Learning

Since ChatGPT appeared the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies on learning has been widely debated. Are they handy tools or gateways to academic dishonesty?

Most importantly, there has been concern that using AI will lead to a widespread “dumbing down,” or decline in the ability to think critically. If students use AI tools too early, the argument goes, they may not develop basic skills for critical thinking and problem-solving.

Is that really the case? According to a recent study by scientists from MIT, it appears so. Using ChatGPT to help write essays, the researchers say, can lead to “cognitive debt” and a “likely decrease in learning skills.”

The MIT team asked 54 adults to write a series of three essays using either AI (ChatGPT), a search engine, or their own brains (“brain-only” group). Analysis showed that the cognitive engagement of those who used AI was significantly lower than the other two groups. This group also had a harder time recalling quotes from their essays and felt a lower sense of ownership over them.

The authors claim this demonstrates how prolonged use of AI led to participants accumulating “cognitive debt.” When they finally had the opportunity to use their brains, they were unable to replicate the engagement or perform as well as the other two groups.

To understand the current situation with AI, we can look back to what happened when calculators first became available.

When calculators arrived in the 1970s, educators raised the difficulty of exams. This ensured that students continued to engage deeply with the material. In contrast, with the use of AI, educators often maintain the same standards as before AI became widely accessible. As a result, students risk offloading critical thinking to AI, leading to “metacognitive laziness.”

Possible Preaching Angle: Just as students should use AI as a tool to enhance—not replace—their thinking, so the Bible calls believers to seek wisdom actively without shortcuts.

In an article in The Atlantic, Russel Shaw writes:

When my son was a toddler, I realized how much my emotional reactions influenced his. If I showed worry when he fell, he'd wail; if I remained calm, he'd recover. Learning that I could so powerfully influence his mental state was a revelation. This taught me that parenting is about more than just teaching skills; it's about shaping emotions.

Our instinct is to protect our children, but overprotecting can hinder their development. This urge has led to pop-culture mythology around pushy parenting styles, including the “Helicopter Parent,” who flies in to rescue a child in crisis, and the “Snowplow Parent,” who flattens any obstacle in their child’s way.

Lighthouse parents, on the other hand, provide support while allowing their children to learn from their experiences. Like a lighthouse that helps sailors avoid crashing into rocks, Lighthouse Parents provide firm boundaries and emotional support while allowing their children the freedom to navigate their own challenges. The key is learning when to step back and let them find their own way.

The crucial shift is from fixing problems to listening. Listening teaches resilience and communicates trust in our children's abilities. Parenting can be stressful, but by letting them face challenges, we help them build the skills they need to thrive.

Modern life is full of common mishaps such as mistakenly sending a text to the wrong person or confusing a stranger for an acquaintance. In a survey of 2,000 adults, researchers found that frequent blunders include laundry mishaps, accidentally ordering the wrong thing in a restaurant, and putting the wrong destination into the car’s GPS.

The study, conducted by OnePoll, also found that the average adult encounters 84 mishaps a year, amounting to more than one embarrassing error per week. Additionally, 31 percent confessed to repeating the same mistake more than once.

Top Mishaps People Endure in Modern Society:

1. Sent a text to the wrong person
2. Mistook a stranger for someone you knew and greeted them
3. Washed clothes and accidentally shrunk them or turned them to a different color
4. Accidentally sat on the TV remote control and missed a key moment on live TV
5. Prepped a meal for work but forgot to take it
6. Forgot to cancel subscriptions you never use
7. Had your phone go off in a place it should have been on silent
8. Tried to unlock your car before realizing it was someone else’s vehicle
9. Forgot about plans and didn’t show up for an event
10. Bought a piece of furniture but didn’t check the dimensions and it was a lot smaller or larger than you thought

These misfortunes are a part of life, and we can all make them. The findings show it can happen to anyone and everyone can relate to making a mishap.

Despite being the butt of the joke, 45 percent laugh at their misfortunes, while 21 percent felt they had learned something from the experience. In fact, a remarkable 87 percent acknowledged that mistakes and mishaps are simply an unavoidable part of life.

