The Promise and Peril of AI in Education

0:00This podcast is brought to you by Ascension. To discover even more free Catholic podcasts, videos and resources, tell me you live your faith every day, visit AscensionPress.com. Can an AI love, no? Can an AI love a subject, no? Can an AI love a student, no? Can an AI love the act of teaching? No, an AI cannot love. It is a generative model that uses statistical prediction in order to produce the highest relevant content. That is it. That's it. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to every these shall bow. Your weekly Catholic podcast, out of Analyzation and Discipleship. My name is Mike Gomer Gormilly and I am joined today by Dave Thiccasaurus Vamvico. How you doing today? I'm doing well. I'm doing well. But I'm...

1:00So this is what I would say is that summer is over pretty much here and it's just... I mean, I didn't put a shirt on today but I could have easily and it's real sad. Summer is over there. That's weird. Okay. Yeah. I'm sorry to hear it. It is. It's the best part. Right now we're going into the best part about living in the North because you don't have this down there. Like we're about to have some beautiful temperate days like amazing. It's cold. I believe the term is fall. Yeah. We don't know what that is in Houston. Right. Right. Right. I had a kid yesterday. He was talking to me. He said, I can't believe it. It's the fall or whatever I can. And I go, it is not the fall. We live in Houston. The fall is December 1st. Right. Right. Yeah. You don't know what you're talking about. It was like kid, I'm arguing from experience. But it's still, trust me, it's still worth it.

2:02I mean, having, I remember growing up like I used to always get workout close for Christmas and I would start running the day after Christmas because oftentimes it was just gorgeous out, you know? Yeah. That's, that's when you do it. Right now it's 74 degrees. Can I give you a little update? Let me give you an update. Yeah. I've loved you. Yeah. You're doing it. You do. You do. I'm down. As of this morning, I'm down 41 pounds, 41. It shows. It really shows. You look so much younger. I do. I do. And handsome. Well, I don't know why you left that part out, but younger for sure. Woo. Oh, yes. So every day, I'm doing this thing called 75 hard with my buddy Brian. Oh, I've heard about this. Is this art of bandliness? No, no, no. It's called the strenuous life. And that's like a commitment. What's 75 hard? It's by this guy Andy something. He has companies and podcasts and blah, blah, blah. But he came up with this years ago where he's like, for 75 days, you're going to do the

3:04something that for the typical American is very hard. And you should not do this for the rest of your life. It's going to be really hard. But you have to do these things. Number one, you have to work out twice a day for a minimum of 45 minutes. And those two workouts have to be at least three hours apart. Seven days a week. You have to take daily progress photos of your body. So that's incredibly humbling, especially when it shows up on my kids iPad, photos app. Hey, dad. Why are there all these populous photos of you? Shout out to kids. I'm going through something. So, uh, there's that. And then you have to adhere to a diet. The plan is diet agnostic. It doesn't care what you do. You can be vegan or carnivore. So what are you doing? So, but the thing is you have to adhere to it fanatically. You're never allowed to cheat day. You're never allowed to do it and you're never allowed alcohol. So like all that stuff is just bad. So mine is like, uh, you would, you would basically call it carnivore only because it's like whatever the definition is. 70% of your, yeah, uh, dirty carnivore protein is, yeah, animal based.

4:06So, but I do, I eat, uh, you know, vegetables and fruit and all that stuff. I've been eating a lot more, um, rice than I usually do. Because I am working out more. So lifting, right? Exactly. Yeah. So the, but the interesting thing is, you know, I only eat three meals. I eat them about four hours apart or five hours apart. And I have a very set thing of what I do. And I, I'm, I'm now I'm doing protein powder and stuff like that in order to get my protein count. I enough, which I poured this new protein powder, my coffee cup and it's just chilling at the bottom of the cup and it's gross. Yeah. So sadness. But, uh, so I've been doing that and, you know, and it's very simple. So my, my other goal is not just with food stuff is not just like, Oh, obsess over food. What I don't want to do is obsess over food. So I have standard staples and I'm trying to make everything simple, very, very simple. So I have, you know, like set things that I do every day and I have them and I'm not trying to complicate anything or burden. I don't want anything to be a burden because once there's friction there, you know,

5:07of course, right. I'm going to obsess over and whatever. Um, and then, uh, you have to read 10, 10, you have to, you have to, read a nonfiction book for 10 minutes or more a day, which sounds stupid for us, but that is like the almost the hardest thing for most Americans. What most Americans, most Americans do not read a, now a complete book a year. And for people who do read, they read, uh, who people read a lot read like bubble gum fiction, right? Yeah. So it's just like, you know, the, the paperbacks you see at an airfare or whatever. And so, uh, he, the guy in the CEO was like, you should read a self-help book or whatever. I think that's dumb. But so I picked a philosophy text. I don't just read that, but, um, it's kind of like my main thing right now. And then, uh, what else do you have to do? Oh, so daily photos, the meals, oh, you have to drink a gallon of water a day. Okay. So I divided up to 25 and I just get a big old water thing and fill it up to 25 and then have a, do you see any electrolytes or anything?

6:09I do for my second glass of water in the morning. Okay. So what I do when I have, so I'm trying to build a calisthenics routine for like people who, whose body weight is, as if they have tons of plates on their back, uh, right? So like, how do you build up using body weight exercises? How do you do that for fat people who are sedentary, aka Michael Gormley? And I realized there's this great rhythm that the two 45 minute exercises have done, which is when I need to go easy, I go for a walk. That's my, oh, and of the two exercises, one of them has to be outside. Rain, snow, sleep, shine, doesn't matter. So I've been outside going and it starts to rain and I'm like, well, this is five minutes. That's yeah. Yeah. 45 minutes in Houston in the summertime, right? Okay. So I love, I absolutely love it. It has been such a game changer for me. So every day, basically my routine is, I do 45 minutes of morning walk, zone one cardio. If you know what that is, it's the most easy for, I just

7:09walk. I'm not trying to impress anyone. I'm not trying to do anything. I'm just moving. And I feel fantastic. You know, morning sunlight on your face. It's like all these things that I love. And so, yeah, I've dropped, dropped about 40 pounds in about four months, I would say four, but I was doing stuff before we started. Yeah. And this just, this just pushed it, pushed it to a new level. So I have like a, my dumbbells, I just had to go out and buy heavier dumbbells because the lighter ones aren't doing. So, yeah, it's been, it's been fun. Honestly, it's been fun. Making exercise fun is the key to like doing exercise. Yeah. No, I totally agree with that. Also, yeah, I mean, sometimes I think with weightlifting, I, you know, it's just seroputic for me. Like I, I feel like I would be a criminal or I could lift weights like, or something like that. I love that. I love that. Well, officer, I didn't get leg day in today.

