Education in the Age of AI
You won’t always have your calculator with you. The sentiment, spoken by math teachers across America, was well-intended. After all, students should learn to think on their own. The prediction, however, turned out to be dead wrong.
How will programs like chatGPT or other AI writers impact academia, the student learning experience, and our future? Professor and librarian Benjamin Reese gives his take.
Teachers working in the humanities could watch these developments unconcernedly. Math was all numbers, but subjects like literature or art required something only a person could supply. If students didn’t learn the subject matter, there was no computer program to turn to.
Their confidence, it seems, was misplaced. With the public launch of ChatGPT, students do have a program to turn to. ChatGPT is a web-based program that accepts any prompt from the user and outputs a well-written block of text. ChatGPT is a tireless, seemingly all-knowing, writer at your fingertips. Need a summary of the 14th chapter of the Red Badge of Courage? Need a poem for your 10-year-old niece’s birthday card? Need an advertising slogan for your energy-drink company? ChatGPT has your back.
Institute librarian Benjamin Reese has been exploring and testing ChatGPT since it came out.
Not convinced? Let’s say that I, your Bible professor, assign you to “write a paragraph discussing the imagery of light in John 1.” Paste that prompt into ChatGPT, and it will give you (in a matter of seconds):
In John 1, the imagery of light is used as a metaphor for Jesus Christ. He is referred to as "the light of the world" and "the true light that gives light to everyone." This imagery emphasizes Jesus' role as a source of spiritual illumination and guidance for humanity. Additionally, the passage contrasts light with darkness, suggesting that those who follow Jesus will be filled with light and understanding, while those who reject him will remain in darkness and ignorance. Furthermore, it emphasizes the idea of light being the source of life, and that Christ is the source of eternal life for all who believe in him. Overall, the imagery of light in John 1 serves to convey the idea that Jesus is the source of spiritual enlightenment and salvation for humanity.
Add a few touches of your own, and voilà, assignment complete. Obviously, this has caused not a small amount of concern for teachers.
ChatGPT isn’t going away. The Age of AI is upon us, and its arrival will shake up more than education. After all the oohs and aahs that ChatGPT garnered online, the market reaction was swift. Microsoft announced it would invest $10 Billion in support for the program and further research. Google declared “code red” and has been reallocating massive amounts of resources into its own AI development. Buzzfeed’s stock skyrocketed after announcing that it would work with ChatGPT to generate content for its website (which is truly horrifying, if you ask me). AI is here, and it will stay. Technology has a flawless track record of only marching forward.
Language is no longer “uniquely human.” AI produces content for us as quickly as desired. So, what are colleges to do?
Does the coming of AI mean the end of education? No, not really.
Noam Chomsky, in a recent interview, described ChatGPT as “sophisticated plagiarism” and a way to “avoid learning.” His advice to teachers: Make classes interesting enough that students won’t want to avoid learning the material. It may be, then, that ChatGPT is a danger only to educational programs that are already sick.
For all its technological bravura, ChatGPT is boring, and what it produces is boring. It mashes up mountains of information into a bland-but-edible paste, all packaged with the goal of pleasing as many users as possible.
A good Bible education would never accept such work; Nor would a Bible student want to do it. Students get a Bible education because they believe it is the bread of life, and the idea of shortchanging their education wouldn’t appeal to them. I know it wouldn’t have occurred to me, and I know it wouldn’t occur to the students that I teach.
Not that I think that AI is something that The Institute has to be entirely unworried by, but I do believe that God breathed into human beings something that he withheld from the rest of creation. We happily offload many tasks onto machines, but when God awakens that part of us, it gives us a task that we know belongs to us and no other. A good Bible education becomes irresistibly personal when students feel called by God to serve to him.
