God, Sex, and AI

Summary

Paul Ford and Rich Ziade tackle a provocative spectrum of AI applications in this episode, examining two extremes: a Christian LLM company called Gloo, now headed by former Intel CEO Patrick Gelsinger, which is building faith-oriented AI technology, and OpenAI’s announcement that it will allow ChatGPT to generate erotic content for verified adult users. The discussion begins with a demo of Aboard’s product capabilities before diving into the thorny question of what happens when the LLM your business relies on starts offering services that conflict with your values.

The hosts explore the historical pattern of religious organizations creating their own versions of popular media — from Christian rock to faith-based films — as a parallel to faith-oriented AI. They reference Steve Jobs keeping porn off the iPhone as an example of values-driven product decisions in tech. The conversation grows more philosophical as they consider whether the future of AI will be dominated by three or four monolithic platforms, or whether we’ll see a proliferation of ideologically distinct LLMs serving different communities. Rich argues that the rapid consolidation of AI into just a few companies is unprecedented and concerning, while Paul sees the emergence of specialized LLMs as a potentially healthy sign of people rejecting platform monopolies.

The episode also raises fundamental questions about free speech and AI: Is an LLM protected by free speech? Is the interaction with it protected? The hosts grapple with questions of accountability when AI-generated content crosses lines, noting that these tools are gaining autonomy in ways that make it hard to trace responsibility back to specific people.

Highlights

”Sam Altman’s going to let ChatGPT write porn”

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“Sam Altman’s out there. He’s saying, you know what? I’m going to be cool with this thing generating erotica. We’ve been turning it down. We’ve been saying no more erotica. But I’m gonna let ChatGPT — you wanted it to write porn for you, you just say, ‘Write me some porn.’ It’s gonna do it.” — Rich Ziade, 3:29

”The velocity of consolidation is incredible”

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“The internet was incredibly distributed and democratic in the beginning. And then over about 15-20 years it became incredibly consolidated. The velocity of consolidation we’ve seen in AI in like two years — it’s incredible. It’s down to like two companies at this point. It’s kind of bananas.” — Rich Ziade, 20:15

”Christian rock is universally terrible”

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“Religious organizations tend to make their own. It’s almost always incredibly inferior. Like Christian rock is universally — even Christian rock fans know it’s terrible. But it speaks to their values and they can listen to it without feeling threatened.” — Paul Ford, 8:40

”Does a machine have a right to free speech?”

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“Is the LLM protected by free speech? Is the interaction with the LLM protected by free speech? These tools now are gaining autonomy and can assert themselves and cause damage that — it’s hard to draw a dotted line back to a team of people that are responsible for it.” — Rich Ziade, 16:50

”Part of a trillion dollars is porn”

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“They’re aiming for a trillion dollar IPO. And so part of a trillion dollars — like a chunk of the trillion dollars is porn. He knows that this is an audience. It’s probably tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions globally who are into erotic literature.” — Rich Ziade, 13:30

Key Points

• Aboard product demo (0:38) - Rich demonstrates how Aboard could be used to manage a network of 50 Lutheran churches, building a CRM through AI-guided conversation
• OpenAI enables erotica (3:29) - Sam Altman announced ChatGPT will generate erotic content for verified adult users
• Gloo and Patrick Gelsinger (3:55) - Former Intel CEO now leads a Christian LLM company encoding faith-based values into AI
• Aboard uses OpenAI (3:20) - Aboard’s product relies on OpenAI, raising questions for faith-oriented customers
• LLMs have ingested all subcultures (5:25) - These tools have effectively absorbed all the world’s information including every subculture and value system
• Steve Jobs kept porn off iPhone (6:40) - As a parent, Jobs made a product decision to keep adult content out of the App Store
• Historical pattern of religious media (8:40) - Religious organizations have always created their own versions of popular media, from Stryper to Christian rock
• Altman’s Y Combinator instinct (12:30) - His decision to allow erotica reflects the YC “ship first, iterate later” philosophy
• Trillion dollar IPO motivation (13:30) - Part of OpenAI’s valuation path includes the massive global market for erotic content
• AI-generated erotica quality concerns (14:20) - Compared to meeting someone at a party who seems cool then gets creepy four minutes in
• Free speech and AI (16:50) - Fundamental questions about whether LLM output or interactions are protected speech
• Responsibility always arrives too late (17:40) - Like tobacco and asbestos, harm must become unbelievably apparent before regulation kicks in
• DeepSeek and censorship (19:30) - DeepSeek won’t talk about Tiananmen Square, showing how cultural values get locked into AI
• Consolidation vs. distribution (20:15) - AI has consolidated into 2-4 companies faster than any previous technology
• Mark Cuban as positive example (22:00) - Cuban uses his wealth and voice to tackle medicine costs rather than building bunkers

