Rachel Griffis and I have signed a contract with Abilene Christian University Press for a book tentatively titled Educating Humans in the Age of AI. It’s slated for publication in March 2028.
Since OpenAI released ChatGPT 3 in the fall of 2022, educators and school administrators have scrambled to understand how LLMs and other generative AI tools might force them to rethink their educational practices and policies. The first wave of books discussing LLMs and education is now out, but many of these books are superficial overviews or gauzy celebrations light on nuance. Christian educators need to articulate clearly their educational purposes and then sift particular technologies carefully to discern how they might serve, or subvert, these ends. AI may not be welcomed by educators: it’s disruptive and chaotic and ever evolving. But to the extent that it invites us to reevaluate ill-conceived assignments and misguided pedagogical habits, it can be a real gift. The rise of artificial intelligence should provoke us to consider anew the nature of human persons and human intelligence and then to orient our educational practices toward cultivating these goods. This collection of essays, consequently, accomplishes four interlocking goals:
1) Articulate metaphors and narratives that convey the value of productive, formative effort in the educational process and allow us to recognize when and how technologies might aid that process;
2) Provide examples of classroom and assessment practices that make engaging in formative effort the most advantageous option, thereby diminishing students’ temptation to rely inappropriately on AI;
3) Describe collaborations across school divisions that foster cultures of serious intellectual inquiry, cultures already threatened by other digital technologies and habits; and
4) Propose reasonable policies that act as guardrails to clarify educators’ expectations without fomenting distrust and suspicion.