Modern Prometheus, Part 2

The difference between a person and a program

05/30/2024

We climb back into the ring now of my brotherly boxing match over which is superior: an AI teacher or a human teacher. Now if someone can tolerate my preliminary assumptions – about the soul, God, and immortality, and not everyone can, by the way, like Richard Dawkins and modern atheists – I can begin to build my case for the advantages of a human teacher over an AI teacher. I would like to suggest three notable advantages. Think of each advantage as another round in our boxing match between Rocky Balboa (who was full of soul) and Ivan Drago (who was full of skill). The first round as we saw went decisively to Drago, but now the bell rings to start the second round.

Since a human is a composite of body and soul (matter and spirit), he is capable of actions that have symbolic and even spiritual meanings. For example, a meal between two friends is not just an occasion for refueling the body – like you recharge your Tesla self-driving car with electricity – but an opportunity for social intercourse, sharing food means sharing friendship. You will not go out to lunch with your AI teacher because it does not desire your food, and it does not need your friendship. If spouses sit down at table, breaking bread together can symbolize a lifetime of sharing and caring, even if the man and woman seldom say a word. Someone sent me a cartoon where an older married couple is sitting on the couch. The husband says somewhat forlornly, “For the last thirty years, all you have done is find mistakes in anything I say.” The woman replies, “Thirty-one years.” In other words, a few words can communicate an entire library of meaning. Human actions and words, you see, are multivalent, existing simultaneously on multiple levels, operating not only a surface level but also on a symbolic level.

Josef Pieper makes this point forcefully: "At the same time it is one of the characteristics of man, a corporeal and spiritual being, that it should be his spiritual soul which informs the physical and sensitive realms – to such a degree that taking food in man and animal are two utterly different things (quite apart from the fact that in the human sphere a “meal” may have a spiritual or even a religious character). It is so true that the spiritual soul informs the whole of man’s nature that even when a man “vegetates” it is ultimately only possible because he is spiritual – a cabbage can’t vegetate." The reason a cabbage cannot vegetate is because it lacks intentionality or free will to choose to be lazy. A cabbage lacks an inner immaterial source of choice and thus cannot vegetate by watching its favorite Netflix shows. A robot teacher, although far more complex than a cabbage, also cannot vegetate in the teachers’ lounge (even if its feet are up on an ottoman) like a human teacher could because it lacks that invisible source of intentionality called free will located in the soul. Why is that? Because at root, an AI teacher is not a person, but a program. Only persons enjoy the freedom of self-determination because they have a “self” to determine.

Now, here is the real surplus value of a teacher with a soul or with a self, and thus we move from the symbolic level to the spiritual level. A human teacher in front of the classroom is able to teach not only math, science, history, even religion – all of which an AI teacher could do far better – but also stands before the classroom as an exemplar, a model, of what is uniquely human, that is, as a person, not as a program. The human teacher is not purely material but also spiritual – neither zombie nor ghost, but a wholesome combination of both – and therefore endowed with an inherent capacity to mirror or reflect God. As you know, the soul comes as a gift directly from God. Gn 1:26 says man is created in God’s “image” and “likeness.” An AI teacher, by contrast, is only created in man’s image and likeness. Human beings are the product of God’s creative genius. But an AI robot is merely the product of man’s creative genius. Can you catch the difference?

I am a big fan of the sci-fi movie series called “Matrix” starring Keanu Reeves as “Neo.” But I commented to a friend, “You know, these movies can only be as great as the minds of the Wachowski brothers who directed them.” That is, every movie has a glass ceiling of greatness, namely, the mind of its creator. A human being, on the other hand, can be as great as God who created us because the mind of God is our “glass ceiling.” God has made us persons like him, whereas we can only make programs like us. It is like the old adage, “water cannot rise higher than its source.” Persons can rise as high as heaven (God is our source), programs can only rise as high as Harvard (human beings are their source). In the final analysis, with an AI teacher, “what you see is what you get,” but with a human teacher what you see is only the beginning of what you get.

Put differently, a human teacher standing before human students can become the occasion of an extraordinary encounter. It can be compared to Adam’s wonder and fascination when, after Adam had examined all the animals and found them unsuitable partners, God finally brought Eve before his eyes. When Adam saw Eve, he exclaimed: “Wo-man!” Actually, he said: “This one is at last bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh” (Gn 2:23). Pope St. John Paul II touchingly described this Edenic encounter of our first parents: “They see and know each other, in fact, with all the peace of the interior gaze.”  That is, they see each other as God sees them. Christopher West, a popular commentator on John Paul II, says that the best way to understand “intimacy” between two people is the parsed phrase “in-to-me-see.” In a similar fashion, a truly perceptive student might exclaim when a human teacher enters the classroom: “This teacher is ‘bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.’ This teacher is essentially like me, for we share a spiritual principle that makes us God-like." That is, this is a person is a with a self, not just a program with a lot of skill.

Martin Buber, the twentieth century Jewish philosopher, distinguished between experiences and encounters to help us understand the value of human persons. He explained that we “experience” a sunset or a video game; whereas we “encounter” persons and God. According to Buber, at the other end of an experience is just an “It” but at the other end of an encounter is a marvelous “Thou.” He states succinctly: “The world as experience belongs to the basic word I-It. The basic word I-Thou [on the other hand] establishes the world of relations [between persons].” 

Further, Buber believed that every genuine human relationship bears the remarkable potential of leading to a relationship with God, the ultimate “Thou”. Buber observes: “Every single Thou is a glimpse of [the eternal Thou]. Through every single Thou the basic word addresses the eternal Thou.”  In other words, true and meaningful relationships are only possible in the world of spiritual beings (that is, between persons), but this is notably absent in the world of artificial beings (that is, between a person and a program), where an “I” merely meets an “It”. Human teachers alone, therefore, can give students the opportunity for a rich “I-Thou” encounter, whereas AI teachers can only provide students with a superficial “I-It” experience.

But sadly, many people do not seek an encounter, they settle for an experience. About a month ago I was walking Apollo around the school and some parents of one of our students stopped to talk to me. The husband was fascinated with Apollo. He knelt down to pet him, and looked up and remarked: “I would much rather spend time with my dog than with other people.” I was astonished at his words since his wife and daughter were standing close by and clearly heard him. But they simply replied, “Yeah, that’s true!” and rolled their eyes. That man’s comment pin-points the precise problem of our modern culture: many people would rather spend time with a pet or a program than with a person. They are avid for experiences and avoid encounters. Ding, ding! End of Round Two.

Praised be Jesus Christ!