My latest: no to AI in the pulpit

I’m in Christianity Today this morning with a piece called “AI Has No Place in the Pulpit.” It’s in partial response to a CT piece from a few weeks ago about the benefits of using AI in pastoral work. A couple sample paragraphs from the middle of the article:

Pastors are students of God’s Word. They are learners in the school of Christ. He teaches them by the mouths of his servants, the prophets and apostles, who speak through Holy Scripture. There is no shortcut to sitting at their feet. The point—the entire business—of pastoral ministry is this calm, still, patient sitting, waiting, and listening. Every pastor lives according to the model of Mary of Bethany. Strictly speaking, only one thing is necessary for the work of ministry: reclining at the feet Jesus and hanging on his every word (Luke 10:38–42).

In this sense, no one can do your studying for you. I’ll say more below about appropriate forms of learning from professional scholars and commentaries, but that’s not what I have in mind here. What I mean is that studying God’s Word is part of what God has called you to do; it’s more than a means to an end. After all, one of its ends is your own transformation, your own awesome encounter with the living God. That’s why no one can listen to Jesus in your stead. You must listen to Jesus. You must search the Scriptures. This is what it means to serve the church.

Read the whole thing! And thanks to Bonnie Kristian, among others, for commissioning and sharpening the piece in editing.

A.I. fallacies, academic edition

ChatGPT is here to stay. We should get used to it.

Why? I’m not used to it, and I don’t plan on getting used to it.

ChatGPT is a tool. The only thing to do with a tool is learn how to use it well.

False. There are all kinds of tools I don’t know how to use, never plan on using, and never plan to learn to use.

But this is an academic tool. We—

No, it isn’t. It’s no more an academic tool than a smart phone. It’s utterly open-ended in its potential uses.

Our students are using it. We should too.

No, we shouldn’t. My students do all kinds of things I don’t do and would never do.

But we should know what they’re up to.

I do know what they’re up to. They’re using ChatGPT to write their papers.

Perhaps it’s useful!

I’m sure it is. To plagiarize.

Not just to plagiarize. To iterate. To bounce ideas off of. To outline.

As I said.

That’s not plagiarism! The same thing happens with a roommate, or a writing center, or a tutor—or a professor.

False.

Because it’s an algorithm?

Correct.

What makes an algorithm different from a person?

You said it. Do I have to dignify it with an answer?

Humor me.

Among other things: Because a human person—friend, teacher, tutor—does not instantaneously provide paragraphs of script to copy and paste into a paper. Because a human person asks questions in reply. Because a human person prompts further thought, which takes time. ChatGPT doesn’t take time. It’s the negation of temporality in human inquiry.

I’d call that efficiency.

Efficiency is not the end-all, be-all.

It’s good, though.

That depends. I’d say efficiency is a neutral description. Like “innovation” and “creativity.” Sometimes what it describes is good; sometimes what it describes is bad. Sometimes it’s hard to tell which, at least at first.

Give me a break. When is efficiency a bad thing?

Are you serious?

Yes.

Okay. A nuclear weapon is efficient at killing, as is nerve gas.

Give me another break. We’re not talking about murder!

I am. You asked me about cases when efficiency isn’t desirable.

Fine. Non-killing examples, please.

Okay. Driving 100 miles per hour in a school zone. Gets you where you want to go faster.

That’s breaking the law, though.

So? It’s more efficient.

I can see this isn’t going anywhere.

I don’t see why it’s so hard to understand. Efficiency is not good in itself. Cheating on an exam is an “efficient” use of time, if studying would have taken fifteen hours you’d rather have spent doing something else. Fast food is more efficient than cooking your own food, if you have the money. Using Google Translate is more efficient than becoming fluent in a foreign language. Listening to an author on a podcast is more efficient than reading her book cover to cover. Listening to it on 2X is even more efficient.

And?

And: In none of these cases is it self-evident that greater efficiency is actually good or preferable. Even when ethics is not involved—as in killing or breaking the law—efficiency is merely one among many factors to consider in a given action, undertaking, or (in this case) technological invention. The mere fact that X is efficient tells us nothing whatsoever about its goodness, and thus nothing whatsoever about whether we should endorse it, bless it, or incorporate it into our lives.

Your solution, then, is ignorance.

I don’t take your meaning.

You want to be ignorant about ChatGPT, language models, and artificial intelligence.

Not at all. What would make you think that?

Because you refuse to use it.

I don’t own or use guns. But I’m not ignorant about them.

Back to killing.

Sure. But your arguments keep failing. I’m not ignorant about A.I. I just don’t spend my time submitting questions to it or having “conversations” with it. I have better things to do.

Like what?

Like pretty much anything.

But you’re an academic! We academics should be knowledgeable about such things!

There you go again. I am knowledgeable. My not wasting time on ChatGPT has nothing to do with knowledge or lack thereof.

But shouldn’t your knowledge be more than theoretical? Shouldn’t you learn to use it well?

What does “well” mean? I’m unpersuaded that modifier applies.

How could you know?

By thinking! By reading and thinking. Try it sometime.

That’s uncalled for.

You’re right. I take it back.

What if there are in fact ways to use AI well?

I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?

You’re being glib again.

