So this is one of those emails where I started typing, and I couldn’t stop haha. There’s a lot of gold nuggets in here, but I hope I didn’t ramble too much on any particular subject. But who am I kidding, I mostly talked about AI. Despite this the focus is and always should be on Jesus Christ.

North America West Area Mission Leadership Seminar- A Church History Conversation

We had a really neat opportunity to watch a Mission Leadership Seminar as a whole mission. Elder Bragg (our area president) interviewed Elder Kyle S. McKay—the current church historian, he spoke in general conference with his most recent address, The Man Who Communed with Jehovah. We had the opportunity to submit questions about Joseph Smith and early church history to our mission president who then forwarded them to Elder Bragg for the interview. The meeting was really good, despite the questions being all the basic stuff that can be easily researched, blacks & the priesthood, polygamy, etc. What particularly stood out to me is when he talked about having experiences with the scriptures. He said we read the scriptures and we hear all about these stories and learn them. But we cannot truly understand them without experiencing them ourselves. He also talked about asking for forgiveness in your prayers and being cleansed of your sins. He shared that when he does this, it allows him to stand sinless before us while he speaks. Although he continues to sin and make mistakes, we all have the opportunity to stand sinless as we ask for forgiveness just as Joseph did.

Tyler’s Preparing for Covenants

Our friend Tyler is progressing incredibly fast. We are effectively meeting with him every day now. He’s quick to accept invitations, and has been doing an exceptional job in his repentance and conversion. I’m grateful for him and for the wonderful members that have fellowshipped him. In particular, we had Sister Tougas at a lesson, and she had so many great insights and was very supportive of him. She also brought cookies to the lesson haha, which is so nice. Our lesson went way longer than it did, but it may have been necessary. He had questions about the temple and we shared with him the video of Elder Bednar & Elder Renlund giving a tour of the Rome temple. If you haven’t seen that video, I recommend you watch it. The video is incredibly well put together and explained. Sister Tougas then invited us and him to her house the next day for dinner. She also invited two other new members who both came. We all made pizzas together, and the unity of Christ’s love was so strong between all of us. Tyler was incredibly grateful for the opportunity to come over and for all of the new friends he’s making along the way.

All Nations Flowing through Temples, MLC, & META AI Discussion

The Gill’s shared an experience at MLC about a meeting which included the North America West Area with Elder Bednar. In that meeting, Elder Bednar shared statistics regarding the pace in which temples are currently being built; he stated that at this pace, about 50 temples will be dedicated each year by 2030—that’s a temple being dedicated each week for a whole year. The whole world will have the opportunity to participate in temple open-houses; temples will be open to everyone. The prophecy in [Isaiah 2:2], will be truly fulfilled. These truly will be “days never to be forgotten.” The Gills also shared how there was a discussion of AI. I’m not entirely sure what was specifically discussed in that meeting in regards to that subject, they didn’t really share much beyond that it was a discussion topic. However they did mention that Elder Bednar put his general conference talk through AI and prompted it about the tone of the article. So rather than generating content, Elder Bednar was using it as a way of providing insight and direction.

This leads into my next topic of discussion. This was brought up preliminary to a question of making the META AI that we can access from our devices a “red zone.” META AI is an AI that you can interface with through Facebook or Facebook Messenger. Although the AI is incredibly basic and hasn’t been trained enough to be of any serious use, there’s also an image generator that can be used as well. Prior to the discussion of the Gills question, they were pretty set in-stone on making it a “red zone” which effectively is banning or avoiding it at all costs. There were a lot of points made on this subject. A few missionaries shared how they used it to generate the text for their Facebook posts and assisted in helping to construct their ideas more effectively and efficiently. Another missionary shared that they’ve been able to ask random questions particularly related to health or using a specific tool to get quick answers. Other missionaries shared that the absence of the AI would not affect their missionary efforts, we didn’t have AI before and having AI now hasn’t changed the work. The idea was also shared that this technology is not going away, and we need to learn how to use it.

It may be surprising to some, but my thoughts pertaining to this META AI ban are pretty neutral. I don’t particularly care for it right now. The quality of the output is not up to standards to warrant the need of having it. I do agree, I don’t believe it has had a big impact on missionary work… yet. I shared a few thoughts in the council, and my thoughts may have been seen as pro-META-AI, the sole purpose of them was to provide President & Sister Gill with good information so that they may have good inspiration. The first point I believe I mentioned was a quote from the prophet Russell M. Nelson, “In coming days, it will not be possible to survive spiritually without the guiding, directing, comforting, and constant influence of the Holy Ghost.” You won’t know! You won’t know the difference between truth and error. We are walking into unprecedented territory. AI will blur the line so much that it will be impossible for the average seeker of truth to know. The guidance of the Holy Ghost will be more needed than ever in the history of the world. That mist of darkness is growing, confusion and opposition will rise to heights never before seen, but so is the access to the Lord’s power, His House is exalted upon many great mountains, and the power of Him is flowing out to all nations. Never has the world seen so many servants of God bestowed with power from on High, with the constant companionship of the third-member of the Godhead. He has given us access to all the blessings and tools that we need to conquer the darkness. As President Nelson stated, “The battle with sin is real.” This brings me to a thought that a member was sharing with us. He believes that the Spirit’s influence and the adversary’s influence upon our thoughts is way more than we realize. We are constantly having our thoughts tugged one way or the other and we don’t recognize it. But we have full control in which one we entertain or tune in to.

After laying this foundation, I shared that although it may seem pretty useless to missionary work right now, these tools will have an incredible impact on missionary work! I specifically mentioned AI translation which will open the gospel to channels of the world that previously were closed. Traditional translation software doesn’t cut it, we need a system that understands the culture and context so that we can have a more pure translation. I also shared how these tools can direct us to wonderful resources and information that can enhance our missionary endeavors. I expressed how the search function on the Gospel Library is not useful at all, but with AI I can be directed to so many great resources on a particular topic of study. And not only that, but this is incredibly useful when pointing our friends to resources that can help them. I shared how my father has found an incredible use of these technologies in directing him to specific resources of study on a particular topic. Good inspiration is based on good information! The church is becoming more and more aware of this principle in recent years and it’s been amazing to see how much they are focusing on informing us as members, especially on topics of great controversy in the early church. The church has also been putting a lot more emphasis on scholars and what they have to say. Anyways with AI technology, it will be easier than ever to have access to a multitude of this information, leading to better inspiration. This doesn’t come without it’s flaws, such as hallucination, false information and so on. But the idea is that you use a system like this to effectively and intelligently search an incredibly large database of information like a library and then point you to the books where you can find it.

Towards the end of the council Sister Gill shared that the reason why they wanted to “red zone” META AI. She shared with great emotion that there has been an extreme case that has affected the rest of a missionary’s life. At the conclusion of the council, they were unsure if we should “red zone” the usage of it. They decided to put it on hold, and President shared that he was very grateful for our insights and that we have brought up a lot that he hasn’t considered. He then shared this is what councils are for, he talked about the purposes of councils and how they can be effective. Throughout the rest of the MLC and particularly at the end, many marveled at how great that council was.