In Trust Center
The In Trust Center podcast is hosted by Matt Hufman. Walk alongside theological school leaders and innovators as they explore issues relevant to North American seminaries, all while helping institutions live out their missions more intentionally. Find more at intrust.org/podcast.
In Trust Center
Ep. 84 - Engaging innovation and AI in theological education
Acadia Divinity College in Canada has been experimenting with AI and exploring the future of theological education and the church. The Rev. Anna Robbins, Ph.D., discusses what the school has done (including offering an AI-developed class) and describes AI's moment in history as akin to the printing press because of its transformative nature. She considers the mission of theological schools, the accessibility of AI, and how schools might preserve human connection and formation.
Hello and welcome to the Intra Center Podcast, where we connect with experts and innovators in theological education around topics important to theological school leaders. Thank you for joining us. Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Good Governance Podcast. I'm Matt Huffman. I am joined today by the Reverend Dr. Anna Robbins, who is the president of Acadia Divinity College in Nova Scotia and Dean of Theology of Acadia University, has been since 2019. Is that right? That's correct. Probably feels longer. Anna, welcome to the podcast.
SPEAKER_01:Thanks so much, Matt. It's great to be here having a chat with you again.
SPEAKER_00:I'm going to um belabor or cut through all of the uh resume stuff, but it's important that people know. I mean, we're we're having a we've had a little conversation off uh recording, but uh uh people need to know. You are uh a chair of theology, ethics, and cultures, you're directing a center for Christian faith and culture at the at the school. Um, you have a career as uh a theologian, you have done great scholarly work, you've done administrative work, you've been an educator, a professor, you've also been in the church um as a church leader. And I I want to say that because I think it's important people understand the perspective we're going to talk about uh as we talk about artificial intelligence. You at Acadia, you've all done some great work. Um, you're a futurist, I didn't mention that, um, but you've done some great work looking into the future of the church. The the you know, you're you're working on that at Acadia uh with a new center for that. Um let's start first. Um we're gonna talk today about artificial intelligence and and how it's being used in theological education or not, what the future looks like, but I want to set a framework for that. And I think it's important that people understand that your background is certainly somebody who's come out of the church, it's come out of uh a great and deep theological reflection and an understanding of what it takes to uh be in this space and succeed in this space because it's complicated, to say the least.
SPEAKER_01:More complicated every day.
SPEAKER_00:More complicated every day. So let's start talking about AI. And and you and I have had some great conversations without it being recorded. Um, but I think there's this the we have a bipolar relationship in terms of how we talk about AI. It we either hide our, you know, it's the proverbial bury hand in bury head in the sand, or you or there's chicken little, the sky is falling. Um one of the things I appreciate what you've done, and you've spoken extensively about this, and you're you're speaking about the experience of how Katie is dealing with it. You've even created a course out of AI. Um, so let's start with understanding all that. I'm gonna give that background so people understand that you are deeply engaged in it, your school's deeply engaged in it. First, let's start with what do you think the framework ought to be? You know, when we hear it in theological circles or we hear about it in theological education, um, give me a framework for how you would want somebody to start to approach the conversation.
SPEAKER_01:I think first of all, Matt, that people have to recognize that this is not just another cultural trend. Uh the emergence of AI, which is not new, it's just accessible in new ways at the moment. And um uh, but the emergence of AI is likely to have uh as big an effect, if not bigger, than the development of the printing press on uh Western culture, the culture of the world. And so recognizing that this isn't just another trend and it'll come and it'll go and that sort of thing, recognizing the power that it has uh and the uh even the social upheaval, uh, those impacts that it's going to have, industries that will have to be transformed. Some might shut down. Uh, and uh how we respond to that as theologians, as leaders in the church is really important. Um, and so I get frustrated sometimes when people say, well, you know, it's not, it's just, it is just another thing. Like, well, it's not really just another thing. This is a really, really big thing. And so although that seems overwhelming