Possible Preaching Angle:

As James says, “We all stumble in many ways” (Jam. 3:2). If we allow ourselves to make honest mistakes, humble ourselves (and maybe even join in the laughter), we are in the best place possible to learn a lesson about humility and grow by allowing others to be imperfect also.

If you’re a young parent, you’re probably used to hearing “Why?” a lot! With that in mind, a new survey finds moms and dads field an average of 11 questions from their young children each day.

A new poll of 2,000 parents of kids under six finds that between being asked “What?” (37%), “When?” (22%), and “Why?” (11%), parents are always on call when their kids get curious.

Children most commonly ask questions to better understand the world around them, such as asking about animals, nature, current events, and home experiences. When asked about the most interesting question their child has ever asked, parents mentioned “Why is the sky so high?” and “Why can fish keep their eyes open in water?”

Children’s questions may be frequent, but they aren’t always easy, as parents admit they can confidently answer an average of only 42% of their child’s questions. Poll results also reveal that 81% of parents learn just as much from their child as their child learns from them. The average parent learns something new from their child about five times per week, and four in five parents are surprised by their child’s knowledge of certain topics.

News and concerns about Artificial Intelligence systems like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Bing AI Chat are all over the media. These systems are an unprecedented technological breakthrough and the consequences still unknown. What's amazing is that even the creators of these systems have no idea how they work.

NYU professor and AI scientist Sam Bowman has spent years building and assessing systems like ChatGPT. He admits he and other AI scientists are mystified:

If we open up ChatGPT or a system like it and look inside, you just see millions of numbers flipping around a few hundred times a second, and we just have no idea what any of it means. With only the tiniest of exceptions, we can’t look inside these things and say, “Oh, here’s what concepts it’s using, here’s what kind of rules of reasoning it’s using. Here’s what it does and doesn’t know in any deep way.” We just don’t understand what’s going on here. We built it, we trained it, but we don’t know what it’s doing.

Bowman is concerned about AI's unpredictability:

We’ve got something that’s not really meaningfully regulated and that is more or less useful for a huge range of valuable tasks. We’ve got increasingly clear evidence that this technology is improving very quickly in directions that seem like they’re aimed at some very, very important stuff and potentially destabilizing to a lot of important institutions. But we don’t know how fast it’s moving. We don’t know why it’s working when it’s working.

Brian Grazer, Hollywood producer of such movies as Apollo 13, Splash, and A Beautiful Mind, writes:

More than intelligence, or persistence or connections, curiosity has allowed me to live the life I wanted. And yet for all the value that curiosity has brought to my life and work, when I look around, I don’t see people talking about it, writing about it, encouraging it, and using it nearly as widely as they could.

Curiosity seems so simple. Innocent even. Labrador retrievers are charmingly curious. Porpoises are playfully, mischievously curious. A two-year-old going through the kitchen cabinets is exuberantly curious—and delighted at the noisy entertainment value of her curiosity. Every person who types a query into Google’s search engine and presses ENTER is curious about something—and that happens 6 million times a minute, every minute of every day.

Possible Preaching Angle

Brian Grazer writes about curiosity in a way that might remind us of how Jesus habitually piqued curiosity in others, whether it was the woman at the well or the disciples imagining a camel squeezing through the eye of a needle. Curiosity can be what enables the searcher to find the life they are looking for in Jesus Christ.

A burst of recent editorials have criticized AI tools like ChatGPT as a threat to educational goals over concerns that students would abuse the technology. However, educators are beginning to come around to the value of artificial intelligence – not for students, but for the teachers themselves.

Kansas high school teacher Mike Harris said that normally, designing a 16-week drama class that adheres to state standards would take him at least a full workday. He asked ChatGPT to engage the task, however, and he said he had a workable outline in a few minutes. He also used it to break down the class into daily lesson plans. The 10-year veteran drama teacher said, “To me, that’s the wonder of the tool. This is one of those once-in-a-millennia technology changes.”

Experts recommend using caution when applying AI tools to complex tasks, particularly in the field of education, because the technology is still prone to making errors. Still, many educators would rather use their time rigorously fact-checking the output of an AI rather than starting from scratch.

