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Artificial intelligence is already part of daily life, but what happens when people begin to trust it with work, ideas, and decisions? On In the Market with Janet Parshall, Janet talks with software engineer and Christian writer Doug Smith about his book Unintelligence: The Lies Behind Today’s AI and the Truth You Need to Thrive. Their conversation focuses on how AI may shape its users, not just what it can produce.
Doug has spent decades working with technology and studying Scripture. He also wrote Unintentional, a book about how screens can shape people’s desires. Janet asks him to explain why he is concerned about generative AI, why those concerns led him to leave a job he loved, and why Christians should think carefully about claims that machines can be intelligent. This episode begins a longer discussion of his new book, with special attention to its first chapter.
Janet and Doug examine AI through the lens of technology, discipleship, and the Christian understanding of human beings. Doug draws on his software career and his research into how digital products affect behavior. Rather than rushing through his book, they spend time on the questions behind its first chapter.
Doug describes himself as someone who has been interested in technology for as long as he can remember. He studied electronics engineering, learned computers and software engineering, and built a career in the field. He also loves science fiction and has long wanted to understand how things work. Janet says that background matters because he knows the technology from the inside while also approaching it as a follower of Christ.
His questions about technology began before today’s AI tools became common. Doug noticed scenes that many people would recognize: families sitting together in restaurants while everyone looked at a phone, and children using tablets while little conversation took place. Around 2014 and 2015, he began researching why digital products were so effective at drawing people in. He studied technology, behavioral psychology, neuroscience, and theology.
That research became Unintentional, his earlier book about screens and desire. Doug says technology companies have learned to make products that do more than serve a practical need. In his view, those products can change habits and shape what people want. When ChatGPT and other large language models arrived, he brought the same questions to them: How are these tools designed, and what might regular use do to the people using them?
Janet stresses that this is not a conversation against technology itself. She wants Christians to pause and think biblically rather than treating AI as separate from their walk with Christ. She points to Galatians 2:20, where Paul speaks of being crucified with Christ and living by faith in Him. For Janet, that commitment reaches into screen time, work, and decisions about AI.
Janet asks Doug to explain a choice that put his concerns into practice. He had worked for a company he loved for seven years and expected to remain there much longer. At first, using AI for software engineering was optional. When the company changed its policy and required it, Doug says he had to decide how deeply he held the convictions he had been writing and speaking about.
Doug had researched generative AI for several years and had written articles about whether to use it for tasks such as research and creativity. He says his decision at work was not based on a single passing worry. He wrote down 12 reasons he would not use big technology companies’ generative AI for software engineering. He has shared that account, along with other writing, on Doug Smith’s website.
Two concerns were central. First, Doug believes people lose some of the skills they hand over to a tool. He had worked hard to develop software engineering as a craft and to do high-quality work. He did not want to give up those skills by depending on AI to perform parts of that craft. Second, he feared that such use would create a lasting dependence on a technology he had come to regard as untrustworthy.
Doug left the company, though he makes clear that he still cares about it and had needed the income. He says he did not know exactly what would come next and had to trust God with that uncertainty. The change gave him time to finish Unintelligence more quickly than he could have while working full time. Janet asks listeners to pray for his household’s financial needs and notes that writing a book with such extensive research would have been difficult after a full workday.
Doug uses the phrase intentionality imbalance to describe a difference between technology companies and their users. He says many people approach a new product without much thought about how it may affect them. The companies building it, by contrast, put great effort into learning how people respond and how to keep them engaged. His earlier book urged readers to become more intentional about their screen use.
He brings that concern into his new book. Doug argues that generative AI offers a kind of intelligence exchange: users hand tasks that require thought to a system that promises a quick result. His worry is not simply that a person might get a poor answer. It is that repeated use could weaken the abilities that person has stopped practicing. He wants readers to value and develop what he calls their God-given intelligence.