This time I’m not. You’re acting like the aim of life, including academic life, is to be on the cutting edge. But it’s not. Besides, the cutting edge is always changing. It’s a moving target. I’m an academic because I’m a dinosaur. My days are spent doing things Plato and Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas and John Calvin spend their days doing. Reading, writing, teaching. I don’t use digital technology in the first or the third. I use it in the second for typing. That’s it. I don’t live life on the edge. I live life moving backwards. The older, the better. If, by some miracle, the latest greatest tech gadgetry not only makes itself ubiquitous and unavoidable in scholarly life but also materially and undeniably improves it, without serious tradeoffs—well, then I’ll find out eventually. But I’m not holding my breath.

Whether or not you stick your head in the sand, your students are using ChatGPT and its competitors. Along with your colleagues, your friends, your pastors, your children.

That may well be true. I don’t deny it. If it is true, it’s cause for lament, not capitulation.

What?

I mean: Just because others are using it doesn’t mean I should join them. (If all your friends jumped off a bridge…)

But you’re an educator! How am I not getting through to you?

I’m as clueless as you are.

If everyone’s using it anyway, and it’s already being incorporated into the way writers compose their essays and professors create their assignments and students compose their papers and pastors compose their sermons and—

I. Don’t. Care. You have yet to show me why I should.

Okay. Let me be practical. Your students’ papers are already using ChatGPT.

Yes, I’m aware.

So how are you going to show them how to use it well in future papers?

I’m not.

What about their papers?

They won’t be writing them.

Come again?

No more computer-drafted papers written from home in my classes. I’m reverting to in-class handwritten essay exams. No prompts in advance. Come prepared, having done the reading. Those, plus the usual weekly reading quizzes.

You can’t be serious.

Why not?

Because that’s backwards.

Exactly! Now you’re getting it.

No, I mean: You’re moving backwards. That’s not the way of the future.

What is this “future” you speak of? I’m not acquainted.

That’s not the way society is heading. Not the way the academy is heading.

So?

So … you’ll be left behind.

No doubt!

Shouldn’t you care about that?

Why would I?

It makes you redundant.

I fail to see how.

Your teaching isn’t best practices!

Best practices? What does that mean? If my pedagogy, ancient and unsexy though it may be, results in greater learning for my students, then by definition it is the best practice possible. Or at least better practice by comparison.

But we’re past all that. That’s the way we used to do things.

Some things we used to do were better than the way we do them now.

That’s what reactionaries say.

That’s what progressives say.

Exactly.

Come on. You’re the one resorting to slogans. I’m the one joking. Quality pedagogy isn’t political in this sense. Are you really wanting to align yourself with Silicon Valley trillionaires? With money-grubbing corporations? With ed-tech snake-oil salesmen? Join the rebels! Join the dissidents! Join the Butlerian Jihad!

Who’s resorting to rhetoric now?

Mine’s in earnest though. I mean it. And I’m putting my money where my mouth is. By not going with the flow. By not doing what I’m told. By resisting every inch the tech overloads want to colonize in my classroom.

Okay. But seriously. You think you can win this fight?

Not at all.

Wait. What?

…

You don’t think you can win?

Of course not. Who said anything about winning?

Why fight then?

Likelihood of winning is not the deciding factor. This is the long defeat, remember. The measure of action is not success but goodness. The question for my classroom is therefore quite simple. Does it enrich teaching and learning, or does it not? Will my students’ ability to read, think, and speak with wisdom, insight, and intellectual depth increase as a result, or not? I have not seen a single argument that suggests using, incorporating, or otherwise introducing my students to ChatGPT will accomplish any of these pedagogical goals. So long as that is the case, I will not let propaganda, money, paralysis, confusion, or pressure of any kind—cultural, social, moral, administrative—persuade me to do what I believe to be a detriment to my students.

You must realize it’s inevitable.

What’s “it”?

You know.

I do. But I reject the premise. As I already said, I’m not going to win. But my classroom is not the world. It’s a microcosm of a different world. That’s the vision of the university I’m willing to defend, to go to the mat for. Screens rule in the world, but not in my little world. We open physical books. I write real words on a physical board. We speak to one another face to face, about what matters most. No laptops open. No smartphones out. No PowerPoint slides. Just words, words, words; texts, texts, texts; minds, minds, minds. I admit that’s not the only good way to teach. But it is a good way. And I protect it with all my might. I’m going to keep protecting it, as long as I’m able.

So you’re not a reactionary. You’re a fanatic.

Names again!

This time I’m the one kidding. I get it. But you’re something of a Luddite.

I don’t reject technology. I reject the assumption that technology created this morning should ipso facto be adopted this evening as self-evidently essential to human flourishing, without question or interrogation or skepticism or sheer time. Give me a hundred years, or better yet, five hundred. By then I’ll get back to you on whether A.I. is good for us. Not to mention good for education and scholarship.

You don’t have that kind of time.

Precisely. That’s why Silicon Valley boosterism is so foolish and anti-intellectual. It’s a cause for know-nothings. It presumes what it cannot know. It endorses what it cannot perceive. It disseminates what it cannot take sufficient time to test. It simply hands out digital grenades at random, hoping no one pulls the pin. No wonder it always blows up in their face.

We’ve gotten off track, and you’ve started sermonizing.

I’m known to do that.

Should we stop?

I think so. You don’t want to see me when I really get going. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.