By Chris Yates, Catholic Herald. (Image: Steve Johnson/Unsplash)
In all the discussions being had about artificial intelligence (AI), and particularly about its role in education, there remains one largely overlooked or dismissed perspective. While arguably old-fashioned, this approach has the virtue of simplicity and clarity, and probably more practical utility in determining how we respond to it. AI is evil.
However you phrase it, it is plain bad and nasty and will do only harm to people. And if this comes across as spittle-flecked and paranoid, the fact remains – you can look ’em up – that AI fulfils so many of the formal theological and philosophical definitions of evil, across times and nations, that whether you believe in the distinct, metaphysical reality of the diabolic or not is almost moot.
For high school teachers like myself, and anyone involved in encouraging reading and writing and thinking, it is becoming clear that this is not a change in a pedagogical paradigm, but more likely the end of personality and the interior mental life altogether. If so, the only way to counter-attack it will be with divine assistance; as with all things vampiric, to wave a crucifix at it.
Parents of all religions can demand collectively that their children are protected from AI as a matter of principle, and faith schools should treat its use as they would a mortal sin, with its purveyors eligible for the millstone treatment.
The only context in which AI should be mentioned in schools should be in the same breath as PSHE cautions about online grooming by paedophiles. Children should be told: if and when ChatGPT invites you to “ask anything”, your only answer should be: No, nothing; just begone, avaunt; in the name of God, return to the Pit from whence ye came.