Sarah Alvick is a social studies teacher who says AI is also helpful for teachers having difficulty engaging students with the task of writing. She said, “You’ll have a kid who sits for a whole week, saying, ‘I don’t know what to write about.’” With AI, she tells students to use it “to assist you, not to do it for you.” She is concerned about the loss of critical thinking, but seems to feel that the positives outweigh the negatives.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Technology constantly brings changes to the way we do things. We need to wisely put it to use as a tool, without it becoming a crutch or a way to avoid hard work.

Actress Diane Kruger (National Treasure, In The Fade) was once offered a role that required her to play a young wife and mother, experiencing the loss of her husband and child. Since she hadn’t personally experienced such painful losses in her own life, Diane realized that the only way she could prepare herself for the important role, would be to connect with people and groups that were walking through extreme grief and similar experiences.

It is said that initially, she began to offer her own thoughts and responses with those who shared their stories in the groups she attended. However, she gradually realized that it would be far better for her to stop talking, and to start listening with empathy to their stories. That decision brought about a meaningful learning curve that helped her adapt to the role she had to play in the film.

Possible Preaching Angle:

In conversations, how often are we eager to air our thoughts and views without listening to the other person? The Bible however advises us to be careful of the words we speak, and about the importance of being willing to listen to others. James 1:19 says, “My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak.”

Where would the self-help and business media be without the secret habits of highly successful people? Almost every week there’s a new article outlining a high-flying individual’s behaviors—with the implied promise that using the same techniques could deliver us fame and fortune, too.

You’ll hear how top CEOs like Elon Musk begin work early, skip breakfast, and divide their time into small, manageable tasks. Other inspirational figures are more idiosyncratic in their habits. Bill Gates, for example, would reportedly rock backwards and forwards in his chair while brainstorming. This was a bodily means of focusing his mind that apparently spread across the Microsoft boardroom. Further back in history, Charles Dickens carried around a compass so he could sleep facing north, something he believed would contribute to more productive writing. Beethoven counted exactly 60 coffee beans for each cup, which he used to power his composing.

Why do successful people follow such eccentrically specific habits? And why are we so keen to read about them and mimic them in our own lives?

A key reason for this is that humans are social creatures; we are primed to look to people of higher status for advice. Given this tendency, it may be only natural that, reading a biography of a famous writer or watching an interview with a billionaire businessperson, we are tempted to take on their idiosyncratic rites and rituals. All in the hope that we can somehow achieve the same success, without recognizing how many other factors would have played a role in their achievements.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Copying a successful business leader’s superstitious habits and idiosyncrasies is not a guarantee of success in the business world. However, Scripture does tell us to “Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith” (Heb. 13:7). Following the godly habits of our spiritual leaders is a sure way to success in our spiritual life.

55-year-old New Jersey school bus driver Herman Cruse noticed that a kindergartner seemed a little sad and out of sorts during one morning ride to Middle Township Elementary. When Cruse asked the kindergartner what was wrong, the boy explained that he couldn’t complete his reading assignment because his parents were busy with his four siblings at home to help him practice reading.

Cruse said an idea popped into his mind, since normally he just napped between his morning and afternoon routes. “I told him, ‘Listen, I have some free time, and if you don’t mind, I’d like to come to the school and read with you.’”

Cruse received permission from the six-year-old’s teacher, Alex Bakley, to show up at her kindergarten classroom the following week. When he walked in, the boy shouted, “Hey, that’s my bus driver!”

Cruse said, “We went into a quiet corner and began reading together, and it took on a life of its own. Then a second student wanted to read to me, then a third. All these kids were going to the teacher asking, ‘Can I read with Mr. Herman?’”

He and Bakley decided to call his reading circle “Mr. Herman’s Kids.” Bakley said, “He’s a bright light at our school who makes every child feel loved and heard—they’re all drawn to his energy.”

LaCotia Ruiz said her five-year-old son Kingsly is more excited about books since he started reading with Cruse. She said, “Kingsly had a rough time with reading at the beginning of the school year, but he’s doing much better because of this fun one-on-one time. In the morning he wakes up excited and says, ‘I’m going to read with Mr. Herman!’”

