Catching Up to AI

The title of this piece is audacious. Is it possible to “catch up” to AI? What does that really mean?

I’ve had some fascinating recent opportunities to learn more about AI, including an invite to an AI perspectives conference in November attended by academics and religious leaders.

Fun note: I learned that many professors are not only using AI tools to check student homework for unapproved AI usage, but they’re re-instituting some oral exams and essay reviews.

It’s easy to become fearful that AI will take over the world, making human beings obsolete and eventually extinguishing us. But many secular and religious leaders are finding ways to embrace AI while working to establish adequate guardrails and failsafes.

The concept of some AIs verifying the activities of other AIs reminds me very much of how we humans must check each other as we seek mutually beneficial arrangements for societal interactions. James Madison (one of the U.S. Founders, who, by the way, also stayed at the home of a Mrs. House during the Constitutional Convention in 1787), said this in Federalist 51:

“It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices [checks and balances] should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.”

Interesting, but not surprising. Humans are the creators of AI, so it stands to reason that the same checks and balances needed for us are needed for our AI tools, especially as they become more agentic.

That word, “agentic,” requires a brief pause for some definitions. Here are a few terms we need to familiarize ourselves with:

• Agentic AI – AI that autonomously plans, reasons, and acts toward goals

• AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) – AI that can perform any intellectual task a human can—not just one specialty; Note: AGI has not yet been achieved, but this is the current arms race, involving massive amounts of money being expended

• ASI (Artificial Super Intelligence) – AI vastly smarter than humans in all domains; currently hypothetical, post-AGI

• Emergent Abilities - Unexpected skills that appear at scale (e.g., ChatGPT-4 suddenly solving math)

• LLM (Large Language Model) – AI trained on vast text reservoirs to predict next word (e.g., Grok, GPT, Gemini)

• Multimodal AI – Handles text + image + audio + video

• RLHF (Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback) – Humans rank AI outputs, leading to model improvements; Used in Grok, GPT, Claude

• Hallucination (also called False Correction Looping) – AI confidently stating false, even elaborately fabricated, information; Reduced but not eliminated in 2025 models

• Authority Bias – AI using ranked sourcing to help determine outputs; some form of ranking—or bias—is obviously needed (humans have to rank sources, too), which is why the guardrails are critical

• Novel Hypothesis Suppression – process whereby new discoveries are politely deemed improbable and then over-critiqued, often using fabricated evidence (again, humans ALSO do this)

Some of those terms are a bit daunting in their implications, but panic will not help us. AI is not, and cannot become, God (who many scientists just call the “Intelligent Designer”). Once we better understand that a loving, interested God created us in his image for a powerful, eternal purpose, with vast, mostly untapped potential, we will realize that AI should be neither feared nor abused. If you don’t have that faith, this journey will by definition be tougher.

The Response of Faith Leaders

Teams at Baylor University, Brigham Young University, the University of Notre Dame, and Yeshiva University are building an AI tool to test how other AI programs treat religion and faith.

Said one of the leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Gerrit Gong, who is helping oversee this effort, “Portraying faith traditions accurately or respectfully is not an imposition of religion on AI. Rather, it is a public necessity. It is especially needed as increasing numbers of individuals ask AI about faith and belief, and as AI becomes a primary source of information about faith traditions.”

Here are two more apt and incisive quotations from him, made as he visited with other world religious leaders in Istanbul (July 2025) and The Vatican (October 2025):

“We deplore addictions and evils that AI is being used to enhance, including AI ‘adult companions,’ AI-generated pornography and AI-driven gambling. We recognize AI can supercharge digital dopamine. This includes social media algorithms optimized to increase each person’s use; draw in more users; maximize advertising; and monetize rage. And, for good and ill, we know AI-enhanced virtual reality, robotics and other leading-edge technologies are coming.”

“We do not fear AI, nor do we think AI is the answer to everything … AI is neither the sum of, nor the solution to, all our opportunities or problems.”

Clearly, there is much work to do—collectively—on many fronts.

Job Market Impacts

This is a big deal, and understandably so. As an author, I have some obvious concerns about AI “taking over” my industry space. It’s already making inroads in all the arts—books, paintings, music, movies, etc.

Here is an interesting story about a new AI country “artist” called Breaking Rust:

Country’s No. 1 Digital Song Is an AI Smash, But Who Is Breaking Rust? (by Billy Dukes, Nov. 7, 2025)

https://tasteofcountry.com/breaking-rust-explained-ai-country-song/

Yikes?

