AI Mastery through ASK: Nurturing Religious Education

Matt Gardner

It’s a delight to be here. I feel like I’m learning so much from you. I’m just a Lowly Seminary teacher up at Lehigh. So it’s an honor to be with you and to present to you.

I’m going to come at my topic sort of from a pragmatic approach. Where my mind goes when it is dealing with AI is how do we teach this to our youth? How do we teach this?

My mother’s here. She’s, I don’t want to reveal her age, but I think about my mother. I think of parents. I think about children who are. Living in this amazing world with AI. And what are some solutions? What are some practical teaching tools to help our youth? to navigate these challenges and opportunities with AI. And that’s what I would like to present to you.

As all of you guys have talked about where we’re going with AI, In general, you get feelings of on one camp, it’s going to be amazing. It’s as if the millennium is going to be here today because of AI.

On the other side of the argument, you get my mind thinks of Eliezer Yudowski, who said last year, who really opened up my eyes to this issue, he said something to the along the lines of if we keep going down this road with AI development, we’re all going to die. And I’m like, as a father, I’m like, I don’t want that to happen to my kids.

And so again, I am coming at this from a faithful approach, from an LDS point of view. And I realize that not all of us are LDS, but I would be curious maybe to hear your guys’ perspectives, what I have to offer to you guys today. And so here we go.

So each week I get the opportunity to teach about 180 students. And we use a pedagogical tool to help students navigate with their questions. Stemming on a wide range of things. It could be anything, including artificial intelligence. And I want to see if I can back up. I think I. Well, yeah, no, we’re good.

So it’s based on three principles. The number one principle, and I think all of us can use this when we teach our kids, teenagers, high schoolers. Act in faith. That’s number one.

Number two, examining concepts from an eternal perspective. And then number three, seek understanding from divinely appointed sources.

The administrator over our seminary and institute, Chad Webb, states Acquiring spiritual knowledge isn’t a hundred answers to a hundred questions. This is more about how you think about information, how you turn to trustworthy sources, and how you frame questions in a gospel. premise instead of a world’s premise. And so I want to model this out to you so you could in turn possibly model this with your own children.

So don’t ask how this even got started. In my seminary class, somehow we started talking about artificial intelligence. Maybe I provoked it, who knows.

And we started to talk about the latest video that Tesla released. I’m sure most of you guys in here know about what Tesla has been developing. They’ve been developing what is called a Tesla bot named Optimus. And I think it’s fascinating. It’s so cool. And so I turned it on for my students just to see what their reactions were.

And I’m all happy. And then I look out and I see faces that were like, What? This is actually real? This is happening today? I’m like, uh-huh. And I got to be honest, a lot of their faces looked confused, sort of in disbelief.

One student said, This isn’t real. This is like a deep fake. I’m like, this is not a deep fake, okay?

Another student yelled out, We’re all doomed. I’m like, maybe.

Another one, a student, she was very thoughtful about it after the video, and she raised her hand up. And she just said, We’re not even going to have a job anymore. And we’re going to be more depressed than ever. I was like, okay, that’s one way to look at it. And I get their concerns, and I have the same concerns, and I think all of us in here have the same sort of concerns, and their real concerns.

And so, what I did in this moment, and again, I think we can apply this over into our own families. I think a grandparent can use us.

In fact, my seven-year-old daughter asked my father, who’s 87, we were interviewing him. just to give us sort of his life sketch. And we opened up to questions and she says, Grandpa, should I be afraid of AI? And he chuckled about it. He didn’t really give her an answer, though.

I want to go to the next step. And this is, I want my children to know that I have thought about this. And I do want them to have answers, or at least hope. And that’s what I want to give to each of us today, and including my students who watched this video on these Tesla bots.

So I said, you guys, these are good points. And I’m going to pause you. Let’s use the statement that we’re all going to be doomed, okay? And I said, look, we teach these principles every week to act in faith. So I’m going to say, can you just for a moment take that statement away? That we’re all going to be doomed just for a second and recast that statement into a faithful question. And this is what we came up with, with me guiding them. But it’s to get them in the habit to start looking through these, through the lens of faith.

So the first thing that we came up with, revolving AI, is how can AI be used to benefit humanity and align with the Savior’s teachings? When we wrote this out on the board, the energy in the room changed. Instead, it was like, oh, maybe there is hope. Okay?

Then we took the example of we’re going to be more depressed. Potentially, yes. However, when we look at it through a faith perspective, We begin with a question like this. How can AI be trained to alleviate suffering and promote the Savior’s message of love and healing?

Instead of only focusing, we’re not going to have any more jobs or opportunities, we can rephrase it and ask, how can AI create new opportunities? for service and contribute to building society, a society of Zion. And then all of a sudden they’re like, oh, whoa, I never thought of this. What can we do with AI to accelerate the kingdom of the Lord here on this earth today?

And then finally, how do we apply it? What role, I ask them, what role do you guys see yourself playing in in contributing or using these new technologies to get them to be thinking about this?

I’m gonna quote Elder Gong. He gave a training. not too long ago about to all church workers for the LDS Church about AI. And part of acquiring spiritual knowledge, that third principle is seeking further understanding through divinely appointed sources.

And from my perspective I’m always looking for what LDS leaders are talking about so I can share them with the youth, the rising generation. And I think for me personally, this quote from Elder Gong. Might be the most, I don’t know, important quote from the 21st century, in my opinion.

He states, We’re going to need not be fearful, but embrace the possibilities in a careful way. Because the intent, I believe, is for us to take our soul, which is composed of physical body and a spirit. and bring body and spirit, the physicality with the spiritual, together in new ways that can be a blessing to all of us children. of our Father in heaven.

And I think that’s the way we should approach this with our families and our students. I really do believe in this. I know this might sound naive to some of us in here, and it might be, but I do still feel like we have the moral responsibility to give our children hope.

And I’m going to conclude on this point about acquiring spiritual knowledge, specifically dealing with acting on faith. Utilizing acquiring spiritual knowledge, specifically embracing faith, and its capacity to guide ethical development, will help our students and children manage the evolution of AI. Faith is inherently imaginative and can lead to new truths or potential truths that currently do not give one reason to believe or trust in the moment.

Imaginative faith isn’t anti-science. Instead, it interacts with the available evidence. However, imaginative faith allows us excuse me imaginative faith allows us to extend beyond the limits. of existing evidence or the current scope of evidence-based truth.

With the encouragement of teachers and parents, our students and children will develop A faith-driven imagination that becomes a catalyst for solving the most challenging issues within AI with imaginative faith and in an eternal perspective, I see AI accelerating the work of the dead, both genealogically and genetically. What an incredible time to be alive as teachers, parents, and students and children, to exercise our faith in Christ’s gospel.

an attempt to tame this technological dragon using acquiring spiritual knowledge, acting in faith, examining concepts and questions from an eternal perspective. and to seek further understanding through divinely appointed sources. Thank you.