July 15, 2025 • 44 mins
Jake Carlson shares how his AI-powered chatbot is revolutionizing global evangelism by providing biblical answers in 192 languages across 125+ countries. His journey from missionary kid in China to tech innovator demonstrates how cutting-edge technology can be harnessed for the Great Commission, particularly in reaching unreached people groups.
• Built Apologist.ai after years in software development at Oracle and Apple
• Chatbot answers theological questions using content from trusted ministries like GotQuestions.org
• Customizes responses for different worldviews and cultural contexts
• Reaches places traditional missionaries cannot access, including closed countries
• Users feel comfortable asking sensitive questions they wouldn't ask another person
• Developing voice interfaces for illiterate populations and offline capabilities for areas without internet
• Partners with missions organizations to create white-labeled versions that match their branding
• Identifies spiritual openness in conversations to help focus on receptive seekers
• Technology serves as a bridge to human relationships, not a replacement
• Already seeing usage among highly unreached people groups without any targeted advertising
Visit apologist.ai to try the chatbot yourself or alim.apologist.ai for the Muslim-focused version. Reach out to Jake if you're interested in discussing how AI can amplify your ministry's impact among the unreached.
Follow @unreachedpodcast on Instagram for more!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
In Revelation 7, john shares his vision of heaven
with members from every tribe,tongue, people and language
standing in the throne roombefore the Lamb.
Yet today there are still over7,000 unreached people groups
around the world.
For the last six years, myfamily and friends have been on
a journey to find, vet and fundthe task remaining.
(00:28):
Come journey with us to theends of the earth as we share
the supernatural stories of Godat work for the men and women he
has called to reach theunreached.
Hello friends, welcome back tothe Unreached Podcast.
Dustin Elliott here, your host.
Today We've got a specialepisode and it starts with a
(00:49):
cool story and you know there'smore stories coming.
But this story starts out asthis guy, jake Carlson, reaches
out to me because he heard thepodcast and he heard his friend
Craig Bradley on the podcast.
We did an episode with Craig AOLab on the Seed Bible and Jake
reached out.
He goes.
Hey, I know Craig loved thepodcast.
We did an episode with Craig AOLab on the Seed Bible and Jake
reached out.
He goes.
Hey, I know Craig loved theepisode.
I'm working on something kind ofinteresting.
(01:10):
I just so happen to live inyour backyard.
I'm in Steiner Ranch, which isjust outside of Austin, and he
says could we visit?
So I said of course we could.
So we hopped on Zoom and heshared what he's doing.
And, guys, I mean we've beentalking about new methods, we've
been talking about how to getto the unreached.
(01:31):
You want to talk about usingthe coolest new technology on
the planet.
That is exactly what Jake isdoing.
So help me welcome Jake Carlsonto the show.
Yeah, thanks for having me, ofcourse, of course.
So start us out with a littlebit about Jake, right?
Who are you and what's yourbackground in like professional
and faith?
(01:52):
How'd you get to know the Lord?
To get you started on whatyou're doing now?
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Absolutely so.
I actually grew up as amissionary kid in China and went
to a private Christian schoolthere, got really interested in
kind of worldview studies,apologetics and through that God
put in my heart you know, theheart of evangelism.
Watching my parents minister tothe people over in China and
kind of, coming out of highschool and into college, got
(02:19):
really in-depth study-wise intoapologetics and was looking
around at the internet.
It kind of was the nascentstages of the internet becoming
kind of a communications tooland I noticed online there's a
lot of kind of philosophicaldiscourse.
But I noticed it was more of akind of a secular bent and I
decided there and then to oneday raise up a platform for
(02:43):
apologetics online.
Now, at that moment AI wasn'treally a thought in my head.
I was just starting my careerin software development and you
know, to make a long story short, I worked for lots of startups
in Austin and abroad.
I worked for Oracle and Applein my career, mostly in software
development and then also inproduct management more recently
(03:05):
, and maybe every decade or so,I would remember that domain I
bought Apologistcom a long timeago and how I made a promise to
myself and God oh, okay, Okay alittle seed got planted back
there.
That's right.
You know I would kind of startit up and you know it would
peter out because I got busywith work or whatever.
(03:26):
And it wasn't until 2023 that Ihad just left my most recent
startup right in the middle ofthe tech layoffs in that time
period.
It was in that period that, Ithink, frankly, god was just
kind of kicking me in the butt,saying, look like now or never
you got to do this.
Me in the butt saying look nowor never, you got to do this,
(03:49):
and so ChatGPT had been takingthe world by storm.
At that point, I saw an obviousopportunity to use the latest
bleeding edge technology for thekingdom, and so we started out
creating a chat bot, went to ahackathon, unveiled it and part
of the tech involved with thatis on the human side partnering
with ministries that had contentto give that chatbot a little
(04:12):
bit more context by which toanswer from a biblical
standpoint.
You know we unveiled the chatbotin 2023.
We decided that it wasincredibly important to build up
that corpus of biblically-basedtechnology and partner with
different ministries, and so weset about from there, creating a
(04:34):
corpus management system.
And just for the listeners whomaybe might not be familiar with
the terminology I'm using here.
A corpus is basically just aknowledge base.
We have partnered with a bunchof different ministries and
gotten a ton of content into thecorpus, spent the first about
year and a half building that upand right now we're kind of
(04:56):
pivoting a bit, in the sensethat we have enough content in
there that the chatbot is reallyeffective at what it does and
now we want to pivot a littlebit and start partnering with
ministries to get it out in thefield and I can share some stats
a little bit later.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
All right, I'm going to stop you.
I'm going to stop you becausethere's a few things we need to
lay out some groundwork here for.
Okay, first you see apologistsapologetics, just for we don't
know if everybody's up to speedon that term and what it means.
So take us through.
What is it about to be adefender of the faith?
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Yeah, absolutely so.
I view apologetics asevangelism of the mind.
You know, god does not ask usto put our intellect at the door
and blindly believe right.
He asks us to see the worksthat he has done in the lives of
(05:53):
other people, and also thestories in the Bible, and use a
fundamental base of thatknowledge to go a step further
and say, yes, this makes sense.
This allows me to believe that,even if there are unanswered
questions or things that arebeyond my intellect, I believe,
based on the trustworthiness ofthose things, that he is Lord
(06:18):
and Savior.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
You're not going to be able to discern it all and
understand it all, but it'sactually meant to be that way.
Okay, so if we have a littlebit of a grasp of apologetics,
and then you have this realheart for building content,
building something that can workwhen we're sleeping, in theory.
And so for folks that don'tknow a lot about AI and large
(06:43):
language models and how that allworks, so if you go to like
ChatGBT or Grok through X orothers, they basically have let
them read the Internet, they'vetrained them to go read kind of
everything that's out there, andso you can ask about any topic.
But you're going to be pullingfrom kind of all these different
angles and opinions andviewpoints on that topic, and so
(07:06):
what you did was you didn't letyour LLM, you didn't let yours,
read the internet.
You restricted it to the Bibleand to trusted commentaries and
trusted partners and whatthey've written and said about
the Bible and about the faith.
Is that fair?
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Yeah, that's mostly true, I would caveat it, though.
So I'll try to keep this notsuper technical.
But basically, a lot of thelarge language models that maybe
the audience has heard about,including you know ChatGPT,
obviously, and you know Grok,like you mentioned, they were
trained on a you know kind ofunfiltered source on the
(07:46):
internet or other sources togenerate a natural language
processing capability, and whatthat means is it understands how
to interpret language and thenturn around and generate a
response to questions or prompts.
So we actually layer on top ofthat a corpus of
biblically-based content, andwhat that does is it constrains
(08:09):
the responses to that context.
Several people in the audiencemay have already used ChatGPT,
at least in passing, and atypical use case for that would
be hey, I have this huge chunkof text that I don't want to
read the whole thing.
Can you just summarize it forme?
Synthesize, exactly.
And so what we're doing isessentially that, except we're
(08:30):
providing that content right.
So if you ask a question likeis Jesus God?
Well, we hand the AI hundredsto thousands of documents that
were curated fromBible-believing Christians, who
wrote it, and synthesizes thatcontent into an answer that's
succinct to the user.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
You don't know this, but I shared it with a few
people and I said ask it thehardest questions you can think
of.
It is robust and I have notbeen able to trip it up, so I
went deep.
I was like you know, tell mehow there are giants after the
flood, right, like, explain theheavenly host to me, explain the
divine counsel to me.
(09:12):
Like I wanted to get in thereand see, like could I trip it up
?
No, no, no, I have not beenable to trip it up.
It's really something.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
That's awesome.
Over the years, right, we'vehoned it to the point where when
we do see an answer that's not100% optimal, we fix that right,
and so it's an iterativeprocess.
But I got to say that in thelast six months to a year, I
don't think I've heard ofanybody reporting you know a bad
theological concept or anythinglike that.
It's been pretty solid.
(09:42):
And again for any of thelisteners who are concerned
about AI kind of making stuff upright or hallucinations what we
do is we ground the AI in thatbiblical knowledge produced by
human beings.
So, yes, the AI is generatingyou know text from its own
programming, but the sources ofthat synthesis are produced by
(10:02):
humans inspired by the HolySpirit to write biblically based
content.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
Think of it this way if you go onto a website and
you're shopping and you'relooking for something and
there's a little chat thing thatpops up in the bottom
right-hand corner of the webpage and it says chat with us,
right, and then you choose to,or if you're, you know anything
you could be doing doing yourtaxes?
Do you need help?
Chat with us.
Whatever the case is, you'vebuilt that and so if I have my
website for my church thewebsite we're actually building
(10:28):
a new website for the podcastwhich we're going to feature
this on If somebody else has amissions website, or even if
you're just a missionary andyou've got a small site that you
use to stay connected to yoursupporters back home, etc.
