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What an interesting thread. I started learning about AI over 50 years ago. Of course, initially, the AI was rather primitive – at least by today standards. I have watched changes I never thought possible and over the last 5 years things have taken a quantum leap. I was recently talking to my son that is a software engineer learning to apply AI in our current software environment. For about 10 years he has worked for the same company, pushing previously developed software to expand capabilities. One particular module he has worked with for his full 10 years making changes. I know well this kind of problem. In my day we called this spaghetti code. Working with spaghetti code is one of software engineering’s greatest problems. More than once in my past – I gave up and went through the very time-consuming effort to rewrite an entire module of spaghetti code. Using a new AI algorithm purchased by my son’s company – he had the AI algorithm analyze the code and rewrite it one night as he left work. By the next morning it was complete. He added the new fetchers and had the AI algorithm reanalyze his work. It made a simple change and for months the new module had performed exceptionally well – much better than expected. The ramifications of this is staggering and far reaching. Windows software is a nightmare. Every software engineer knows this. We all know that it was built on top of a very old open source “basic” software. There are parts of windows that no one understands or dares to delete. It is one of the reasons that your computer takes so long to perform simple tasks. Currently any cleaver software engineer could decompile their Windows code then have AI analyze and rewrite the code and have a version of windows that they could forever maintain for themselves – or even market to their friends and family. Rewriting their internet connection in such a manner that could make it impossible to hack into their system without knowing the specific locks and inceptions applied. All this is currently in reach. I have a sister-in-law that works with a company that specializes in medical imaging. Already AI is greatly affecting their operations. AI can read the images and see things no live expert can see. It is possible to diagnose problems long before what could be done without AI. Lives could be saved and the cost of medical care greatly reduced. I have a nephew that is a pharmacist. The greatest problem in prescribing drugs is that combinations of drugs will interfere with each other and increase the probability of problem side effects. My nephew tells me that already AI is predicting better results of interfering drugs than even testing is able to reveal because of all the possibilitiesand probabilities. I rely on high blood pressure medication and my nephew tells me that most cold and flu medication will interfere with my blood pressure medications. I can envision the day that I can supply AI with my prescriptions and other medical information and discover very quickly what over the counter stuff would be best specifically for me and whatever is ailing me at the time. As I read the scriptures, specifically concerning the last days – changes are inevitable. Contrary to what it seems to me many are saying – we are outclassed trying to teach our children how to handle the changes. We can protect them for a while but eventually they must learn for themselves how to address their spiritual gifts. Since their spiritual gifts will often be different than our own – we cannot teach them all they need to know. They must learn for themselves – as each of us have done – how to listen and identify the truth through the spirit. If some of you face similar challenges as I do – you will quickly realize that how we as an individual, discerns the spirit is how everybody else must learn for themselves. Our prophet has said on more than one occasion that we all must learn to rely on our own testimony through how the spirit communicates to us. The Traveler

I just got out of three meetings that overlapped. One was to go over our file management system which is so messed up, you'd have to get an associate's degree exclusively devoted to the study of this architecture to understand it. One was to say hi to all the new people on the staff throughout the country. (Like we're even going to remember the name of a staff member in California.) One was to go over the timesheet entry process... which I've been using effectively for over a year. Why they thought I needed to be part of the meeting is beyond me. So, while all three were playing in the background at my desk, I was actually getting work done. Yey! Meetings!!! Did I mention I'm a government contractor?

I understand that-to a degree. There are people who think 9/11 was an inside job, the moon landing never happened, and that eating organic food makes them healthier. If you want to live a happy life, make fun of them with your buddies instead of arguing with them. Seriously-what’s the difference between people who deny the Trump shooting and those who think Bush flew the planes into the WTC via remote control?

I just came from 30 minutes of arguing with people about whether Trump was really shot in the ear or not. There's endless millions upon millions of people, just in the US, who'll fall for quick fake vids. Again, the main point isn't "nobody will believe someone licked uranium". My main point is now it takes minutes for the layuser to come up with a strikingly convincing fake.

