AI is amazing at sounding right. It can give you a polished, logical answer to nearly anything you might ask, something I doubt any of your classmates (or students) can do. So why not use it to bring more coherence into the classroom? Is there really any reason to stumble through a question that should be obvious to a class?
To be good classmates, we ought to both be able to love our classmates for their nonsense and to be confident enough to share potential nonsense. Baylor Great Texts professor Dr. Kirsten Welch, an upcoming presenter at Baylor’s Symposium on AI, faith, and the human person, defended the classroom condition without AI: “When we insulate ourselves from that pain of making mistakes and giving the wrong answer, we are depriving ourselves of a tremendous opportunity to form ourselves into better human beings.”
As I explored this issue of human value and AI with Baylor professors and students, I found a unique theme running through our conversations—the value of idiosyncrasy.
Each professor I interviewed affirmed what Zach Miyazaki, a junior who will be presenting at the AI and Faith Symposium elucidates: “Christianity has the resources to say that human work is valuable insofar as it’s an expression of that God-given gift of creativity and of imagination.” This idiosyncratic creativity, this eminently human nonsense, is exactly what AI is not capable of and what we ought to be fostering in the classroom, over and above recitation of information.
The point here is not to elevate senseless babble. That is to say that, when someone has reasoned their way to an answer that turns out to be nonsense, we ought to tolerate it—insofar as it’s a contribution to the class discussion from a real, singular, human. Just as Plato’s Republic would be less impactful without the indifference of Cephalus or wrath of Thrasymachus, so too would classmates lose an opportunity for growth without that one kid.
When AI is brought into a classroom, not only could it hurt critical thinking (as this study and this study suggest), but it could create a profoundly boring classroom environment.
A few weeks ago, one of my quietest classmates gave a well-informed answer to my instructor’s question, which pleasantly surprised me. Later, I noticed ChatGPT on his screen. While my classmate’s use of AI may have added helpful information to our class discussion, he also flattened it and cut it short.
Baylor’s Associate Director for the Academy for Teaching and Learning, Dr. Christopher Richmann, takes the implications of these incidents seriously. Many people’s idea of an “AI apocalypse” looks something like The Matrix or The Terminator. But for Dr. Richmann, “the most likely dystopian or apocalyptic future as a result of AI” might be that “more and more people become thoroughly uninteresting… because they’re not engaging in the same kind of thinking and friction and pushback that you get from real human interaction.”
For advice on how to avert this apocalypse of boredom, there is nowhere better to turn than the musings of a drunk Russian college dropout. In Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, Razumhikin, a well-meaning friend of the main character, delivers a poignant speech on the value of “nonsense” in the midst of his intoxication:
“Not one single truth has ever been arrived at without people first having talked a dozen reams of nonsense, even ten dozen reams of it, and that’s an honourable thing in its own way; … Talk nonsense to me, by all means, but do it with your own brain, and I shall love you for it. To talk nonsense in one’s own way is almost better than to talk a truth that’s someone else’s; in the first instance you behave like a human being, while in the second you are merely being a parrot!”
A classroom full of humans may not be as informed and intelligent as one full of chatbots. We will talk more nonsense, and that’s perfectly alright. If we are to believe Razumhikin, it’s good and even worthy of love.
Incentivising AI use over potential nonsense would create an artificially frictionless environment, hostile to the development of truth and to our nature. AI will affirm you, even when you’re clearly in the wrong. If we’re not careful, we may come to expect this extreme lack of friction in the people around us.
Miyazaki’s upcoming talk at the AI and Faith Symposium centers on this idea of supplanting our conception of the real with the artificial. For example, a serendipitous moment is “just like a movie” and a sunset is “as beautiful as a painting.” Early twentieth-century French author Georges Bernanos develops this concept as applied to emerging tech:
“The danger is not in the multiplication of machines, but in the ever-increasing number of men accustomed from their childhood to desire only what machines can give.”
If generative AI supplants our idea of what a classmate or friend ought to be, nonsense and friction may become intolerable.
How should higher-ed then live? Should we become Luddites advocating for the abolition of AI (and smartphones while we’re at it)?
No, at least not in every sphere of life and education. The relative value of AI compared to human nonsense is very different in Business and Biology compared to Great Texts and Philosophy. Likely in recognition of this, Baylor has not adopted any blanket policies on AI. In fact, Baylor leaves AI policy completely up to the instructor, although they do provide guidelines and example syllabi clauses.
In November of last year, the Academy of Teaching and Learning brought on Dr. Megan Alstot as a post-doc in AI and emerging technologies to help guide Baylor’s approach to AI. She recommends that responsible AI users keep in mind the “three Cs”: cognition, creativity, and connection. Be aware of how new technology may be affecting the way in which you think, your capacity to create, and how you relate to other people.
While Dr. Alstot advises caution when it comes to the “three C’s,” she is a regular user of AI and is “equal parts enthusiast and skeptic.” She emphasizes that “we need to be learning how to work with it and thinking about ethically what is appropriate.” We shouldn’t run for the hills, but we also shouldn’t assume that generative AI is perfectly compatible with Baylor’s educational values.
Over the next three years, whenever I’m struggling to navigate my education in the midst of chatbots, I will go back to Razhumikhin. I will engage with my idiosyncratic classmates, strive to love them for their reams of nonsense, and be brave enough to spew some of my own. I ask my professors to leave space for this honorable pursuit, and for them to ask more of me than a machine could give. In everything I do in and outside the classroom, I will strive to become not a bot.