The Daily DeseretElder Gong on 'Becoming BYU in an Age of Artificial Intelligence'
This page is our own summary. The original belongs to BYU Speeches; please read it there.
Elder Gerrit W. Gong tells BYU faculty and staff that AI is a major opportunity to reaffirm the university's mission, and asks four questions about how to prepare students.
Elder Gerrit W. Gong of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles gave this address to BYU faculty and staff at the university conference on August 24, 2026. The talk is embedded below, and this summary follows the transcript posted by BYU Speeches.
Faith, belonging and becoming
Elder Gong begins with students. He hopes BYU will help each one build unwavering faith in Jesus Christ, form an eternal family and gain an excellent education. He thanks employees for the personal example they set, and recounts memories of professors, administrators and others who blessed him as a BYU student. His theme is that covenant community helps students "believe, belong, and become."
Why AI matters
He calls artificial intelligence a defining feature of our age that will affect every course, discipline and degree, and says he sees it as one of the greatest opportunities for BYU and the Church Educational System. He suggests faculty neither fear AI nor treat it as the answer to everything. Banning it entirely from classrooms, he says, makes it hard to teach students to use it well. He recommends clear class AI policies, ranging from "do your own work" to guided use, so that students stay responsible and honest.
He cites an OECD report warning that some students may use AI to avoid the productive struggle that real learning needs, and he distinguishes between completing tasks and nurturing learning.
Four framing questions
Elder Gong organizes the rest around four questions:
- How should AI shape the way students, faculty and staff work?
- How should it influence courses, disciplines and degrees?
- How should it influence BYU's guiding principles, curriculum, pedagogy and assessment?
- How can BYU contribute to wider conversations about human identity, dignity and flourishing?
On the third and fourth, he proposes revisiting the classical liberal arts and great literature, so that students and even AI developers can draw on human wellsprings of imagination and moral courage. He cites Restoration teachings on agency, the soul and each person as a child of God, and draws on President Henry B. Eyring's talk "A Child of God" and its habits of great learners.
Closing
He says BYU students should define themselves not by what AI is but by who they are as children of God, and he prays that the university will become all it is meant to be in this age.
Our summary only; the transcript and footnotes are at BYU Speeches.
How we wrote this: we read the source page linked above and summarized it in our own words, quoting at most a short line with attribution. We have not added facts from outside that source. If anything here differs from the original, the original is correct.