Modern Prometheus, Part 1

Assessing advantages of human versus AI teachers

02/28/2024

Arguably one of the greatest challenges to the Church and to the world today is artificial intelligence, or AI for short. All technology is a tool, like a hammer, an abacus, or a search engine, and can be used for good or for ill. So, too, AI. It is not inherently malicious. A local restaurant uses a robot server to deliver pizza to customer’s tables using AI software - pretty harmless. Over the past few years my brother and I have had intermittent conversations about the proper place of AI, trying to pin-point its true value. It began on a car ride to Tulsa where we casually started a discussion about the advantages and disadvantages of human teachers compared to a robot teacher endowed with artificial intelligence. We humorously harangued over which teacher would be superior. With my background in classical liberal arts (philosophy, literature, history), I championed the side of the human teacher, while my brother, who is well-versed in information technology (senior vice president in information technology, no less) gravitated to the AI teacher.

The first round of the debate went decisively to the AI robo-teacher. That is, every time I raised a possible advantage for the human teacher, my brother’s AI teacher delivered a counter-punch with greater force, leaving my human teacher looking like Rocky Balboa after his first round with Ivan Drago. For example, I said the human teacher would be more empathetic to needy or shy students than a cold, unfeeling robot could be. My brother countered that the AI teacher would instantly marshal from the Internet all the best-practices of teaching a needy or shy student and discern what this particular student (having learned everything about the pupil as well) needed most. The AI teacher’s ability and speed in assessing, evaluating, and reacting to a struggling student would be lightning fast compared to the slower and clumsier reaction rate of a human teacher. In sum, an AI teacher would be smarter than Albert Einstein, more compassionate than Mother Teresa, and more attractive than Taylor Swift, and sing better, too.

Since that initial defeat in the first round, I did not stop thinking about what is unique and unrepeatable in a human teacher that is utterly out of a robot teacher’s reach. I was convinced that this elusive quality of being human – whatever it might be – was also the human teacher’s edge, and just might land the knockout punch in our brotherly boxing match. My initial hunch was that human superiority hinges on a spiritual soul. Wasn’t it precisely Rocky’s intangible and indomitable spirit (his soul) that finally overcame the technically and genetically superior Drago in the fifteenth round of the movie “Rocky IV”? The purpose of the following essay, therefore, is to answer the hypothetical question – which may not remain hypothetical for long – is a human teacher superior to a robot teacher with artificial intelligence, and if so, in what way?

Romans Catholics, and most Christians, believe that a human person receives a spiritual, animating principle, called the soul, at conception. That is, the mother and father each contribute twenty-three chromosomes to the begetting of a new person. But that combination of forty-six chromosomes does not complete the human picture. At the same instant of conception, God infuses a spiritual soul into that individual. From its first moment of existence, therefore, a human being is inextricably a body-soul composite. This body-soul composite marks the radical newness and unrepeatability of every human being vis-à-vis all animals, all artificial products, and even all angels. No scientist can inject a spiritual soul into a robot because souls are immaterial and therefore cannot be captured, manipulated, exchanged, reproduced, manufactured, or studied under a microscope. A soul always stands a few inches beyond a scientist’s reach.

Suggesting the presence of a spiritual soul inevitably raises the critical question of preliminary assumptions. You know, of course, what happens when you assume something, right? You make an “ass” out of “u” and “me”. That is, before we take up a position from which we can argue, everyone assumes certain “givens” which we accept without debate or doubt. For example, in mathematics we begin with the integers “0” and “1” and everything else we build (or prove) in mathematics is constructed upon that foundation. In the art of painting the preliminary assumptions are the primary colors blue, red, and yellow; all other colors being an admixture of those three. Each science or discipline – indeed any discussion – begins with a set of assumptions. First, therefore, we must agree on what a human being is – that is, our assumptions about the constitution of man – if we hope to make the conversation about the difference between human teachers and AI robot teachers productive. Otherwise, we will only make an ass out of you and me.

It is no exaggeration to say that most modern scientists (and modern society in general) consider human beings as essentially and only composed of genetic material, that is, man is forty-six chromosomes sans spiritual soul. A good example of such modern scientist would be Rickard Dawkins, the Oxford professor of evolutionary biology and zoology. In his New York Times Bestseller, The God Delusion, Dawkins maintained:  "An atheist in this sense of philosophical naturalist is somebody who believes there is nothing beyond the natural, physical world, no supernatural creative intelligence lurking behind the observable universe, no soul that outlasts the body and no miracles – except in the sense of natural phenomenon that we don’t yet understand." Interestingly, later in the book he argues for the impossibility of immortality, asserting: “Many religions, for example, teach the objectively implausible but subjectively appealing doctrine that our personalities survive our bodily death. The idea of immortality itself survives and spreads because it caters to wishful thinking.”  Surprisingly, Dawkins and I do agree on one point: the soul, God, and immortality are a package deal, that is, these are things which we assume without doubt or debate. We either accept all of them as givens (as I suggest) or we begin with other purely material criteria for human beings and all reality (as Dawkins does).

In other words, if the purely material conception of a human person is the unquestioned starting point of our conversation about human and AI teachers, the AI robot will have the upper hand, as we saw back in the first round. If scientific, material, and observable measurements are all that are used, what human teacher could compete with the Albert Einstein-Mother Teresa-Taylor Swift teacher? I would not start at that “given”, however, but rather with a human who is essentially an ensouled-body, or contrariwise, an enfleshed-spirit. Dr. Peter Kreeft once explained the reason we are afraid of ghosts and zombies is that each represents only half of a healthy, normal human. Zombies are bodies without souls, and ghosts are souls without bodies. The reason we love scary movies is because they agree with our fundamental assumption about a human being as a body-soul composite, otherwise there would be nothing startling or eerie about them. So, my starting point – my assumptions – are that each person is a tightly knit body-soul composite who has received his soul directly from God at conception and is destined to live forever. And it is only if we can agree on the assumptions that we can have a productive conversation. Otherwise, we just end up making an ass out of you and me.

Praised be Jesus Christ!