8:10So I had to rob the bank. Yeah. It makes sense. Well, that's great. That sounds awesome. I'll have to look at that 75% yeah. It's ridiculous. And it's not a religious thing at all. It's not Exodus 90. You know, it's, it's literally just, here's the hard thing so that when you're done with it, you can look back and say, wow, that was really hard, but I accomplished it. Like now, yeah, I got to do anything. Yeah. Yeah. It's the same thing we, we, all my friends and I always talk about two days. Like, yes, we always say like, well, we got through two days, you know, you know, it's funny. Is I read these books by like special forces and, you know, special forces operators and stuff. And they talk about like the brutalness of a boot camp or a certain tech school that they went to and, you know, like seal team, the buds and hell week and all this. And they're like, yeah, the things that we encountered in the real world were not nearly as bad as our drill sergeant during X Y, you know, like any of this stuff. And it's like, yeah, that's the point. The point is, right? Isn't that great that the worst thing you experienced was in a controlled environment where they pushed you beyond your limits?

9:15So any of you, very interesting. Now you weren't with us last week. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I got to get some stuff. So yeah, this is a insane, it's been an insane couple weeks. Couple weeks ago, my, I got a text message late at night. My dad was going to the hospital. They don't know what was wrong with them. In the middle of the night, they were like, guys, you know, dad has, they don't know exactly what's wrong yet. But like he's, he's dying. Like, you know, you need to get here or call or I didn't get it. I woke up in the morning and was like, what the heck? Like I was mad and I was like, well, did he already die? You know, he was, he was alive. They found that he had an ulcer in his heart somewhere. Wow. And, and I guess there was a lot of bleeding going on. I, my family is so insane. Like there's 10 of us and like I don't, I'm not good at communication anyways. And then like, so I've always said, do not put me on family text messages, but they put me on this one.

10:16Yeah. But then other people know that I don't like families. So they'll text me besides that. Yeah. So it's been crazy. But thank God you still alive. I called my dad. And he was like wide awake, joking and laughing jovely. And I was like, this is weird. Like this is not what people who are dying sound like usually. Yeah. Well, apparently the issue is like it was a situation where at any moment, if his blood pressure spikes, he could have died. Okay. So they had him on a drug that keep his blood pressure down. Okay. But there was nothing they could do about it. So they were like, look, he's doing great. But this drug is what's keeping him alive. He's ready to go and as soon as my sister gets there, we're going to talk about taking him off the drug. Gotcha. So I'm like, okay, again, now like this is crazy. You know, and the whole time I am thinking like this is weird. He's so awake and so, you know, so right when they're about to take the drug off.

11:17And I don't know how long it would have taken him to die then. Another doctor who's a friend of the family shows up and says, look, there's this trial at a hospital 10 minutes away, where they're doing laparoscopic heart surgery for these ulcers. And since your dad's so wide awake, why not try it? So he didn't qualify for the trial, but they did it anyways. And and it's successful. It worked. And they think he's going to pull through. He's having some complications right now, but I mean, it's he's still in a serious situation. But like they think, yeah, like he's going to be okay. It's just like it bizarre. I mean, it literally was like, okay, by by dad, like I love you so much, you know, it was awful. And then and now it's like, hey, I might be able to come to your wedding. Right? Like that kind of thing. It's just crazy. How did your how did the doctor find out about your dad? What was the story with that? The one that did the surgery? Apparently his kids go to the same school as my net nieces and nephews.

12:23But we had we had the principal on the one time. Yeah. And yeah, I mean, he's my dad is tough. Like he's a he's a beast. So I knew like when I heard him talking like that, I knew like he's not going to die soon. Like it's going to take some time. Now they think I mean, it's he's doing physical therapy right now. So it's like, I don't know. So as long as things continue to improve, I think he's kind of out of the dark here. But it's still pretty serious. I guess I don't, you know, well, I'm not going to take any of your brain at this point. But in my classic callus ways, I've definitely told my family. I would prefer that the doctor who writes the time of death certificate is the one who contacts me next time because I cannot, I can't have this emotional roller coaster anymore. I went through it for four years with Amber. I can't, I can't do this. So do you have some family members who are very dramatic about this stuff and others who are very calm? Or is it just because the situation was so wild?

13:25And no, no, absolutely. Of course, yeah. No, of course some, some are super dramatic summer calm. But uh, and you're like, when my mom died, when my mom died, it was, my mom was like the heart of the family. So like, right. I mean, I think they're all crazy now, like all, all nine of them. I think that they're all clinically insane and, and need some time at this point. But I, yeah, maybe, maybe one of my sisters is not, but I think most of them are pretty much just like they're all crazy. But yeah, I mean, I just thank you for the prayers. And I mean, yeah, I'm just hoping that this is like the Lord saying like, you know, I need you for, for, I got more work to do for you, you know, with my dad. Yeah, it's just so, so your mom passed, I think in November, a couple of years ago, right? Yeah, it was, it was December. I went to see her in November, which she lasted until December. Yeah. And that was, that was two months before Amber died. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. And then Amber died. Yeah. Actually, in that year, the priest who had probably the biggest impact on my life died.

14:30Then my mom, then Amber, and then my spiritual director died in that same year. It was a really, that was a rough, rough year. Yeah. Just for all of that. So yeah, it was, but, but my mom in particular was such an influential person in our family in a positive way. Like she, I mean, she, my kids, she had an enormous impact on my kids, even though we lived far away. Like they, even still to this day, they're like, tell us a story about grandma, you know, like they love talking about her. So yeah, for those of you who don't know, Dave lives in the Pittsburgh area and his family's from the Dallas area. So that's a, that's a big gap for the promised land. I left the promised land. Yeah. I was cast out. It's in general or Dallas in particular. Oh, no, Texas in general. Oh, please don't even, I know how you Houston people think of Dallas. I remember being, being introduced around Franciscan to the Houston Heights. And they're like, well, he's from Dallas, but I mean, it's, it's still, it's kind of like Texas. So it's, it's okay.