You could embed the chatbot inthere and they could go in there
when they're hanging out withyour content and go tell me more
(10:48):
.
Like this missionary just wrotethis blog post and this story
was about this concept and theytalked about Acts 1-8, and I've
heard Acts 1-8, but like, whatwas the geographical, like
actual terms between Jerusalemand Judea and Samaria and the
ends of the earth, and how do Icontextualize that?
You know in Texas or in theUnited States?
Like you could ask it questionswhile you're reading that
(11:10):
content, right yeah?
Speaker 2 (11:11):
absolutely, and we, you know, we focus in on kind of
that biblical knowledge andextra-biblical apologetics
content.
The strongest use case that wehave is really direct evangelism
and indirect evangelism, andwhat I mean by indirect
evangelism we're in the world toshare the gospel.
(11:33):
We're in the world to furtherthe Great Commission and in that
capacity we all will bump upagainst hard questions that our
friends or acquaintances, oreven you know just chance
happenings, will ask us, and webelieve that building a very
quick resource for people, evenChristians, to be able to answer
(11:56):
those questions and, you know,as an aid for Bible study and
whatnot, is far more efficientthan wading through thousands of
unvetted Google results orsomething like that.
Right, if you can just get asynthesis of those pre-curated
sources, that'll save you tonsof time and it'll be more
accurate and you can have trustthat the sources you're getting
(12:16):
them from are all from a curatedset.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
Right.
So one of the sources isgotquestionsorg right, which I
love.
I know a lot of people thatreally appreciate that, and so
tell me how'd you get connectedwith them and how did y'all work
that out?
Speaker 2 (12:32):
Yeah, absolutely Mainly through, you know, kind
of networking, and there'ssomebody on our team I don't
want to necessarily out them whohad a relationship with Shea of
GotQuestions connected us, andthat's just an example of God's
providence in this project.
As you mentioned, gotquestionsis an amazing ministry kind of a
(12:55):
question-and-answer format, sothat website is really the ideal
kind of content set for us.
Right, it's almostpurpose-built for exactly what
we want, and so GotQuestions hasbeen an amazing partner, and we
have many other partners aswell.
Not only do we ingest theircontent and use that to help
generate questions, but we alsoproduce white-label chatbots,
(13:15):
and so if you go togotquestionschat, that's a
version of our chatbot that weprovided.
Now, in that case it's justconstricted to the GotQuestions
Ministries corpus, right, it'snot anybody else's, because they
have a pretty comprehensivecorpus.
But any other ministry thatwants to create a chatbot that
(13:35):
blends in with their colorpalette and has all their
messaging can do so.
And not only that, but they canselectively turn on or off the
different sources that we have.
So you'll have people say likeI really I trust GotQuestions.
I want to have my own chatbot,upload some of my own stuff,
maybe some sermons or whatever.
And then I just want to turn onthe faucet for the GotQuestions
(13:58):
corpus, but maybe not some ofthis other stuff.
That's totally doable, oh cool.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
I can hear some of the older guard out there
turning the volume down rightnow and maybe going for a walk
and they're like I don't knowabout this.
I don't know about this stuff.
Chatbots this sounds too youngand maybe it won't work and can
I trust it is?
If you're trusting Google,you're getting Google with a
(14:25):
huge layer of trusted, approved,synthesized results that your
team has already gone throughand said like these are the guys
that are doing it the best,these are the books and
commentaries and sites and suchthat we trust.
And so if you go in and you aska question here, your results
are going to be cleaner, faster,better.
(14:48):
The point you made when you'rejust sitting with someone having
a conversation about the gospeland you're talking through a
concept and you know, you canthink of a point in the Bible
where you would like to go pullthat verse or that story from.
But, man, I don't remember wasthat in Matthew or Mark or was
that in John, because John'sdifferent.
I can't remember which one itwas in.
You can just ask Pull it out,just open the app and ask and
(15:11):
it's going to pop.
It's going to be there for you,just like that, and not just
the scripture itself but somecommentary on it as well, to
kind of help you see how othershave thought through it.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
Yeah, to kind of help .
You see how others have thoughtthrough it.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
Yeah absolutely Okay.
So this is the UnreachedPodcast.
Now we've talked through thisevangelistic chatbot and what it
can do, but right now we'veonly talked about or thought
about it really in English, andit doesn't only work in English,
does it it?
Actually?
You've got a translator builtinto it and I think you said 192
(15:45):
languages right now, that'sright?
Yep, how incredible is that?
So somebody could ask aquestion in their heart language
and it's going to figure outwhat it's asking, find the
answer, translate it back tothem in real time.
Is that how it works?
Speaker 2 (16:00):
Yeah, absolutely so.
As I stated earlier, we're hereon earth to fulfill the Great
Commission and, yes, you know,the AI is an amazing tool for,
you know, sermon prep and youknow, helping Christians here in
the West understand biblicalpassages and all that good stuff
(16:20):
.
But the way we differentiateourselves is we try to focus on
evangelism, and obviouslythere's a big world out there.
I grew up as a missionary kid,as I stated, so my heart is
leaning in that direction and todate, our chatbot has been used
in over 125 different countries, spread out across 64 languages
(16:44):
and counting right.
So, as you mentioned, wesupport 192 languages and if you
count that up, that's double orquadruple what most of the
commercial AIs can offer.
And we do that throughreal-time translation and that
allows us to convey thosebiblically-based answers in just
(17:07):
about any language you canthink of.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
That's incredible.
Okay, and so the country whereyou're getting the most activity
right now, or the part of theworld, is really in Southeast
Asia, right?
Speaker 2 (17:18):
Yeah, we've had amazing usage in Indonesia and
Singapore in particular, andthen just kind of random other
countries that we're notadvertising in per se, and then
just kind of random othercountries that we're not
advertising in per se, but justword of mouth has spread.
South Africa is a big one forus as well.
Indonesia is an interestingcase, in particular because
that's the largest you knowIslamic country in the world by
population.
(17:38):
You know we've built specificchatbots that minister to that
worldview and we're stillbuilding others for other
worldviews as well.
And so we go in and not onlycan you kind of customize the
look and feel, but you cancustomize how it's ministering,
right.
So how are the responsesrelated to the particular
person's use case?
And how we got there honestlyis kind of an interesting story
(18:01):
as well.
We started out by building achatbot and my assumption at
that point was like, hey, let'sbuild one chatbot to rule them
all right, like this entity thatcould just respond perfectly to
anybody.
And I was talking to amissionary friend of my father's
who he knew in college,currently serving in Bangladesh
to the Muslim population there,and he was offering his feedback
(18:24):
and said like hey, yeah, youknow, your chatbot's really
great.
It gives me, you know, biblicalsupport for the answers and
everything like that.
But here's the thing, jake,muslims aren't going to find
that very compelling.
What you need to do iscontextualize the gospel, and
that was like an aha moment forme.
It's like, of course, you know,how could I have, you know, not
seen this?
You can't just have the samemessage for every audience.
(18:47):
It's not going to work.
You have to contextualize it.
Paul at Mars Hill, for example.
And so that set us on a courseof building variants of the
chatbot that minister tospecific worldviews.
So, in the case of Islam, wepartnered with several
ministries that werespecifically geared toward
Muslim ministry, got theircontent and put it into the
(19:08):
chatbot, but also partnered withsome folks who were more
familiar with ministering to theMuslim population than I.
Was.
Growing up in China, easternChina specifically I just didn't
encounter a lot of Muslimpopulations, it's just not my
wheelhouse.
So what we do is we partnerwith ministries who have
specific focus areas or specificpeople group and we come
(19:32):
alongside them and help thembuild a customized chatbot that
will minister to that particularpopulation.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
So they've got that bot then on their site and the
people that are going to theirsite are primarily in that area,
correct?
Yes, but what if I'm running aglobal missions organization and
there's people in 50, 60different countries and
accessing my site?
Am I going to have the generalbot or will it know where that
(19:58):
person's coming in from and youcan then supply that bot in that
?
Speaker 2 (20:04):
area.
Yeah, so we allow ministries tocreate as many different
variants as they have differentuse cases.
Okay, so you could easily youknow, in the sense of like a
media-to-movement kind ofsituation, where maybe the
ingestion point is like socialmedia or something like that you
could advertise one of yourvariants that specifically
(20:25):
ministers to, say, indonesia,like I mentioned before, and
have that funnel go to,specifically, a chatbot that's
been designed to minister tothat people group.
I was on a panel at South bySouthwest, the Sunday service,
and right after I got off of thestage, someone approached me
and said like hey, I have aministry, or I'm involved with a
(20:48):
ministry that specificallytargets Islamic women coming out
of abusive relationships inTurkey.
That's a very hyper-focusedspecialization.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
I'm not gonna say it out loud, but I think I know
which one you're talking about.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
Okay, but anyway, the point is that you can
hyper-focus the intent of thesechatbots to whatever level of
context you want.
We have a generalMuslim-serving chatbot, but you
could extend that to anygeographic region, any subset of
the population, anything likethat.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
Crazy, cool.
So some companies will havedifferent sites for different
parts of the world, and then youcould gear it to that part of
the world and what's that looklike in partnering with you.
So if I'm listening to this, uhlike, we know a lot of the
heads of the biggest missionsorgs in the in the world uh are
are listening.
Um, what, what would you say tothem?
(21:38):
Reach out, check it out.
Let me run a demo for you.
This is how it could work.
You could test it here, youcould test it there.
We can do different iterations,is it like?
How do they partner with you?
Speaker 2 (21:49):
How do we do it.