sometimes and scary sometimes, I don't know that we have a pass as Christian leaders on uh the scary and big things. Uh, in fact, we probably have a call to meet them head on uh to to engage and to see what is this thing. So if we the chicken little people, you know, the sky is falling, this is terrible, um, as well as the people who are head in the sand, I think both of them are motivated by fear. And and it's a big scary thing. And so we'll pretend it's a small thing and doesn't need our attention, um, or we will run far away because it's just too scary. Um, well, I don't know about everyone else, but I like to think I'm friends with the God of the universe. So I don't need to be afraid. Um, and I'm not afraid. And um, and and I think the call to us has always been to engage. What's happening in the world, what's happening in culture, not embrace. That's not what I would ever say out of the, and I've had some people actually say, well, you guys are embracing all that AI. Are you sure that's a good thing? We're not embracing it, we're engaging with it. And we're we're keen to experiment, to find out what it can do, what is the extent of what it can do for us as theological educators, for the church, so that we might be able to harness it for good and to also be able to assess what things about it are not so good. And you can't assess those things if you don't actually understand what it's capable of. And so that's why um we have that frame of saying, we're going to engage, we're going to explore. Um, and I think that's really an adaptive posture uh for a leader to say, well, why should we be afraid of it? We carry who we are into this. And the way that we approach futuring here is to say, well, if we're actually, if we're uh if we're involved in this earlier on uh in its emergence and its impact on contemporary culture, we actually might, might have some kind of uh influence on the direction that it would take. Um, whereas if you just don't engage at all, um, you you won't have that influence. And it could be worse than that because futurists are saying, um, Amy Webb, for example, says this, and I've read others who are saying it, that um unlike many other trends and technologies, if you wait, sometimes people say, well, I'm gonna wait, I'll let the early adopters get in, we'll let them learn their lessons, then we'll decide what we're gonna do. This is different from those technologies. And people are saying if you don't get in on this, and not to get in on it, but if you don't engage and understand now, the gap is gonna be huge and you won't be able to catch up. And so when we saw, when we started experimenting with what AI could do in a very limited kind of way, it was it was potentially impactful enough that we realized we have to be involved with this because um it it changes every day, every month, every hour. And and and if you don't know what's happening, um it will be very, very difficult to catch up. It's very different, for example, from um we were early adopters of Zoom technology for for um hybrid learning, for example. And we had the college all kitted out with the right technology that we need to do that. Um so when pandemic hit, it was it was such an easy switch for us. You know, it's cold up here. We sometimes have snow days. Um I think you guys are experiencing a little bit of that in some place right now. But um, you know, we would we'd just, if it was a snow day, we don't cancel, we just switch to online. And so for us, the pandemic was it was we had all the same kinds of decisions and all kinds of things to make. But the technology side was easy. It was a switch. Uh by the end of the pandemic, everybody had caught up, right? Pretty much.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_01:You know, everyone was able to get the technology. Okay, we weren't first, they weren't first off the bat with the with the tech, but now they're there. And so we're kind of we're not necessarily that much further ahead than anybody else in some ways, uh, when it came to that. I would say that maybe we pushed into some new pedagogy and some of those things, but AI is different. And so if if people aren't paying attention, then either they will have to potentially live life without it going forward if you if you'll be able to do that. Yeah. Uh, or or um, you know, you you won't be able to ever catch up again. At least that's that's what's being posited. And I and I don't disagree with that at this stage.
SPEAKER_00:Well, let me let me step back. You said it was like the printing press rather than the advent of the internet. Yeah, I think so. The the printing, and and I wanna I want to stop on that, not to be pedantic or not to be to quibble, because I don't mean that. When I look at history, the printing press was so revolutionary.
SPEAKER_02:Yes.
SPEAKER_00:Uh, even more so than the internet. Now, I say that I mean right now, you know, you're in Canada, I'm in the United States, we're talking over wires and all this, it's cool stuff.
SPEAKER_01:I don't understand any of it, Matt.
