AI and the Gospel

[laronius]

As members we generally believe that many of the major technological advancements over the last couple of hundred years were inspired of the Lord to help advance His work in the last days. Artificial Intelligence seems to be the most recent major advancement. I know generally what it is but I can't say I'm super familiar with all of it's potential applications (other than cheating in school 😁). For those more in the know, do you think it will play a significant role in furthering the work of the Lord and if so how?

[NeuroTypical]

I used AI to help write my last sacrament meeting talk.  Talk was on repentance.  The prompt was something like:   "Write a poem about an LDS churchgoer who is attending sacrament meeting, and wondering if his sins are so extensive that he doesn't belong there."  I looked up the church handbook policy section names for a list of sins, and told it to make sure all of them were covered in the poem.    It spat out 7-8 stanzas, I took the best 4, applied some minor edits, added some of my own stuff, and read it at the conclusion of my talk.  

In 25+ years of giving talks in church, I've never had so many people approach me afterwards to thank me for the talk.  Several people asked me for a copy of the poem.   

I told maybe 4-5 folks that ChatGPT had written the poem, and I had only applied minor edits.  Reactions ranged from vague disinterest, to wonder and awe, to worry that I had done something wrong and they might need to keep an eye on me.

I've used it as a google backup and topical research tool.  I can't say it's better than google at finding sources, but it certainly finds different, often better, sources and summarizes them.  

@mikbone and I also used it to argue back and forth here on this board about some obscure topic that wasn't really important to either of us.  Just for the experience. 

[Jedi_Nephite]

I used it to write a crossover story of the show “24” and “Anne of Green Gables.”  It was…interesting.

[Ironhold]

https://www.quora.com/What-was-the-reason-for-the-Mormon-migration-from-Nauvoo-to-Utah

For those of you who don't know, Quora is a website where people can crowdsource answers to questions. 

I link this particular question so that you can take a look at the question itself. 

Specifically, look at what's immediately below the question, on the right-hand side of the space beneath it. You should see a lightning bolt symbol, a speech bubble symbol, a down arrow symbol, and an ellipsis. 

That lightning bolt symbol means that the question was not written by a human being. 

Rather, it means that Quora's Prompt Generator Bot is the source of the question. You see, the bot scans Quora, sees questions that people are posting, and automatically generates additional questions to keep engagement going & guess what people are going to ask next. 

Sometimes the bot screws up hard, like the one time I saw it produce a nonsensical question about Star Wars. 

Other times, the bot asks a reasonably intelligent question like the one above, a question that real people might actually have. 

[NeuroTypical]

Oh - and don't forget: 

ldsbot.com

It's truly amazing.  Apologetics with a sense of humor.

[Manners Matter]

https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/church-jesus-christ-artificial-intelligence

from the above:

The Church of Jesus Christ sees several opportunities with AI including in family history work, accelerating and automating processes, and great potential for language translation and interpretation. Generative AI may also offer natural language queries and prompts to help Latter-day Saints find current, accurate information from designated, grounded, and approved Church sources, such as ChurchofJesusChrist.org.