So the first step is just toreach out and we'll set up a
demo and during that demo we'llkind of, you know, tell you a
lot of this.
You know, we'll kind ofreiterate some of the things
that we've said here about kindof the use cases and so forth.
Sometimes we'll build a demoahead of time.
In fact, I find the mosteffective demos is, you know.
For example, we've gotquestions, right, like I built a
(22:09):
chat, a white label chat botfor them with their corpus,
didn't release it to the world,right, and nobody else could
access it, because we always getpermission for any of the
content that we're using.
But I rolled into that meetingsaying like, hey, here's your
chatbot, it's already ingestedyour entire content.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
Open this up and try it.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
See how it works and the jaws just drop right Because
it's like, wow, because we'vebuilt a platform where that kind
of thing is fairly easy to doahead of time, right?
And so I don't always know theministry well enough to know
what content to ingest ahead oftime, but usually it'll just
happen that, you know, we'llhave a uh, an initial call.
(22:48):
We'll, you know, understandtheir use case, but then, very
quickly afterwards, we'll spinup a white label chat bot with
their, with their content, withtheir branding.
We can even, you know, matchthe fonts on your site.
We can do make it reallydetailed and um, so that, so
that everyone understands, whenwe meet with them, that this can
really fit in and augment theirdigital strategy.
(23:10):
It's not like something outhere, right, it's something that
you can plug and play into yourministry.
What?
Speaker 1 (23:14):
are they going to get ?
What are they going to get fromit?
What data are they going to getthat they can use?
Are they going to see who's on,how many people are on, what
questions are being asked, etcetera?
Speaker 2 (23:24):
How many people are on, what questions are being
asked, et cetera.
Yeah, right now all the chatbotusage is anonymous, but we do
collect, you know, informationabout language and country and
everything like that.
We are going to have like anauthenticated version in not too
long but for that evangelismuse case, we're not expecting
that.
A lot of people say in a Muslimcountry are going to create an
account, right, because thatcould you know any way to trace
back to the people in countrieswhere there might even be laws
(23:48):
or at least heavy social stigmaaren't going to want to have an
account.
So most of it's anonymized, butthe ministries involved will be
able to see the prompts andresponses that are going back
and demographic details aboutthe users, Sure, and if they're,
on their site, then they have away to contact them there.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
So if something happens in that conversation
with the chatbot somebody Idon't want to say fully goes all
in, but maybe they get close ormaybe they do then they know
they can reach out to theorganization, they can get
connected to somebody.
You can set up next steps fromthere.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Absolutely yeah, the organization who you know.
When we build a chatbot for anorganization, they're in control
of how much information todivulge about themselves.
You know, in some sensitiveareas it might not be advisable
exactly to trace it back to youknow an organization in the
sense that it might kind ofcompromise their operations in
that country, and so they're incomplete control of that.
They can send the user back toa website if they click to learn
(24:52):
more, but they don't have toright.
You can also just kind ofremove that and just have it
more of like an anonymous kindof ministry.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
You know God's in time and on time all the time
right.
Nothing surprises him.
This isn't something he didn'tsee coming.
But I just wonder what it'slike to see the internet take
off and people engaging with theBible digitally, and now this
new incredible iteration with AIcoming in and people having
actual conversations and we knowthis is happening culturally in
(25:24):
the world.
Man, this is so cool.
I mean, somebody's going to beable to truly have access to the
gospel and get their questionsanswered and, you know,
depending on which side or whichplace they're doing it through,
you know they can probably getconnected to somebody and figure
out what's next for them.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
Yeah, absolutely.
And one key thing that Ineglected to mention earlier is
that the handoff from an AI to ahuman being is exceptionally
important for us, right?
So I don't want to get too muchinto the theology of technology
and how God uses and all thatgood stuff, but I think most
Christians would agree that it'sthrough the work of the Holy
(26:05):
Spirit and that very often isthrough a relationship between a
human being to another humanbeing.
So the AI can certainly kind ofpoint people in the right
direction and even answer reallygood.
You know hard-fought questionsand I believe that God can work
using the Holy Spirit throughany kind of external simulation,
(26:30):
right?
So, for example, if someone'sheart is stirred by the act of
someone giving to the poor,that's the Holy Spirit working.
If someone gets a questionanswered that was a kind of a
hang-up intellectually for themvia AI, that can still be the
Holy Spirit working.
But we do offer a way in ourchatbots for that handoff to a
(26:54):
human being to occur.
So what we do is for everywhite-label chatbot you can add
a call to action of any sortbeneath the question, right?
So if you look at a partnerlike—we're also a partner with
allaboutgodcom, for example—andthey have, at the end of every
one of their webpages, some callto action, some buttons that
(27:14):
say like hey, yes, I'veindicated my interest in
learning more about Jesus of theGospel, or hey, I want to learn
more, something like that,right?
And so what they've done isthey've built in that same call
to action at the end of everyprompt.
So it's almost as if you know,you ask the chatbot a question,
it gives you a dynamicallygenerated essay, essentially
about that topic, just like thecontent on that website.
(27:37):
And then, just like theirwebsite, at the bottom it says
like hey, you know, click hereto get in touch with a human
being.
Let's talk a little bit moreabout our relationship with
Jesus.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
I wonder if this, as you gather more data, if this
will start to inform the taskremaining in the Great
Commission community.
Like there's a lot of questionscoming from this people group
in this area who's there Isnobody there yet.
Like that might be a place weneed to go get somebody to.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
Absolutely, and we've actually just recently we've
cross-referenced kind of ourusage against the Joshua
Project's data and we found that, you know, in several of the
highly unreached people groupswe actually have thousands of
prompts going on that you know.
Again, not advertising there,don't have any idea how it
happened.
Just we put it on the internetand through both our first party
(28:24):
chatbots and our ministrypartners, we're reaching people
who aren't being reached rightnow.
You know there are lots ofgreat missionaries in the field,
but there are too few, right, Ithink.
Speaker 1 (28:36):
More taxi cab drivers in Vegas than missionaries.
In the 1040 window you got allthe stats on that.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
That's why we're here right.
So one thing that you hit on alittle bit earlier that I'd want
to touch on as well is yes, ahuman relationship is definitely
key for outreach, but sometimesthat's not an option.
Sometimes it's the middle ofthe night, Sometimes it's in a
place where there's a ratio ofone missionary to a million
(29:02):
people right.
Sometimes there are situations,again in closed countries,
where you can't openly seekright.
Seekers are lost and have noconnection to anyone who would
even be able to share the gospelto them.
But most people have a phoneright or at least a big portion
of people, especially in thedeveloping world and they have
(29:24):
access to this technology thatcan answer these questions with
a high degree of accuracy, 24-7,in any location that has an
internet connection.
Another use case that we'reexploring is situations where
there's not internet, Forexample, many remote regions,
especially in Africa and otherplaces in the world, where we
(29:46):
could embed the AI onto a devicethat could then be brought into
that country and used withoutany connectivity.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
Yeah, no, that's incredible.
So that makes me think about,like DeVar right, and the audio
Bibles, and a lot of people inthe world who are not able to
get internet access so theycan't go online and read, but
they have this, and then, ofcourse, there's the whole
conversation around who can readand who can't read, and what
can you do that?
Speaker 2 (30:13):
in audio?
Absolutely, yeah, that's areally good point.
So we're exploring voice agentsas well.
But I was just talking to areally large Christian
evangelism organization theother day and they're kind of
exploring having, you know, notjust voice but avatars kind of
you know, so there's actuallylooks like a human being talking
(30:33):
to you.
But I think voice is going tobe a huge area of expansion for
us, both because of cases wheremaybe the user is actually
illiterate, but also becauseit's just a lot more convenient.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
That's fascinating.
We don't think about how fewpeople can actually read.
We don't think about how fewpeople don't have internet
access that's readily availableand reliable and good enough
that you would actually sitthere and engage with it and use
it, and good enough that youwould actually sit there and
engage with it and use it.
But, man, when you start toaddress those last kind of
issues, and you oh my gosh, yeah, clint's over here just smiling
(31:05):
and nodding like whoa, this isso cool, this is so cool.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
Yeah, absolutely, and there are plenty of.
You know.
Voice technologies is obviouslynot new.
The problem really is latencyright, like how do you
synthesize and generate thevoice?
And in the last couple of yearsthat technology has grown in
leaps and bounds.
So now you can.
(31:28):
You know, you've probably seenthe OpenAI demos and some other
companies where somebody'sliterally just talking to an AI
and the response is very quick.
I mean, if you get that in thehands of a seeker where they're
just having a conversation, theydon't even have to type, they
can just start talking back andforth with an AI and get those
biblically-based responses, thatto me, is really powerful.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
Goodness, gracious man, what a call on your life,
and I love how the seed wasplanted years ago I mean growing
up in the field, obviously, butthen grabbing that URL and just
kind of waiting waiting onGod's prompt to say like now's
the time that the tech is readyand you are ready, like you've
done enough in this field, thatyou're an expert, you know how
to do it.
One thing on your website thatI noticed was you mentioned the
hackathons earlier.
But what in the world is ahackathon for those of us that
(32:13):
don't hackathon?
Speaker 2 (32:14):
Yeah.
So a hackathon is an eventwhere a bunch of people get
together and, in a short timespan, try to develop some kind
of technology, output Right, sosome kind of product or some
kind of outcome, and the keythere is is that it's in a time
boxed.
Lot of innovation tends tohappen where people are focused.
You have teams working togetherusually teams, at least Some
(32:43):
people go it alone, but the bestoutcomes are usually when
various different professionalsget together and try to develop
something, brainstorm and bringa product to fruition in a short
period of time.
Got it Late.