Mentions

Companies

• Gloo (3:55) - Christian LLM company building technology for the “faith ecosystem”
• OpenAI (3:20) - Announced it will allow erotic content generation
• Aboard (0:38) - The hosts’ company, an AI-powered software building platform
• Intel (3:55) - Patrick Gelsinger’s former company
• Apple (6:40) - Referenced for Steve Jobs’ decision to keep porn off the iPhone
• DeepSeek (19:30) - Chinese AI that censors Tiananmen Square content
• Anthropic (19:10) - Mentioned as one of the major AI companies
• Google (21:00) - Has a good play in the AI consolidation
• Facebook/Meta (19:00) - Referenced in platform consolidation history

People

• Sam Altman (3:29) - OpenAI CEO who announced erotic content policy change
• Patrick Gelsinger (3:55) - Former Intel CEO, now heading Gloo
• Steve Jobs (6:40) - Famously kept porn off the iPhone
• Mark Cuban (22:00) - Praised for using wealth to tackle medicine costs

Products & Technologies

• ChatGPT (3:29) - Will now generate erotic content for verified adults
• Sora (14:30) - Referenced for its video stream showing AI-generated content trends

Surprising Quotes

“You can go into ChatGPT and ask it to give you advice from a particular theological perspective. You can say, ‘As a Muslim, how should I approach this problem?’ And then you can switch right over and be like, ‘I also would like you to write some erotic fanfiction around Sonic the Hedgehog.’” — Paul Ford, 6:05

“I can build my little Jesus thing on top of what is essentially a very dark, obfuscated, exponentially more powerful platform underneath. And if they want to insert little Satan thingies into my Jesus thing without me knowing about it, they’re going to do it.” — Rich Ziade, 20:40

“We cannot predict human behavior even though it’s the most predictable thing ever. We thought it was going to be cat pictures and tuna casseroles coming on Facebook pages.” — Rich Ziade, 23:10

Transcript

0:00 Hi, I’m Paul Ford. And I’m Rich Ziade. And this is the Aboard Podcast. The podcast, Richard, about how AI is changing the world of software. Yeah. All right. Don’t bring it too far down. I want to talk today about something that is very, very related to software. Yes. Jesus Christ. Play the theme song.

0:38 Let me take this back to our product for one minute. Let’s do a little marketing, but tie it back to the theme. Kind of ease people in. You ready? Could I use Aboard to manage my church? Absolutely. Okay. What would that be like? Most churches are probably managed by notes, emails, and maybe a spreadsheet. Well, actually, let’s take it up a level. Let’s say I got 50 Lutheran churches in New York City and I got to coordinate between all those different parishes.

1:18 You could start talking to it. Like you can talk to anything with AI and tell it what you’re looking to solve and the kind of tools you need. But you could even not talk about the tool, just talk about the struggles you have today. Let me describe a struggle. We plan a lot of events and outings across our youth groups and our Bible study. Manage the event calendar. I want to almost like a CRM but around things like Bible study outings, interfaith services, stuff like that.

2:40 It builds a prototype of your solution. Yes, but it’s actual software. That’s the world we live in. It’s not a whiteboard sketch. It’s an AI assisted generated solution. We’re sort of a different angle than vibe coding, which is sort of more riffing and casual. This is actually trying to guide you through getting to a real solution.

3:07 But I want to bring it back to this subject. Right now we use what’s called an LLM, a big sort of database that is hosted and managed by a giant AI company. Like most people. Which one do we use? We use OpenAI. Okay. And I’m a church. Now, let me tell you about a couple things that OpenAI is up to recently.

3:29 Sam Altman’s out there. He’s saying, you know what? I’m going to be cool with this thing generating erotica. We’ve been turning it down. We’ve been saying no more erotica. But I’m gonna let ChatGPT — you wanted it to write porn for you, you just say, “Write me some porn.” It’s gonna do it. If you’re an adult, you gotta check a box.

3:55 And then the ex-Intel CEO Patrick Gelsinger is now at an AI startup and they’re building a Christian LLM that kind of encodes all those values. So that the mega church says hey go over here and use Gloo, which is their company, and their technology, and then you won’t have the risk of all this other stuff that Sam Altman says is cool.

4:40 So this is a sanitized version of AI? They wouldn’t say sanitized. They would say that it would assert Christian values when prompted. It would strongly bias scripture and scriptural analysis and broad theological concepts. You ask it for advice, it’s going to color it with its understanding of Christian values.

