No Toil Nor Labor Fear
While completing my student teaching in a 7th-grade English classroom, I received an email from one of my students asking me for more creative liberty on an assignment.
She and her classmates were asked to write an argumentative essay about school electives (granted, not the most engaging topic) and had been working on it for a couple of weeks at that point. Here’s what she sent me:
“It’s so important for us to have the freedom to write in a more personal and authentic way, as this can truly capture our interest and that of our readers. I would love the freedom to step away from a strict formula. While I’m happy to stay somewhat within the guidelines, I believe we shouldn’t all have to use the exact same words. Let’s celebrate our unique voices!”
I sympathized with her. It is important for students to write personally. I do want to hear their authentic voices. I, too, felt constrained by the district-supported curriculum that mandated the essay on school electives. At the same time, something about her request felt off—when pressed, this student told me that her email was AI-generated.
As a new teacher starting my first full year teaching middle school English, I am, unfortunately, already very exhausted by artificial intelligence. I know many of my students will try to use it to avoid assignments that will stretch them or turn to it out of fear that they cannot write what I am asking them to. I worry that they may resort to AI out of a belief that their own ideas are not important or not even worth thinking about. I am still deciding how I will approach the AI conversation with my tween pupils to encourage and develop them as writers.
When I consider AI use in the classroom, I can’t help but reflect on my specific situation as an English teacher in Provo, where a large percentage of my students, their parents, and others in our community are also members of the Church. Like many of my future students, I have spent a considerable amount of time as a student within Mormon spaces, from high school seminary to BYU. In these educational environments, we are encouraged to be lifelong learners, situating us as pupils into eternity. As a student in these spaces, I have witnessed a concerning amount of reliance on AI from my peers across the spectrums of both faith and politics. My status as an eternal learner compels me to draw from the Mormon theology I know and love to encourage readers, writers, and any serious learners to abandon their use of generative AI.
If you have been at all engaged in the wider discourse about AI, you likely already know something about its tremendously negative environmental impacts. Even just a short exchange with ChatGPT consumes about half a liter of water to cool the data centers that house AI servers. Furthermore, the use of generative AI models like ChatGPT causes a strain on energy resources roughly equivalent to the energy consumption of 33,000 U.S. homes. And AI’s environmental demands are only growing, continuing to put more stress on our already suffering planet. For us Mormons, who are accountable as stewards of the earth, the imperative to abandon AI based on the environmental toll alone seems clear.
And although Mormon environmental stewardship already provides a sound argument against AI use, an even more compelling, doctrinally specific argument is found in Mormon teachings about work and divine nature. In fact, Mormonism is itself a theology and culture of work.
Mormons have never been ones for ease. Our scriptural canon frequently valorizes stories of hard work and struggle, pedestaling those who take initiative, are industrious, and serve others. Church history narratives also emphasize the labors and pains of the early Saints. Some of the most famous and quoted scripture and historical stories are about people who spent a long time doing difficult work: Nephi was commanded to build a boat; the pioneers spent years crossing the plains on foot; Mormon and Moroni painstakingly carved a record into golden plates; early Saints built cities in the arid Utah desert; Enos spent an entire day on his knees communing with God through a long, laborious prayer. All of these figures are revered for the work they performed at the commandment of God, and, as members of the Church, we are taught to follow their example.
The scriptures also emphasize that hard work is more meaningful when it is personal. Variations on the phrase “labor with thine own hands” are present alongside almost all scriptural references to work. In his proclamation, King Mosiah commanded his people to show charity for their neighbors by “laboring with their own hands for their support (emphasis added).” For King Mosiah’s people, it was necessary to employ their own work to uphold God’s highest law—loving one another. Personal effort and love are so intertwined in this scripture and throughout Mormon doctrine that love is almost always described as an action word, bound up in work. One cannot love without work, and work is nothing without love. Just as Mosiah’s people labored to demonstrate love, Latter-day Saints are commanded to follow suit. The Doctrine and Covenants also encourages Saints to “improve upon [their] talent, that every man may gain other talents.” We are each instructed to do our individual work precisely because our status as unique children of God makes our personal effort immensely valuable. Our very identities and futures as eternal spirit children of Heavenly Parents imbue our works with divine nature—to leave that work to AI would be a shame.
When we default to AI for work that will improve our talents, we are not only undercutting opportunities to build community with other saints, but we are also robbing ourselves of a more abundant eternal future. Work done by one’s own hand is so necessary because Mormon theology affirms that knowledge, experience, and relationships are the only things that we take with us when we die. Knowledge that we gain on earth is advantageous to us in the world to come; it will be one of the few parts of our earthly existence not stripped away by death. Why, then, would you leave all the learning and growing you get to do here to AI? Why would you deprive yourself of the chance to do something difficult and be changed by it? Why would you ask ChatGPT for guidance when you can strengthen a human relationship with the same question? Why squander your opportunities for intellectual enlargement and real connection on Grok or Gemini? You can’t take AI with you to the Celestial Kingdom. It’s not coming.
The doctrine about knowledge and experience gained on earth has shifted how I understand the purpose of the work we do in this life. Instead of an inconvenience or annoyance, hard work becomes an immense privilege. How lucky we all are to have a life so full of opportunities to expand our intelligence, and how blessed we are to have God-given minds of our own to assist us in that journey.
So many of my peers seem to turn to AI out of fear—fear that they will not get all of their assignments done in time, fear that they are inadequate writers or artists, fear that they cannot build successful relationships with others, fear that they will fail. I am sympathetic to these fears. But I would urge readers to remember that defaulting to an AI model to generate writing, lend a listening “ear,” or serve up ideas is tantamount to surrendering your life to be lived without you. All the things we are scared of failing at in this life are the things worth working for, the things that God has commanded us to work at, and the things we get to take with us when we die.
Writing this piece was hard work. As I deliberated on how best to convey my thoughts about AI, wrote and rewrote my sentences, and consulted friends about my drafts, my mind kept returning to one cherished Mormon hymn in particular, resonating hourly from the BYU bell tower:
“Come, come, ye Saints, no toil nor labor fear;
But with joy wend your way.
Though hard to you this journey may appear,
Grace shall be as your day.
’Tis better far for us to strive
Our useless cares from us to drive;
Do this, and joy your hearts will swell—
All is well! All is well!”
Like the hymn declares, we should not avoid difficult things because we are afraid. We are made to be agents to act, not to be acted upon. We have been blessed with minds and spirits that allow us to learn for our own benefit and the benefit of others. I encourage all readers to embrace hard work. Don’t let AI steal opportunities for growth and connection from you. Draft your own essay. Write your own email. Ask your friends for advice. Pray to God. The miraculous (and mandatory) task of becoming happens through reverent completion of those tedious works that mold us—I hope you won’t miss out.
References
Artificial Intelligence and Climate Change – Yale E360
AI’s Carbon Footprint – Nature
Doctrine and Covenants 104:13–15
Doctrine and Covenants 75:3; Alma 24:18
2 Nephi 5:17
Mosiah 2:14
Mosiah 27:4
Doctrine and Covenants 82:18
Doctrine and Covenants 130:18–19
2 Nephi 2:26
Alma 34:32