Last year we participated in twoseparate hackathons, one put on
by a company called Glue andanother with a international
(33:04):
digital missions organizationcalled Indigitous.
Leading up to that firsthackathon I think it was in
October of last year God reallylaid it on our heart that we
really needed to develop theseworldview-specific chatbots, and
so we took that as a clear signthat we ought to develop a
(33:24):
chatbot specifically targetingthe Muslim population, just
because, obviously, Islam is oneof the major religions.
In fact, some of the researchrecently has indicated that it's
going to overtake the Christianpopulation in about a decade,
mostly through birth decade,mostly through birth rate, not
through conversion, they'remaking more babies than we are
Exactly, but in any case, that'san obvious kind of demographic
(33:48):
for us to focus on.
And so we partnered with a bunchof ministries to develop a
chatbot for that particularhackathon, to kind of
demonstrate the capabilities oftargeting a particular worldview
.
Went to that hackathon.
It was an amazing experience.
We brought a team of about fiveor six people and at the
hackathon the nature of thesehackathons is that some people
just show up without a team andare just interested in getting
(34:11):
involved with a project that'salready going on.
So we also kind of not onlybrought a team but we garnered a
couple other kind, you knowkind of members of the team at
the hackathon who were, you know, saw what we were doing and
were like, hey, I want to beinvolved in that.
So the experience was reallygreat and lots of connections
made, lots of networking.
So now you have a global team,absolutely Right, yeah, yeah.
So through these hackathonevents, one of the individuals
(34:37):
on our team actually resides inMalaysia and I think that's so
important.
Like, yeah, you know, honestly,I'm a white Protestant here in
the US, but I havea heart forevangelism, and to not have that
international focus is a reallybig miss for me personally,
right, no doubt.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
Hey, the mission field's become the mission force
.
And your buddy, craig Bradley,right I mean, he said that.
He said that he's got somefolks that come from other
religious backgrounds who havenow become Christ followers
through the work they're doingdeveloping the seed Bible.
And that's not the sole reasonthat he brought them in.
He brought them in because theywere highly technically skilled
(35:15):
and at a cost that a nonnonprofit could afford.
But the result is, when you getinto this work and when you're
in the Bible a lot, it is theliving word and some things can
and will change Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
And that global perspective is really important
for us.
I grew up in an environmentwhere we did focus on kind of
the classical Western Christianmindset, but contextualizing
that for peoples across theglobe is just so important, and
so we believe that, throughpartnering with global missions,
(35:50):
organizations that have peopleon the ground over there that
have the sensibilities of how toreach the people that they're
ministering to, that is reallythe most powerful combination.
We bring our technology, ourexpertise in conversational AI,
and combine that with theexpertise of the people serving
across the globe and you havejust a really powerful
combination.
(36:10):
Who's that sound like?
Speaker 1 (36:11):
That sounds like TMAI I mean the same concept Like
we've got these trainingmaterials.
We've kind of got some you knowexperience in how to run a
church, when you plant a church,things like that.
But we're not coming in heresaying we know how to do
everything and you have to do itour way.
We're coming in saying help usunderstand who you are and your
culture and what's important andwhat's relevant to you, and
here's some things that could beuseful and would you like to
(36:32):
consider working together andcould some of these be helpful?
And that's just this veryhumble approach that you're
sharing as well, which is veryimportant to me and I know a lot
of our listeners to hear that,because you're clearly a very,
very smart guy, but you're notwalking around the world going.
I know more than you You'regoing.
Hey, I just kind of have accessto some cool stuff that could
(36:52):
be supplemental and helpful foryou and I'm here to help.
Speaker 2 (36:55):
Yeah, we've been surprised by how open people are
with AI, and that's anotheraspect we didn't explore too
much.
But while that relationalaspect with a human being is
important, it's also true thatpeople open up to AI more than
they do to human beings a lot ofthe time.
Speaker 1 (37:12):
That's a fascinating concept.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
And so not only do you have the access, the
language, but also there's thisthing where I might go to chat
GPT, and since it's not a humanbeing on the other side of that,
potentially judging me, I'llsay— you might ask it.
The really hard stuff you'redealing with Exactly Like I'm
not shy about that, and so whenwe're reviewing our chat logs
(37:34):
and seeing what people are usingit for and what people are
asking, it's all anonymous, sowe don't know who it is.
But you'd be surprised, Likeyou know, we have stories of you
know people in Egypt, forexample, talking about sexuality
, right, and that's a really hottopic.
If you're a Muslim in themiddle of Egypt, right, talking
about sexuality and stuff likethat, and you want some both
(37:57):
guidance and comfort in yourfeelings, like that's a really
heavy topic.
Yeah, and I could get you killedtalking to the wrong person
about that Exactly right, like,who are you going to trust with
that information, right.
But we see people opening up toyou know, in a conversational
AI context.
And then another example wouldbe you know, we have chat logs
(38:17):
of people who are experiencingabuse, you know, and asking
questions about you know, how dothey handle it?
Like, what do they do?
And you know the person'seither going to go to another
human being, which sometimesthey're reluctant to do, or
they're going to, you know,search, google or something like
that and get a mishmash ofadvice from various sources, or
they can come to abiblically-based conversational
(38:39):
AI and they'll get a Christianperspective on their issue.
Speaker 1 (38:44):
Wow, that's amazing.
Yeah, that's a wrinkle, Ihadn't considered.
Hey guys, as you're listeningto this, if you want to test out
the technology for yourself,Jake, what site could they go to
or what app could they downloadand give this a go?
Speaker 2 (38:57):
Yeah, the easiest one would be apologistai.
So that's going to be ourgeneric kind of chatbot.
It has knowledge about all thedifferent worldviews.
If you want to check out theMuslim serving one specifically,
we have a URL for that as well.
It's alimapologistai.
That's A-L-I-M dotA-P-O-L-O-G-I-S-T dot A-I for
(39:24):
the Muslim Serving Chatbot, andthat one's pretty interesting as
well.
It services a lot of theMuslim-speaking countries and
has specific training tominister to the Muslim peoples.
There you go.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
There you go.
So, apologistai, type it in,check it out, go, ask us some
hard questions.
So, given the kind of currentstate you're in, you've got the
translation stuff going.
You're considering bringingvoice and even avatars in where
there's kind of a conversationthat's being had.
We're considering where theinternet is not, although there
(39:57):
are others that are working ongetting the internet everywhere
and that's incredible.
You've got all these differentavenues, all these different
kind of channels.
What are you most excited about?
Speaker 2 (40:07):
Well, that's a great question.
There are so many differentavenues for us to explore right
now, but in reality we're justso excited to partner with
missions organizations spreadingthe gospel across the globe to
come up with innovativesolutions using our AI
technology.
For example, we're starting astudy about evaluating different
(40:30):
AI models for their ability toalign with the Christian
worldview, with a Christianworldview.
Another project that we're kindof embarking on is using AI to
analyze conversations that arehappening in real time to
determine the spiritual opennessof the seeker right.
So we're working on that inpartnership with a couple
ministries and if you're aministry out there that wants to
(40:54):
explore conversational AI,maybe you already have a media
to movement program but you wantto augment it.
You know we also run against alot of missions organizations
who are just inundated withinflow of seekers that and they
need some kind of automation tokind of narrow down to the
people in that funnel that aremost earnestly seeking.
(41:17):
We're exploring ideas like that.
So if you're a missionsorganization that is interested
in that kind of automation usingAI, definitely reach out.
But there's just so many wayswe can, so many different
directions we can take thisright now.
We're really excited for whatthe future holds in fulfilling
the Great Commission.
Speaker 1 (41:35):
Yeah, same here, same here.
I'm excited as well.
And the last thing, as we kindof wrap it up here, I would just
challenge our community to beopen to new methods.
Consider this an opportunity toadd another arrow into your
quiver.
That can again, I just thinkthat it can work while you're
(41:57):
sleeping and it can help peopleget clarity on hard topics and
it can help people get to aplace where they're ready for a
conversation and ready to engageand ready to be more helpful
and partner.
So definitely consider it.
And then you know to the fundersthat are out there that listen
to this podcast as well it's notcheap to develop this kind of
(42:18):
as well.
It's not cheap to develop thiskind of technology and it's not
cheap to run this kind oftechnology.
I mean offline.
We were talking about just thecost.
What you need to be able to dothat real-time translation is
really it's expensive and it'san ongoing expense.
Jake has a huge heart formaking this available and it's
an ongoing expense.
Jake has a huge heart formaking this available and not
(42:42):
letting cost be a hurdle thatmissions and nonprofits can't
jump so they won't implement it,and so that falls to those of
us that are in the funder sideof things and that are able to
partner in that capacity.
So just pray with me If there'sa place for you to participate
in this project with Jake.
I know they're raising rightnow.
(43:04):
They have a runway ahead ofthem, but they have a lot of
work to do and I know Brittanyand I are going to pray about
how we can be helpful for youand get it out to our community
as well, because this is another.
You know and you got to usthrough Seed Bible and Craig,
but this is another one likethat.
This is a new method that Iwould love to see fully.
(43:25):
You know unleashed, and youknow, man, the possibilities are
endless, as we know.
So, hey, we always ask theguests, as you know, if you've
heard the podcast, to pray forthe listeners.
So would you close us in?
Speaker 2 (43:39):
a prayer, absolutely, father.
God, we just thank you so muchfor each and every listener
right now and for their heart,for the unreached otherwise they
wouldn't be here and, lord, Ijust pray that we would
continually seek ways to glorifyyou and fulfill the Great
Commission, whether that'sthrough technology or just
ministering to our neighborswhere we're at.
You know, we always want toseek ways where we can meet
(44:02):
people where they are, andsometimes that's through
technology and that's kind ofour focus.
