, it's about vaccines,
stats is everywhere, and beingable to exist now without having
some critical thinking is verydifficult and challenging, and
so that's kind of for my.
If I were ever up to me, I'dhave every person take stats.

Dr. Benjamin Harris (01:00:19):
Which reminded me of a lot.
The last topic I justremembered one that I thought
would be helpful.
I remember at a previous placeI was teaching and this had to
do with drug testing.
Because I was asking a questionof mathematics students and I
made up this contrived examplethat I'm like.
They cannot possibly believethat this is how statistical

(01:00:40):
testing is done.
I tried to construct thequestion in such a way they
would seem absurd, but theyuniformly believe that that's
how they test the drugs.
And I was like that doesn'tlike okay, from a math
standpoint that makes sense, butwhat you just described to me
is actually a war crime.
And they were like oh right,that seems unusual, and both

(01:01:02):
with statistics and withargumentation.
So in my bio there's naturallanguage processing, natural
language understanding.
One of the shortcomings ofsomething like chat GPT is you
can present to it just anonsense argument about
something that Clark Ray is amean person because he's tall.
It's a nonsense argumentbecause one Clark is not a mean

(01:01:25):
person but his height hasnothing to do with any of that.
But chat GPT can't discernwhether that's right.
It doesn't do the understandingcomponent yet, and so
statistics being one tool butalso reason to debate.
An argument of actually usingthe English language in a way

(01:01:46):
that's logically consistent issuch a lacking thing.
When a news article saysexperts say I'm immediately
skeptical because that's anappeal to authority argument
that actually isn't logicallysound.
You have to make a reason toclaim.
So there's hope that naturallanguage processing will extend

(01:02:06):
into actually assessing argumentquality, but that's a hard
problem to solve.
It's not been done yet.

Zack Johnson (01:02:14):
Smartly, smartly tried.
The experts say there is anotion that you can actually get
experts on both sides whoactually were probably trained
at the same institutions andthey both have really valid
expertise to be pitted againsteach other, and then you just
have to choose one or the other.

And the article will, and this is the
sad nature of I'm not going tobe a blanket condemnation of
media, but having to be carefulof like did an article choose
one set of experts that it likedfor its purpose, and if both
sides aren't presented, then youactually don't have a complete
picture of anything which is sadRight.

Well, Clark, anything that peaked your
interest.

Clark Wray (01:03:00):
Lots of things that peaked my interest.
I find myself using AI ChessiBrazil on a regular basis.
Do you feel like there'sanything about that that could
do?
You feel like that promotesproductivity or decreases
creativity?
Interesting?

That's a good question.
I think it has the realpotential to do both, because
JATGPD does some thingsbeautifully Right.
It's able to construct textfairly readily, you can write
computer code very simply and ifyou need, if you know the end
goal you need to get to, andit's really just a matter of
typing keys to get somethingthat they can help you greatly.

(01:03:41):
So it has some realproductivity gains.
But if you're asking it to sortof just get you out of a
creativity hole a little bit,you might lose some of the
marination that your mind neededto come up with something even
more unique, which JATGPD can'tdo.
It can only learn from the datathat it's been fed, and so I

(01:04:02):
think it really can increaseproductivity.
There was a study that came outrecently that there's a number
of people in the US and Canadawho are what are now called
over-employed, which means theyhad a job that JATGPD could help
them do at like 10x the speed,and so they've actually been
able to take on like fourdifferent full-time jobs and do
them all using JATGPD.

That sounds awful to me.

And they manage their hours and they're
making huge amounts of salarywhich from an engineering
standpoint, I'm like oh good useof efficiency in the system.
I'm not sure all thosecompanies would appreciate that
kind of a thing.
So I think it can increaseproductivity, but I think we're
going to start to discover thedownsides in not the too distant
future.

Yeah, yeah, I agree, I was laughing because I
give a lot of talks and you'realways looking for analogies.
We read many people like mehave a list of analogies they
collect somewhere.
And now I can just go to JATGPDand say give me an analogy on
this, and I've never used theanalogy it's given me.