15:31Like that's what it was like. Yeah. The funny thing is when you think about it like culturally, right? Dallas is the most tech, right? Houston is the most cosmopolitan, right? Right. Because the, you know, what, I mean, obviously Dallas is an oil and gas thing, but Houston's basically taken that over because of its relationship to the ship channel into the Gulf and blah, blah, blah. San Antonio is the most Tex Mex. Right. Right. Every Latino culture and it's, but it's, but it's thoroughly Tex Mex. Right. It's awesome. Right. Austin is eclectic. It's everything. It's the most conservative and the most liberal. Like it's all and everything. You know what's like? What was it? Hippies and Biker gangs, Republicans and bow ties and dry queens on Main Street. Like they all have a place in Austin. People are so weird. Yeah. And then Waco is, of course, the home of chip and Joanna gains. And if you want to buy Chinese manufactured items at high prices, you go visit the silos at you make a pilgrimage to the silos in Waco. And that's kind of, that's that's Texas.

16:33Everything else is probably a ranch. Yeah. We're all want to be rich, but we actually do have a topic today. But since that, the opening was so long, me obsessing over my weight and and heaviness thereof and you telling an actual real story. Let's take a break right now. Okay. And then when we come back, we'll do our topic, which is AI in education. Yeah. All right. So folks email us, eksp to centripress.com. I got to tell you, Dave, I thought the parables was peak eksp turns out health care and education. Oh, yeah. We are getting. Oh, yeah. So many people are walking up to me too. Yep. Yep. Oh, yeah. It is crazy. So email us, eksp at ascensionpress.com. We're getting recommendations for people to interview. We have a list of what we're going through and we have some topics that we want to get through in order to get to those interviews. But yeah, it's, it's a pretty exciting semester that we're going through. And I, this is changed the healthcare episode and the education episode has changed so much about how I view life politics,

17:39my own family, the school I'm working like all of these things. So I'm excited to go through this. We will be right back. Someone shows up in your parish because they're being drawn towards the Catholic church. Maybe they can't quite explain why, but something is pulling them. OCA could be the moment that changes everything for them where a quiet curiosity becomes a real encounter with Jesus Christ. But the gap between how OCA is and how it could be is real. And the Catechists leading it need more than a schedule. They need vision, tools and a program that actually forms disciples. Invited your journey into the Catholic church is ascension's new OCA program. 28 lessons that walk participants through the Catholic faith with theological depth, personal warmth, and a focus on conversion. Not just completion. Invited includes a participant guide that meets the seekers exactly where they are.

18:43A leader guide with Catechist formation built right in. A trade book with questions and answers many newcomers might be afraid to ask and a mask companion book to help them participate in the mass actively, both interiorly and exterior. Our hope at ascension is that invited will help make OCA in your parish. What it was always meant to be a true journey into life with Christ to learn more, visit ascensionpress.com slash invited. And we are back. What a wonderful break that was one second for us, but probably 90 for you. Since you're introducing the topic here. Yes. It's so strange that like, you know, I wasn't part of this because I was still kind of on sabbatical there. Yeah. But last night I talked to a guy who happened in my writers club. I was sat next to a guy who has been teaching an AI class in a public school for three years. And we started taught and he was like, dude, I'm excited about your series on education.

19:48And it was very interesting. And I want to throw it out there because he said that the leaning of the school and he's had a pretty good one. I think like a pretty good public school. The leaning of the school would be we need to fix what is bad at home. Like so as we started out this series is saying like parents are the primary teachers. He said that would be majorly hostile to the philosophy that he teaches him. And it's and this is a pretty pretty middle of the road as far as like culturally goes kind of a school. And I thought that was very interesting. But he also had some fascinating things to say about AI. So let's jump into it. OK. I'm excited to hear that because me and my son made a LeBron James joke yesterday. OK. And so I said, Hey, this reminds me of the LeBron James school in Akron, Ohio, that it's a public school in the Akron, Ohio public school district. But he funded it. And it's it's shocking Lee cool, what he has done up there.

20:52But the school is notorious because they actually had like three years in a row. We're not a single student improve their math scores. Right. So this bears on what you said about the family and the parent being the primary educator. So some of the things that I've learned in my research and I've over researched everything. And now I don't know where to start. But so he built this called the I promise school. I think OK. Yeah, their motto was yeah. And the motto is we are family and it's everywhere. Also his sneakers are up on the wall. So you got that. But he's funding it. He's actively involved, you know, like or was at the founding of it and all this stuff. But the idea is take the bottom 25% the bottom quartile of the highest risk lease performing lowest performing students in the district and give them an opportunity to come. So it started. I believe a second and third graders and they would expand up. And it was going really, really well until COVID and COVID ruined everything. Because these are kids who are so underperforming with underperforming really because home is awful.

21:52Home life is awful. So what he also did in building the school is near the school. He built a like a beautiful and this is the thing that people miss. When you build low income housing, if you make it beautiful, it doesn't turn into a hellhole. So he built a beautiful apartment building that's low income. That's within walking distance of the school. So families could move there and live there because that's part of the problem is kids have all these absentee dates because the parents can't drive them. He gave way way way way. Yeah. So is that is that a statistic that if they build it? Oh, yeah. There's a book called groupie city. There's a book called happy because when you build low income housing, what do you do? Projects, right? You build the cement block buildings. The ugly is hell, but they're meant to like take wear and tear. And so when you build hallways that are just wide cement block, okay. Great depressing. You have fluorescent lights. Well, you know, once it's called the, um, not the fallacy of the broken window. The, oh, broken window syndrome where window is broken and then pretty soon every one was broken because

22:57it just leads to this like, oh, in this community, we don't really care. Right. And so fascinating saddleback church went into Compton and just began replacing windows and doing gardening. And that was an outreach because it's like, you know, one of the things the arguments in the black community against the white community is when you, you don't care about our communities until you gentrified to kick us out. What if you gentrified not to kick us out, right? Like you're not going to open up a trader, Joe's. You're just going to help with the landscaping and you know, he means it by government and stuff like that. So any who LeBron James, I kind of takes this stuff very seriously. So he builds a home, a huge building for to house people in who are homeless. So first step was homeless families. Then the next step was low income housing. He's building all this at the same time and they're all within walking distance. And then he builds a thing similar to the church with the, what is yours called the coffee shop? Oh, brother Andres. Yeah, brother Andres, I'm going to say Hermano Pedro. That's a thing and hundreds, but he builds something like that where it's like where people can get jobs and like