AI is just a tool. The real problem is dis-information and outright lies. It’s no wonder that lies are Lucifer’s tool of choice. When I read Lehi’s dream and Nephi’s interpretation, I had the impression that the river was filthy due to lies and dis-information. When water comes from a natural spring or fountain, it is pure and clear, like the truth. But the river becomes filthy due to the pollution. The tree of life is no doubt nurtured by the river and it’s roots are powerful enough to filter out the filth and be strong and whole. God is the source of all truth. We have the Light of Christ and the Gift of the Holy Ghost to assist us to filter out the filth. Everyone still has to drink. Just look at the recent unpleasantness of the last election when we were told repeatedly about the brilliance of the Democratic leadership. It wasn’t challenging to wittiness Joe Biden’s dementia and Kamala Harris’s word salad nonsense. It seemed obvious to many of us, yet a huge group of the population believed the lies and disinformation. (I don’t think that Trump is the source of all truth either…) We all have a portable water filter. We just have to use it. When people drink deeply from the river without using a filter they become poisoned. AI is just another source of water. You still have to use your filter. It would be a huge mistake to assume that AI is a safe filter.

I've just come out of a meeting. I'd seriously like to know if anyone has ever achieved anything by going to a meeting. Everyone sits around a table and the chairman goes through the agenda items one by one, and sometimes says "Now item four, blah blah blah... I'll hand over to Julie for this." And Julie gets up and says "Blah blah blah blah..." - to which (almost) no one one listens to a word - "...blah blah blah blah. Thank you very much." and the chairman says "Thank you very much Julie, does anyone have anything to add..." and the one person who was listening gets up and says "Yes I'd like to add that..." blah blah blah blah blah..., while everyone else reads e-mails on their iphones or looks out of the window at birds circling against the grey overcast, or watches the hands of the clock and thinks about the piles of work on their desk which isn't getting done because they have to be at this stupid meeting listening to the chairman and Julie spouting stuff no one will listen to or remember five minutes on from now. I can think of only two exceptions: The Council of Elrond During the war, the meetings that bomber pilots, navigators, bombardiers etc. would have with their commander before flying off on a mission to make sure they bomb the right place at the right time etc. There are two consolations to going to a meeting: Coffee or tea (though this naturally doesn't apply if you're LDS. Sometimes orange juice too.) Biscuits (I like the ginger ones) (Sometimes) Cake and sandwiches OKOK that's three. Cake and sandwiches do kinda make all the difference - if they have them. But apart from them, meetings are an unproductive drain on your time, which could be put to something far more productive (like sleep). I daresay I'm going to be flamed now by all the meetings fans out there!

That implies that there are no more than four layers of management between top and bottom. Or... It implies that there is such a thing as negative brainspace, where most of our top executives live. Terrifying.

I am utterly sympathetic to every word being uttered here. That said, apparently God likes meetings for some things, so I guess I have to as well. If the D&C wasn't bad enough: Moroni had to deal with meetings too: I might be wrong, but this is the only scripture that says we've got to go to church every Sunday:

I’ve always thought that the people who like meetings are always the least productive people in the office.

No I didn't. Since you don't believe me, go talk to an English professor. What you call "two sentences" was [one sentence] and [an incomplete sentence that should have been a qualifying clause as part of the first sentence]. At least now we've established that I understood your original intent. But it took way, way too long to get there.

