As AI advances, it’s getting to the point now where it doesn’t just go and do what you tell it to this instant. It will also remember what you’ve told it, and act on those directions in the future. This is really just another facet of agentic AI: AI that goes and takes actions on your behalf based on rules or guidance you give it.
Sometimes, this can be pretty scary or even downright dangerous. Agentic AI like Openclaw can go to work on a task you give it, like responding to your emails. You basically give it the keys to your email and sit back and watch the magic happen . . . or watch the disaster unfold, depending on how the AI interprets your directions. If it decides to clean our your inbox by just deleting everything, for example, or if it emails things it shouldn’t to people it shouldn’t, that can have some pretty severe ramifications.
So I get that most people aren’t ready to take that jump. However, I do still think there’s a time and place to start dipping your toes into agentic AI. Yesterday, I came across a new AI platform called Poke. Essentially, it’s AI that will act on your behalf and send you text messages in response to criteria you’ve set up. You might, for example, set it to alert you whenever there’s snow in the forecast, or if a particular person sends you an email. It integrates with different apps out there, so you can get it to take action in those apps.
Whoopty doo, right? Well, I decided to see if I could get it to help me with something I personally struggle with. Each week, there’s a set of readings to do for gospel study, and as well intended as I’ve been over the years, I still have a hard time reminding myself to actually study it day in and day out. So yesterday I set up a Poke “recipe” (each AI platform likes to come up with a different set of words to describe what it does) that finds the Come Follow Me curriculum for the week each Sunday, divides it up into 7 logical chunks, and then sends me a text message each morning at 7am that includes a link to a scripture selection, a topic to think about, and a question to ask myself.
I got the first text this morning:
- Passage: Exodus 11:1-10; Exodus 12:1-13
- Theme: Passover symbols point to Jesus Christ
- Summary: The Lord warns of the final plague and prepares Israel for the Passover. The lamb without blemish represents deliverance and spiritual rebirth through the Savior’s Atonement
- Question: How does the requirement for a lamb without blemish deepen your appreciation for the Savior’s perfect life?
- Action step: Show your faith today by standing in a holy place or sharing a small testimony
- Links:
🔗 view-link.cx/fmbVzpSXuw8
🔗 view-link.cx/NKs0ONtc0kb
This is pretty barebones when it comes to Agentic AI, but then again, I don’t really want to dive into it headfirst. There’s a wide spectrum of things you can use AI to do, and it doesn’t all have to be super complex to make it worthwhile. Sometimes all it takes it to spend a bit of time thinking through the ways it might help you, and then to move forward with that. Will this magically make me study the scriptures more? Not sure. But it worked for this morning, so that’s already more than I might have done without it.
The nice thing about Poke is that it lets you share those “recipes” with other people, who can then use them for free. If you’d like to give my “remember to study Come Follow Me” recipe a go, all you need to do is click this link. You’ll need to put your phone number in, I think, but supposedly the service is free after that. (They do have a paid plan, but I believe this low level won’t hit up against the paywall. We’ll see. They’re also incentivizing people to share recipes right now, but I don’t know how that all plays out. For now, I’m just giving it all a test drive.)