Coming earlier than Tuesday’s bruising U.S. election that has residents anxious and scared, with worldwide observers wringing their palms, Elder David A. Bednar of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints shared an encouraging message Sunday in a worldwide devotional at the BYU-Idaho campus in Rexburg, Idaho.
The apostle started by highlighting the religion’s optimism for the long-term future — calling this a “exceptional season” in “the build up of Zion” — which he mentioned the prophet Joseph Smith referred to as “a trigger that has the individuals of God in all ages” and a theme upon which they “dwelt with peculiar delight.”
Greater than only a future hope, Elder Bednar underscored Joseph Smith’s declaration that “prophets, monks and kings” have “regarded ahead with joyful anticipation to the day wherein we stay; and fired with heavenly and joyful anticipations they’ve sung and written and prophesied of this our day.”
Women and men have the alternative, the early prophet continued, to “take part in and assist to roll ahead the Latter-day glory,” involving a uniting of “heavenly” and “earthly” disciples to result in the “salvation of the human household” and “destined to result in the destruction of the powers of darkness” and “the renovation of the earth.”
Additionally talking, Sister Susan Bednar talked of being moved by how usually she hears questions from younger adults “primarily based on concern, insecurity and belief” — happening to discover how any of us can “substitute concern with Christlike love and religion” by amplifying Isaiah’s words: “Worry thou not; for I’m with thee: be not dismayed.”
“Jesus walks with you and me on our journey via life greater than we’ll acknowledge.”
In a contemporary society heavy with anomie, despair and meaninglessness, it’s exhausting to think about a extra countercultural set of messages.
Elder Bednar addressed the seriousness of challenges at the moment confronted by youth and adults alike.
‘Limitless perils’ and ‘untold potentialities’
“The particular season wherein we stay is now and can proceed to be crammed with beautiful religious developments and happenings,” Elder Bednar mentioned, drawing consideration to a “miraculous development of improvements and innovations which have enabled and accelerated God’s work of salvation and exaltation” — from trains to telegraphs all the strategy to web and “an virtually limitless checklist of applied sciences and instruments that bless our lives.”
These “scientific discoveries that stagger the creativeness,” as President David O. McKay anticipated in 1966, embrace “discoveries latent with such potent energy, both for the blessing or the destruction of human beings” — prophesying about our now-present age “fraught with limitless perils, in addition to untold potentialities”
Elder Bednar himself had warned 15 years in the past in an address at Brigham Younger College–Idaho about the “doubtlessly stifling, suffocating, suppressing and constraining affect of some sorts of our on-line world interactions and experiences upon our souls.” Now he requested college students the identical questions posed beforehand:
“Does the use of assorted applied sciences and media invite or impede the fixed companionship of the Holy Ghost in your life? Does the time you spend utilizing varied applied sciences and media enlarge or limit your capability to stay, to like, and to serve in significant methods?”
The attract of AI ‘companions’
Elder Bednar cautioned about AI know-how “meticulously designed” to “supply participating and addictive experiences” whereas mimicking nurturing companionship — an “attract” that’s “additional heightened by their 24/7 availability and the absence of the complexities usually present in genuine human relationships.”
This can “wreak havoc in beforehand protected relationships” as “an individual might discover consolation and solace in a digital companion” and “counterfeit emotional intimacy might displace real-life emotional intimacy,” Elder Bednar continued.
“Some people might fall into this lure with out realizing it’s a violation of the unique dedication to a partner as a result of a digital companion just isn’t ‘actual’ and doesn’t rely as one other individual.”
He spoke plainly: An AI-generated companion “doesn’t such as you. It doesn’t care. It actually doesn’t know in the event you exist or not. … It’s only a mathematical algorithm … a set of laptop equations that can deal with you as an object to be acted upon, in the event you let it.”
Free to decide on God
Along with being commanded to “love each other,” Elder Bednar cited God’s entreaty to Enoch that the would would “select me, their Father.”