But, lord, there's just so manyways that we can glorify you
through our actions and words.
In Jesus' name, I pray, amen.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
Thank you for listening to Unreached.
Our sincere desire is that whatyou've heard today will cause
you to see the mission of Goddifferently and your role in it
more clearly.
If this adds value for you andwe hope it does would you please
rate and review the podcastwherever you listen.
Also, share with your family,your friends, your church, your
life group, small group, d group, wherever you do life, and if
(44:42):
you want to connect with us,find us on Instagram at
unreachedpodcast, or email us atunreachedpodcast at gmailcom.
In Revelation 7, john shares his vision of heaven
with members from every tribe,tongue, people and language
standing in the throne roombefore the Lamb.
Yet today there are still over7,000 unreached people groups
around the world.
For the last six years, myfamily and friends have been on
a journey to find, vet and fundthe task remaining.
(00:28):
Come journey with us to theends of the earth as we share
the supernatural stories of Godat work for the men and women he
has called to reach theunreached.
Hello friends, welcome back tothe Unreached Podcast.
Dustin Elliott here, your host.
Today We've got a specialepisode and it starts with a
(00:49):
cool story and you know there'smore stories coming.
But this story starts out asthis guy, jake Carlson, reaches
out to me because he heard thepodcast and he heard his friend
Craig Bradley on the podcast.
We did an episode with Craig AOLab on the Seed Bible and Jake
reached out.
He goes.
Hey, I know Craig loved thepodcast.
We did an episode with Craig AOLab on the Seed Bible and Jake
reached out.
He goes.
Hey, I know Craig loved theepisode.
I'm working on something kind ofinteresting.
(01:10):
I just so happen to live inyour backyard.
I'm in Steiner Ranch, which isjust outside of Austin, and he
says could we visit?
So I said of course we could.
So we hopped on Zoom and heshared what he's doing.
And, guys, I mean we've beentalking about new methods, we've
been talking about how to getto the unreached.
(01:31):
You want to talk about usingthe coolest new technology on
the planet.
That is exactly what Jake isdoing.
So help me welcome Jake Carlsonto the show.
Yeah, thanks for having me, ofcourse, of course.
So start us out with a littlebit about Jake, right?
Who are you and what's yourbackground in like professional
and faith?
(01:52):
How'd you get to know the Lord?
To get you started on whatyou're doing now?
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Absolutely so.
I actually grew up as amissionary kid in China and went
to a private Christian schoolthere, got really interested in
kind of worldview studies,apologetics and through that God
put in my heart you know, theheart of evangelism.
Watching my parents minister tothe people over in China and
kind of, coming out of highschool and into college, got
(02:19):
really in-depth study-wise intoapologetics and was looking
around at the internet.
It kind of was the nascentstages of the internet becoming
kind of a communications tooland I noticed online there's a
lot of kind of philosophicaldiscourse.
But I noticed it was more of akind of a secular bent and I
decided there and then to oneday raise up a platform for
(02:43):
apologetics online.
Now, at that moment AI wasn'treally a thought in my head.
I was just starting my careerin software development and you
know, to make a long story short, I worked for lots of startups
in Austin and abroad.
I worked for Oracle and Applein my career, mostly in software
development and then also inproduct management more recently
(03:05):
, and maybe every decade or so,I would remember that domain I
bought Apologistcom a long timeago and how I made a promise to
myself and God oh, okay, Okay alittle seed got planted back
there.
That's right.
You know I would kind of startit up and you know it would
peter out because I got busywith work or whatever.
(03:26):
And it wasn't until 2023 that Ihad just left my most recent
startup right in the middle ofthe tech layoffs in that time
period.
It was in that period that, Ithink, frankly, god was just
kind of kicking me in the butt,saying, look like now or never
you got to do this.
Me in the butt saying look nowor never, you got to do this,
(03:49):
and so ChatGPT had been takingthe world by storm.
At that point, I saw an obviousopportunity to use the latest
bleeding edge technology for thekingdom, and so we started out
creating a chat bot, went to ahackathon, unveiled it and part
of the tech involved with thatis on the human side partnering
with ministries that had contentto give that chatbot a little
(04:12):
bit more context by which toanswer from a biblical
standpoint.
You know we unveiled the chatbotin 2023.
We decided that it wasincredibly important to build up
that corpus of biblically-basedtechnology and partner with
different ministries, and so weset about from there, creating a
(04:34):
corpus management system.
And just for the listeners whomaybe might not be familiar with
the terminology I'm using here.
A corpus is basically just aknowledge base.
We have partnered with a bunchof different ministries and
gotten a ton of content into thecorpus, spent the first about
year and a half building that upand right now we're kind of
(04:56):
pivoting a bit, in the sensethat we have enough content in
there that the chatbot is reallyeffective at what it does and
now we want to pivot a littlebit and start partnering with
ministries to get it out in thefield and I can share some stats
a little bit later.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
All right, I'm going to stop you.
I'm going to stop you becausethere's a few things we need to
lay out some groundwork here for.
Okay, first you see apologistsapologetics, just for we don't
know if everybody's up to speedon that term and what it means.
So take us through.
What is it about to be adefender of the faith?
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Yeah, absolutely so.
I view apologetics asevangelism of the mind.
You know, god does not ask usto put our intellect at the door
and blindly believe right.
He asks us to see the worksthat he has done in the lives of
(05:53):
other people, and also thestories in the Bible, and use a
fundamental base of thatknowledge to go a step further
and say, yes, this makes sense.
This allows me to believe that,even if there are unanswered
questions or things that arebeyond my intellect, I believe,
based on the trustworthiness ofthose things, that he is Lord
(06:18):
and Savior.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
You're not going to be able to discern it all and
understand it all, but it'sactually meant to be that way.
Okay, so if we have a littlebit of a grasp of apologetics,
and then you have this realheart for building content,
building something that can workwhen we're sleeping, in theory.
And so for folks that don'tknow a lot about AI and large
(06:43):
language models and how that allworks, so if you go to like
ChatGBT or Grok through X orothers, they basically have let
them read the Internet, they'vetrained them to go read kind of
everything that's out there, andso you can ask about any topic.
But you're going to be pullingfrom kind of all these different
angles and opinions andviewpoints on that topic, and so
(07:06):
what you did was you didn't letyour LLM, you didn't let yours,
read the internet.
You restricted it to the Bibleand to trusted commentaries and
trusted partners and whatthey've written and said about
the Bible and about the faith.
Is that fair?
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Yeah, that's mostly true, I would caveat it, though.
So I'll try to keep this notsuper technical.
But basically, a lot of thelarge language models that maybe
the audience has heard about,including you know ChatGPT,
obviously, and you know Grok,like you mentioned, they were
trained on a you know kind ofunfiltered source on the
(07:46):
internet or other sources togenerate a natural language
processing capability, and whatthat means is it understands how
to interpret language and thenturn around and generate a
response to questions or prompts.
So we actually layer on top ofthat a corpus of
biblically-based content, andwhat that does is it constrains
(08:09):
the responses to that context.
Several people in the audiencemay have already used ChatGPT,
at least in passing, and atypical use case for that would
be hey, I have this huge chunkof text that I don't want to
read the whole thing.
Can you just summarize it forme?
Synthesize, exactly.
And so what we're doing isessentially that, except we're
(08:30):
providing that content right.
So if you ask a question likeis Jesus God?
Well, we hand the AI hundredsto thousands of documents that
were curated fromBible-believing Christians, who
wrote it, and synthesizes thatcontent into an answer that's
succinct to the user.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
You don't know this, but I shared it with a few
people and I said ask it thehardest questions you can think
of.
It is robust and I have notbeen able to trip it up, so I
went deep.
I was like you know, tell mehow there are giants after the
flood, right, like, explain theheavenly host to me, explain the
divine counsel to me.
(09:12):
Like I wanted to get in thereand see, like could I trip it up
?
No, no, no, I have not beenable to trip it up.
It's really something.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
That's awesome.
Over the years, right, we'vehoned it to the point where when
we do see an answer that's not100% optimal, we fix that right,
and so it's an iterativeprocess.
But I got to say that in thelast six months to a year, I
don't think I've heard ofanybody reporting you know a bad
theological concept or anythinglike that.
It's been pretty solid.
(09:42):
And again for any of thelisteners who are concerned
about AI kind of making stuff upright or hallucinations what we
do is we ground the AI in thatbiblical knowledge produced by
human beings.
So, yes, the AI is generatingyou know text from its own
programming, but the sources ofthat synthesis are produced by
(10:02):
humans inspired by the HolySpirit to write biblically based
content.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
Think of it this way if you go onto a website and
you're shopping and you'relooking for something and
there's a little chat thing thatpops up in the bottom
right-hand corner of the webpage and it says chat with us,
right, and then you choose to,or if you're, you know anything
you could be doing doing yourtaxes?
Do you need help?
Chat with us.
Whatever the case is, you'vebuilt that and so if I have my
website for my church thewebsite we're actually building
(10:28):
a new website for the podcastwhich we're going to feature
this on If somebody else has amissions website, or even if
you're just a missionary andyou've got a small site that you
use to stay connected to yoursupporters back home, etc.
You could embed the chatbot inthere and they could go in there
when they're hanging out withyour content and go tell me more
(10:48):
.
Like this missionary just wrotethis blog post and this story
was about this concept and theytalked about Acts 1-8, and I've
heard Acts 1-8, but like, whatwas the geographical, like
actual terms between Jerusalemand Judea and Samaria and the
ends of the earth, and how do Icontextualize that?
You know in Texas or in theUnited States?
Like you could ask it questionswhile you're reading that
(11:10):
content, right yeah?