5:25 What is so unusual about these tools is they have effectively ingested all the world’s information that we’ve laid on the internet. Inside of that, the internet is an incredibly multi-threaded opinionated place with many cultures and subcultures embedded within it. And if you’re a religious person, that can feel very threatening because you are committed to one way of living.

6:40 I think a lot about Steve Jobs. He famously wanted to keep porn off the iPhone. He was just like, as a parent, this is really important to you. And Apple basically said there may be a lot of money over there and free speech, but we’re going to draw a pretty clear line. You’re not going to get a smutty app in the app store.

7:30 These tools are tricking us a little bit because they have a persuasive quality to them. They have an anthropomorphic quality to them. And so I think people are getting a little giddy about their vector of influence, especially on young people. And when you say young, it doesn’t have to be porn. You could be a teenager who has all these temptations.

8:40 This always happens with media and technology. People used to think Pac-Man was corrupting the youth. Music has always been a big one. And what happens is religious organizations tend to make their own. It’s almost always incredibly inferior. Like Christian rock is universally — even Christian rock fans know it’s terrible. But it speaks to their values and they can listen to it without feeling threatened.

9:30 Do you remember Stryper? Stryper was a heavy metal band from the 80s. Big hair. Tight spandex. They wore black and yellow so they looked like bumblebees. They were this very subtly Christian heavy metal band. They crossed over at one point. They actually had some hits. Their message was essentially you can be different and cool and still believe in the Lord.

11:20 This former CEO of Intel is thinking, I want to guide them a little bit. I know they’re going to go into the other mode, the incognito. But how do I inject these values? Anybody who’s thinking I’ve got an airtight, hermetically sealed way of influencing a young person — best of luck to you. You probably don’t. But they’re trying.

12:30 Altman, I think his agenda is completely different. He has embraced the — it’s not even ask for forgiveness. It’s almost like just go and we’ll tweak this as we go. His instinct is the same one he had to put ChatGPT out even — it’s very much a Y Combinator “get out there and see what the world looks like” mindset.

13:30 They’re aiming for a trillion dollar IPO. And so part of a trillion dollars is porn. He knows that this is an audience. It’s probably tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions globally who are into erotic literature and the like, and they want in.

14:20 You ever go to a party? And that person for the first minute or so seems real cool? And then like four minutes in you’re fully creeped out? That is AI generated erotic literature. I think that might be right. It’s that fourth paragraph and it just goes off the rails.

16:50 Where’s the free speech in this? Is the LLM protected by free speech? Is the interaction with the LLM protected by free speech? Because if the LLM is a document, is that an artifact of communication? These tools now are gaining autonomy and can assert themselves and cause damage that — it’s hard to draw a dotted line back to a team of people responsible for it.

17:40 Responsibility eventually has to kick in the same way it kicks in often too late when it comes to tobacco, the internet. Always too late. The harm has to become unbelievably apparent. Welcome to human beings, right? Human nature. We always show up too late to the party.

19:00 My larger point is people are going to have strong reactions because people have very strong reactions to religious stuff. I do think as long as we’re not enforcing the usage of one thing for one community or the other, this is just how it’s going to go. If the Jesus folks want to make their own LLM and they got the money and the compute, that’s their right.

19:30 It’s tricky because DeepSeek wouldn’t talk about Tiananmen Square. There are certain things that just get locked down. Altman saying go and Jesus Christ AI edition are frankly very American, very libertarian in spirit.

20:15 The internet was incredibly distributed and democratic in the beginning. Then over about 15-20 years it became incredibly consolidated. The velocity of consolidation we’ve seen in AI in like two years — it’s incredible. I can build my little Jesus thing on top of what is essentially a very dark, obfuscated, exponentially more powerful platform underneath. It’s down to like two companies at this point. It’s kind of bananas.

22:00 You know who’s good at this? Mark Cuban. He drives everybody crazy, but I do believe that guy believes in what he says. He picked a really hard problem to conquer — cost of medicine. He has a voice and he has money and he’s like, let me go do this. He’s decided to use the years 45 to death in some positive way instead of building a freaking bunker.

24:00 These are corners that are going to get created. I don’t mind them existing. I don’t mind a Christian AI edition. The red line is if the current administration says we will ban the communist LLM. That’s more worrying to me than someone deciding, let’s try erotic literature.

25:30 Check us out at aboard.com or send us an email at hello@aboard.com. If you’re building a very specific LLM or working with ones that are really specific, get in touch. Have a great week everyone. Take care of each other.