AI is becoming more and more prevalent. More people are using it. Search engines are now largely run by AI. We've already become dependent on them. Recently, we had someone return to this board who depended on AI to question the sanity of a Prophet. We've come to trust it. Essentially, we've come to have faith in it. I know. Not everyone. I'm hyperbolizing. I appreciate the many AI exchanges that @Vort has provided over the past year or so. It reminds us that AI is not all-knowing. We need to take everything it says with a grain of salt. We need to remember that only the Holy Ghost can really allow us to discern between truth and error. I believe that AI is the TOOL that will be used to separate the wheats and the tares in this generation -- especially those just now growing into adulthood. I tend to believe my children are pretty smart. They've been raised right. They know the scriptures. They know truth. But the younger ones struggle with knowledge and learning because there isn't enough truth out there to recognize. All they seem to hear is confusion and chaos. If that is all they are familiar with, how can they recognize truth when they hear it? We do our best to teach them the truth in our homes. So, at least they get that. I have no idea what they teach in Church on Sundays and on activity night. And when they go to FSY??? I have no idea. School is somewhat safe because they go to a private school that is based on LDS principles, and run by a nearly all-LDS faculty. Yet I still feel like they aren't protected enough. Really, I feel like they still don't recognize the truth. They still don't know how to feel and recognize the Spirit. I don't believe it is a flaw in them. I see it as a problem with the world we live in today. I find it interesting that the remainder of Pres. Nelson's address is not anything special. It would fit into virtually any General Conference. Indeed, I'd believe that most people have completely forgotten it. Or at the least, they don't associate those parts with his warning. But when coupled with his warning, the insight is profound. What are you doing to teach your children to depend on the Spirit to help them recognize truth?

I was able to view it without paying the WSJ. Not sure if it's due to this being my old work computer or not (it allows me access to certain sites and such), but I was able to view it. Interesting video.

I don't feel like you answered my first question, and until you do, in a way that's clear enough for me to understand, the next question is pointless (it may be anyway, depending on your answer). This feels like beating around the bush. I could not care less about why Calvinists think what they do. So let's try this.... Recognizing that any example is of necessity going to be flawed, nevertheless, let's imagine what this might have looked like for Joseph Smith, Jr. He and God (or the Godhead or whomever) get together and come up with a plan (or perhaps God just tells Joseph the assignment / calling), that looks something like: "You'll be inspired to pray and ask what church to join. You'll be called to restore the church of Jesus Christ, translate scripture, restore and reveal doctrine..." Etc. etc. They'll go over the plan for Joseph's mortality to some level of detail. Maybe it includes detail like the surgery on his leg as a child, who he'll marry, his children, his family's poverty, his numerous trials, how he'll die, who will betray him.... Or maybe it won't. Maybe it'll just include the high points with an acknowledgement that mortality can be brutal. Or maybe it's just the calling to be the head of this dispensation, without all the details... My first question is, is something in there along the lines of what you're suggesting happened in our pre-mortal lives, or am I misunderstanding what you're trying to say? And if that is along the lines of what you're suggesting, do you have thoughts on the level of detail: Very vague: "You're called to be the prophet of the restoration." Just the important points: "You'll restore ancient scripture, restore the gospel, establish the church..." Also major life events: "...and you'll marry Emma and..." Lots of details (see example above)

It's also like @JohnsonJones is looking for a fight on this topic. Ok, I wasn't but I guess we could. See @zil2's post above again for further detail. Maybe read it a second time. I never claimed anything as statistic based. I was talking about my own experiences. I spoke of what I personally observed. I spoke of what friends in the medical field told me. Apparently that has rubbed you wrong. I really don't care if it did. That is an @JohnsonJones problem, not a mirkwood problem. Your anecdotal references are on equal ground with mine. You are the one who appears to take exception to this. Again that is an @JohnsonJones problem, not a mirkwood problem. So what is your real issue? Frankly I am bewildered by your being upset by this sharing of experiences.

Fair enough. That’s why teaching kids how to think critically is so important. So they won’t fall for rubbish like this. I still think I’m right though. While we all get duped from time to time, if little Joey keeps falling for stuff like this, take the college savings fund and go on that trip to Maui.