Janet presses him on why Christians should make room for such questions when ordinary life is already full. Doug acknowledges that people are tired and busy. That, he says, is part of what makes an easy tool appealing. He believes people still need to ask who they are and what it means to be made in God’s image, because the products they use can influence how they answer those questions.
Janet frames the issue as one of discipleship. In her view, Christians cannot put their faith in one part of life and their technology use in another. She urges listeners to be discerning, like the Bereans she mentions, and to consider both the promises made about AI and the choices they make when using it.
The first chapter of Unintelligence takes up a basic question: What does it mean to call a machine intelligent? Janet introduces Alan Turing, whose work with his team on breaking wartime codes helped shape modern computing. Doug explains that Turing also proposed what became known as the imitation game, or the Turing test.
In that test, a machine succeeds if it can communicate with a person who cannot tell that it is a machine. Doug says this measures how convincingly a machine can imitate human conversation. It does not, in his view, settle whether the machine understands anything. The person’s mistaken impression is part of what allows the machine to pass.
That distinction matters to Doug because he believes human intelligence cannot be reduced to convincing replies. He offers a working definition of intelligence as the ability to choose for a purpose. A person can understand a goal, make a choice, and mean what they say. Doug argues that a machine runs code and follows algorithms, even when its output sounds thoughtful.
Machines don't and never will have purposes.
Janet adds that people may confuse intelligence with having a great deal of information. A system can generate words or images quickly, but she and Doug distinguish that process from a person making a creative or moral choice. They also discuss why chatbots can be especially persuasive. For years, people used typed conversations to communicate with other people. When a machine responds in a similar form, Doug says it can feel human even to someone who knows how it works.
Doug turns to Michael Polanyi, a Christian chemist and philosopher who was a contemporary of Turing. He says Polanyi challenged the idea that a machine’s convincing performance proves it thinks. Doug also credits philosopher Esther Meek with helping him understand and explain Polanyi’s work.
As Doug presents it, Polanyi’s response begins with how people know things. Human knowledge is not merely a collection of words that can be rearranged. People have an understanding of the world that allows them to choose words, recognize meaning, and interpret what a machine produces. Doug notes that even Turing’s work with machines required a human being to understand what their output meant.
Janet asks about semantics, or meaning. Doug points to their own conversation as an example: each of them chooses words to express something they intend to say. He argues that a computer does not understand the meaning of the words it generates, however natural those words may sound. A person must still interpret its output.
Janet reads a passage from Polanyi, quoted in Doug’s book, that sums up the distinction they are discussing:
But a deception, however compelling, does not qualify thereby as truth.
For Doug, Polanyi’s argument offers a reason not to treat imitation as understanding. Janet connects that point to the Christian belief that human beings are made in God’s image. They both want listeners to notice when human qualities are being assigned to machines simply because those machines produce human-sounding responses.
The conversation also touches on creativity. Janet recalls an earlier example in which someone asks AI for a picture of a cat. Her point is that producing the picture is not the same as a person having an original idea. Doug says generative systems work from digitized material used in training and produce new combinations through their algorithms. He contrasts that process with a person’s ability to have an idea and choose how to express it.
Doug says that, in his own experience, his best ideas often come as he leans into his relationship with God. He also tells Janet that no word of Unintelligence was written, edited, or inspired by AI. He credits God, his own work, and the human editors who helped him. Janet notices the book’s “human authored” marking and says she values knowing that a writer has personally wrestled with the subject.
They end without trying to cover the whole book in one hour. Janet says its arguments deserve slower reading and plans to continue the conversation with Doug. For now, she urges listeners to consider the first chapter’s question carefully: when a machine seems to think, what has it actually done, and what do Christians believe is distinct about a human being?
Doug’s hope is that readers will take those questions seriously before handing more of their work and thought to AI. Janet closes by returning to the purpose of their discussion: to help Christians think deeply about technology while remembering whose they are and how they want to live.