New guardrails are being created as we speak – by industry groups, governments, and others, but it will be interesting to witness and participate in how this all shakes out over time. Progress is never easy, in society or in our personal lives.

I asked SuperGrok about jobs being replaced by AI versus those being created by it. It gave me a Top 20 for both, with some helpful explanations. Here are the top 5 for each, with some prefacing. (I note with some trepidation that #7 in the replacement category is Writers/Content Creators.)

Jobs AI Is Starting to Replace

AI is rapidly automating routine, data-driven, and repetitive tasks across industries, leading to job displacement in roles that rely on predictable processes. Based on recent reports from sources like Microsoft Research (analyzing 200,000 AI interactions), the World Economic Forum's 2025 Future of Jobs Report, Forbes, and Bloomberg Intelligence, here are the top 20 jobs most at risk as of late 2025. These are ranked by estimated automation potential and observed layoffs/reductions, with many companies (e.g., Amazon, Meta) citing AI as a factor in cuts totaling over 1.1 million jobs this year.

Rank	Job Title	Why AI Is Replacing It	Key Sources/Stats
1	Data Entry Clerks	AI tools like OCR and automated pipelines handle inputting and processing data faster with fewer errors.	WEF: 92M roles displaced by 2030; highest vulnerability.
2	Customer Service Reps	Chatbots and AI agents (e.g., from Zendesk) resolve queries 24/7, reducing need for entry-level reps.	Bloomberg: 67% of sales reps' tasks automatable; 58K London jobs at risk.
3	Telemarketers	AI-powered robocalls and personalized outreach scripts outperform humans in volume and targeting.	VKTR: High risk from mobile apps; repetitive nature ideal for bots.
4	Administrative Secretaries	Scheduling, filing, and basic admin tasks are automated by tools like Google Workspace AI.	Exploding Topics: #2 most vulnerable; 85M jobs replaced by 2025.
5	Bookkeepers/Accounting Clerks	AI software (e.g., QuickBooks AI) automates reconciliations, invoicing, and audits.	Winssolutions: 300M global jobs at risk; 34% of tasks automated per WEF.

Jobs AI Is Creating (2025–2030)

While AI displaces routine roles, it’s creating more jobs than it eliminates—the World Economic Forum (2025) projects 97 million new roles by 2030, outpacing the 85 million lost. These jobs blend human judgment, creativity, and technical skill with AI tools. Below are the top 20 emerging roles, ranked by projected demand, salary growth, and hiring trends (LinkedIn, Indeed, McKinsey, xAI job postings).

Rank	Job Title	What You Do	Avg. Salary (USD, 2025)	Key Skills / Tools
1	Prompt Engineer	Craft precise inputs for LLMs (e.g., Grok, GPT) to optimize outputs.	$120K–$250K	NLP, logic, A/B testing
2	AI Ethics Officer	Audit models for bias, fairness, and compliance (e.g., EU AI Act).	$130K–$280K	Law, philosophy, Python
3	MLOps Engineer	Deploy, monitor, and scale ML (Machine Learning) models in production (CI/CD for AI).	$140K–$220K	Kubernetes, Terraform, MLflow
4	AI-Augmented Therapist	Use AI (e.g., Woebot) to scale mental health support with human oversight.	$90K–$160K	Psychology, HIPAA, chat UX
5	Data Labeler Supervisor	Manage crowdsourced human labeling for training datasets (e.g., Scale AI).	$85K–$140K	Project mgmt, quality control

Obviously, things are still evolving, so the target keeps moving. While I’m a little dubious about jobs created outpacing jobs eliminated, past technology upheavals have, over the long term at least, proven beneficial in that regard.

I’m also not sure what the training to become a Prompt Engineer looks like, but one obviously has to understand something about the programing parameters, including guardrails, built into the AI engine (like an LLM) that they are using.

And, quite frankly, AI-Augmented Therapist sounds both intriguing and disquieting.

Conclusion

As you can tell, I’ve challenged myself to become more conversant with AI. I have a long way to go. My intent is to become part of good, meaningful solutions, and my eyes are wide open now to the fact that this journey will be both challenging and long.

Not all that long, though. This major technological disruption is moving much faster than previous ones, so keep those seatbelts tightened. 😊