(01:05:10):
I'm like that's ridiculous,that doesn't make any sense.

And some of the tricky parts is you can
feed JATGPD a text of scriptureand say, can you write me a
sermon from this text and itwill do exactly what you ask it
to do, and then put you end upwith these thorny theological
questions of now.
You have to contend withsomething new, of like was this

(01:05:37):
Holy Spirit inspired?
When you talk about inspirationor the needs of a congregation,
how do you then assess it?
So I think there's a like Iwould never pastors and leaders
of churches I would neverencourage to now take that on to
make your job easier.
It's like the Lord will providewhat you need, but like you
have to trust him.
You have to trust an autonomoussystem that someone's built to

(01:05:58):
do, to give the very words oflife to the people that you care
about.

I just don't do that, and maybe this is to both
of you.
If you have no idea what AI isor even what JATGPD is I know a
lot of people they're like Idon't even know, I have no idea
what you're talking about what'sthe best way to like take it
for a spin, so to speak?
There's JATGPD4 on open AI.

(01:06:23):
It's barred for Google.
I know China.
There's a company in Chinathat's releasing its own model
right now.
What's like a good way to justgo experiment and see what's up?

So you can create a free account with
JATGPD4.
I think it's chatopenaicom.
Create a free account there andyou can just take it out for a
spin, ask it to do things.
And now to use the more the aswas going to happen, to use the
more cutting edge models, you'regonna have to pay a
subscription, so you pay peruser, per token.

(01:06:55):
That you might do, but thebasic ones, the old legacy
models, are all now free.
So just try it and again, butbe wary of the temptation to use
it to replace what you know.
You need to invest time andeffort to grow in.

Like friendships.

Yeah, like friendships or the work or the
study you're going to do.
It's like you know.
Realize that temptation earlyand say like your integrity is
far more important than yourproductivity.
So like don't abuse it.
Use it for what it's good for.

Clark, do you have any tips for use GPT?

Clark Wray (01:07:31):
The creative side of things.
We actually did try to use itto find a podcast title and we
picked none of them.
But the productivity side forme is usually around dry
documents, select agreements,code troubleshooting like a soup
of a code I need to write toput something on my page.
Stuff like that's extremelyefficient.

(01:07:53):
But the creative side of it hasbeen more challenging, although
on the scriptural side, 100%agree on sermon prep, not having
it write your sermons, butBible searches are quite useful.
It'll mess things up sometimes,but be able to ask it and what
are passages that talk aboutthis?
And it'll give you a list ofscriptures and you have to go
look at that and check it out.

(01:08:13):
It makes a pretty powerfulsearch engine.

If you take advantage of what computers are
good for.
Computers don't get tired.
They can do things incrediblyfast.
If you're trying to review10,000 lines of illegal document
, don't trust a person to dothat, because they'll get tired,
they'll miss stuff, whereaschat GPT can do it easily.
Just let it do what it's goodat.
But from a human standpoint, wewant to interface with it in a

(01:08:39):
way that's beneficial to all.
We're not going to costourselves something that we
would rather not have given away.

And it can save time with graphic generation too
.
We don't need to get into it,but I've been really impressed
with some of the creativemarketing side that you can.

Yeah, because what you're seeing is
companies like OpenAI are nowconsuming other companies that
do complimentary things, likeDahli and really so and now they
just really see ability to nowintake documents and analyze
them of a variety of types, andso they're just going to get
more and more centralized, Ithink Right.
So I think it's good to knowhow to use them wisely.

(01:09:22):
Yeah.

Well, thanks so much for joining me and I really
enjoyed the conversation.
And if you're interested incoming to Sattler and studying
under Dr Harris and his tutelage, what do you do, clark?
Apply that to Sattleredu?
Yeah, so we're talking aboutthis more and more, but this
year in particular, we're makinga phenomenal financial

(01:09:51):
announcement where we're tryingto do away with tuition.
Make it a thing of the past.
More exciting details to comethere and anything else, any
other events or anything notnecessarily- Anything that I
know related to that will beafter this podcast comes out.
All right, thanks everyone,thank you.

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