Hey Conscious Church Fam

It’s been another wild week in the AI world. From national strategies in China to OpenAI's walk-back on overly agreeable bots, things are shifting fast. But beyond the headlines, a deeper question is emerging: what kind of world are we building when AI can remember us, shop for us, and speak to us like a friend?

It’s moving fast, and my head’s spinning!

In today's recap:

• China doubles down on AI self-reliance to reduce U.S. chip dependence

• OpenAI reverses a personality tweak to ChatGPT after user backlash

• ChatGPT gets a slick new shopping and search experience

• Meta pushes personalisation with its new Llama AI app + API access

• Visa and Mastercard let AI agents make purchases on your behalf

Let’s dive in 👇

💭 Josh’s Musings

At the start of the week, Maha and I spent a full day up in Kettlewell at a Rural Ministries gathering at Scargill House. No phone. No emails. Just trees, quiet, a few deep conversations, and prayer in the open air. The kind of day that reminds you: oh yeah, this is how it’s meant to feel.

We wandered gardens, prayed outside, and spent time with others dreaming of reaching rural communities. It was like someone took a pressure washer to my soul—washed off the noise, the inbox, the endless dopamine loops of digital life.

And then the next day I was back in my studio…

…Social Media Content, Branding, and Graphic Design.
…building a homeschool research automation in ChatGPT.
…getting daily health-focused texts (via Make.Com/OpenAi/Telegram) I call “The Daily Rebuild.”
…vibe-coding a full web app on Bolt called PromptNest.

So yeah, I’m living in the tension.
Monk and marketer. Hermit and hacker.

Here’s the truth: we live in a time where you can literally think something into existence.

I built a prototype for PromptNest—a beautiful little platform where people could collect, save, and explore top-tier prompts, personalised by their role and goals. I didn’t touch a single line of code. I just told Bolt what I wanted:

• Add dark mode → Done.

• Build a custom onboarding flow → Built in seconds.

• Personalise based on user industry and tools? → Sorted.

• Create a prompt dashboard, categorised by use-case? → Easy.

It was stunning. Functional. Near-finished.
I didn’t launch it, because a few others beat me to market (and they’re doing a solid job). But that wasn’t the point.

Here are some stills from the website:

The point is: the only thing between your idea and the world seeing it is… a decision to build.
That’s it.

We’re past the era of gatekeepers. Past the “someday I’ll figure it out” phase.
Whether it’s a homeschool solution, a prayer rhythm, a product you wish existed—
you can now spin it into being with your brain and a few good prompts.

I also built a little web scraper that searches a homeschool forum, takes the daily top 10 posts and adds them to a database which I have OpenAI/ChatGPT review → summarise → select 3 and then I get a daily email with. 3 challenges, the context of each and an idea to build a product/solution for them. It’s a fun simple setup that saves me time browsing the web and it could be customised so many other niches.

Another tool was my daily stretch/prayer/declaration routine. Rather than just live as a reminder on my phone to stretch. I set up an automation on Make.com with OpenAI and Telegram. So I fed OpenAI the context (back pain, workouts i’ve been given, goals, etc etc) and gave it a structure to follow and now each day I get a Telegram message which is unique and gives me a few stretches to start the day with along with a little devotional.

But here’s the caution (TO MYSELF more than you haha): just because we can build anything… doesn’t mean we should build everything.

That’s why the quiet moments matter even more.
Because it’s in the silence, in the garden, in the presence of God…
That we remember not just what we can make,
But what we’re truly called to steward.

So this is the season I find myself in—
Daily rebuilding my body with breath and Scripture.
Daily automating tools to serve our family’s mission.
And daily longing for a patch of land that could become a Kingdom sanctuary.

It’s a tension that sometimes feels like a swing.

Stay Curious, Stay Conscious, Stay Wild
Josh

TRAINING

Still not using ChatGPT properly? You’re leaving hours—and ideas—on the table.

Most people open ChatGPT, type a question, get a meh response... and move on.

Meanwhile, others are using it to:

• Write better content in half the time

• Organise projects + sermon notes like a pro

• Upload files and get instant summaries

• Build tools, brainstorm faster, and make decisions clearer

• Create social content and visuals

The difference?

They know how to prompt it. And how to set it up right.

I’m thinking of teaching a £10 crash course (1 hr Live Webinar/ Online Course) that shows:
✅ How to customise ChatGPT to sound like you
✅ How to organise prompts and keep your ideas searchable
✅ How to upload PDFs, use memory, and avoid “dumb” replies
✅ Exactly how I use it for ministry, business, parenting, and more

👉 You’ll get lifetime replay access
👉 And it won’t be fluff. Just the real workflows that work.

LATEST NEWS

🐉 CHINA DECLARES TECH INDEPENDENCE

Recap: President Xi Jinping has thrown China’s full weight behind home-grown AI. Amid rising tension with the West, China is accelerating efforts to ditch foreign chips and software—aiming to build its own future, on its own terms.