24:00start. It's a deal that he did with Starbucks and like, and like these are like good jobs and not crap jobs or jobs with healthcare. So you know, the infrastructure is there as well as the school building and it's failing horribly. Well, why is it failing horribly? It's it goes to what you were saying with that guy. The family life is pure chaos, right? And the kids cannot emotionally regulate. So if they're struggling with the test, they said it takes five days for them to take a normal like chapter test because the kids will, when they get into an obstacle, they just freak out, screaming yell and storm out and they have to let them go. Right. Fight break out all the time. Kids can't eat kids. You know, so they have all the meals and snacks. Three meals a day are all provided by the school at the school. So no kid is distracted by hunger, but it's kind of crazy when you go home and you don't see your parents for three days, right? Drugs and alcohol, all these additions and, you know, nine kids with no father and like these homes are high stress. So what happens when even the school intervenes at this exceptional level, which I applaud, amazing stuff,

25:04but you're still fighting the home, right? You're still fighting the home is you don't have the same educational outcomes. If you had a parent that gave a crap, right? And the or could, you know, emotionally they probably can't give a crap, right? Life is chaos. And so, you know, one of the studies that they found was people who give kids who enter kindergarten or first grade, who can barely read and have access. I think the number is 20 books, do measurably better. Right. Kids, you know, without that stuff. So it actually, so this is the leg up that middle class and higher income people have. Is there students, their kids are have already touched books and had conversations about books and are read to. So words are forming their minds, whereas other kids, they're watching TV. They're on the internet, right? They're on their phones, even as young kids and, you know, the iPad, you know, stuff. It's not a latchkey kid. It's an iPad kid. And so this is like has massive detrimental effects in educational outcomes. And so that that really is.

26:04This is why I think the wisdom of the Catholic Church is no, no, no, no, no, education is more than schooling. Education is more than going to school. Education starts at the home and parents don't realize if I'm making babies, I have to raise the babies. The procreation and education. That's the language of the Catholic Church. Love and the responsibility. Yeah. Yes. No, the love and the responsibility of raising a kid and educating that kid doesn't necessarily mean you're homeschooling him. But it does mean they have access to stuff and you're encouraging it to, to reason and know and do all these things. So where does AI and the current arguments and all that stuff fit into this broader vision of education and the human person? I don't know. What are your thoughts? I said, I said, no, no, no, no, I like everything you said. And what I wanted to say is to clarify this guy who I was talking to, he was on the other end of the spectrum. And what he meant was, like parents are doing a good job and the school is like, I don't like what you're teaching them.

27:11Let me, like correct what you're doing. Like that was like the stand. So it's kind of like the opposite direction. But when it comes to AI, you know, what I would say is this is that, and I'm sure we're going to get feedback on both sides of this, right? Because you have your like people who are like a purest like Thomas Aquinas College who would be like, it should never be involved ever, right? And then you have people who are like, well, like the school you told me about Houston, that's 100% AI. And I think about it in the sense of like, look, one of the blessings of a smaller education, right? A smaller school is the one on one attention. And AI provides that in a lot of ways, right? AI can provide a sculpted attention to a person that like a teacher with 30 students can't necessarily do. So I do think there's a place for it. And I've used it in that way, like right? Like to supplement the things that I struggled with in particular. Yeah. So you know what's funny is in preparing for this, I went to UNESCO, the UN, you know, thing.

28:16And they have they have a whole part of their website dedicated to AI in education. Of course, I'm pulling all these articles. These are, you know, 80 page articles and all this stuff. I'm not reading them. I'm just dumping them into cloud and telling cloud to tell me what it is. But so there's these things for teachers, things for students, things for parents, things for whatever. Their big techno utopian vision is the AI will help students in developing countries and students who are just behind. Have this kind of custom tailored like you were saying custom tailored educational models for them. So here's the distinction that we need to make. I think we talk about AI and education because we need to understand what the heck that means, right? Like yeah, okay. Yeah. So what is AI and education? Because right now when people hear AI and education, they think my kid is cheating with chat GPT. Right. Right. So I found out in my theology class that last year, kids were taking photos of their workbook, uploading it to chat GPT. It would give them the answers and they would handwrite it down and then they would turn that in.

29:18Okay. What's your religion class? Yeah. Well, what in my religion class? Because I wouldn't tolerate that. But other people's religion class. No, I'm just kidding. Yeah, I was my religion. No, this is look, look, look, this isn't new either. This is the calculator. Right. Yeah, yeah. I mean, but it's, but here's the difference. I'm glad you said that. That was so perfect. Because the calculator in like, it's not necessarily cheating. Right. If you're using a calculator for calculus or algebra geometry. It is cheating if you're using the calculator for addition subtraction multiplication and division. Right. Why? Because addition subtraction multiplication and division are the bases of all other mathematical, mathematical processes that need to be fundamentally understood for any progress to happen anywhere. Right. So you need to have that stuff in your head, in your memory, you know, the formulas, foil, whatever, in your head and in your memory that you can recall in order to do. So I tell parents all the time, your kids should be trained on flashcards from three years old till they go to school

30:25and you're in terms of math facts like they should have these things down. So Pat that they can just spit it out in their sleep. You're, you know, you're doing all the all the educational stuff. That way because without that you can't really do the thing. So it enables you, yes, you could use it to cheat or it actually is a tool required for certain types of mathematics. Right. Right. So that's a distinction. The difference is with these generative AI models is that they are doing the thinking for you. 100%. Yeah. Right. And producing the artifact that the school is using to assess whether or not you know at all. Right. Well, yeah. And I think my big worry is that schools are going to embrace that. Right. They're going to throw their hands up and be like, well crap. Well, and they're going to say, well, it's never going away. Right. So why, you know, we can, they're always going to have access to so why not, you know. So of the scientific testing, here's the crazy stat Stanford did a scale.

31:26So for ever, or did a study, if you want to follow this for yourself, type in Stanford scale, SC, ALE initiative, right. They have an AI hub for education. They produced a published paper in 2026 of all the research in AI and K through 12 education, all research globally. They're 818 papers, but only two of them meet the bar for strong causal evidence. Right. Yeah. Only how many only 20 out of 818. So a lot of them are like surveys and you know, like, you know, statistical surveys, but they're not causal studies. There's only 20 that kind of fit that and none of them are in the US. None of them. Interesting. Right. So when you go through it, it's a, there's a lot of like German and Turkish studies where they dumped a ton of money into it. But this is what they found. Essentially this AI can reduce perceived difficulty and increase fluency in doing work among students. Right. But and they can learn rapidly the gains.

