AI Game Night: Youth Church Activity on Artificial Intelligence

Preparing for our youth church activity on Artificial Intelligence (AI) reminded me of my first reaction to AI. I remember hoping that my kids wouldn’t learn about it. I worried they’d use it to do their homework and never actually learn anything in high school. As the technology spread rapidly, I quickly realized that avoidance wasn’t going to work. Within a couple of years, AI was everywhere.

I was also surprised by some of the emerging problems. In the movies, the threat was of AI taking over the world and exterminating humanity. But hardly any movies had addressed some of the biggest problems we are experiencing right now – deep fakes, subversion of reality, isolation, and the overuse of the em dash.

Social media is being taken over by AI. I love cute rabbit videos, but now I have to wonder which ones are real or fake. I also started to hear about kids at school who had developed friendships with AI chatbots and some of the damage that these “relationships” caused.

Follow The Prophet

But if the movies didn’t get it right, do you know who did? Our prophet and his apostles.

A couple of years before the pandemic, President Nelson released the “Hear Him” initiative with an emphasis on learning how the spirit communicates with us personally. Prophets are amazing! Hollywood didn’t catch it, but President Nelson did!

In a world where you can no longer believe what you see, that connection to the spirit is so important. In 2018, he shared, “In coming days, it will not be possible to survive spiritually without the guiding, directing, comforting, and constant influence of the Holy Ghost.” Little did we imagine how true that would be.

There have also been some really good talks by Elder David A. Bednar and Elder Gerrit W. Gong on AI. The talks are hopeful and positive about all the good that can be done using AI, but they also sound some warnings and things we should consider.

AI Night: Battle of the Bots

Instead of shielding my kids from it, I realized I need to learn about it, become familiar with how to use it, and also teach my kids what our leaders have taught us. It was with that thought that I decided to do an AI game night as a young woman’s activity. I wanted to teach these principles in a way that would capture their attention. So I came up with some games that illustrate key points from Elder Gong’s and Elder Bednar’s talks. Ironically, AI even helped me create the last two games!

My focus was to stay true to Elder Gong’s and Elder Bednar’s talks. This is an evolving area, and I didn’t want to go adrift. If you would like to dig deeper, here are the sources I used for the youth church activity on Artificial Intelligence.

I structured the activity around Google slides that I put up on the TV screen in the Young Women’s room. I made the slides so that other leaders could easily copy them and do an activity of their own. You can read about the activity below, but you can also make your own copy of the slides.

Access Google Slides For This Activity

Prep For Youth Church Activity on Artificial Intelligence

First, make your own copy of the slides and review them carefully, make any changes that are appropriate for your group. You won’t have time to get through all the games, so prayerfully pick the ones that you think will resonate and be important for your group.

Depending on the size of your group, pick 3 or more leaders to be the team leaders. I did not want the girls to feel like they needed to put ChatGPT on their phones, so I thought it would be best if they worked together with a leader on their laptops. Make sure the leaders are somewhat familiar with ChatGPT and that they already have accounts set up. They will also need access to the internet through either the building’s wifi or a hot spot on their phone.

Send the leaders the Google Slides ahead of time so that they can become familiar with the games. This will help them guide and direct the youth better.

AI Treats and Refreshments

I thought it would be fun to have AI treats. The table cards are available on the last slides of the Google Slides file. You can export them as a PDF in Google Slides and then print them on cardstock.

Cookie Cache → any kind of cookies in a bowl
Computer Chips → bags of chips
Hard Disks → hard candy disks
Nerds → Nerd candy
Byte-Sized Brownies
Software → napkins
Hardware → forks

Instructions and Slides For Youth Church Activity on Artificial Intelligence

Safety First:

When I ran the games and activity by one of my kids, their immediate response was, “When can I get ChatGPT on my phone?!” I realized I needed to back up a bit and start the night out with some words of caution. I thought this would be the “broccoli” of the night, but I tried to keep it upbeat and fun. The young women actually really responded to it, but it helped that we had a really good group. My hope was that this would help the youth frame expectations and make it easier for their parents to implement guardrails later.