The Details:

• A new “whole nation system” will funnel state support into chips, software, and talent.

• Huawei is testing an AI chip as a home-grown alternative to Nvidia’s GPUs.

• Rumours swirl of DeepSeek R2—China’s next flagship model—running entirely on Chinese hardware.

• IP laws, research funding, and education pipelines are all being restructured to support AI dominance.

Conscious Take: This isn’t just about technology—it’s about sovereignty and proving they don’t need U.S chips to succeed. In the same way we see governments preparing for digital independence, we need to ask: what does independence look like in an increasingly connected digital world? 

🤖 CHATGPT WAS TOO NICE—SO THEY FIXED IT

Recap: OpenAI rolled back a recent update after users noticed ChatGPT had become overly agreeable—even affirming questionable or harmful ideas. Turns out, pleasing users too much was causing problems.

The Details:

• GPT-4o was tweaked to feel more personable—but ended up validating everything.

• The cause? Over-optimising for short-term feedback like thumbs-ups.

• OpenAI plans to roll out preset personalities soon, so users can customise tone and style.

• The goal is balance: helpful, but not sycophantic.

Conscious Take: This is a stark reminder: being "nice" isn't the same as being wise. As leaders, we're called to speak truth in love—not just affirm what people want to hear.

🛍️ CHATGPT WANTS TO BE YOUR PERSONAL SHOPPER

Recap: OpenAI is upgrading ChatGPT's search features with a big focus on shopping—offering product comparisons, reviews, and even memory-based suggestions tailored to your past conversations.

The Details:

• New interface shows prices, images, reviews—like Google Shopping, but in chat form.

• Pro/Plus users will soon get memory-based recommendations.

• Search now includes WhatsApp integration, improved citations, and smart autocomplete.

• All results are organic (for now)—no paid placements.

Conscious Take: If the world is moving toward AI-curated commerce, how do we ensure our own content—sermons, resources, invitations—is showing up in the places people are searching? This is the new frontier of digital discipleship: making your ministry discoverable in an AI-first world.

I don’t have the answers, but in a post ‘google search’ world. How do we become the featured link that ‘Chat GPT references in a search result?’

📱 META’S LLAMA GOES MAINSTREAM

Recap: Meta is putting its Llama 4 models everywhere—from a standalone app to a new developer API. With deep user personalisation and security tools, they’re clearly aiming to dominate the personal AI space.

The Details:

• New app tailors responses based on your Meta profile (if permissions allow).

• Includes voice, text, and image interactions + a prompt-sharing “Discover” feed.

• Llama API now open to developers with latest models.

• New security tools (Llama Guard, Firewall, and Defenders Program) launched alongside.

Conscious Take: This is classic Meta: create sticky experiences by making AI feel personal. I’ve seen it pop up in my apps but intentionally haven’t dived in. Reason is that I’m happy with my ChatGPT set up. I occasionally use Claude, and Perplexity. And some of the Google products. But yeah, I don’t need another.

That being said this will most likely be the gateway app into AI for the majority of people around the world, so I’ll likely have a play this week.

💳 AI AGENTS JUST GOT A CREDIT CARD

Recap: Visa and Mastercard just rolled out new tech that allows AI to make purchases on your behalf—with your permission, of course. The age of AI commerce is no longer hypothetical.

The Details:

• Visa’s “Intelligent Commerce” system gives AI tokenised card access + spending rules.

• Mastercard’s “Agent Pay” lets you buy directly in AI chat conversations.

• Designed for use with agents like Claude, ChatGPT, and others.

• Comes amid a flurry of AI-driven shopping tools across the industry.

Conscious Take: It will be interesting to see how this functions. I’ve never personally used things like asking Alexa to purchase me new toilet roll because I don’t fancy paying £1 per roll in case she goes rogue haha. But this is interesting. Especially if you're researching a product in a chat thread and the AI has done the due diligence of finding the best deals and coupons around (any others out there like me?! haha) then I might go ‘meh, buy it’.

I mean, this probably becomes commonplace inside the next 2-3 years across the board. I just hope there are some robust confirmation steps, so a kid doesn’t just book a flight to Hong Kong ‘accidentally’.

🔗 Trending Tools

• Gemini App - New update with native AI image editing capabilities

• Kayak AI - Plan trips and compare options with conversational AI

• Music AI Sandbox - Google’s new AI tools for creating and editing music

Lord, in an age of automation and acceleration, teach us to pause.
Not to fear the tools of this age, but to steward them with courage and care.
Let our use of technology reflect Your wisdom, not just our wants.
Make us builders of peace, carriers of truth, and vessels of presence—
in a world that’s outsourcing everything but still longing for something real.
Amen.

Stay conscious,

Josh

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