Artificial intelligence has nothing to do with education

Artificial intelligence is soulless. Archival

Last week, a student called me and asked me to meet with him to ask me a few questions about the assignment he would do, and the topic of this assignment was artificial intelligence and its impact on the ivory tower, that is, the class of scientists and researchers. His question was frank and simple: Is AI good or bad? Does it help or hinder the learning process?

My answer was brief and frank, and I told him: "You are asking the wrong question, artificial intelligence has nothing to do with education at all, but it is about information, and there is a huge difference between the two."

For more than 1000,<> years, traditional education was supposed to be more than just gathering information, and the ivory tower's obvious mission was to strengthen society with a healthy heart, not a heart with so much data in its head. Through the world's renowned universities, from Oxford to Dartmouth, from Princeton to Yale, liberally educated people have realized for thousands of years that the goal of education is to continue to learn the truth and understand the difference between it and lies.

The truth is an objective reality

Until five seconds ago, history assumed that truth was an objective reality, transcending our feelings and emotions. Truth was taken for granted, stood the test of time, was steadfast, and did not bow to politics or cultural fads. The educated person realized that we are not making the truth, but following it, searching for it, submitting to it, and learning about it. We do not change the truth, it is the truth that changes us.

Abandoning the truth has long had devastating effects on our culture and way of life, our public schools have fallen behind those of other countries by all standards, and women have lost their privacy, dignity, and even identity at the hands of those who deny what it means to be female. Children have lost their innocence, freedom of expression has been ridiculed and religious freedom is no longer there.

This free fall of common sense and civic cohesion highlights that truth is more than just a set of X and O elements, and simply having more and more information doesn't make you an educated person. Countless amounts of information on our smartphones or even through AI promises have provided nothing to help our culture understand the difference between good and bad, beautiful and ugly, real and fake.

Inevitable consequences

Herein lies the difference between more information and the traditional ivory tower. Western civilization is based on the assumption that truth is a revelation from a true God, not just downloading quantities of things from a "digital God." The truth is not the creation of a computer, but revelation from above, not just retrieving a quantity of "facts" from Google.

In the first decade of the last century, the British academic and philosopher, J.K. Chesterton, spoke of the inevitable consequences of moving towards the cult of man-made information.

Noting that the elites of his time were ready to turn information into a new religion, Chesterton said: "I didn't say a word against prominent men of science, but I complained about the obscure popular philosophy that assumes itself to be scientific when it is nothing, but a kind of new and unusually bad religion."

Information Blast

Chesterton realized that more information could answer some questions about mathematics, and perhaps medicine, but at the same time you could say nothing about virtue and morality. He warned that such progress is dangerous when not controlled by sacred principles.

He said the information explosion may be "an interesting academic debate when applied to plants, animals, or metals," but when applied to humans, the consequences are horrific.

British writer C. Basis. Lewis on Western society's shortcomings in the spiritual aspect of its life, and promoting interest in information to fill this shortcoming.

He predicted the emergence of the "digital God," when information becomes more important than the truth.

Lewis warned of a time when morality and religious beliefs could become all that scientists say.

In his novel The Horrible Force, Lewis asks readers that after two world wars, in which the guardians of information brought us eugenics and the mass murder of millions of people, how would the God made by humans work for us?

Finally, is AI good for education? Is it good for humans? To answer this question, let's look no further than German Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, and one of the most prominent leaders of the French Revolution, Maximilien Robespierre, all of whom were responsible for the deaths of large numbers of people, each of whom had a lot of information at his disposal, yet had no soul.

Everett Piper. Writer for The Washington Times and former university president

Countless amounts of information on our smartphones or even through AI promises have provided nothing to help our culture understand the difference between good and bad, beautiful and ugly, real and fake.

• British academic and philosopher J.K. Chesterton spoke about the inevitable consequences of moving towards the cult of man-made information. Noting that the elites of his time were ready to turn information into a new religion, Chesterton said: "I didn't say a word against the eminent men of science, but I complained about the obscure popular philosophy that assumes itself to be scientific, when it is nothing, but a kind of new and unusually bad religion."