Elder Gerrit W. Gong released a talk today called Faith, Dignity, and Human Flourishing: Hearing God’s Voice in an Age of Artificial Intelligence. I watched it as someone who has Claude Code open on at least one screen most waking hours.

When an apostle stands up and asks the question out loud — can artificial intelligence replace God? — I lean in.

The answer he lands on is no. The question itself is the part I want to sit with.

The line that stopped meLink to heading

“You are not a data point. You’re a beloved child of God with moral agency and divine potential.”

I wrote that down because I have kids. The world they’re growing up in is going to hand them tools that feel like answers — chatbots that talk back, models that finish their sentences, agents that do their homework before they get to it. The pull to outsource thinking is going to be real for them in a way it never was for me.

I want them to know what Elder Gong said in plain words: AI is a tool. Discipleship is a covenant journey. Those are two different things, and one is not the other.

What I use AI for, and what I don’tLink to heading

I use AI to write code faster than I ever could on my own. To draft outlines. To summarize meetings, debug errors, think out loud at 11pm when I should be asleep. It’s woven into my day. I’m not going to pretend otherwise — and I’m not going to apologize for it either.

But I don’t use AI to pray. I don’t use it to decide what’s right and wrong. I don’t use it to tell my kids who they are. And I don’t use it to write what I share at church.

That last one matters. Elder Gong said it directly — we shouldn’t let AI write our sacrament meeting talks. I agree. Some words are supposed to come from the wrestle, not the prompt.

Three guideposts I’m keepingLink to heading

He offered three: rely on the Spirit, practice wisdom, choose trusted sources.

I’m a developer, so I read that list and immediately think about how I already vet AI output. I verify. I cross-check. I don’t trust hallucinated file paths. Why would I apply less rigor to my spiritual life than to my code?

The same skepticism that keeps me from shipping garbage from Claude is the same skepticism I want my kids to have when an algorithm tries to tell them what to believe.

What I want my kids to carryLink to heading

If I had to put it in one paragraph for them:

AI is a tool. A good one. I use it every day and I’m not going to stop. But it does not know you. It does not love you. It does not know what you are for. Those answers don’t live in a model — they live in a quieter place that takes longer to hear. The phone gets put down for that one. The prompt doesn’t help.

Elder Gong said it better than I can: when we step outside, we step into God’s classroom. I want my kids to know where that classroom is, and to know that no chat window will ever replace it.

What I’m carrying forwardLink to heading

I’m not going to use AI less. I’ll probably use it more. But I’m going to be more deliberate about what I refuse to hand it. The talks I give at church. The journal entries I write about my kids. The hard conversations. The prayers.

The tool stays a tool. The choosing stays mine. The voice I’m still trying to learn to hear — that one was never going to come out of a model in the first place.