Hey Conscious Church Fam

This week felt like Silicon Valley swapped the chessboard for a boxing ring. Meta has quietly poached half a dozen OpenAI researchers, Sam Altman’s throwing shade in Slack, and Microsoft is building AI tools better than most doctors.

But first, if these emails have been helpful. Would you mind sharing it with 1 person today. 🙂 & 👉 Fill out the 6-month check-in (more info in the musings section)

In today's recap:

• Meta’s secret AI hiring spree (and Zuckerberg’s group chat…)
• Sam Altman hits back with bold claims about OAI’s future
• Microsoft just built an AI doctor that diagnoses better than humans
• A viral band made with Suno is stirring up deep questions on creativity

Let’s dive in 👇

💭 Josh’s Musings

(6 Months In… What’s Next?)

It’s hard to believe but we’re almost six months into this little newsletter experiment.

What started as a simple idea, to curate the week’s AI news for a Christian audience, has quietly become one of my favourite parts of the week.

It’s lean.

It’s light.

It fits my current rhythm without overwhelming it.

No social posts, no YouTube summaries, no complex content calendar.

Just one focused email, written on a Saturday/Sunday night.

And the feedback? Well.. it seems to be good haha.

What’s been interesting lately is how many offline conversations I’m now having about AI. On video calls with churches, charities and in branding consultations and web design projects. The topic keeps coming up. I’ll be talking about logos or social media content and someone says, “Wait, how are you using ChatGPT again?” or “Can you show me what this could look like for our ministry?”, “Is it possible to build a tool/workflow that does xyz?”

Eyes light up. Lightbulbs go off. Workflows begin to shift.

And it’s got me wondering… should this newsletter evolve?

Right now it’s super sustainable. It doesn’t take a huge amount of time, and it feels fun to write.

But I’m also curious. What would it look like to grow it slightly, or even build something around it that serves more people in a practical way?

A few ideas I’m toying with:

1. Keep it simple.
   Stay as it is. Add a “buy me a coffee” link to cover costs (email platform subscription etc). Keep it light, lean, and manageable.

2. Build a next step.
   If there’s interest, offer something more. Bespoke training, a mini-course, consulting calls, or maybe even a small community.

To get a sense of where people are at, I’ve made a quick (5-minute max) form.
Just a pulse check. No pressure. But it would genuinely help me see if there’s something worth developing here:

👉 Fill out the 6-month check-in

Or if you’d rather just reply with a thought, idea, or “Josh don’t change a thing” — that’s great too.

Thanks for reading.
Thanks for being part of this.
And thanks for believing there’s space for Spirit-filled wisdom in the middle of all this AI noise.

🙌Stay Curious, Stay Conscious, Stay Wild
Josh

LATEST NEWS

🔍 META’S SECRET AI RECRUITMENT LIST

Recap:
Meta has now hired eight researchers from OpenAI—four in just the past week. According to the WSJ, Mark Zuckerberg has a secret shortlist of AI talent he’s personally wooing with huge astronomical pay packages.

The Details:
• New hires include contributors to GPT-4.1 and foundational models like o1 and o3-mini
• Zuckerberg personally reviews AI papers and runs a “Recruiting Party” group chat with Meta execs
• OpenAI staff seem rattled—a now-deleted tweet and an internal memo show rising concern
• Meta’s CTO publicly called Sam Altman “dishonest” over bonus claims
• The hires signal Meta’s serious push toward building artificial general intelligence (AGI)

Conscious Take:
Talent matters more than tech. It’s people who build the models, shape the culture, and set the mission. And when companies lose their top people, it is BOUND to have ripple effects. It will be very interesting to see how this all plays out over the coming months.

💥 ALTMAN HITS BACK IN SLACK

Recap:
Sam Altman responded to Meta’s poaching with a punchy internal message. He called Meta’s approach “distasteful” and promised OpenAI would remain the place to build something that truly matters.

The Details:
• Altman claimed Meta had to settle for second-choice hires after offering up to $300M
• He promised better stock and long-term upside at OpenAI
• He warned Meta’s culture of “mercenary” recruiting would cause deep issues
• Meta, meanwhile, just announced “Superintelligence Labs” with 11 new hires from top labs

Conscious Take:
Culture is a currency, and Sam knows it. CRO Mark Chen likened it to “someone breaking into our home.” It’s fascinating and time will tell how much of an impact this will be. Meta HAD to do something as OpenAI (ChatGPT) was/is becoming the household name and trusted ‘companion’ for AI. Will it disrupt their flow? Will these hires reshape Meta AI and significantly move the needle in their favour?

🩺 MICROSOFT’S AI OUT DIAGNOSES DOCTORS

Recap:
Microsoft launched the MAI Diagnostic Orchestrator (MAI-DxO), an AI system that solved medical cases at four times the accuracy of trained physicians. This isn’t theoretical—this is real-world performance.

The Details:
• MAI-DxO works as a team of AI agents, each handling a specific diagnostic task
• It solved 85.5% of complex cases correctly, compared to 20% for doctors
• It also spent less money—$2,397 per case vs. $2,963 on average
• The new benchmark (SDBench) includes 304 tough diagnostic cases
• Powered by OpenAI’s o3 model

Conscious Take:
This is stunning. Having a tool like this with such accuracy should mean that there are fewer uneccesary tests and addressing the more challenging diagnoses with speed and precision, which directly combats the current bottlenecks/limitations in the healthcare system.

🎵 AI BAND FOOLS SPOTIFY, AND HALF A MILLION FANS

Recap:
A mysterious band gained over 500,000 monthly listeners before being exposed as a marketing stunt powered by Suno. The music was AI-generated, the band wasn’t real, and the fans didn’t seem to care.

The Details:
• Two albums appeared online with no history, sparking Reddit threads
• Deezer flagged the music as likely AI, but Spotify left it untouched
• The creators later admitted it was a blend of Suno-generated content and trolling
• The AI used “Persona” features to create consistent vocal identities

Conscious Take:
We’re entering a time when creativity doesn’t always come from a creator, and despite this not passing the human test fully, it probably isn’t long before a future version does. And that forces us to ask: what do we actually value/want? Is it the beauty of the output, or the soul behind it? We need discernment in how we define authenticity in a post-authentic world.

🔗 Trending Tools/Tips

🎵 Songscription – songscription.ai
Turn audio into full sheet music. Worship team leaders, this could be your secret weapon?

🖥 Freepik AI Generator – freepik.com
Design AI with built-in upscaling and templates. Great for Image/Video Generation.

💬 PattiAI – pattiai.com
Chat with an old-school MSN-style bot. Nostalgic, funny, and weirdly helpful.

May we never forget that what we create flows from who we are—and who we belong to.

“Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labour in vain.” – Psalm 127:1

Stay conscious,

Josh

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