Google Veo3 is currently in some sort of early release mode, with folks getting their copy by documenting what they'll do with it - and "content creator" is one of the professions. So, guessing at motivations, I'd guess that whoever made these videos is a fan of the tech and wanted to generate lots of likes and subscribes to their channel by making click-and-share-worthy videos. A good way to do that is with a bit of shock value. Yeah? I mean, it also might have been a random marketing effort from the Veo3 people, trying to go viral and generate interest, or it might have just been a random user. Either way, it's now insanely easy to make such things. Not sure if this is behind a paywall or not, but here you go: https://www.wsj.com/video/series/joanna-stern-personal-technology/we-made-this-film-with-ai-its-wild-and-slightly-terrifying/D17B233B-1E06-400D-9095-B5247306DD38?mod=article_inline

I’m going to be really blunt here. If your child is unable to see the humor in this or worse, tries to lick uranium and drink from gasoline pumps, AI is the last thing you need to be concerned about.

I'm confused. "No" above means "it's not limited to only those I know", that means it's not anecdotal. But then you say, "this was anecdotal". If it was anecdotal, then the answer to my text is, "Yes, this was anecdotal. That's what I was trying to communicate in that incomplete sentence I wrote after the sentence that looked like a claim of facts rather than an anecdote." Or your first statement should have been a single sentence rather than one sentence + one incomplete sentence. So that this: Should have read: "If we are going by anecdotal information, 100% of the people my age who died from Covid were NOT Vaxxed." Or even better, "Of those I know about, 100% of the people my age who died from Covid were NOT Vaxxed." If structured like this, then the preceding clause acts as a qualifier that this is your limited experience. But your original wording is such that your first sentence ("100% of the people my age who died from Covid were NOT Vaxxed.") is making a factual claim about every person your age on the entire planet across the entire timeframe of COVID's existence, because that sentence has no qualifiers. The intent of the second sentence was apparently unclear to everyone but me (though after your response, I'm now uncertain whether it is or isn't intended to qualify the first sentence). In other words: when I try to guess that your second, incomplete sentence, was intended to qualify the first, you tell me "no, it wasn't" but then "this was anecdotal" (which means "yes, it was")... Honestly, it's like we're speaking a different language.

I am not really a big fan of AI. I'm glad I don't have to deal with it academically anymore (I am now...officially retired...finally). I didn't have to worry about it as much because my testing tended to be old school (you go to the testing center, they give you a blue book, you write your mid-term and final in the blue book) for under graduates, and the graduate students are held to a higher standard than what you will get out of AI (I think). I know some professors have had great difficulties with it. Personally, if it was something that they could use AI for in my classes, I think due to requiring sources and references, they would need to do just as much work to do prompts and other inputs to get an accurate report as they would if they just did it themselves without the AI, that they would learn what was needed either way. But AI is getting more complex and more advanced and I don't know if that would continue to work in the future. Some already felt that it had surpassed what we could monitor already during my last year or two at the university. It opens many ways for students to cheat, and that obviously is not what the Lord would probably want. I personally dislike a LOT of the AI we are seeing today. I want to turn it off of Google half the time I'm doing a search now as I would prefer the actual sources than a summation. I don't want it in my PC (but I have no idea how to turn this copilot thing off), and don't want it on my phone. It seems they want to put it everywhere, whether we want it or not. I can see that many kids these days will probably only read the first thing on Google (which is the AI summary) and accept that rather than do further research. With that type of mindset, with AI ideas or items getting more prevalent in every electronic device in our lives, I can see how these future adults and leaders could be easily duped into believing things without trying to look further than whatever the AI tells them to. In that instance, I could see how important being led by the spirit may be in the future. I don't know if this was the exact thing President Nelson was warning about (it could be part of it along with many other things) but I can definitely see how it could be.

I’m with the kids. I thought it was hilarious. If someone tries these things in real life, chalk it up to natural selection and move on.

Deleted. Too nasty. Starmer is... not a very nice man. But that's all the more reason to pray for him.