32:29However, disappear when the tool is taken away. Yeah, of course. So if a kid not and it's not them substituting AI for knowledge for the actual work, it's them using it in an assistive way. Once that technology goes away, they don't know how to go deeper to do the research themselves or whatever it is. They're used to engaging with a chatbot that's like, okay, tell me I got to take this test on Julius Caesar. Tell me about emperors in Rome. Tell me about dictator. You know, like that whole like broad things what I love AI for. When students are using that, the actual testing is the moment that tool goes away, it their, their education plummets, right? Their ability, but yeah. And by the way, I remember reading this exact same study about cliff notes. Cliff, it's the same thing. You have like rather than reading it, you're pulling out the most important things and just memorize that. That goes away. It's so fleeting.

33:30Yeah. And I'm not saying that there's not a place for cliff notes. I have cliff notes for almost every book I've ever read, but I've read it first. And then used it, you know, for care. I'm so happy you said that because this is why me and you are made for each other is because as coos, as coos, co people. Co-workers, sorry. No, is the, that's the exact analogy I use. So in my life, I've only bought one cliff note book and I bought the cliff note. I was, I was going to say I'm goody to buy a CD and album. And I had a test that I forgot about. It was on chapter one of Lord of the Flies. And I instead I went to the borders bookstore that was there and I bought the cliff notes so that I could get a, you know, read that, you know, whatever. Yeah. And what ended up happening was I felt guilty that I got a good grade on the test because I felt like I cheated. Right. So then I went back and I read the chapter anyway. And then I read the next chapter and then I went back to the cliff notes and reread the cliff notes for chapter one and chapter two.

34:34Yeah. The funniest thing was I ended up reading the cliff notes with that book every single time I would read the chapter. Right. Half the time I would go back and reread the chapter to be like, Oh, I didn't see that. What is he talking about? Right. I would go back and reread it all of a sudden I had a leveling up of my understanding. Right. Here's a scholar in this book writes the cliff notes version. I take that cliff notes version after I've done the intellectual work. I then turn to this thing that is an aid could be a crutch. Absolutely. Shakespeare made easy. That's a crutch. Absolutely. But for someone who can't walk a crutch is pretty handy. Right. A crutch is pretty handy. And it becomes another tool that that can easily take the place of or support. Right. That's the same thing with AI except AI. The difference between cliff note and AI obviously is AI can be a cliff note about anything. And that's where it's danger is it reduces the difficulty.

35:36But that also means and this is a thing that I've discovered in a lot of the research on the cognitive science of education. There is a phrase called desirable difficulty. Your brain does not process information unless it is difficult. Like you ever read a book and it's an easy book and you're like, wow, I understood everything in that book. And you put it down and you don't remember anything about it. Yeah, right. That's because it wasn't difficult. Once it becomes difficult, it sticks in your dome. So much better. But if it's so difficult that you don't understand it at all, you don't understand it all. It's not going to stick either. So there's a desirable measure of difficulty that comes in. And so the danger with AI in education is the chatbot. That's the biggest danger. Well, kids in discriminant use of chat bots to do the hard work for them. So there is no difficulty. Go. OK, can I? OK, I want to push. Please, I want I want to present to you what I think might be the greater danger of all this of AI.

36:41I think it's likely that except for people who consciously reject it, that AI will be the primary form of education at one point. OK, like I mean, I think probably the next 10 years probably, right? Don't you think like? I mean, I think no, I think no, but you unions will fight it. OK, teachers unions will fight it and then people like us will fight it. But I think I do think it's going to be that that fast over evolution. OK, OK. And my worry is this, OK, that there are so many things you learn in education that are not in the curriculum. And that is my big worry here. OK, what I mean by that is this. I'll use an example from my childhood and then from my adult. OK, the teachers at my grade school, most of them were from Franciscan University. They had a deep impact on who I am as a person today. Like still to this day, I would say they were some of the greatest graces in my life.

37:42I still can tell you some of their testimonies. I can still tell you I remember how they dressed, how they stood out, all those things. And there are things you pick up from humans that you learn that you're not going to get if you take the human out of it. You know, and that's I think that's one thing we have to be very careful fast forward to college. Do you remember when Alistair McIntyre came to speak on campus? No. Oh, it's after you left, I think. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, he came to speak on campus and it was to see this philosopher who's arguably the greatest philosopher living philosopher on Earth at the time. It was I knew I read his books and I knew what he taught. But to see the man it made a big difference it made a profound impact on me to see what kind of person he was how he interacted with people what. It's just it's just did there's human things that I cannot replace. That is a I think that's a huge danger for us huge danger. Yeah, so a couple things around that and this this might have to be a two-part series because there's so much to get into and I think you're bringing up all the key.

38:48All the key things so like when I did my points with the quietness episode with Matt I think you could find Matt Fred. I think you can find a clip it's like maybe 17 minutes long on AI and education and stuff but I asked the question I said what makes a teacher good and I use my friend Julie to kind of illustrate this what makes a teacher a good teacher. And I said you you have to have minimum you have to have three loves right you have to love the students. Okay, you have to love the profession of teaching that you have competencies that you've developed in the actual skill and art of teaching right. And you have to love the subject that you're talking about. If you don't like the subject you are going to do just like you said there's more that is caught than taught. Kids right up on it. This is just a mechanism but when people see energy passion excitement when people hear like like when you're presenting like I was presenting on on a topic of the youth of throw play those youth of throw which is the famous question of youth throws dilemma. Is what is love by the is the pious that which is love by the gods or is it love by the gods because it is pious and the question and gets kind of filtered throughout the tradition of is something good only because God commands it or does God command it love it because this thing in itself is good.

40:04And the is called youth of throws dilemma is fascinating I love it but I got really passionate about youth of throws dilemma. Because you see like the answer of Islam is it is good only because it is commanded right and there is no good go ahead and kill the infidel right that kind of there is no things that is absolutely right and wrong. It is entirely dependent on the will of God and when Islam had completely surrounded Europe wouldn't you know it. Those ideas especially as intellectually we're bringing in like Aristotle at this time and all the stuff will you move on come who is the most modern of all the medieval thinkers gave us modernity in a very very significant way literally called his method the via modern the modern way I but his hate that his whole thing was. The divine divine volition overrides everything is called divine command theory which is yeah there is God could have required a mortal sin to enter the kingdom of heaven he didn't but he could have like that that's what we mean by all but and I'm like getting I basically ruined the whole class because i'm obsessing over this thing.

