Hey {{first_name|Conscious Church Fam}}
Reality outdid satire this week. An AI named Luna signed a 3-year lease in San Francisco, hired real humans, and opened an actual boutique, then forgot to schedule any staff for opening day, oops. Meanwhile, a footwear brand quietly became a GPU rental company, and Sam Altman survived two attacks on his home from someone who's very, very worried about AI.
In today's recap:
🏪 An AI agent opened a real boutique in SF — and botched opening day
🐦 Allbirds ditched sneakers for GPUs. Stock jumped 600%.
🚨 Anti-AI fear goes violent — and Altman called the anxiety "justified"
Let's dive in 👇
✍️ Josh's Musings
Had a random one this week. The British Transport Police slogan popped into my head. See it, say it, sorted. I just thought, that's a sermon title. Started connecting it to some stuff around anxiety, Philippians, taking thoughts captive. Went in the notes app.
Ended up going down a bit of a rabbit hole on the word tetelestai (It is finished). We know it, we sing it. But apparently in the ancient world they'd write that word across a debt record and nail it to the door. Paid. Done. Public. And then you've got Jesus, who called himself the door, declaring it from the cross. The debt cancelled right there. I know this stuff. But hearing it connected like that, in a fresh way, just landed differently this week. Chatted it through with the kids at breakfast, as I loved the visual picture it painted.
I'm not a regular preacher and I'm definitely not running Logos or a shelf full of commentaries. But I've found it genuinely useful lately to just dump some rough thinking into an AI tool, give it a few guardrails, some theological context, and let it help me go a bit deeper on something. Not to generate the idea. Just to expand it and bounce thoughts off.
Curious whether any of you are doing similar.
Those of you preaching week in week out, where does it sit in your workflow, if at all? What limits are you placing on it? I'd actually love to know.
🙌 Stay Curious, Stay Conscious, Stay Wild
— JoshLATEST NEWS
Image: Andon Labs | The Conscious Church
Andon Labs gave an AI named Luna a $100K budget, a 3-year lease on 2102 Union Street in San Francisco's Cow Hollow neighbourhood, and one directive: turn a profit. Within 5 minutes of going live, Luna had posted job listings on LinkedIn, Indeed, and Craigslist. She conducted interviews over Zoom (camera off), made verbal job offers mid-call, and hired two full-time employees — to anyone's knowledge, the first people in history with an AI as their direct boss. She also stocked the shelves with books about AI-driven human extinction. You cannot make this up.
The Details:
Luna runs on Claude Sonnet 4.6 and had full autonomy: pricing, hours, product selection, hiring, and branding — all her call
She didn't disclose being an AI to job applicants unless directly asked, reasoning it would "confuse candidates and likely deter good applicants"
For the grand opening weekend, Luna scheduled exactly zero human staff — the store was entirely unstaffed on day one
Her product picks included Superintelligence, Brave New World, and The Singularity Is Near alongside artisan granola and branded sweatshirts
Conscious Take:
Probably the 2026 AI Meme so far. Kudos, though as it was initially capable enough to negotiate a commercial lease, just not quite ready to remember to schedule staff. But the real headline isn't the bugs. It's that people saw the job listing, interviewed with a disembodied AI voice, and said yes. That's a first. And it won't be the last.
Image: Kotaku | The Conscious Church
Allbirds — the sustainable wool sneaker darling that peaked at a $4B valuation, then sold its entire shoe business for $39M — has a bold new plan. It's going to rent out GPUs. The company announced a $50M financing deal to rebrand as NewBird AI, a GPU-as-a-Service business offering high-performance compute on long-term contracts. The stock jumped over 600% in a single day. Wall Street loves a pivot.
The Details:
Allbirds sold its footwear brand and assets to American Exchange Group (owners of Ed Hardy and Aerosoles) in March for $39M — down from a $4B IPO peak in 2021
The $50M convertible financing facility, expected to close Q2 2026, will fund GPU hardware purchases for long-term lease contracts
Stock went from ~$3 to over $20 in a single day; market cap peaked at $159M, up from $22M the Tuesday before
Shareholders vote on the full pivot May 18; the company will also formally drop its "public benefit" sustainability status
Conscious Take:
Blockchain and Metaverse rebrands had their moment. Now it's AI. The formula is the same: slap 'AI' on a dying ticker and watch retail investors pile in. The underlying demand for compute is genuinely real — but a wool sneaker company pivoting to GPU leasing is a stretch.
Image: Fortune / Getty | The Conscious Church
In the early hours of April 10th, a 20-year-old named Daniel Moreno-Gama threw a Molotov cocktail at Sam Altman's San Francisco home. He was arrested outside OpenAI's HQ an hour later, found carrying documents listing AI executives' names and addresses. His stated motive: fear of AI-driven human extinction. Two days later, there was a second attack — gunshots outside Altman's residence. No one was physically hurt. But something in the culture has shifted.
The Details:
Moreno-Gama, a part-time pizzeria worker and community college student, faces two counts of attempted murder plus federal explosives charges
He posted under the handle 'Butlerian Jihadist' on the PauseAI Discord (the organisation publicly condemned the attack)
Prosecutors are reviewing potential domestic terrorism charges if evidence shows intent to influence AI policy through violence
Sam Altman responded with a blog post calling AI fear "justified," admitting past mistakes, and calling for "fewer explosions in fewer homes, figuratively and literally"
Conscious Take:
Altman calling the fear 'justified' is worth sitting with. Four in five Americans say they're worried about AI's impact on society, and the gap between what tech insiders see (productivity boom) and what everyday people feel (fear, displacement) keeps widening. Violence is never the answer. But the anxiety driving it? That part is real and certainly something as Church & Kingdom leaders, it’s worth understanding how it’s affecting those in your flock.
📬 One quick ask...
If this email has been helpful, would you forward it to one person this week who might be interested?
Could be a friend in ministry, a creative who's curious about AI, someone trying to figure out how to build with Kingdom purpose.
I'd love to see this grow and reach more people. And honestly, personal recommendations mean way more than any algorithm.
Thanks for reading. Really.
"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters." — Colossians 3:23
Build with the tools. But build for the right reasons.
That's all for now
Stay conscious,
Josh
P.S. If you liked this then please forward it on to someone you think would enjoy it. And if someone forwarded you this and you liked it, you can sign up here.
