Introduction to the AI Academy
About the AI Academy
Welcome to the Max7 AI Academy 2024. We are so glad you are here! You have joined a unique and experimental global learning community, focusing on how to harness our God-given creativity in fresh ways.
The AI Academy is designed to employ human creativity in the process of exploring AI. We believe, and are continuing to discover, that you need MORE creativity to use AI effectively, not less. AI can perform certain tasks faster and more accurately than humans. However, in many AI tasks, human involvement is essential for setting the task's scope, fact-checking, shaping commands, and ensuring that the outcomes are appropriate for the intended audience. In many ways, the human brain and human creativity remain far superior to AI. AI helps us by discovering, remembering and using data/information in the ways we ask it to.
The combination of human creativity and AI, when used with discernment, opens a myriad of new ministry applications and possibilities!
There will be many surprises coming your way … the first being that THE AI ACADEMY MANUAL is not finished! Not because we are lazy, but because we want YOU to help finish it. Read on to find out more.
Celebration and Worship
We want this to be a celebration of the abundant creativity of Jesus’ followers from across the world. We welcome anyone who doesn’t know Jesus yet and wants to learn too!
David’s jubilant Psalm 98 captures some of the essence of this Academy, starting with:
Sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvelous things …
Psalm 98:1a (NIV)
We will be singing new songs, writing new ideas, creating new images and learning how to make new animations, all to glorify our God who never changes. With these new skills, we hope that many more people will discover this amazing God who loves us and whom we serve.
AI is a tool
In this Academy, we take the view that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is simply a tool. Just like inventions that came before it, including the printing press, the computer, the internet, and the mobile phone, each can be harnessed for good purposes (and for evil).
Our hope is that you learn new skills, understand AI better and stretch yourself to try things you’ve never tried before. Above all, we are seeking to encourage each other to keep persevering in the task of serving Jesus in our families, churches, communities, schools and workplaces.
We look forward to sharing together in this practical learning experience.
What are we going to learn?
The AI Academy is running for five weeks, though the material shared will remain active and online, so whether you are reading this Manual during the AI Academy or afterwards, we will be learning in a range of ways:
- We are going to learn about different AI tools and how we can get the most out of them.
- We will be stepping through how to set up different AI tools.
- We will be provided with guides and beginners tasks to show us how to use these tools.
- We will be given more advanced and challenging tasks to stretch our thinking and help us discover more that we can do with AI.
- We will be guided with a Kingdom approach; how to use these tools in ways that serve Jesus’ mission in the world.
- We will be provided with weekly Zoom tutorials, how-to guides, examples, and a support manual so that we can do more self–directed learning in areas that interest us the most.
- We will have a moderated WhatsApp discussion community where we can share questions, our results, and inspire one another with ideas.
- We will be able to teach one another by sharing in the manual, on our WhatsApp discussion forum, and through Question and Answer sessions on our weekly Zoom calls.
Practical and Fun
This AI Academy is designed to try new things and have fun learning. We will do this by:
- Giving you new videos to watch and documents to read each weekday of the Academy. It is up to you how much you want to look at and how much time you choose to put in.
- Everything will remain in place online, so that you can take longer than the five weeks to learn and explore.
- The Zoom calls and WhatsApp group are designed to be interactive, allowing you to ask questions and learn from others.
- Each document we send will have Prompt Ideas in a yellow box, that you can copy and paste into your AI app to see how it works and learn from the results.
The Blue icon will be a prompt for a chatbot.
The Yellow icon will be a prompt for generative art, video or music.
For example
Try copying this into your Chatbot (ChatGPT or Google Gemini for example):
Prompt Idea: Can you give me a list of five surprising ways I can learn something new today. I don’t want to spend any money and don’t want to use any technology.
If you have never used any AI chatbot we will explain how to do this.
Academy Overview
AI Manual documents
This manual is underway and will be shared in segments over our five weeks together. We will share PDFs on the WhatsApp AI Academy NEWS and INFO channel. We will also share a Download link so that you can download a WORD version if you would prefer.