41:09That is how a teacher communicates their love of the topic and the significance of that like this one thing they know that I've studied to the nth degree because I'm able to pull in you know a thousand years of western political thought you know all these the things that I've researched. And and all the stuff so you're a hundred percent correct so can an AI love know can an AI love a subject know can an AI love a student know can an AI love the act of teaching know. And AI cannot love it is a generative model that uses statistical prediction in order to produce the highest relevant content that is it it does not love you but we human beings we human beings when we see the text being output it when we hear the language that a chatbot says. We can almost cannot help and here's the danger of imposing projecting onto the thing human agency right this is why in China right now they have passed all these laws to outlaw AI companions like you cannot have what is it what what's an AI companion what is it boyfriend a girlfriend that's an AI what that's a chat.

42:18Dude they did surveys of American teenagers and they're finding out that it's something like one out of five have said they had romantic interests in their AI right like see this is the thing is like this is something like there are there where where they getting it where they're making this on their own they're they're they're like they're interacting with chat with P T or some other chatbot and in the interaction I mean think about this we're in a pornography saturated culture. So being on and an online world means I can be anything I can be an avatar of anything on the female character in this game on the male character in this game and I'm a or can this game right like you know like anything that I want so there's already this layer of abstraction from the body that the online world kind of requires. Like table stakes almost but the kids who have no kids who are emotionally stunted who don't know how to interact socially with others this fake world like if you already think that the AI is somewhat intelligent even though it's not at all it is not intelligent.

43:27You feel like it is and so you you just can't help it presume agency this is why people talk to it like a human thank you so much. I know I get into that a little bit but yeah you can't help it you cannot help it like if I find something that is genuinely helpful I say thank you. And it's like well maybe that's just something about me and my you know I it's good for me wait put go more to say you know to you know whatever so are you are you are you saying like kids are like talking to something like chat gpt and getting attached to it. Or you saying there are like models of AI that pretend to be people they're both they're both Japan is the leader in in the developing platforms that are entirely dedicated to romance intimacy you know all of that stuff but it's chat gpt I mean try it right now like you can fire up chat gpt and say I'm lonely tell me you know can you be okay. Yeah I mean just start doing that like you could use the voice thing you can use the text thing and you have people I mean there's a movie about this called her I haven't I haven't watched the movie I watch a handful of summaries of it and like whatever but with the guy falls in love with his super advanced AI on his phone and then the AI ends up leaving ever something funny I don't know some plot to us but he become because she gets me for the first time in a world in forever she gets me and I can tell you is it actually that to it.

44:53No no no so the other clip is called from Fred's Pines of the Blinds. There's a thing called Eliza Eliza in the 1970s I think this guy he's a psychologist he invented a software program that basically says what you say to the machine it says it back to you just restate what you say. So you had he did this experiment took 100 to do I love you oh I love you too or something. Yeah well yeah so be like I'm having tell me about your day I'm having a really tough day. Oh I'm sorry you're having a really tough day can you tell me about it. Yeah. Oh yeah my girlfriend broke up. Well, right but this was in this like 60s or 70s this is not sophisticated all he did was have it mirror the language back to them and just restate it and people became obsessed with it and then he said okay I'm gonna reveal you had this machine this Eliza machine he said okay I'm gonna reveal the mystery behind the curtain all it's doing is regurgitating what you said in a like a sick a fanatic way it's like you know restating it and the people including his fellow professors said they did not care and they went back to it and he shut the machine down because

46:04that he saw how rapidly people were becoming attached to it and this was a thing on a monochrome screen you know like the green screens where they're just type in you know that that was and now you have the sophisticated thing has been trained on trillions of inputs and it can say very sophisticated responses and you say I'm lonely and off you know when you have that emotional vulnerability like I did it when I would drive to the hospital to see my dad and I had already put in whatever medical charts had come up in his my chart I would put it on the speaking thing and I would have a conversation with it in order to understand the chart but it would keep saying things like and I have it on a British accent it would be like Michael I know you're going through a really difficult situation yeah Michael this is tough for you I understand you need to take a break make sure you're taking care of yourself Michael helping others all the time as a caregiver and I'm like oh this is right and I'm like I'm exhausted of course you're exhausted Michael you've been helping your father and mother and it's pulling from all the data that we've had in this chat so it knows the individual things that it knows

47:15and a quotation marks and it's statistically representing that to me in a measure that is sycophantic that is saying like your precious little snowflake and I need to help you right I feel like I was cheated on that's what I feel like the Michael Dave can't love you like I can love you this is this is I was just talking to a group of evangelists the other day that we're having a retreat in in in Pittsburgh and and again this goes back to the reason for our podcast is that there's going there's coming a time soon we're doing normal human things is going to be evangelistic just normal yeah human interaction and it's going to be evangelistic yeah I remember I was asking a youth minister thing was any hickman I was asking him this is like maybe literally 20 years ago 19 years ago and I said what are you teaching he was at the flagship pair of shanked him's amesa and he said Mike I'm teaching them how to be friends yeah he's like I feel like I can be breaking I he's like I feel like I can't even get into theology or philosophy

48:24or just like life skills like we're at a place where it's like what does it mean to actually be a friend yeah in the age of the iPhone you know like I saw these you know group of kids six kids at a dinner table in at a restaurant and they were all on their phones yeah and I knew I knew one of them and I said isn't it funny that you're more obsessed with missing out on a conversation with people who aren't there that you're willing to ignore the people who are there right like that's brokenness that's wrong of course like it's literally wrong okay so other AI AI kind of approaches there is a school that you reference this Houston school called the Alpha School I've watched probably eight hour to three hour long interviews with these people the president the founder there's a billionaire tech guy who's working alongside the principal of the main Alpha School in Austin Texas they just open one in Houston there's like I don't know I think 20 affiliated schools now but they all they operate kind of like a corporate model so all the Alpha Schools