Speaker 2 (11:11):
absolutely, and we, you know, we focus in on kind of
that biblical knowledge andextra-biblical apologetics
content.
The strongest use case that wehave is really direct evangelism
and indirect evangelism, andwhat I mean by indirect
evangelism we're in the world toshare the gospel.
(11:33):
We're in the world to furtherthe Great Commission and in that
capacity we all will bump upagainst hard questions that our
friends or acquaintances, oreven you know just chance
happenings, will ask us, and webelieve that building a very
quick resource for people, evenChristians, to be able to answer
(11:56):
those questions and, you know,as an aid for Bible study and
whatnot, is far more efficientthan wading through thousands of
unvetted Google results orsomething like that.
Right, if you can just get asynthesis of those pre-curated
sources, that'll save you tonsof time and it'll be more
accurate and you can have trustthat the sources you're getting
(12:16):
them from are all from a curatedset.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
Right.
So one of the sources isgotquestionsorg right, which I
love.
I know a lot of people thatreally appreciate that, and so
tell me how'd you get connectedwith them and how did y'all work
that out?
Speaker 2 (12:32):
Yeah, absolutely Mainly through, you know, kind
of networking, and there'ssomebody on our team I don't
want to necessarily out them whohad a relationship with Shea of
GotQuestions connected us, andthat's just an example of God's
providence in this project.
As you mentioned, gotquestionsis an amazing ministry kind of a
(12:55):
question-and-answer format, sothat website is really the ideal
kind of content set for us.
Right, it's almostpurpose-built for exactly what
we want, and so GotQuestions hasbeen an amazing partner, and we
have many other partners aswell.
Not only do we ingest theircontent and use that to help
generate questions, but we alsoproduce white-label chatbots,
(13:15):
and so if you go togotquestionschat, that's a
version of our chatbot that weprovided.
Now, in that case it's justconstricted to the GotQuestions
Ministries corpus, right, it'snot anybody else's, because they
have a pretty comprehensivecorpus.
But any other ministry thatwants to create a chatbot that
(13:35):
blends in with their colorpalette and has all their
messaging can do so.
And not only that, but they canselectively turn on or off the
different sources that we have.
So you'll have people say likeI really I trust GotQuestions.
I want to have my own chatbot,upload some of my own stuff,
maybe some sermons or whatever.
And then I just want to turn onthe faucet for the GotQuestions
(13:58):
corpus, but maybe not some ofthis other stuff.
That's totally doable, oh cool.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
I can hear some of the older guard out there
turning the volume down rightnow and maybe going for a walk
and they're like I don't knowabout this.
I don't know about this stuff.
Chatbots this sounds too youngand maybe it won't work and can
I trust it is?
If you're trusting Google,you're getting Google with a
(14:25):
huge layer of trusted, approved,synthesized results that your
team has already gone throughand said like these are the guys
that are doing it the best,these are the books and
commentaries and sites and suchthat we trust.
And so if you go in and you aska question here, your results
are going to be cleaner, faster,better.
(14:48):
The point you made when you'rejust sitting with someone having
a conversation about the gospeland you're talking through a
concept and you know, you canthink of a point in the Bible
where you would like to go pullthat verse or that story from.
But, man, I don't remember wasthat in Matthew or Mark or was
that in John, because John'sdifferent.
I can't remember which one itwas in.
You can just ask Pull it out,just open the app and ask and
(15:11):
it's going to pop.
It's going to be there for you,just like that, and not just
the scripture itself but somecommentary on it as well, to
kind of help you see how othershave thought through it.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
Yeah, to kind of help .
You see how others have thoughtthrough it.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
Yeah absolutely Okay.
So this is the UnreachedPodcast.
Now we've talked through thisevangelistic chatbot and what it
can do, but right now we'veonly talked about or thought
about it really in English, andit doesn't only work in English,
does it it?
Actually?
You've got a translator builtinto it and I think you said 192
(15:45):
languages right now, that'sright?
Yep, how incredible is that?
So somebody could ask aquestion in their heart language
and it's going to figure outwhat it's asking, find the
answer, translate it back tothem in real time.
Is that how it works?
Speaker 2 (16:00):
Yeah, absolutely so.
As I stated earlier, we're hereon earth to fulfill the Great
Commission and, yes, you know,the AI is an amazing tool for,
you know, sermon prep and youknow, helping Christians here in
the West understand biblicalpassages and all that good stuff
(16:20):
.
But the way we differentiateourselves is we try to focus on
evangelism, and obviouslythere's a big world out there.
I grew up as a missionary kid,as I stated, so my heart is
leaning in that direction and todate, our chatbot has been used
in over 125 different countries, spread out across 64 languages
(16:44):
and counting right.
So, as you mentioned, wesupport 192 languages and if you
count that up, that's double orquadruple what most of the
commercial AIs can offer.
And we do that throughreal-time translation and that
allows us to convey thosebiblically-based answers in just
(17:07):
about any language you canthink of.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
That's incredible.
Okay, and so the country whereyou're getting the most activity
right now, or the part of theworld, is really in Southeast
Asia, right?
Speaker 2 (17:18):
Yeah, we've had amazing usage in Indonesia and
Singapore in particular, andthen just kind of random other
countries that we're notadvertising in per se, and then
just kind of random othercountries that we're not
advertising in per se, but justword of mouth has spread.
South Africa is a big one forus as well.
Indonesia is an interestingcase, in particular because
that's the largest you knowIslamic country in the world by
population.
(17:38):
You know we've built specificchatbots that minister to that
worldview and we're stillbuilding others for other
worldviews as well.
And so we go in and not onlycan you kind of customize the
look and feel, but you cancustomize how it's ministering,
right.
So how are the responsesrelated to the particular
person's use case?
And how we got there honestlyis kind of an interesting story
(18:01):
as well.
We started out by building achatbot and my assumption at
that point was like, hey, let'sbuild one chatbot to rule them
all right, like this entity thatcould just respond perfectly to
anybody.
And I was talking to amissionary friend of my father's
who he knew in college,currently serving in Bangladesh
to the Muslim population there,and he was offering his feedback
(18:24):
and said like hey, yeah, youknow, your chatbot's really
great.
It gives me, you know, biblicalsupport for the answers and
everything like that.
But here's the thing, jake,muslims aren't going to find
that very compelling.
What you need to do iscontextualize the gospel, and
that was like an aha moment forme.
It's like, of course, you know,how could I have, you know, not
seen this?
You can't just have the samemessage for every audience.
(18:47):
It's not going to work.
You have to contextualize it.
Paul at Mars Hill, for example.
And so that set us on a courseof building variants of the
chatbot that minister tospecific worldviews.
So, in the case of Islam, wepartnered with several
ministries that werespecifically geared toward
Muslim ministry, got theircontent and put it into the
(19:08):
chatbot, but also partnered withsome folks who were more
familiar with ministering to theMuslim population than I.
Was.
Growing up in China, easternChina specifically I just didn't
encounter a lot of Muslimpopulations, it's just not my
wheelhouse.
So what we do is we partnerwith ministries who have
specific focus areas or specificpeople group and we come
(19:32):
alongside them and help thembuild a customized chatbot that
will minister to that particularpopulation.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
So they've got that bot then on their site and the
people that are going to theirsite are primarily in that area,
correct?
Yes, but what if I'm running aglobal missions organization and
there's people in 50, 60different countries and
accessing my site?
Am I going to have the generalbot or will it know where that
(19:58):
person's coming in from and youcan then supply that bot in that
?
Speaker 2 (20:04):
area.
Yeah, so we allow ministries tocreate as many different
variants as they have differentuse cases.
Okay, so you could easily youknow, in the sense of like a
media-to-movement kind ofsituation, where maybe the
ingestion point is like socialmedia or something like that you
could advertise one of yourvariants that specifically
(20:25):
ministers to, say, indonesia,like I mentioned before, and
have that funnel go to,specifically, a chatbot that's
been designed to minister tothat people group.
I was on a panel at South bySouthwest, the Sunday service,
and right after I got off of thestage, someone approached me
and said like hey, I have aministry, or I'm involved with a
(20:48):
ministry that specificallytargets Islamic women coming out
of abusive relationships inTurkey.
That's a very hyper-focusedspecialization.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
I'm not gonna say it out loud, but I think I know
which one you're talking about.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
Okay, but anyway, the point is that you can
hyper-focus the intent of thesechatbots to whatever level of
context you want.
We have a generalMuslim-serving chatbot, but you
could extend that to anygeographic region, any subset of
the population, anything likethat.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
Crazy, cool.
So some companies will havedifferent sites for different
parts of the world, and then youcould gear it to that part of
the world and what's that looklike in partnering with you.
So if I'm listening to this, uhlike, we know a lot of the
heads of the biggest missionsorgs in the in the world uh are
are listening.
Um, what, what would you say tothem?
(21:38):
Reach out, check it out.
Let me run a demo for you.
This is how it could work.
You could test it here, youcould test it there.
We can do different iterations,is it like?
How do they partner with you?
Speaker 2 (21:49):
How do we do it.
So the first step is just toreach out and we'll set up a
demo and during that demo we'llkind of, you know, tell you a
lot of this.
You know, we'll kind ofreiterate some of the things
that we've said here about kindof the use cases and so forth.
Sometimes we'll build a demoahead of time.
In fact, I find the mosteffective demos is, you know.
For example, we've gotquestions, right, like I built a
(22:09):
chat, a white label chat botfor them with their corpus,
didn't release it to the world,right, and nobody else could
access it, because we always getpermission for any of the
content that we're using.
