Breakpoint
Author: John Stonestreet and Andrew Carico
In Paris, two historic structures offer explanations of the human experience. The Great Arche of the Defense is France’s official memorial to the 200th anniversary of the Declaration of the Rights of Man. It’s an immense, striking, open cube of nearly perfect dimensions.
Down the river is the Cathedral of Notre Dame. Its two towers are of different heights. Various gargoyles adorn the exterior. The stones differ in size, and the stained glass is of different colors and shapes.
As George Weigel noted in The Cube and the Cathedral, the two buildings carry significant worldview implications. The cube represents rationality as a means of perfection. The Cathedral reflects the fragmented beauty of the diverse human experience and God’s creativity in all that He made.
Artificial Intelligence, especially its potential for education, tempts us to stand in awe of its seeming rational superiority. Like The Great Arch of Defense, it is impressive, especially in comparison to our limitations. To be merely awestruck, however, would be a tragic mistake.
Consider Unbound Charter Academy, Arizona’s first all-online, AI-powered charter school, which guarantees that students will score in the top 10% of standardized tests. At Unbound, there are no “good” or “bad” teachers. There are two AI chatbots, Phillip and Phoebe, available 24/7 and with a world of information at their non-existent fingertips. How appealing, especially when compared to Mrs. Smith, the local school teacher who is married with four children, unavailable after 4 p.m. and on weekends, and who has the unfortunate limitation of being merely human.
Unbound Charter is just one variation of AI schools that are disrupting traditional models. The rapid adoption of AI in education is unsurprising, especially given the shortage of quality teachers and the highly political emphasis in schools of education over and above subject matter expertise and mentoring skills. Moreover, the overall drive for efficiency makes AI desirable to both teachers and students. With AI, there is no lesson planning or teacher meetings, no study sessions or “all-nighters.” With AI, there are just instant responses to complex questions.
Within a Christian worldview, there is—to use the apostle Paul’s words—“a more excellent way” to approach AI in education and elsewhere. AI is an incredible tool for humans, but never a replacement. This is a difference not in degree but in kind. Simply put, humans are exceptional. AI is not.
The biblical framework of Creation and Fall provides the helpful and necessary context for this framing. Humans were created at the pinnacle of the creation story as the only beings made in God’s image, and the only creatures given authority over the rest of the created order. AI is a derivative of human creation and thus, below humans in the hierarchy of what exists. If we are to properly understand and manage the AI revolution, we must orient life as if humans are exceptional, because they are.
Christians can fully support employing AI in education, but we must do so prudently. Efficiency cannot be the only motivation. There will be a perpetual temptation to confuse the efficiency of AI in gathering and organizing information with cultivation of wisdom, knowledge, and virtue. Nor can the convenience of chatbots replace the mentoring students need by actual humans. Moms and dads may need sleep when AI does not, but they will always still be those who carry the primary educational responsibility for their children.
The emergence of AI forces the question of whether ultra-efficiency is always best. Formation and relationships are not always properly cultivated efficiently. A friend in the business space has adopted what he calls the “principle of intentional inefficiency in order to respect people as image bearers and honor biblical mandates. Likewise, in education, we must preserve higher values and fixed reference points beyond the promises of AI. Doing so can help us avoid what Josef Pieper called the temptation of “total work” (which, ironically, AI can incentivize) and instead cultivate “leisure,” which carries powerful educational benefits.
The Christian doctrine of the Fall also clarifies aspects of human nature in relation to AI. Though humans are exceptional, we are not perfect. Much of the discourse on AI is driven by the attitude, “We must do this now because we can!” The central lesson of the Tower of Babel is we ought not do everything we can do. Part of preserving human exceptionalism is recognizing and accepting human limitations.
We face a choice: The seeming omniscience of AI or the exceptionalism of humanity. Our answer will determine not only the trajectory of education, but the future of humanity.