Below is my submission to a university assignment asking "How can you ethically use AI in future writing?". The assignment also requested that the response reference "Things as They Really Are 2.0" by Elder David A Bednar of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. I ended up creating a far longer answer than I needed to because I have a great deal to say on the topic:

I have a very progressive view towards AI. The invention of a machine that can string together valid English prose to communicate ideas, a task that I view as mundane and uninspiring in the extreme, seems to me like a miracle on par with agriculture and industry in freeing the human race to accomplish work that actually matters. Efforts to “control”, “limit”, or “restrict” the use of Large Language Models to accomplish rote tasks seem foolish and backwards to me.

Despite this semi-radical view, I actually agree with the majority of what Elder Bednar has to say: “I personally do not use this technology to generate or draft my talks, articles, or content for other projects. This must be my diligent effort, my creative work, and, most importantly, my seeking to be open to inspiration from the Holy Ghost.” This is a remarkable statement that I agree with completely – in context.

Elder Bednar is an apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ. His purpose in writing is to communicate the will of the divine. The writing and giving of talks is his purpose, so to delegate this to an AI is to surrender his job to an inferior, spiritually nonexistent machine.

I am a scientist. My purpose is to develop and perform experiments that discern the natural laws of the world, and to use those laws to develop techniques and tools to improve human life. My purpose is not to write, so anything to speed up the process of publication and description of real science will allow for quicker and better inventions and innovation. Every hour spent writing is an hour not spent developing cancer drugs, super-crops, genetic screens, stem-cell therapies, or any number of potentially life-saving innovations.

The moments of scientific experimentation and technological development are the moments when I will need the guidance and influence of the Holy Ghost. As Elder Bednar also says: “the divine capacities to create and work belong uniquely to each of us as sons and daughters of God.” This is where the human diligence, intelligence, and spirituality of scientists need to be applied.

My proposal for effective use of LLM technology in scientific communication is that humans should be responsible for the primary generation of ideas and experiments, while AI agents generate most published descriptions of those ideas under rigorous human scrutiny and extensive human editing. It is a basic scientific principle that verification and adjustment are far faster and less expensive process than their generation.