But I rolled into that meetingsaying like, hey, here's your
chatbot, it's already ingestedyour entire content.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
Open this up and try it.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
See how it works and the jaws just drop right Because
it's like, wow, because we'vebuilt a platform where that kind
of thing is fairly easy to doahead of time, right?
And so I don't always know theministry well enough to know
what content to ingest ahead oftime, but usually it'll just
happen that, you know, we'llhave a uh, an initial call.
(22:48):
We'll, you know, understandtheir use case, but then, very
quickly afterwards, we'll spinup a white label chat bot with
their, with their content, withtheir branding.
We can even, you know, matchthe fonts on your site.
We can do make it reallydetailed and um, so that, so
that everyone understands, whenwe meet with them, that this can
really fit in and augment theirdigital strategy.
(23:10):
It's not like something outhere, right, it's something that
you can plug and play into yourministry.
What?
Speaker 1 (23:14):
are they going to get ?
What are they going to get fromit?
What data are they going to getthat they can use?
Are they going to see who's on,how many people are on, what
questions are being asked, etcetera?
Speaker 2 (23:24):
How many people are on, what questions are being
asked, et cetera.
Yeah, right now all the chatbotusage is anonymous, but we do
collect, you know, informationabout language and country and
everything like that.
We are going to have like anauthenticated version in not too
long but for that evangelismuse case, we're not expecting
that.
A lot of people say in a Muslimcountry are going to create an
account, right, because thatcould you know any way to trace
back to the people in countrieswhere there might even be laws
(23:48):
or at least heavy social stigmaaren't going to want to have an
account.
So most of it's anonymized, butthe ministries involved will be
able to see the prompts andresponses that are going back
and demographic details aboutthe users, Sure, and if they're,
on their site, then they have away to contact them there.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
So if something happens in that conversation
with the chatbot somebody Idon't want to say fully goes all
in, but maybe they get close ormaybe they do then they know
they can reach out to theorganization, they can get
connected to somebody.
You can set up next steps fromthere.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Absolutely yeah, the organization who you know.
When we build a chatbot for anorganization, they're in control
of how much information todivulge about themselves.
You know, in some sensitiveareas it might not be advisable
exactly to trace it back to youknow an organization in the
sense that it might kind ofcompromise their operations in
that country, and so they're incomplete control of that.
They can send the user back toa website if they click to learn
(24:52):
more, but they don't have toright.
You can also just kind ofremove that and just have it
more of like an anonymous kindof ministry.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
You know God's in time and on time all the time
right.
Nothing surprises him.
This isn't something he didn'tsee coming.
But I just wonder what it'slike to see the internet take
off and people engaging with theBible digitally, and now this
new incredible iteration with AIcoming in and people having
actual conversations and we knowthis is happening culturally in
(25:24):
the world.
Man, this is so cool.
I mean, somebody's going to beable to truly have access to the
gospel and get their questionsanswered and, you know,
depending on which side or whichplace they're doing it through,
you know they can probably getconnected to somebody and figure
out what's next for them.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
Yeah, absolutely.
And one key thing that Ineglected to mention earlier is
that the handoff from an AI to ahuman being is exceptionally
important for us, right?
So I don't want to get too muchinto the theology of technology
and how God uses and all thatgood stuff, but I think most
Christians would agree that it'sthrough the work of the Holy
(26:05):
Spirit and that very often isthrough a relationship between a
human being to another humanbeing.
So the AI can certainly kind ofpoint people in the right
direction and even answer reallygood.
You know hard-fought questionsand I believe that God can work
using the Holy Spirit throughany kind of external simulation,
(26:30):
right?
So, for example, if someone'sheart is stirred by the act of
someone giving to the poor,that's the Holy Spirit working.
If someone gets a questionanswered that was a kind of a
hang-up intellectually for themvia AI, that can still be the
Holy Spirit working.
But we do offer a way in ourchatbots for that handoff to a
(26:54):
human being to occur.
So what we do is for everywhite-label chatbot you can add
a call to action of any sortbeneath the question, right?
So if you look at a partnerlike—we're also a partner with
allaboutgodcom, for example—andthey have, at the end of every
one of their webpages, some callto action, some buttons that
(27:14):
say like hey, yes, I'veindicated my interest in
learning more about Jesus of theGospel, or hey, I want to learn
more, something like that,right?
And so what they've done isthey've built in that same call
to action at the end of everyprompt.
So it's almost as if you know,you ask the chatbot a question,
it gives you a dynamicallygenerated essay, essentially
about that topic, just like thecontent on that website.
(27:37):
And then, just like theirwebsite, at the bottom it says
like hey, you know, click hereto get in touch with a human
being.
Let's talk a little bit moreabout our relationship with
Jesus.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
I wonder if this, as you gather more data, if this
will start to inform the taskremaining in the Great
Commission community.
Like there's a lot of questionscoming from this people group
in this area who's there Isnobody there yet.
Like that might be a place weneed to go get somebody to.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
Absolutely, and we've actually just recently we've
cross-referenced kind of ourusage against the Joshua
Project's data and we found that, you know, in several of the
highly unreached people groupswe actually have thousands of
prompts going on that you know.
Again, not advertising there,don't have any idea how it
happened.
Just we put it on the internetand through both our first party
(28:24):
chatbots and our ministrypartners, we're reaching people
who aren't being reached rightnow.
You know there are lots ofgreat missionaries in the field,
but there are too few, right, Ithink.
Speaker 1 (28:36):
More taxi cab drivers in Vegas than missionaries.
In the 1040 window you got allthe stats on that.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
That's why we're here right.
So one thing that you hit on alittle bit earlier that I'd want
to touch on as well is yes, ahuman relationship is definitely
key for outreach, but sometimesthat's not an option.
Sometimes it's the middle ofthe night, Sometimes it's in a
place where there's a ratio ofone missionary to a million
(29:02):
people right.
Sometimes there are situations,again in closed countries,
where you can't openly seekright.
Seekers are lost and have noconnection to anyone who would
even be able to share the gospelto them.
But most people have a phoneright or at least a big portion
of people, especially in thedeveloping world and they have
(29:24):
access to this technology thatcan answer these questions with
a high degree of accuracy, 24-7,in any location that has an
internet connection.
Another use case that we'reexploring is situations where
there's not internet, Forexample, many remote regions,
especially in Africa and otherplaces in the world, where we
(29:46):
could embed the AI onto a devicethat could then be brought into
that country and used withoutany connectivity.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
Yeah, no, that's incredible.
So that makes me think about,like DeVar right, and the audio
Bibles, and a lot of people inthe world who are not able to
get internet access so theycan't go online and read, but
they have this, and then, ofcourse, there's the whole
conversation around who can readand who can't read, and what
can you do that?
Speaker 2 (30:13):
in audio?
Absolutely, yeah, that's areally good point.
So we're exploring voice agentsas well.
But I was just talking to areally large Christian
evangelism organization theother day and they're kind of
exploring having, you know, notjust voice but avatars kind of
you know, so there's actuallylooks like a human being talking
(30:33):
to you.
But I think voice is going tobe a huge area of expansion for
us, both because of cases wheremaybe the user is actually
illiterate, but also becauseit's just a lot more convenient.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
That's fascinating.
We don't think about how fewpeople can actually read.
We don't think about how fewpeople don't have internet
access that's readily availableand reliable and good enough
that you would actually sitthere and engage with it and use
it, and good enough that youwould actually sit there and
engage with it and use it.
But, man, when you start toaddress those last kind of
issues, and you oh my gosh, yeah, clint's over here just smiling
(31:05):
and nodding like whoa, this isso cool, this is so cool.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
Yeah, absolutely, and there are plenty of.
You know.
Voice technologies is obviouslynot new.
The problem really is latencyright, like how do you
synthesize and generate thevoice?
And in the last couple of yearsthat technology has grown in
leaps and bounds.
So now you can.
(31:28):
You know, you've probably seenthe OpenAI demos and some other
companies where somebody'sliterally just talking to an AI
and the response is very quick.
I mean, if you get that in thehands of a seeker where they're
just having a conversation, theydon't even have to type, they
can just start talking back andforth with an AI and get those
biblically-based responses, thatto me, is really powerful.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
Goodness, gracious man, what a call on your life,
and I love how the seed wasplanted years ago I mean growing
up in the field, obviously, butthen grabbing that URL and just
kind of waiting waiting onGod's prompt to say like now's
the time that the tech is readyand you are ready, like you've
done enough in this field, thatyou're an expert, you know how
to do it.
One thing on your website thatI noticed was you mentioned the
hackathons earlier.
But what in the world is ahackathon for those of us that
(32:13):
don't hackathon?
Speaker 2 (32:14):
Yeah.
So a hackathon is an eventwhere a bunch of people get
together and, in a short timespan, try to develop some kind
of technology, output Right, sosome kind of product or some
kind of outcome, and the keythere is is that it's in a time
boxed.
Lot of innovation tends tohappen where people are focused.
You have teams working togetherusually teams, at least Some
(32:43):
people go it alone, but the bestoutcomes are usually when
various different professionalsget together and try to develop
something, brainstorm and bringa product to fruition in a short
period of time.
Got it Late.
Last year we participated in twoseparate hackathons, one put on
by a company called Glue andanother with a international
(33:04):
digital missions organizationcalled Indigitous.
Leading up to that firsthackathon I think it was in
October of last year God reallylaid it on our heart that we
really needed to develop theseworldview-specific chatbots, and
so we took that as a clear signthat we ought to develop a
(33:24):
chatbot specifically targetingthe Muslim population, just
because, obviously, Islam is oneof the major religions.
In fact, some of the researchrecently has indicated that it's
going to overtake the Christianpopulation in about a decade,
mostly through birth decade,mostly through birth rate, not
through conversion, they'remaking more babies than we are
Exactly, but in any case, that'san obvious kind of demographic
(33:48):
for us to focus on.
