Does AI Have to Be Evil? Jeremy Boreing’s Conservative Approach to Tech.

In my most current podcast, I was joined by an influential voice in the world of culture, media, and faith—Jeremy Boreing. 

Jeremy was the CEO and co-founder of The Daily Wire alongside Ben Shapiro. Together, we touched on today’s hot cultural moments and how important it is for Christians to get involved in them. 

This is one of the most interesting interviews I’ve done over the years. See an excerpt below.

• Jeremy Boering’s Christian Background
• A Defining Moment in Jeremy’s Spiritual Walk
• Conservatives Are On Track to Miss the AI-Moment Like with Social Media
• The ‘Huge Opportunity’ to Embrace AI as a Conservative
• Conservatives Have to Make Sure Their Worldview Exists Where People Shop
• ‘I Believe This Next Chapter for Me Is About Trying to Answer That Moment’

Jeremy Boreing’s Christian Background

[00:11:58] Greg Laurie: What role has your faith played in all of this?

I know you’re a Christian. And in fact, I was surprised to find, watching one interview you did, you said you were like a lay pastor of sorts. Tell me how you came to faith in Christ and what you mean about a lay pastor.

 Jeremy Boreing: So, you know, I grew up in that part of the country and in that particular time when being a Christian was sort of a default state.

Greg Laurie: Yeah. 

Jeremy Boreing: My maternal grandfather had a late life conversion to Christianity. And changed the direction of my family certainly. But by the time I came along, we were just a Christian family… you grow up in the church. And I have come to believe that there’s no such thing as a second-generation Christian.

But I didn’t know that as a child because I was one, whatever that means. You know, there are various points along that journey where you make different kinds of decisions, you know, where you.. you know, I grew up in a sort of non-denominational, charismatic church called Trinity Church in Lubbock, Texas.

And you know, there’s the time when you’re eight years old and you ask Jesus into your heart.

[00:13:03] What does that mean? I don’t know. As an adult, I can’t actually tell you what that meant at eight years old.

Um, you know, there’s that time at 13 when you make a decision to be baptized.

And my baptism was a very meaningful experience, but also looking back, it’s hard to know exactly what it meant.

There was a time in college when I would argue with my professor who was supposed to be teaching me to play the piano, and instead was arguing with me about politics and religion.

And at first I would argue against his sort of view of the gospel, and in time I realized I was arguing on behalf of his position on the gospel. Then there’s, you go west, you get to LA, and LA requires a lot of you. If you’re going to have, um, what in that one party town are heterodox opinions, you have to mean them. LA won’t allow you to have casual conservatism or casual Christianity, uh, because the city’s trying to spit you out of its mouth at all times and you’ve given it two really good reasons to. 

A Defining Moment in Jeremy’s Spiritual Walk

Jeremy Boreing: And so I took a deeper look at my own faith in those early years in LA.

I was invited to– there’s a really great story in my life, probably one of the most important moments of my life. 

I would meet some of my friends for a buffet at Pizza Hut on Wednesdays on Ventura Boulevard. And we were all super poor, so we’d like scrounge quarters. You know, but if you came up with six bucks, you could have all-you-can-eat Pizza Hut.

…And this particular day I got to the restaurant early.

…And so… I’m just sitting in my little Nissan pickup, and a friend of mine had bought me a very, very small Bible, like the kind of Bible you can easily throw in a backpack and carry around. And it had been sitting in the front seat of my truck for some time. And I thought, you know, I don’t- I actually don’t know where the idea came from, but I thought, “I’m just going to read one of Paul’s letters as a letter.”

Which seems obvious, but we rarely, rarely actually do it.

I thought, “I’ve got 20 minutes, I need something really short.” 

So I kinda thumbed through

…But, uh, I arrived at Galatians and I read Galatians straight through

…I got to the end of reading Galatians straight through, and I was… I was dumbstruck. I felt like everything that I had ever thought changed in that moment.

And I couldn’t gather my… I couldn’t rally myself. I actually saw my friends arrive, you know, one at a time and go into the Pizza Hut, and it took me another 15 minutes probably to collect my- myself and go inside…

Conservatives Are On Track to Miss the AI-Moment Like They Did with Social Media

[00:28:46] Jeremy Boreing:  …Well, in the same way that I saw the social media opportunity, you know, 12 years ago, there’s a similar generational moment happening right now with AI.

Greg Laurie: Oh, yes.

Jeremy Boreing: And it looks exactly the same to me as what social media looked like, you know, over a decade ago, which is, uh, conservatives are very reticent about it.

Greg Laurie: Why do you think that is?