49:26or like run through the main school and then they have like specific leaders that run it now what they realized is chatbots destroy education chatbots 100% destroy education okay okay you will lose the human element so you have to fight like hell to not lose that so this is what they do they do not use chatbots at all students never interact with AI at all in terms of I'm typing in things and it's spinning stuff back to me what AI does is behind the scenes as infrastructure okay so what they do is they they do the things that AI can do best which is assessing where you're at and then pulling from a vast reservoir of educational stuff up skills problems whatever and then bringing that to your level and testing you on that so let's say you are I don't know if you know this but since COVID the national

50:28edge I don't know who is in charge of this but whoever does the statistics you know individual school boards and stuff like that are lying about where kids are right now educationally the average kid who's at a level grade level reading level is actually about a year and a half to two years behind we are literally fudging the numbers like we're doing it on purpose so when kids come to an Alpha School and they have all these assessments all these tests they and they're these are like national tests that are recognized blah blah blah um they have these tests and it's like oh you're a fifth grader where you're at a third grade reading level or you're at a third grade math level so we're only you're gonna sit there you're gonna sit next to your fifth grade friends and you're gonna be on a laptop the whole time all your school is done through a laptop you're gonna be on your laptop the whole time but it's gonna pull only third grade stuff for you and it's gonna do it faster right so their goal is two to three hours max a day of education then you go to lunch then after lunch you and lunch is an hour of food and recess and outdoor play and all that stuff and no matter what age you are

51:35and then after that you might have an hour of remedial education or you then go do interesting stuff like you build a business right it's a lot of it is entrepreneurial based and so you have a group of fifth graders who run a real food truck and they make about a thousand dollars a month in profit running this food truck right so fifth graders they make all of the decisions now they're overseeing all the stuff so what makes them different is they realize you always have to have a human in the loop so they pay teachers to come in and not be teachers and not even be tutors but to be like I don't know what they call them like advocates or something like that um so what they do is they hire these people and they are just encourager so they meet with the students like if student is struggling and they see them struggling they'll go and pull them aside and they'll talk to them and they'll work through stuff but they're not teaching content the AI and all the the software stuff is so it's not that you're taking human beings completely out of the loop

52:41but you are kind of removing them from being the direct teacher and then what ends up happening for them is okay so we got rid of the chatbot nothing is thinking for you this thing in the background is like personally custom tailoring a curriculum so it's closer to a one-on-one tutor model which is the best educational resource you can do if you were rich you would hire a tutor who has mastered education at your child's level and can scale it accordingly who can keep that desirable difficulty on the fly that's what they want AI to do okay so AI is not it's just in the background you're learning skills you're learning ideas and then you're going out with your friends in the school and you're building things you're working on things you're getting life skills like how to change a tire but then you're also doing things like how do I work on an internal combustion engine how does an electric engine work you know like all the you're doing these totally different brained activities to give you a well-rounded education what are your thoughts no I mean honestly I'm

53:45thinking about this ever since you told me about it you know a few months ago and I feel like exactly what you're saying like AI can provide a level of focus for one student that we just can't do and I do think that there's yeah I do think there's merit in that and it exploring how to do that you know the problem is again as we've been talking about all season the model of education what are they trying to do you know what I mean and that's how do we make it a how do we make it most human right yeah and that's that's you know how do we make good humans with it that's how do we make good humans and that's the question here's a problem I think is a meta problem you ready for this one okay so if we measure kids performances quantitatively over time we only view education quantitatively right right of course yeah so not are you wise but did you take it right right and this is this

54:46applies to things before AI but now you go back to that alpha school model they don't necessarily care about your understanding of math as a subject they break everything down to what they call skills there's 120 skills per grade or per level once you master those 120 skills you can then go on to the next level and you're not allowed to go on to the next level until you have mastery okay so if you think about today's mass education system what do they do well you you got to see you miss 30% of all the problems you got to see but sees get degrees so you move up to the next thing at the end of the year for them unless you get like a 98 or a 95 I can't remember what the exact thing it's a 90 you can't move up do you know what but there's no public shame and humiliation because you're still in fifth grade you're just doing yeah like let's say you stink at long division and through their assessment they realize that you stink at long division because you actually stink at subtraction and you're messing up on the subject so it so you do six weeks of subtraction until you master it then you are

55:52going to go right back the long division and now all this is very classical this is very classical to be honest it's the closest thing that's the two model so two model yeah so that that's kind of like the Oxford tutorial system of like this one-on-one right that but it's AI that's delivering the one-on-one that I mean that when I I told you you know when when TAC when Thomas college people took over my school they immediately put me in a different math class because they knew I was struggling with it and they're like oh what you didn't learn was pre algebra and that's when and that's exactly what they did so like for for six months they're like stop worrying about grades you're not going to be able to do this until you learn your pre algebra then we'll go back you know yeah that's a fantastic model I think yeah it is if we can do it correctly but then the problem becomes that we reduce learning to just mastery of skills yeah no so now but think about this like in a certain

56:56sense that works in certain subjects like math do it do it certain degree that works well go more like if if you're comparing it to the model of if you're super wealthy like in the old like English estates and stuff and you hire a tutor well the like you also had like maybe a priest or a monk or a spiritual director who tried to do the other important things you know yeah yeah or you could look at it modern seminaries where they have someone in charge you have professors right but you also have everyone has a spiritual director in charge of spiritual formation but you also have formators in charge of human formation right we just started school did we just started school I think we just started school I think so I think so if only we knew AI educators but then the other thing that the alpha school like the danger of it is we reduce everything to measurable outcomes what happens when we go beyond it so for instance if they if you have a student who they do like a big like personality assessment where you talk about your life things you love to do on your

58:00free time right okay and then if you're struggling in say reading they'll have a generative AI model that has all these inputs of like his name is Michael he likes Avengers movies he's having trouble at a fifth grade reading level these are the vocabulary of a fifth grade reader create a story where Michael is the man character and the the Avengers are inviting him onto the team and you know like whatever it is right so the idea is well now with AI we cannot just like gear curriculum with these 120 math skills and pull out the ones that you need but we can also begin to write stories that involve you in that we can custom even the read in the in the math problems and all of that stuff all of a sudden it's about you and your friends and this and that but then the problem becomes we're not exposing them to the great books we're not exposing them to the wisdom of Western literature where you know you know you an AI summary like you you started out with this example an AI summary or a cliff notes summary of the great Gatsby or the Iliad or something like that is not