And so we partnered with a bunchof ministries to develop a
chatbot for that particularhackathon, to kind of
demonstrate the capabilities oftargeting a particular worldview
.
Went to that hackathon.
It was an amazing experience.
We brought a team of about fiveor six people and at the
hackathon the nature of thesehackathons is that some people
just show up without a team andare just interested in getting
(34:11):
involved with a project that'salready going on.
So we also kind of not onlybrought a team but we garnered a
couple other kind, you knowkind of members of the team at
the hackathon who were, you know, saw what we were doing and
were like, hey, I want to beinvolved in that.
So the experience was reallygreat and lots of connections
made, lots of networking.
So now you have a global team,absolutely Right, yeah, yeah.
So through these hackathonevents, one of the individuals
(34:37):
on our team actually resides inMalaysia and I think that's so
important.
Like, yeah, you know, honestly,I'm a white Protestant here in
the US, but I havea heart forevangelism, and to not have that
international focus is a reallybig miss for me personally,
right, no doubt.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
Hey, the mission field's become the mission force
.
And your buddy, craig Bradley,right I mean, he said that.
He said that he's got somefolks that come from other
religious backgrounds who havenow become Christ followers
through the work they're doingdeveloping the seed Bible.
And that's not the sole reasonthat he brought them in.
He brought them in because theywere highly technically skilled
(35:15):
and at a cost that a nonnonprofit could afford.
But the result is, when you getinto this work and when you're
in the Bible a lot, it is theliving word and some things can
and will change Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
And that global perspective is really important
for us.
I grew up in an environmentwhere we did focus on kind of
the classical Western Christianmindset, but contextualizing
that for peoples across theglobe is just so important, and
so we believe that, throughpartnering with global missions,
(35:50):
organizations that have peopleon the ground over there that
have the sensibilities of how toreach the people that they're
ministering to, that is reallythe most powerful combination.
We bring our technology, ourexpertise in conversational AI,
and combine that with theexpertise of the people serving
across the globe and you havejust a really powerful
combination.
(36:10):
Who's that sound like?
Speaker 1 (36:11):
That sounds like TMAI I mean the same concept Like
we've got these trainingmaterials.
We've kind of got some you knowexperience in how to run a
church, when you plant a church,things like that.
But we're not coming in heresaying we know how to do
everything and you have to do itour way.
We're coming in saying help usunderstand who you are and your
culture and what's important andwhat's relevant to you, and
here's some things that could beuseful and would you like to
(36:32):
consider working together andcould some of these be helpful?
And that's just this veryhumble approach that you're
sharing as well, which is veryimportant to me and I know a lot
of our listeners to hear that,because you're clearly a very,
very smart guy, but you're notwalking around the world going.
I know more than you You'regoing.
Hey, I just kind of have accessto some cool stuff that could
(36:52):
be supplemental and helpful foryou and I'm here to help.
Speaker 2 (36:55):
Yeah, we've been surprised by how open people are
with AI, and that's anotheraspect we didn't explore too
much.
But while that relationalaspect with a human being is
important, it's also true thatpeople open up to AI more than
they do to human beings a lot ofthe time.
Speaker 1 (37:12):
That's a fascinating concept.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
And so not only do you have the access, the
language, but also there's thisthing where I might go to chat
GPT, and since it's not a humanbeing on the other side of that,
potentially judging me, I'llsay— you might ask it.
The really hard stuff you'redealing with Exactly Like I'm
not shy about that, and so whenwe're reviewing our chat logs
(37:34):
and seeing what people are usingit for and what people are
asking, it's all anonymous, sowe don't know who it is.
But you'd be surprised, Likeyou know, we have stories of you
know people in Egypt, forexample, talking about sexuality
, right, and that's a really hottopic.
If you're a Muslim in themiddle of Egypt, right, talking
about sexuality and stuff likethat, and you want some both
(37:57):
guidance and comfort in yourfeelings, like that's a really
heavy topic.
Yeah, and I could get you killedtalking to the wrong person
about that Exactly right, like,who are you going to trust with
that information, right.
But we see people opening up toyou know, in a conversational
AI context.
And then another example wouldbe you know, we have chat logs
(38:17):
of people who are experiencingabuse, you know, and asking
questions about you know, how dothey handle it?
Like, what do they do?
And you know the person'seither going to go to another
human being, which sometimesthey're reluctant to do, or
they're going to, you know,search, google or something like
that and get a mishmash ofadvice from various sources, or
they can come to abiblically-based conversational
(38:39):
AI and they'll get a Christianperspective on their issue.
Speaker 1 (38:44):
Wow, that's amazing.
Yeah, that's a wrinkle, Ihadn't considered.
Hey guys, as you're listeningto this, if you want to test out
the technology for yourself,Jake, what site could they go to
or what app could they downloadand give this a go?
Speaker 2 (38:57):
Yeah, the easiest one would be apologistai.
So that's going to be ourgeneric kind of chatbot.
It has knowledge about all thedifferent worldviews.
If you want to check out theMuslim serving one specifically,
we have a URL for that as well.
It's alimapologistai.
That's A-L-I-M dotA-P-O-L-O-G-I-S-T dot A-I for
(39:24):
the Muslim Serving Chatbot, andthat one's pretty interesting as
well.
It services a lot of theMuslim-speaking countries and
has specific training tominister to the Muslim peoples.
There you go.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
There you go.
So, apologistai, type it in,check it out, go, ask us some
hard questions.
So, given the kind of currentstate you're in, you've got the
translation stuff going.
You're considering bringingvoice and even avatars in where
there's kind of a conversationthat's being had.
We're considering where theinternet is not, although there
(39:57):
are others that are working ongetting the internet everywhere
and that's incredible.
You've got all these differentavenues, all these different
kind of channels.
What are you most excited about?
Speaker 2 (40:07):
Well, that's a great question.
There are so many differentavenues for us to explore right
now, but in reality we're justso excited to partner with
missions organizations spreadingthe gospel across the globe to
come up with innovativesolutions using our AI
technology.
For example, we're starting astudy about evaluating different
(40:30):
AI models for their ability toalign with the Christian
worldview, with a Christianworldview.
Another project that we're kindof embarking on is using AI to
analyze conversations that arehappening in real time to
determine the spiritual opennessof the seeker right.
So we're working on that inpartnership with a couple
ministries and if you're aministry out there that wants to
(40:54):
explore conversational AI,maybe you already have a media
to movement program but you wantto augment it.
You know we also run against alot of missions organizations
who are just inundated withinflow of seekers that and they
need some kind of automation tokind of narrow down to the
people in that funnel that aremost earnestly seeking.
(41:17):
We're exploring ideas like that.
So if you're a missionsorganization that is interested
in that kind of automation usingAI, definitely reach out.
But there's just so many wayswe can, so many different
directions we can take thisright now.
We're really excited for whatthe future holds in fulfilling
the Great Commission.
Speaker 1 (41:35):
Yeah, same here, same here.
I'm excited as well.
And the last thing, as we kindof wrap it up here, I would just
challenge our community to beopen to new methods.
Consider this an opportunity toadd another arrow into your
quiver.
That can again, I just thinkthat it can work while you're
(41:57):
sleeping and it can help peopleget clarity on hard topics and
it can help people get to aplace where they're ready for a
conversation and ready to engageand ready to be more helpful
and partner.
So definitely consider it.
And then you know to the fundersthat are out there that listen
to this podcast as well it's notcheap to develop this kind of
(42:18):
as well.
It's not cheap to develop thiskind of technology and it's not
cheap to run this kind oftechnology.
I mean offline.
We were talking about just thecost.
What you need to be able to dothat real-time translation is
really it's expensive and it'san ongoing expense.
Jake has a huge heart formaking this available and it's
an ongoing expense.
Jake has a huge heart formaking this available and not
(42:42):
letting cost be a hurdle thatmissions and nonprofits can't
jump so they won't implement it,and so that falls to those of
us that are in the funder sideof things and that are able to
partner in that capacity.
So just pray with me If there'sa place for you to participate
in this project with Jake.
I know they're raising rightnow.
(43:04):
They have a runway ahead ofthem, but they have a lot of
work to do and I know Brittanyand I are going to pray about
how we can be helpful for youand get it out to our community
as well, because this is another.
You know and you got to usthrough Seed Bible and Craig,
but this is another one likethat.
This is a new method that Iwould love to see fully.
(43:25):
You know unleashed, and youknow, man, the possibilities are
endless, as we know.
So, hey, we always ask theguests, as you know, if you've
heard the podcast, to pray forthe listeners.
So would you close us in?
Speaker 2 (43:39):
a prayer, absolutely, father.
God, we just thank you so muchfor each and every listener
right now and for their heart,for the unreached otherwise they
wouldn't be here and, lord, Ijust pray that we would
continually seek ways to glorifyyou and fulfill the Great
Commission, whether that'sthrough technology or just
ministering to our neighborswhere we're at.
You know, we always want toseek ways where we can meet
(44:02):
people where they are, andsometimes that's through
technology and that's kind ofour focus.
But, lord, there's just so manyways that we can glorify you
through our actions and words.
In Jesus' name, I pray, amen.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
Thank you for listening to Unreached.
Our sincere desire is that whatyou've heard today will cause
you to see the mission of Goddifferently and your role in it
more clearly.
If this adds value for you andwe hope it does would you please
rate and review the podcastwherever you listen.
Also, share with your family,your friends, your church, your
life group, small group, d group, wherever you do life, and if
(44:42):
you want to connect with us,find us on Instagram at
unreachedpodcast, or email us atunreachedpodcast at gmailcom.
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