SPEAKER_00:But the printing the printing press put power into people's hands, you know, particularly in the church. All of a sudden the Bible was printed, people could read the word for themselves. There was such an information revolution that started like that. So, in terms of of what AI is capable of, talk to me as a futurist, because I mean the internet was this great advent. Now we have the, you know, we have the the world of the internet and all this knowledge in our our phones, and we still just watch cat videos. But be that as it may, um I'm guilty of it, certainly, but be that as it may, the I think the the revolutionary aspect of AI now, because as you say, it's been around. There's, you know, whether it's it's Siri or Alexa or any number of other things, call trees or things that people have been using for years, but now the power of that is me and my internet connection, and I can get all kinds of interesting stuff, use it all kinds of interesting ways. Talk a little bit about culturally how we need to think about this, because it's not just, as you say, I think you're absolutely right. It's not just I'm gonna catch up with it in two years. In two years' time, it is going to be so far down the line what it's gonna take me to do to catch up would would be significant.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, exactly. Um Yeah, I mean, uh as we know, the printing press it changed all kinds of things about access to information and therefore the way that people relate to one another, the way that in churches, the way people relate to God, even. Um, and uh we know over those centuries that it was probably the most impactful change that happened in the history of at least of the Western world. And um, and people were saying the same about the internet when I started teaching uh very, very long time ago in theological schools, uh, which was in the UK at the time, um, I actually had a whole section of my class on, you know, the impact of the printing press on culture. And I was saying, and in the future, we're gonna find that the internet will unfold in these, you know, and I was kind of positing this future that is now upon us. Uh, I said that it will have a greater impact. And so here we are uh with this uh technology because um it now it's it's the harnessing of all of that information, uh, which some I would say companies, corporations, some people did have the power to do some of that, but now it's at the fingertips of everyone to be able to harness this world of information, which is almost infinite. Um that becomes part of the problem too, because then how do you sort through what's useful information, what's not useful information? It's all out there. Um, but the ability too of the AI to people say it can't think, others say it can think. I my experience of it is that it's think-like. Um, it's able to analyze, it's able to compare and contrast and therefore posit solutions. Um, it's able to dialogue, it's able to pull from all of the resources that are now on the internet in really powerful ways to do anything from, you know, um, you know, telling you how to clean your bagpipes. Um I have a bagpiper still looked up. So, you know, and people would say, well, how's that different from Google? Well, it's different from Google because it's it's it's kind of creating these answers uh for your question. It's not just harvesting something that is published exactly as it was published, it's it's collating those resources, it's analyzing those resources and putting forth some of the best answers. And and it suddenly um the impact of this on universities, on education, nobody nobody should shy away from that because what we're seeing, according to Joel Murphy, who is our futurist in the lab downstairs, part of our project, um, is uh is the death of the knowledge industry. I mean, this is upon us, the death of the knowledge industry. In other words, why do you need professors to teach uh facts and I and those kinds of things when anybody can access them anywhere in the world within seconds? Um, and so people, you know, in universities were founded on the passing on of knowledge. Look at the gathering of knowledge, the um we were the people entrusted with the knowledge for the people, you know, and suddenly uh anybody can have all that knowledge right at their fingertips. And so this is this is revolutionary um in so many ways that that you know could be articulated across many sectors. I think for education, it is hugely revolutionary. Um, and for uh writing industries and uh other kinds of um jobs that for entire, we know entire sectors are going to drop out, right? Because AI is going to replace them without cost. Um, and we already use AI for interesting, I use AI to draft many things in terms of writing and uh documents, policies. It's really, really good at drafting policies, can I say? Yes. Um, and it draws on if you especially if you specify what kind of material you want it to draw on and that sort of thing. So um, and it will get better and better and more and more powerful, and people will understand how to harness it more and more. Um, so I don't think I I wouldn't even posit here's the impact it's going to have, here's what it's going to look like. We can we can glimpse forward and and posit a few things. Uh, but I think um yeah, the the potential here is immense, both for good and for ill.
SPEAKER_00:Well, sure. I mean, as as b as a professional writer, I've already sweated on this, uh, because it's far easier to at least get a draft, whether that's good, bad, and different. But I also know that in a year or two, you'll be able to say, hey, I want this written in a style like and name names, but but to you know, to name a a certain author or a certain whatever. Oh, yes. And but as for a theological school, I think of this and go, well then what's my role? What will my role look like? You know, I think one of the one of the keys in seminary education, theological education is formation. Um, it's not just knowledge, you know, passing on knowledge, it's it's the formative part. Um, but but I don't know, is that enough for a school to think of as they move forward? What is what does it look like, or where do you see this going for a theological school? Or what do you think the leaders or board should be thinking about as as they hear you say this?
SPEAKER_01:Those are a lot of different questions, Matt.
SPEAKER_00:There are so where do you think, where do you think, where what are the openings for a theological school?