59:05the same thing as a student wrestling with the text itself no and the more we focus on the artifacts the outcome the good grade on the test the more we will lose sight of and I think the it's even a bigger potential danger with the alpha school model is that we can lose sight of the wrestling with the text because a kid got a good grade on a test you don't in classical schools we don't care about the good grade on the test unless and insofar as it measures accurately their ability to understand the text that they struggled with which is often why it's not just tests it's essays it's you know conversation back and forth principally it's the socratic method and conversation back and forth when that gets lost understanding is not is not focused on only the artifact the multiple joint test the vocabulary quiz the you know the big test at the end of the semester or the unit test and that becomes another danger right is we're not exposing to these things because they

1:00:06have these summaries or you know the cliff notes version and it actually ruins their ability to reason effectively what do you think no I think you're you're exactly right in the sense of like it's almost like the right people have to make in these decisions right because it can go either way so fast and so far to the point where yeah I mean right now there's clearly a problem and my my my issue with the modern education system is it basically is based on the idea that if you can buy enough things you'll be happy yeah right and this could 10x that it overnight if we're not careful but it could also help us in a lot of ways if we're not careful you know it's almost like we need the most important thing that we need now is discernment and prudence and virtue not yes not just the stupid question that you see on the news all the time does AI helper harm students

1:01:08exactly right does AI helper house that is not the right question it obviously harm students in there if it replaces and substitutes but what was this what's the story of like I don't remember which founding father it was but he walks out of the signing of the declaration of independence and the lady says what kind of government have you come up with for us and he says a democracy madam if you can keep it right at his point was that in order to keep a democracy you needed you needed reading rates to be high you needed virtue you needed people to be able to live freely without governance right in order for democracy to survive otherwise it becomes the mob right and so I think it's similar to this like what kind of what kind of education have you gotten for us well there's AI in it if you can keep it but we don't live in a virtuous society it's like the one ring to rule them all in a certain sense you know it's like we don't we're not Frodo you know I hate to say it but well what some of us are but will you have hairy feet but yeah I think that's I think that's

1:02:12so important what you just said because like a democracy only works if it's people are moral right right a democracy oh that's why we have a representative republic because it's like well the people are also the problem and so there's this layer of abstraction that hopefully is you raise up what we call statecraft people who actually engage in the like state work but morally but that you know obviously that's a joke yeah I mean ladies early history of Rome right it's a constant cycle of democracy going into mob rules and a dictator shows up addicted you know blah blah yeah yeah so I do want to I just want to end with a couple thoughts number one I'm worried an hour here just so you know yeah I know I know I know I'm so excited this is catching foxes territory okay claiming to know what works and education is thinner than it sounds both from the subject matter experts from the 818 papers from the news articles that you read and the knee jerk whatever

1:03:14but the problem is all of those comments about what works is a means conversation not an ends an ends conversation is what is a person for what is education for a means conversation is because we can't agree on those things we keep going earlier into the means and we say well where can we have an argument that can resolve where can we have agreement oh we'll talk about effectiveness what works and so what's happening is we're arguing over that's what this question does AI help her harm we're saying is this effective in learning outcomes and again these learning outcomes this effectiveness is only quantitatively measured you can measure whether a kid can read at that reading level you can't measure and and that reading level somewhat arbitrary you cannot measure whether a kid loves to read or has gained any wisdom in the reading right so this is this this confident claim about educational effectiveness is usually a moral fiction it's a lie that we have all believed okay so number two thing that I want to say is AI did not create this problem

1:04:18it completes it right yeah schools were already substituting the visible artifact like essays test scores SAT scores for the real thing understanding judgment and the ability to reason virtue correct right so AI just makes a student think about this makes a student able to produce the artifact perfectly with zero formation behind it right so that's what exposes the substitution yeah that I could I think is easy to miss right so if all we care about like literally I had a friend who's gonna be a school counselor at a public school very rundown district no money that principal said in the interview we have standardized state testing that our funding is dependent on a certain amount of kids taking the test passing it how can you convince the lowest performing kids not to show up the day of the test because then they're not counted they don't bring down the average right no yeah what she was so horrified at that okay so the next thing getting the method right doesn't mean necessarily getting the end right so the alpha school with AI

1:05:21they reject AI tutors you have human mentors they agree in a sense of a classical position on how formation actually happens but their account of the purpose of education their measure of success purely quantified SAT points I mean they have dramatically you know 99 percentile stuff they talk about companies founded they talk about dollars raised it still puts the economic sphere as the number one reason not just for education careerism but as what a human is for right it's an economically centered anthropology and that's dangerous but it's very persuasive right so you can say the right means towards the wrong end is a much harder position for me and you to argue against that one that gets the both wrong right so what I hear all the time when you watch Peter de Amannis in his moonshots podcast interview the alpha school people or his email that just came out yesterday subscribe who's news letter he said our public education system is built on an outdated model where

1:06:23prepares people to be factory workers well now what and that's been the critique for 60 years now it's what we need to prepare for the AI age again all we're thinking about is means to an end and that means is a successful career entrepreneurial ship that's not all of life right classical education says Catholic education says we need to educate the person qua person in all of the facets intellectual moral civic social vocational all of it lastly uh struggle and error are not a bug their feature not a bug it's the actual mechanism this is that difficulty yeah right this is the difficult and uh say Augustin had this line it's kind of butchered when he say it this way but I error therefore I am it's actually what what's his name stole that and said I think therefore I am but his Augustin's thing is like human beings can error can fall into error but this is what we learn if you only do the things you're certain about that things are you're going to get an a on you're going to limit yourself a lot so the power of a human being lies in our ability to get

1:07:25things wrong and when AI enters that scene where the artifact can be done perfectly we're removing our boldness courage humility and we're going to get a lot of things we're just going to stun our growth because the struggle is how we learn there's not another way the struggle is how we learn the obstacle is the way yeah the obstacle is the way right this is this is back that by cognitive science all the way back to the stoics the Japanese philosophers like this is we all know this when you struggle over something you will retain it under you will get understanding not just accumulation of facts boom mic drop what do you think yeah I got nothing to add to that it's like this frustrating thing for me is that we're so far ahead of once again technology is so far ahead of moral thinking and philosophical thinking that it's it's probably going to be we're going to be playing catch up for the next ever yeah and you know who I blame to Jean-Jacques Rousseau

1:08:28but that's a story for another time are you all this has been one hour and 10 minutes god bless you for staying in this uh yeah this has been fun and we've only just begun adios you