This is the third in a four-part series that looks at the theological foundations for a faithful response to AI in Christian schools. This post is an excerpt from Paul Matthews’ book A Time To Lead.
Let me give you the bottom-line up front: the world we are teaching in now is radically different than it was three years ago.
We are teaching in a new world—a world infused with artificial intelligence.
We must adapt.
Consider the following lines from Galadriel in The Fellowship of the Rings:
The world has changed.
I see it in the water.
I feel it in the earth.
I smell it in the air.
Much that once was is lost.
The change wrought by AI isn’t limited to the fact that we have a few more tools available. No, artificial intelligence (much like the change Galadriel describes) has changed everything.
To unpack the change AI has caused, we can look to the work of Dr. Neil Postman. Postman argued that technological change is not additive but ecological; new technology doesn’t just add to the environment—it changes the whole ecosystem. An example of additive change is adding a book to a bookshelf. After the new volume has been added, the shelf is exactly as it was before, but with one extra book.
That’s not how technology changes the world.
Simply put, new technology creates a new world. After the printing press, Europe was not the same old Europe but with more books. It was a whole new Europe. Similarly, the West in the clutches of social media is not the same as it used to be, just with more apps. It became a whole new society. New technology changes the whole environment; it does not simply add something, it changes everything.[1]
The more powerful the technology, the grander the scale of change. The ecological change brings advantages and trade-offs, some of which are immediately apparent, many of which must be carefully discerned. While many argue the merit of the advantages or the seriousness of the trade-offs, there can be no argument on one point: AI has changed our world.
Here is where things get serious for Christian teachers and school leaders: we are not educating in the same world we were three years ago.
We may drive the same car to work, our school grounds may not have changed, but we are teaching in a different world. If a school rolled out the same curricula, assessments, and pastoral care program as it has for the last 10 years, it would be far less effective than in years past. Those tools weren’t bad; they were simply built for another world.
Despite AI’s power, fear should not dominate our response. As mentioned in my previous post, fear is not befitting the call of the Christian, and it can be banished as we live under the Lordship of Christ. We must, however, adapt appropriately.
If a school rolled out the same curricula, assessments, and pastoral care program as it has for the last 10 years, it would be far less effective than in years past. Those tools weren’t bad; they were simply built for another world.
The first step towards adaptation is acknowledging the changes that have taken place. Here are just some of the permutations we see in the AI world:
- Our frequent AI use is giving large tech corporations wholesale access to more of our data than ever before.
- Students can complete assignments with a fraction of the time and effort using AI.
- Traditional methods of measuring academic integrity are ineffective: every output from a large language model (LLM) AI is unique and cannot be measured against a database for similarity.
- Students (many of whom feel the changes caused by AI more keenly than their teachers) fear graduating into a world where machines can perform every task to a higher standard and for less money.[2]
- Teachers can create tailored resources for their students in a fraction of the time it used to take, allowing for more personalised learning.
- Every student with internet access can be trained to use AI as a tutor. Immediate, tailored feedback is now no longer only for those with the financial means to hire a tutor.
- Teachers can create high-quality lesson plans, rubrics, and assessments more quickly than ever before.
Some of these are bad. Some of these are good. We may think some are good and they turn out to be bad, and vice versa. But one thing is for certain: they are all changes.
As Christian schools seek to lead into the AI world, we must adapt appropriately. Wise response doesn’t involve getting all the right answers, but it must involve asking ourselves the right questions: how has our world changed, and how should we adapt?
Schools are communities. It is not up to one leader or a small working group to ask and answer these questions; it is a process for the whole community. In the final article in this series, we’ll think about how we can continue to navigate the problems and possibilities of AI as school communities.
[1]Those who have read Postman know he can err towards pessimism in his understanding of technological change. In his lecture “Five Things We Need To Know About Technological Change,” he referred to the opportunities and trade-offs of new technology as a “Faustian bargain”—a deal with the Devil. As those who live under the Lordship of Christ, we must view technological change as a commission from Christ, not a deal with the Devil. I use commission to mean the act of committing or entrusting a person or group with supervisory power or authority.
[2] Hamilton, Arran, Dylan Wiliam, and John Hattie. “The Future of AI in Education: 13 Things We Can Do To Minimize the Damage.” (2023).