Jeremy Boreing: Well, I think generally part of the nature of being conservative is that you look back, not forward.

And I think that that is part of what we bring to the conversation-

Greg Laurie: Conserving.

Jeremy Boreing: We’re conserving.

But it also causes us to miss the other very important part of life, which is building. 

And so with social media here’s how it worked. Conservatives were skeptical of social media, and then, uh, conservatives began to see the importance of social media, but they didn’t know how to organize around it, and so everybody sort of did their own thing…

…And then conservatives become frustrated that social media is becoming another place where the left has gatekeeping power against them.

So conservatives start failing at social media because of the new gatekeeping, so they begin complaining to their audience and raising money, which is a you only win by losing mentality that I don’t agree with. I think you only win by winning.

This is a major problem for conservatives. It’s why we do well with nonprofits even though theoretically we don’t believe in nonprofits. Theoretically, we believe that the profit motive is the most efficient and superior motive for creating human flourishing, but we don’t embrace it in promulgating our worldview. Meanwhile, the left, which purports to hate capitalism almost exclusively embraces capitalism to promulgate their worldview. So we, by our own standard, are embracing the less efficient model for how we’re going to succeed in the marketplace of ideas. I say, no, you only win by winning…

…So what do we see happening now? Well, we see the same thing. 

The ‘Huge Opportunity’ to Embrace AI as a Conservative

Jeremy Boreing: Conservatives weren’t a part of creating AI. They didn’t invest in AI early. Um, they’re loath to embrace AI now. They’re already fundraising off of potential failures from AI. And of course AI’s gonna be very disruptive.

[00:32:32] Of course there’s gonna be job loss. There were with social media too… Nevertheless, the cycle is the same, which is: There is a huge, just as there was for the Daily Wire with social media, there’s a huge opportunity to embrace this new technology now when no one else is, and actually find ways for our worldview to succeed within it.

And I want to make sure that I’m a part of that.

Greg Laurie:  Is that programming the AI platforms with a more conservative, even biblical, worldview—or is it much more than that? 

[00:33:13] Jeremy Boreing: It… Well, it’s both more and less.

It’s less in a way for me, because I’m not the guy who can build an AI. …I wish that we had that guy, maybe we do. I think that guy needed to be operating 10 years ago.

I think as, as usual, as conservatives, we weren’t a part of that conversation.

Conservatives Have to Make Sure Their Worldview Exists Where People Are Shopping

[00:33:27] Jeremy Boreing: Now I think what it’s about is availing ourselves of the technology as a mechanism for making sure that our worldview exists in the place where people are going to be shopping in the future. You know, people… The place where people fish for ideas. People used to ask Google whether or not they should k*** themselves.

Like, really think about that. And then people started asking their followers if they should…

…So in the early days of the internet, you would ask Google, “Should I…” The most, the deepest, most profound questions. Questions that people should ask in prayer, that they should ask of their family, they should ask of their pastors. They were asking Google. 

But it’s also a place where people go to discover their faith. It’s a place where people go to meet their spouse. …We have to make sure that the correct ideas exist in these places because are the places people are looking for the ideas. 

And in very short order, five years from now, people won’t ask, they won’t ask Google.

They won’t go look for a website to find these answers. They’re going to be asking AI. They’re already asking the AI. But it will become, you know, in very short order, the ubiquitous place that people are seeking out this information. 

And conservatives are great at catastrophizing, and of course, we’re always right because of the fallen world, because of entropy.

The worst things do happen, although they rarely happen quite the way we predict. You know, because God is still God, and beautiful things also happen, and we tend to only focus on the half empty part of the glass as conservatives. 

But the future is going to be here, and while it will be accompanied by many of the things that we’re concerned about, we can’t stop that.

What we have to do is make sure that it also is accompanied by all of the great things that could be. You know, the gospel has to be there. A belief in human agency has to be there. A belief in personal responsibility has to be there. A  rejection of victimology has to be there.

‘I Believe This Next Chapter for Me Is About Trying to Answer That Moment’

[00:35:27] Jeremy Boreing: And so I believe this next chapter for me is about trying to answer that moment. What does it look like? I don’t know. You never know what it’s gonna look like. I gave up on knowing the future a long time ago. I don’t even have an eschatology essentially because I think that like all the people who knew the future nailed Jesus to a tree when he showed up.  

 …I don’t know nothing, but what I do know is the steps that are in front of us right now are to make sure that the entertainment of the future has our values, to make sure that the technologies of the future have our values, and to make sure that people aren’t just left to the wolves who are already occupying all these spaces.

Get the full interview here.