“We now have not been blessed with ethical company to do no matter we wish each time we’ll,” the apostle continued. “Moderately, based on the father’s plan, now we have acquired ethical company to hunt after and act in accordance with everlasting reality” — together with to “love each other and to decide on God.”
Persistently, he referred to Principles for Church Use of Artificial Intelligence, which inspires the use of synthetic intelligence in the religion “to assist and never supplant connection between God and His kids.”
“Artificial intelligence can not simulate, imitate, or substitute the affect of the Holy Ghost in our lives,” Elder Bednar elaborated. “Regardless of how refined and stylish AI know-how finally might develop into, it merely can by no means bear witness of the Father and the Son, reveal the reality of all issues, or sanctify those that have repented and develop into baptized,” the apostle taught.
“As a result of AI is cloaked in the credibility and guarantees of scientific progress,” he added, “we would naively be seduced into surrendering our treasured ethical company to a know-how that can solely ‘assume telestial.’”
‘The thrill and glories of creation’
Alongside its many potential advantages, AI can “distract us from the everlasting truths and righteous work needed for religious development,” Elder Bednar taught. Solely via “purposeful, unselfish” work — “rendered in the spirit of the real love of Christ” — can any of us develop into “worthy devices in the palms of the Lord,” the apostle cited President Ezra Taft Benson as educating, together with the following from President Thomas S. Monson:
“God left the world unfinished for (women and men) to work (their) ability upon. He left the electrical energy in the cloud, the oil in the earth. He left the rivers unbridged and the forests unfelled and the cities unbuilt. God offers to (us) the problem of uncooked supplies, not the ease of completed issues. He leaves the footage unpainted and the music unsung and the issues unsolved, that (we) may know the joys and glories of creation.”
At a time of life the place “divine capacities to create and work” can particularly be developed and refined, Elder Bednar cautioned that “overreliance on AI know-how will trigger us to develop into spiritually slothful and shallow.”
Moderately than develop spiritually via cautious preparation of classes, Elder Bednar pointed to how simple it can be to make use of AI to generate a sacrament assembly speak or Sunday College lesson. “A easy command spoken into your digital system, wait a number of seconds or minutes, and you’ve got what you want.”
“However do you actually have what you want?”
No shortcuts
Earlier this yr at a BYU devotional, Elder Bednar exhorted students, “Please don’t permit the supposed accuracy, pace, and ease of recent applied sciences to entice you to keep away from or circumvent the righteous work that invitations into your life the blessings you will want. My beloved brothers and sisters, there aren’t any religious shortcuts or quick-fixes.”
Whereas acknowledging the advantages of AI in helping in “gathering info, critiquing our considering, (or) evaluating our writing fashion,” the apostle mentioned this weekend that he personally doesn’t use know-how like this to “generate or draft my talks, articles, or content material for different initiatives” — which he believes should come up via “my diligent effort, my artistic work, and, most significantly, my in search of to be open to inspiration from the Holy Ghost.”
Even when this know-how can help us in producing “fabulous content material” for a presentation or speak, “the goal just isn’t merely producing or presenting spectacular content material,” he added. “Moderately, it’s working and changing into what God intends and yearns for us to develop into.”
“My pricey brothers and sisters, please at all times bear in mind — we must always not promote our religious birthright of ‘know(ing) the joys and glories of creation’ for a multitude of technological ‘pottage.’”
Anticipating ‘the final triumph of reality’
Even with these important cautions, Elder Bednar made clear that “all of those developments are a part of the Lord hastening his work in the latter days” — citing Brigham Younger’s declaration in 1862, “Each discovery in science and artwork, that’s actually true and helpful to mankind, has been given by direct revelation from God, although however few acknowledge it. It has been given with a view to arrange the method for the final triumph of reality, and the redemption of the earth from the energy of sin and Devil.”
“We must always benefit from all these nice discoveries, the amassed knowledge of ages, and provides to our youngsters the profit of each department of helpful information, to arrange them to step ahead and effectively do their half in the nice work.”