- Download the Manual and all Academy files from the AI Academy Channel on Max7.org.
- Read the Manual online at the gcf.community website.
AI Academy YouTube Channel
The AI Academy YouTube channel will grow everyday! We will let you know as new resources are uploaded in the NEWS & INFO WhatsApp group.
This is what is planned over the five weeks in each of the playlists:
| Week Subject | Week Content |
|---|---|
| How to use... | Chatbots, Generative Art, AI Video and Animation, AI Music, various other AI apps |
| Boost your creativity | Videos that help stretch your creative thinking skills and apply them to AI. |
| The Bible and AI | Creating Bible Images, Examples of Bible Stories |
| How I made... | A series of videos explaining how a resource was made. This will help you learn from others and what they did. |
| My Story | This is where we want to share stories of what you have done in ministry and how AI helped or hindered. |
AI Academy Zoom calls
There are two zoom calls each week on a Thursday (or Friday morning in some parts of the world including Australia and the Pacific). The second call is a repeat so that we can cover all time zones.
Go here to register and find times of zoom calls in your part of the world.
Types of AI this Academy will address
There are many types of AI tools, and more are being released or updated constantly. The following list contains the ones we will focus on in this AI Academy:
| Type of AI | What does it do? |
|---|---|
| Chatbots (Conversational AI) | AI that understands and responds to human language in a natural way through text or voice. Used for customer service, answering questions, or personal assistance. |
| Generative Art (AI Art) | AI that creates original visual artwork based on prompts or input from users. It can generate paintings, illustrations, and even 3D models. |
| AI Video Generation | AI that helps in creating and editing videos, sometimes even generating videos from text descriptions or animations. |
| AI Music Generation | AI that composes music or assists in music creation by generating melodies, harmonies, or even complete tracks. |
| AI Writing Assistants | AI that helps with writing, offering suggestions, correcting grammar, or even generating full text based on input. |
| AI Translation Tools | AI that translates text or speech from one language to another, often instantly and with good accuracy. |
| AI for Translation of Videos and Audio | AI that translates spoken language in videos or audio files and often syncs the translated text or voice with the visuals. |
| AI Voice Generation | AI that creates natural-sounding speech from text. This is often used for virtual assistants, audiobooks, podcasts, and more. |
| AI Audio Enhancement | AI that improves the quality of sound in recordings, removing noise or enhancing clarity. |
Then there are many more we will likely not be able to cover.
Contributing your learning to everyone
This will be a shared learning experience!
We said earlier that this Manual is not finished. Let us explain …
Part of the uniqueness of this AI Academy is that this is a community of learning (where we learn from each other). In the group there are people with so many different experiences, skills, learnings, and examples of using AI:
- We know about Digital and AI kids' camps being held in a war zone!
- We know of fabulous, new resources which have been made entirely with AI.
We have five weeks in this Academy, and we would love to gather your stories, your ideas, what you have learned by using it in your local context, what skills you have developed in using AI and much more.
Over the five weeks, we will gather your input, use it to edit this manual, and give you a revised version of the manual by the conclusion of our time together. By the end, our learning will be so much richer as a result of learning together.
How to share your ideas
You can share ideas in two ways:
- AI Academy DISCUSSION WhatsApp: https://chat.whatsapp.com/JCI5YZ0erTjEJgiLdgDnB4
- This Google Form – where you can share more detailed responses that you think would be good to share with the AI Academy participants - https://forms.gle/x6hWpMuTboixsVzJ6
Who is running this AI Academy?
This Max7 AI Academy comes to you from a group of movements dedicated to sharing the good news of Jesus and making disciples for Him. These include:
Global Children’s Forum; GO Play and the sport movement; Generous Generations; 4/14 Movement; World Evangelical Association and more. You will get to meet the team on our Zoom calls and videos and learn more.
Max7.org is a shared library of free ministry resources that has served all these movements since it launched in 2007. Visit max7.org to find thousands of wonderful tools and resources you can use or adapt at no cost.