Ignatian Perspective

Is language an aggregated set of text data used to generate statistically probable outputs or is it our primary tool to communicate the thoughts in our head? To strengthen connections between human souls? To pray passionately from the heart to God?

What is the point of words?

AI is here and I am no luddite … but if I said this morning’s prayer was generated by ChatGPT, as the Leader of Learning for English, you would all think a little less of me (it’s not, by the way). Why is that? Why would you think less of me? Why is my mastery of words critical and important? What is the point of my role and of my department in a world where we can easily delegate routine communication to a Large Language Model?

When ChatGPT burst onto the scene in November 2022, I felt crushed. My job was over: I had lost my purpose in life. I watched with horror as the first semester of 2023 unfolded and teacher after teacher in the English department (and I’m sure many other departments) spent hour upon hour trying to detect the use of Generative AI in student work. I truly felt a deep sense of despair. The path of least resistance is a natural human inclination and if ChatGPT can generate your essay in under a minute so you can go back to scrolling TikTok, why would you not do that? Sure, there had been other platforms used to scramble plagiarised texts and, sure, way back when, plenty of people copied text out of the Encyclopaedia Britannica word for word, but this was different. More beguiling, more widespread and accessible. More sinister.

So I have really had to come face to face in the past few years with my purpose and mission, as an educator and as a human being. I have had to think really deeply about how to bring students on the journey with me and how to deepen and strengthen their own sense of intellectual pride and integrity. How to persuade them of the importance of language and stories.

Since the dawn of time, humans have used stories to make sense of their world, to share companionship, to remind themselves of past battles and victories, to give themselves hope through difficult times.

Stories unlock the thoughts and hopes and fears that lie deep within all of us and allow us to examine what it means to be human and help us to process our understanding of ourselves and others.

There are many stories in the Bible that help us to understand the context of early Christianity and our understanding of God in the Christian tradition: in fact, the Bible is the best-selling book of all time – it is the ultimate source of literature and storytelling and much of our literary tradition grew from there.

Can ChatGPT rewrite the Bible or reinterpret those seminal stories? Maybe …

But I also know there has been a quiet groundswell of revolution away from the world the tech bros have envisaged for us. A return to nature, or creation, a return to authentic, real-time interactions and communication, a return to granny hobbies like knitting and gardening, a huge resurgence of interest in thrifting, and – a return to increased sales of print books and the opening of more bricks and mortar bookstores.

And who has led this revolution? The younger generations, our so-called digital natives. We all know that history is not linear; that it is in fact, circular. And, so, while we may harness the best bits of technology to improve aspects of our lives, and – in fact – I may come to incorporate some elements of Generative AI in my teaching, I’m also pretty confident that there is a fairly strong will in the human population not to outsource culture to statistical probability. And I think it’s because that very creativity arises deep in our soul, from that part of us most connected to the divine.

Vania Thurston
Leader of Learning – English