By Anthony:
A month ago I was shocked and discouraged when an African friend sent me a personal Whatsapp message and I realized it was written with AI!
In Uganda, most people are not using AI yet. But many youth and professionals are. You go to a burial and you hear a speech, and realize it was made with AI. Someone asks a theological question on Whatsapp, and a person makes a nice response, and you realize it was a copy and paste from AI. You see AI being used to generate reports for NGOs, letters, CVs, and assignments. It is out of control.
When many Americans think of Africa, they unfortunately think of poverty. But Africa is far more developed than Americans realize. Americans should realize that the same technologies springing up in the USA are springing up in Africa as well. Life for many rural Ugandans remains quite difficult, but in Ugandan cities, most people own a phone, and often a smartphone. (43% of Ugandans over age 10 own a mobile phone). Family disconnection due to devices and screen time is an issue here too. The average urban home has a television and a smartphone.
One key difference is that Americans have adopted new technologies much more gradually over a longer period of time. But technology in Uganda has exploded at breathtaking speed. Someone can go from never having used the internet before, to suddenly having a smartphone, Whatsapp, and free AI.
I felt a burden to create this teaching in November 2025 when I first started noticing a couple pastors using AI in a dishonest way to create instant sermons, without letting people know that they used AI to do so. This really distressed me. Then I thought about other issues like our friends' children lying awake at night unable to sleep because they are addicted to watching videos and chatting on phones, and the rampant cheating in schools using AI, and parents having no idea about the internet pornography accessible through their children's' phones.
That led to a teaching on technology from a biblical perspective. It takes anywhere from 5 hours to 14 hours to get through the whole thing, depending on the amount of time we give for discussions. Here is an advertisement for one of the conferences that I made using my AI. (I'm not against using AI, I'm just worried about the misuses).
I've taught this now 5 times: a conference for 110 church leaders in Soroti, a conference for 200 youth in Soroti, a half-day church teaching, a two day teaching for our group of Bishops and their wives, and another two day conference in Kaberamaido with 167 church leaders from PAG.
The feedback has been great. One pastor traveled from Kenya to Uganda just to take part in the conference. People say it's the first they've experienced of its kind. I already have invitations to teach this in Kenya and in Tanzania.
Some pastors who attended these conferences did not yet have smartphones themselves, but they wanted to understand what was happening in the world, and why their youth are so addicted to their phones.
These are a few of the many topics I cover:
- Technology from a biblical perspective
- Smartphone etiquette
- Social Media and Mental Health
- Dopamine Addiction
- Pornography Addiction
- Using AI
- Pastors and AI
- Fake news and Whatsapp Forwards
I teach about AI with some hesitancy. For the pastors who don't yet know about it, I'm creating a very real and strong temptation for them. But people are learning about it quickly anyways, and this way we provided a forum to discuss how to use it wisely as pastors in a way that glorifies God.
I do demonstrations with an AI voice chatbot and also AI text chatting and show them some of the features and some of the things I warn against. AI seems almost like magic to those who have never been exposed to it (still does to me a little too!). I also show them some videos I made by asking AI to turn some of my photos into videos.
Here are some of the things we talk about in the conferences:
- I teach about the injustice of AI companies making Nigerians and Kenyans do the dirty work of training AI. See this article.
- Questions about the Mark of the Beast always come up. Even today there are regularly social media forwards about Obama introducing a microchip as part of his health care plan. Some people think that Americans have microchips in their bodies already. But more generally we talk about misconceptions about the Mark of the Beast being something a Christian could accidentally purchase, and explain why we shouldn't necessarily think it's a piece of technology or vaccine.
- We discuss the rampant problem that people answer phone calls and text messages while also trying to have a face-to-face conversation.
- We talk about how phones get misused in the worship service. Unfortunately it's not uncommon to see a person watching Whatsapp videos during the sermon, or pastors sending messages during worship.
- In the social media topic, I learned that while body image issues in terms of weight can be a problem for girls in Uganda, the bigger issue is that photo apps include skin-lightening filters. One young woman testified that she would no longer do that to her profile photos. She changed her photo to "the original me."
- In the US, it's hard enough for parents to help their children not misuse phones and internet. But here you have parents who have never used a smartphone themselves buying them for their children, and having little idea what is possible for them to do on the phone.
- We talk about lazy parenting. It is very common for parents to pass to a crying baby or young child a tablet or phone to get them to be calm.
- We hear that many university students are so lonely that they spend hours talking to AI chatbots.
- I learned that some best men and maids of honor poorly prepare Christian couples for marriage by advising them to watch pornography to learn how to have sex.
- Many people are guilty of talking on the phone or texting while driving a car or motorcycle. They have pledged to stop after this training. We regularly see people on motorcycles or bicycles on our crazy roads here trying to text. There are a lot of road accidents.
- One youth had an action plan after the teaching to no longer leave music on in his room all night every night.
- People are really touched by ideas of having tech-free meal times with no phones and no televisions.
- People are convicted of phone addiction for themselves and their children. A lot of people shared about the problem of endlessly scrolling social media or Tiktok.
- Very few people think it is okay to leave your phone on silent or off at night, because there could be an emergency. Yet many people don't know how to mute Whatsapp notifications and they may get hundreds every night.
