This is our next article in our Proclamation series. To read the last one: Why Marriage, Sex and Family are Keys to Sanctification
I’m still startled by an electronically declared “Hello, Master” whenever I turn on my truck. The artificial intelligence sweeping our society impacts me daily with a casual, “Hey, let me do that for you” or “I’ve got this” availability when I pick up my mobile device or log online. While technology connects us in infinite ways, the physical and psychological effects of reduced in-person, one-on-one relationships loom large, potentially impacting individuals, families, and the broader society.
The prospect of singularity caused me to consider artificial intelligence’s potential impact on parental relationships and the doctrinal verities of agency and truth.
Approaching Singularity
AI advances will offer even more opportunities to intertwine self and technology. Artificial intelligence is defined as “the simulation of human intelligence processes by machines, especially computer systems” or “automation based on associations.” Those simulations and associations are astonishing. The more far-reaching, socially-shifting aspects of AI may require increased engagement by involved parents.
In 1999, technological prophet Ray Kurzweil predicted AI would impersonate human beings by 2029, asserting that Artificial General Intelligence, or AI with the ability to reason, will soon be a reality and promising that by 2029 “AI will be ‘better than all humans,’ in ‘every skill possessed by any human.’” Noting humans’ propensity for failure and weakness, Kurzweil optimistically looks forward to AI-enhanced and linked minds and bodies. “If we can meet the scientific, ethical, social and political challenges posed by these advances, we will transform life on earth profoundly for the better. … [Humans] are far from optimal, especially with regard to thinking.” Kurzweil advocates for transhumanism “where we are partly organic tissue and partly mechanical parts, the natural progression will be toward greater and greater dependence on ever more rapid computer-augmented thinking and consciousness.” For Kurzweil, transhumanism enables immortality.
Singularity and Parenting
As AI advances forward, a flurry of articles and books about its foreseen impact on parenting emerge. “The rapid acceleration of AI capabilities signals a paradigm shift where traditional models of parental engagement may no longer suffice.” A paradigm shift isn’t necessarily negative. Certainly, every generation experiencing technological advances adjusts its parenting styles.
Parents embracing AI find tools to more effectively manage time, automate repetitive tasks, monitor and enhance their family’s health and safety, and receive recommendations specific to their particular family’s circumstances. And while incredibly convenient apps exist to streamline the everyday household’s functionality, the more far-reaching, socially-shifting aspects of AI may require increased engagement by involved parents. In studying the family response to interactive AI, Druga, Christoph, and Ko suggest eight roles parents play as they navigate AI with their children: cheerleader, mediator, mentor, student, teacher, observer, tinkerer, and collaborator.
Some not-too-far-in-the-future hypothetical scenarios parents may face could include these proposed by Murchú:
- Emotional Synchronisation: Parents could experience their child’s emotional state during learning in real-time through neural feedback loops. For instance, a parent might directly sense their child’s frustration with a mathematical concept, allowing for immediate intervention.
- Thought-Based Tutoring: Parents could engage in direct thought-to-thought tutoring sessions where complex concepts are shared through neural visualization. Example: A parent explaining photosynthesis by sharing their mental model directly into their child’s cognitive space, enhanced by AI-generated interactive molecular visualizations.
- Decision Impact Visualisation: Real-time modeling of how parental decisions affect cognitive development. For instance, an AI might show parents a neural network visualization of how choosing between coding classes or music lessons would differently shape their child’s synaptic development.
- Manage Cognitive Enhancement Choices: Parents could face decisions about implementing various cognitive enhancements for their children.
- Emotional Intelligence Programming: Parents could help children develop enhanced emotional capabilities through AI-mediated emotional training.
- Bio-Digital Balance: As children integrate more deeply with technology, parents would need to guide the harmony between biological and digital aspects of their children’s development.
While many parents will step up to the role of shepherding their children through increased technological influence, after a long day at work, other parents may prefer to let their kids navigate AI themselves in an increasingly leveled-up version of screen time. Murchú posits that “While the transformative potential of AI in parental engagement is undeniable, the risks of dependency and societal inequity cannot be overlooked. Over-reliance on AI could erode critical parental skills, reduce human autonomy, and create disparities between technologically advanced and underserved communities. … Failure to address these challenges risks undermining the fundamental human aspects of parenting and education. As we approach technological singularity, maintaining a balance between leveraging AI capabilities and preserving human agency will be critical.”
Considering Singularity within the Doctrines of Agency and Truth
The Father’s plan of happiness and Jesus Christ’s atonement champion human agency. Lehi taught his children that God “created all things … things to act and things to be acted upon. And to bring about his eternal purposes … the Lord God gave unto man that he should act for himself.” The principle of agency will help parents navigate AI with their children.
Parents have a sacred duty to rear their children in love and righteousness, to provide for their physical and spiritual needs, to teach them to love and serve one another, to observe the commandments of God, and to be law-abiding citizens wherever they live. Husbands and wives—mothers and fathers—will be held accountable before God for the discharge of these obligations.
Elder David A. Bednar reiterated that the principle of agency will help parents navigate AI with their children. “God’s creations include both ‘things to act and things to be acted upon.’ And, importantly, moral agency is the divinely designed ‘power of independent action’ that empowers us as God’s children to become agents to act and not simply objects to be acted upon. … Because AI is cloaked in the credibility and promises of scientific progress, we might naively be seduced into surrendering our precious moral agency to a technology that can only think telestial. By so doing, we may gradually be transformed from agents who can act into objects that are only acted upon.” Parents bombarded with options and gadgets can still turn to an ever-reliable source of truth.
Though creations and discoveries are neither intrinsically good nor evil, they can become tools for both good and evil. From his prophetic watchtower, David O. McKay aptly described our day: “Discoveries latent with such potent power, either for the blessing or the destruction of human beings, as to make men’s responsibility in controlling them the most gigantic ever placed in human hands. This age is fraught with limitless perils as well as untold possibilities” (David O. McKay, in Conference Report, Oct. 1966, 4).
While an incredibly useful component of society, in this stage of its development, this simulation or associative intelligence is still artificial, and humans create its data stores with inherent biases and predispositions. However, parents bombarded with options and gadgets can still turn to an ever-reliable source of truth. The Lord declared, “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” and that true intelligence is “the glory of God … or, in other words, light and truth,” and while it cannot be created or made, it is the power by which everything in our universe is made. God’s “work and glory to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man” relies on parents’ knowing truth about eternal identities and then conveying that truth within eternal relationships. Artificial intelligence can be a powerfully supportive or destructive tool for parents trying to fulfill this “sacred duty.”
The opportunity to raise children “in love and righteousness, to provide for their physical and spiritual needs, to teach them to love and serve one another, to observe the commandments of God and to be law-abiding citizens” is an incredible trust given by God to parents. Artificial intelligence can be a powerfully supportive or destructive tool for parents trying to fulfill this “sacred duty.” While AI prophet Ray Kurzweil’s general assessment that humans are “far from optimal” may be realistic, our Heavenly Father, the divine source of real truth, compensates for the natural man’s failings by underpinning His parent-child relationship with us by providing a Savior whose atoning grace enables us to navigate parental roles amidst technology’s singularity with agency and truth.
