Artificial Intelligence. The very words can strike fear into our hearts. Big tech CEOs are warning governments about the need for regulation. These are uncharted waters – even they don’t know where Artificial Intelligence (AI) will lead. But can AI be used to advance the gospel? Our interns explored two AI platforms this summer to see how useful they might be to SonSet Solutions.
ChatGPT has the ability to present SonSetLink® monitoring data in a dynamic and personalized way for our partners. A simple prompt like, “Display water-usage data for all pumps in Africa on a map for 5/23/21 to 6/23/21,” produces results in seconds. Customizing how they can view data could assist partners in pinpointing anomalies or optimizing pump maintenance. Intern Kurt Campbell says, “[Ministries] can just ask whatever they want, and it will just generate a chart of whatever data they want to have – a bar graph, a line graph, a table, a map, whatever.”
GitHub Copilot has the ability to speed up software development. The team found that Copilot, given a brief description of a software function, is able to suggest various software code solutions. It can also find and correct errors in existing code. Intern Alex Nemzek states, “[Copilot is useful] in terms of allowing people to get up to speed and start cranking out production-level code without having a deep knowledge base of the [software] language.”
Jesus tells us in Matthew 24:14, “[T]his gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.” Mission organizations are using AI to speed the translation of the scriptures, create Bible study materials, and aid in sermon preparation. SonSet Solutions is exploring how AI can speed the development of ministry tools and provide faster access to the information ministries need. Will artificial intelligence, harnessed properly, prove to be a key tool for speeding the Lord’s return?
By Doug Weber, August 2023