Cruse’s enthusiasm for his new role has caught on with his colleagues. “There’s now another bus driver who wants to help me out between his routes. What started out as a way to kill time has now blossomed into a way to make a difference in the heart of a child.”

In a review of Timothy Keller’s book, Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God, Jen Michel writes:

One summer, my husband and I wanted to teach one of our youngest sons, age 6, to ride his bike. His twin brother, Colin, had already mastered the skill and was nearly keeping up with his older brother. But despite our cajoling—“It’s fun to ride a bike!” Andrew could not see the merit of potentially skinning his knees, and our attempts ended in his vain tears.

Then suddenly, in early August our little boy outgrew his fears. Nearly instantaneously, the mechanics of balancing, steering, and simultaneously pedaling became almost easy. The fears and tears dissolved, and Andrew forgot that riding a bike had ever been hard.

When it comes to prayer, most of us feel clumsy. We don’t recall someone running alongside us, shouting instructions as we learned. Instead, most of us found our balance by a hodge-podge of imitation and experimentation. Once we’ve learned to ride a bike, we can be sure we’re doing it right. Can anything remotely similar be said about prayer?

In his book, Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God, Timothy Keller invites readers to systematically learn to pray. Keller asserts that prayer depends on both grace and effort. He gently reminds us, there are no perfect prayers or perfect pray-ers. He says, “All prayer is impure, corrupted by our ignorance and willful sin.” We should try and yet can fail at prayer—an encouraging piece of news, when we remember that grace is there to sustain us.

As Keller concedes, “[Sometimes] you won’t feel that you’re making any progress at all, [and fellowship with God] maybe episodic.” But when your prayers are lifted toward a God of grace, at just the unexpected moment, you find that you know how to pedal, and that you are headed toward home.

Stuart Briscoe preached his first sermon at age 17. He didn’t know much about the topic assigned him by an elder. But he researched the church of Ephesus until he had a pile of notes and three points, as seemed proper for a sermon. Then he stood before the Brethren in a British Gospel Hall and preached.

And preached. And preached. He kept going until he used up more than his allotted time just to reach the end of the first point and still kept going, until finally he looked up from his notes and made a confession.

“I’m terribly sorry,” he said. “I don’t know how to stop.” Briscoe recalled in his memoir that a man from the back shouted out, “Just shut up and sit down.” That might have been the end of his preaching career. But he was invited to preach again the next week. And he continued preaching for seven more decades.

In the process Briscoe became a better preacher, discovered he had a gift, and was encouraged to develop it. He ultimately preached in more than 100 countries around the world and to a growing and multiplying church in America.

When Briscoe died on August 3, 2022, at the age of 91, he was known as a great preacher who spoke with clarity, loved the people he preached to, and a had deep trust in the work of the Holy Spirit.

He once wrote,

My primary concern in preaching is to glorify God through his Son. I’ve worked hard to preach effectively. But I’ve also learned to trust as well. Farmers plow their lands, plant their seed, and then go home to bed, awaiting God’s germinating laws to work. Surgeons only cut; God heals. I must give my full energy to doing my part in the pulpit, but the ultimate success of my preaching rests in God.

The often-referenced passage in Daniel 12:4 about an "increase in knowledge" during the last days has taken on new meaning in our high-tech age. Thanks to the internet humanity has never before had access to so much knowledge. A scary next step is what we are producing with this overwhelming increase in knowledge.

Go is arguably the most complex board game in existence. And is thought to be the oldest board game still being played today. However, it's not only humans that are playing this game now. In 2016, Google DeepMind's AlphaGo beat 18-time world champion Lee Sedol in four out of five games. Now, normally a computer beating a human at a game like chess or checkers wouldn't be that impressive. But Go is different. There are over 170 moves possible in Go. To put that into perspective, there are only just over 100 different atoms in the observable universe.