Name Game:

For the youth church activity on Artificial Intelligence, split the youth up into teams. We used 3 teams with about 4 young women on each team. This activity was a quick way to get the youth familiar with AI if they hadn’t used it much before. They had a good time with this and got super creative. It also showed them that they can come up with much better stuff if they don’t let AI do all the work. I wrote the team names up on the chalkboard.

Personal Revelation and The Church is Led By Inspired Leaders:

I asked the girls the following questions and then introduced the following challenge.

After the voting, I told the youth that this is what I got when I asked what their lives might look like. The prompt I used was, “I am a 15-year-old teenage girl who lives in California. I am wondering what my life and the world will be like in 5-10 years.”

Then I asked the youth the following questions.

We talked a bit about what is missing. For example:

It does not know me personally.
It does not know the future.
It does not pull upon faith, grace, or the purpose of your life.
It is very “me” centric.
It doesn’t give much guidance on implementing this in individual situations.
God answers us personally, in the way we can hear him best.

Besides personal revelation, God also prepares us and warns us through His prophets.

AI Can’t Be God

During the youth church activity on Artificial Intelligence, we did the challenge below next.

Some of the questions the young women came up with included, “who is my best friend?” or “who will I marry?” We then covered the below questions, focusing on the following:

What are the differences between asking AI or God if something is true?
- AI was created by man and is trained by the information it is fed and the moral and ethical principles it was given by its creators. It only knows what is in the world, but God knows everything.
Why could that be a problem?
Do we know what biases are there when we use these tools?
Why might it be tempting to ask ChatGPT instead of God?
- It is fast and feels clean cut. Praying for answers can be hard and take a long time.
This could be a good time to share when you received a prompting from God and how AI can’t help us the same way.
Artificial intelligence cannot replace revelation or generate truth from God.

Things as People and People as Things – Authentic Relationships and True Friends

Have 3 other adult leaders come up with answers to the question below ahead of the youth church activity on Artificial Intelligence. Have one write a real response and have two ask ChatGPT. Ask them to send them to you before the activity so that you have enough time to add them to the slides. Have the teams vote on the one they think is from a real person.

I thought it might be helpful to share these examples from our youth church activity on Artificial Intelligence. There are some other samples on the Google Slides as well, but I am only sharing these two here. The first one is a sample of an AI-generated response.

This second response was written by a young women’s leader.

We then went through the following questions and quotes.

The activity can get a little rowdy, so try to bring a little reverence before this slide. You can also talk about the how people might be tempted to use AI because it is fun, exciting, and immediate. Answers from God don’t always feel fun, exciting or immediate, but God loves you and knows and wants what is best for YOU. THAT IS NOT TRUE OF AI.

Distinguishing Truth

For this one, I shared one of my favorite AI videos. It is embedded in the slide show, but you can also watch it here https://www.youtube.com/shorts/rD2b-6YOfIM

I presented it like I thought it was real to see how the girls reacted, and to see how many realized it was fake.

I then asked these questions.

Man on the Moon Activity

This was to get the youth thinking about how AI can make things look real and what clues they can look for. On the slide show, there are some sample images you can delete or use if you want. Photo #3 is the real photo that you will want to include in the selections.

Personal Growth – Law of the Harvest

A week or so before the youth church activity on Artificial Intelligence, I asked one of the youth to write a 4-5 sentence testimony about something they know is true or a time they felt God’s love.

Then that night, I asked the girls to use AI. I included some examples so that you can see how the result changes based on what your prompt is. Learning how to prompt AI is an important skill. It is also important to learn how to effectively use it as a tool, not as a replacement for work.

We then talked about the Law of the Harvest and how taking shortcuts can impact our growth.

Secular Lessons

I wanted to throw in some secular lessons to help the youth see how using it inappropriately at school can cause problems later in life.

I have known people who have lost jobs because they relied on AI to do something for them that they didn’t know how to do. They didn’t know enough to know when AI got it wrong or how to prompt it to get what they needed. These are guidelines I have shared with my kids.