Yes, "judge" entails ruling by law (or a ruler), with a subset role of dispensing judgment according to law in some applications and contexts. Judgement as an official role in the Bible and Book of Mormon entails this and every other aspect of judgement and law, including that dispensed by general (secular and/or religious) leadership, tribal chief leadership, or political and military figures. When God judges us (determines our alignment with the law), He does as part of His lawful judgement (rulership), and hopefully we accept and find that He judges (rules over) us forever and ever in exaltation! In His mercy He offers us every opportunity to do so, just as in love and mercy He granted us our agency to begin with. Because of agency, we learn to act upon things and learn to be acted acted upon, and choose which is the right thing to do. It is right for God to act upon us, and for us to accept what He offers us (wrong to reject it). It is wrong to be acted upon by the adversary or our own devices (e.g., Isaiah 50:11) and to accept what he offers us (right to reject it). In a way, we also act upon God in that He is affected by our choices, which is why He endlessly seeks our immortality and eternal life, for the sake of His and ours together (John 17). This is why one model of the Atonement of Christ is called the "partnership" model: bringing together the elements of covenant relationship, mutual benefit, active engagement. I boil this down to the "work" model where, because of His work from before the foundation of the world and into the Church of the Firstborn, Christ is the True Judge .

The event even has a Wiki page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_of_the_gulls

My favorite LDS-Catholic joke? “The pope says he’s perfect but no catholic believes it. The LDS prophet says he’s not perfect but no LDS believes it either.” A stake president told me that one.

I heard that after all the fanfare that the new Pope call a special meeting with the cardinals and high-ranking bishops within the Vatican. He announced that he had some good news and some bad news. First the good news he said, “A few moments ago I received a phone call from Jesus Christ.” Everyone was shocked. After that news how could there be any bad news? Now the bad news said the Pope, “He was calling from Salt Lake City, Utah”. The Traveler

Once I was discussing our ADD with my brother and he said, "Remember when we were kids and it was just called being bad?"

You can use the blank line at the end.

That's brilliant @zil2. I'd only make one change to that thing: Replace "dejected" with "ejected". I've been in many meetings where I wished for either an ejection seat with a rocket strapped to it, or a trap door of some kind.

For those who need a way to have fun mocking the meeting they're in, while also looking very serious, I present to you, the collection of "Yet Another Meeting" note-taking pages - download the zip with 10 exciting color themes (several are themed for US holidays, so @Jamie123 will have to be a bit tolerant ):

I'm sure that would be danger if such people existed.

I show them examples of how good the lies are becoming, so they understand how important it is to vet things before you accept them. Behold - any 12 year old can now create videos like this by just entering a prompt into Veo3:

I heard a story about a previous Pope – I cannot verify all the points of the story, but it went something like this. There was a somewhat secret meeting of many religious leaders that took place several years ago in Salt Lake City, Utah. The plane with the Pope was delayed making him very late. The Pope asked his bodyguard and others traveling with him to take care of details at the air port while he got an immediate ride to the place for the meeting. The Pope got his ride and asked the driver to hurry. But it was not fast enough. He offered the driver $5,000 extra to get him to the meeting on time. It still was not fast enough. The driver told the Pope that he was undocumented and if caught he would be deported and lose his family. The Pope asked the driver to pull over and let him drive and that the Pope would take all responsibility plus pay the bonus. It was agreed. The Pope drove fast – more than twice the speed limit, weaving in traffic, driving on the shoulder and running stoplights. It just so happened that our loyal local officer, @mirkwood was on duty that day and spotted the speeding car. No way would he allow a law breaker to get away – so the car was chased and pulled over. @mirkwood saw the Pope and a very nervous man in the back that he did not recognize. He did not issue a tick but provided an escort to the destination. Later that day when @mirkwood was checking out at the precinct the usual question came up about how his day went. He responded that he pulled over a very important person – more important than what could be imagined. He was asked who this super important person was. He responded that he was not exactly sure but that his driver was the Pope. The Traveler