However, what many people don't know is that only a year after AlphaGo's victory over Lee Sedol, a brand-new AI called AlphaGo Zero beat the original AlphaGo 100 games in a row. The most impressive part? It learned how to play with zero human interaction. This technique is more powerful than any previous version. Why? It isn't restricted to human knowledge. No data was given. With just the bare-bones rules, AlphaGo Zero surpassed the previous version in only 40 days of learning. In only 40 days, it surpassed over 2,500 years of strategy and knowledge. It is now regarded as the best Go player in the world.

And if we continue to develop Artificial Intelligence, then, that means there's going to be more and more non-human intelligence. Eventually, there's going to be a point where we represent the minority of intelligence. Maybe even a very minuscule amount.

Billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk comments on the rapid development of artificial intelligence: "It could be terrible and it could be great. It's not clear. But one thing is for sure, we will not control it."

You can watch the video here (Time: Start – 2 min 32 sec).

Author Lyall Watson, writing about the culture and habits of pigs, concludes that when young pigs play it is voluntary, random, and stimulated by novelty. “Jumping where there is nothing to jump over, running without going anywhere, fleeing when there is no enemy to flee from--all these are actions that lack any obvious function. They appear to be undertaken purely for pleasure.” Young wild boars chase windfall apples as readily as kittens chase balls of wool.

We call such behavior “play” and find no difficulty in recognizing it when we see it. It is easy to distinguish. An animal involved in play-fleeing or play-fighting looks very different from one seriously occupied in flight or fight. But it would be wrong to regard play just as something opposed to work. It is far more important than that.

Play is voluntary. You can’t make someone play or legislate play into being. A pig wearing a silly hat and jumping through a hoop isn’t playing. Play implies, pleasure, fun, and a definite lack of constraint. It’s something that comes more naturally to the young than it does to adults.

Play is almost certainly a complex collection of activities that are not just frivolous. The amount of time spent on it by young animals suggests that it is important; and a lack of it may impair the acquisition of vital social abilities. Play seems to be necessary for a healthy brain in pigs as well as people.

In both 1929 and 2008, economic experts everywhere claimed to know exactly what they were doing, yet not a single person could fix the series of mistakes that crashed the world’s economy.

After these financial crises, many were rightfully furious--at the fraudulent bankers, who systematically destroyed the world economy for their own gain; at the Wall Street brokers who received bailouts and little to no jail time, while millions lost everything.

To avoid future financial catastrophes, a library in Edinburgh, Scotland has compiled a collection of sensible economic literature that aims to educate the next generation of economists. The Library of Mistakes contains over 2,000 books, all relating to economics and finance. Book titles sizzle with the message of it all; Crash of the Titans, The Crunch, Debt Shock, Too Big to Fail, and The Manipulators.

The Library of Mistakes was inspired by the 2008 Great Recession, which served as a perfect example of how, according to the library’s curators, “smart people keep doing stupid things.” The library’s curators argue that the only way to build a strong economy is to learn from our mistakes.

Ultimately, the Library of Mistakes encourages self-reflection and the serious study of history. In the wise words of George Santayana, “… for those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” And given the turbulent state of the world today, such advice could not be more timely.

Possible Preaching Angle:

God has written the historical sections of the Bible for this very reason--so that we would learn not to repeat the mistakes of others. The clear message is “don’t let this happen to you.” “Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come” 1 Cor. 10:11).

The workers on Japan’s rail system repeatedly call out to no one and point to seemingly nothing. A train driver checking his speed, for example, does not simply glance at the dial. The driver points at it and shouts out, “Speed check, 80.” When staff check whether the platform is clear, they sweep their arms along their view of the platform, their eyes following their hands, before shouting an all-clear signal. The idea is that associating key tasks with physical movements and vocalizations prevents errors by “raising the consciousness levels of workers.”

The gestures are not an inherent part of the task. But the physical reinforcement helps ensure each step is complete and accurate. It works. Crazy as this may seem, these apparently pointless gestures have helped to make it one of the safest railway networks in the world. This pointing-and-calling safety method … reduces workplace errors by up to 85 percent, according to one study. A similar system has been adapted for use on New York’s MTA subway system. As a result, the number of incorrectly berthed trains has been halved.