Collectively, we have been talking with a wide range of specialists across many disciplines. There is massive interest in these issues. In some areas we have found unquestioning enthusiasm, in other areas quiet concern. Some people we speak with are frightened at the scale and pace of change.

We are in the relatively early stages of a global ‘Digital Revolution’. Technology is driving unprecedented changes across most aspects of life and work. The pace and scale of that change is accelerating relentlessly. The combination of always-connected devices, Big Data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are combining to change human life irreversibly.

ChatGPT has been creating quite the buzz ever since its launch in November 2022. Until recently, the massive developments in the world of AI were hidden under the cover of academic institutions or digital frontends of AI powered apps. With the advent of generative AI powered tools like mid journey for image generation or ChatGPT for text generation, the developments in this field have been exposed to the public. The newfound ability of the public to interact with these models using text prompts has dazzled them into an unprecedented realization just how far the field has progressed.

We are a generation living in the midst of AI development, and many of us have likely dreamed of how AI could make our lives easier by carrying out certain tasks and freeing up time for more meaningful pursuits. Sometimes we're surprised by just how far AI has already advanced, such as ChatGPT's ability to write a 900 words article in just 20 seconds. It can make us wonder why we bother writing ourselves and worry about potential typos and grammatical errors.

In this article, I explore the impact of Fourth Industrial Revolution technology on our relationships – with one another, those we love and with God

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.” This profound insight comes not from a philosopher but from the celebrated science fiction author, psychotropic drug enthusiast and mystic, Philip K Dick. There is an ultimate primordial difference between reality and falsehood, between truth and counterfeit. Falsehoods, lies, counterfeits, deceptions are invented by human minds. The truth just is - objective, independent of all beliefs and conspiracy theories, unalterable and unavoidable. And yet, in an era in which the black art of spreading disinformation has become ever more sophisticated, how on earth can ordinary people ever distinguish between truth and lies?

The Robot Will See You Now offers arresting insights into the role of AI in areas such as health care, employment, security, the arts and intimate relationships, and delves deep into cultural and theological issues. With experts considering how AI is perceived - and its impact on how we interact with one another - this enthralling book will benefit Christians who want to understand and prepare for the opportunities and challenges ahead.

The failure of the public examinations grade awards across the UK in 2020 offers a compelling case-study in the risks of large-scale public application of algorithms to decision-making (or recommendation). I believe this demonstrates clearly the need for robust, independent review and certification of algorithms prior to live use – with focus on the impact of recommendations/decisions on individuals who are the subjects of these tools.

Speed of change and unforeseen consequences - it's only 11 years since the first Apple iPhone was launched. Nobody foresaw how smartphones would change our world and our behaviour. An infamous slogan of Silicon Valley is "Move fast and break things" - the naïve assumption is that disruption is always positive.

Human beings have always tried to understand themselves by comparison with the leading technologies of the time. For many centuries of the medieval period and beyond precision clockwork mechanisms represented the pinnacle of technological creation, and it seemed obvious to many thinkers that the human body must represent some kind of clockwork mechanism.

The French philosopher Jean Baudrillard argued that postmodern culture had become so reliant on representations of reality that it had lost contact with the real world. In his 1988 work Simulacra and Simulation he wrote …“It is no longer a question of imitation, nor duplication, nor even parody. It is a question of substituting the signs of the real for the real”.

As the Fourth Industrial Revolution ushers into a new era of artificial intelligence (AI) and virtual reality, how should we respond to the societal and ethical dilemmas associated with this new age of transformative scientific power? This research highlights the need for an ethical and globally shared view on how technology affects the economic, social, cultural and spiritual aspects of daily life. An international team have compiled this book, outlining consequences of the Fourth Industrial Revolution across a broad range of issues covering business and work life, for leadership, for media and communication, for churches and for personal and family life.

In general, I try to avoid posting links to resources hosted on Google or Facebook platforms. However, I came across an exceptional, comprehensive, crowdsourced document gathering a huge range of resources for churches trying to ‘stay connected’. It is being crowd-sourced in a Google Document and is more useful to you as a live link to that document - which is still being updated

Many churches in Australasia, Europe and the US are being forced to move their services online. This is just one aspect of ‘digital church’. We want to gather some useful resources and insights, and we intend to publish some reflections on the lessons we learn. We thought this article from Christianity Today published last week, provides helpful starting point.

On February 17 2020, BBC Panorama Program explored the rise of Amazon and their strategy for growth, driven in part by ‘obsessive data gathering’. This is a powerful example of Surveillance Capitalism, and Shoshana Zuboff, Roger McNamee and Meredith Whittaker all appear on this informative and disturbing documentary.

We very much like the work of START in the USA. START is a grassroots, community organisation which was started in Kansas City, by Krista Boan and Tracy Foster. They have been running workshops for over a year now, and have reached over 3000 people with their practical message of hope for the parents (and grandparents) of digital natives.

Interactions with apparently human-like and ‘emotionally intelligent’ AIs are likely to become commonplace within the next ten years, ranging from entirely disembodied agents like chatbots through to physical humanoid robots. This will lead to new and troubling ethical, personal and legal dilemmas.