SPEAKER_01:Well, so uh I think we have to think about what is this in in the big picture, what what is this gonna what impact is this gonna have on higher education? Yes, and therefore on theological education. And so uh that's one question. Uh, what does it mean for uh faculty development, for example? And some people are panicking saying, oh, you people experimenting with AI, you just want to see all the faculty sacked, and so you can save money as a school. Um, and so I mean, that's there's a there's a thing. Um, as we go into this conversation, I mean, there are there are uh experiments we've done here that have led us to realize that you know, one person could run the seminary off the side of their desk with a handful of avatars quite easily and and and manage um in notion, if not in fact, accredited learning without a faculty altogether. That's not our goal because we don't think that's what theological education is about. That's knowledge transfer, and you don't need the seminary simply for knowledge transfer. Um so I mean, we've been at, we're we're ahead of the game experimenting with this. We're adding faculty, we're not subtracting faculty. So um, because we believe that the future of the seminary is absolutely relational. Um, it doesn't mean that you have to be uh in person, uh face to face in person. I say everyone's in person, whether they're online or on site, they're in person. And increasingly that's the case, but they do want the relationality and the connection. That's something we've learned from uh an experiment we did this term with an AI-generated course, for example. And it helps us to see um both ways that AI can help us to do our work with efficiency to release us for some of the other things that maybe God's calling us to beyond uh the kind of the infinite task of marking, for example, um, and uh devising syllabi and all of those things that faculty love, um, but that's not what brought them into the game, right? What brought them into the game is a curiosity and a and a seeking um, you know, faith-seeking understanding, seeking God's thoughts after him, and those kinds of things are what formed universities to begin with, and why I think theological faculties still exist. And seminaries are places where, I mean, the whole word seminary is seedbed, right? It's a place where you come to grow. Right. Um, and it's organic. And so um the it has to be relational and there has to be time spent uh together in ways that nurture uh the formation and the spirit. And we're gonna have actually more need of this than ever in a world where we're gonna have to be wrestling with what does it mean to be human in a world where AI seems to do so many human things? Things that we thought were uniquely human are no longer so. So, what does it actually mean to be human? And then for the church, what does it mean to be a human who relates to God? And um that that still isn't hardly exhausted at all by the death of knowledge industry, um, because we don't peddle in knowledge of God um objectively so much as um lead people into relationship, deeper relationship with the God they serve and to um and to serve God's people um better because of the relationship they have with God. So um part of that journey is intellectual, of course, because we as human beings, we have minds, but we also have bodies as well as our souls. And so, how do we embody all of that? Um, what it means to be human in the world today. And I I don't know that there is going to be a lot of places where people can find that. And and when we understand too that the the um again, Joel gives me the statistic, I wish I could recall it exactly, but some very large percentage, something like 80% of people between 18 and 21 years old are lonely all the time. We are raising a generation that is lonely all the time. Um, where are those people going to find belonging and and community? And some of these things that AI doesn't, I mean, AI can help you build community, but AI isn't the community. So these are things that I think are you uniquely belong to um to the church, and therefore theological education has an opportunity here to shape that future direction and say theological education doesn't just have to always be catching up to the tools and the latest things. This is a moment where not only the seminary, but the church is suddenly very relevant again in the midst of culture, um, if it ever stopped being relevant. But uh there it is, places of community and belonging and uh uh communities of formation. Uh how do how do I behave in this world? Who am I in this world? Uh the great questions of human existence still will be asked and need to be asked, and probably will be asked with greater urgency in the midst of all of this. So I think we could come into our own if we're ready to uh to engage with what's happening and unfolding around us.
SPEAKER_00:What I hear you say, there's there's this excitement, there's a sense of excitement in this. Because it's for me, definitely. Beyond the technology, there's a re-engagement with the mission of who we are as communities formation.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, absolutely. And and I'm hearing this too. So I at um just the when I began my you said mentioned I started as president in 2019. I went out on across our region on listening tour um, you know, to the churches and just to hear what people are thinking about leadership and what they need for leadership in the future. We just went out again. At that time, um, you know, the big urgency was mental health. Um, and so we were able to respond to that by putting things in place, um, new programs and all kinds of things. But the um I just went out again because I'm about to start my second six-year term. And uh uh so I went out again listening uh to the churches and the on the ground, the word right now is formation, discipleship, and discipleship. And that surprised me actually, Matt. And I was uh, but I'm excited to hear it because it squares so much with the other side of the research, which is you know, in a in an isolating world of tech and AI and so on, and a lack of meaning. Um, what is the church here for? And people are recognizing we want formation, we want discipleship, we want to know what it is to um live in wholeness and and live in a Christ-like way in this world. So um I find that pretty exciting actually, because isn't that what we're here for?
SPEAKER_00:Well, there's there's let's talk about that for a second. I I think we're at a moment even before the big AI chat GPT became all public. I mean, we knew that there was AI out there, now it's accessible to everybody. Um but theological education was at a place, and and behind me on the bookshelf, the theory is a series of books of of theological education between the times. Um, you know, Dan Aylshire wrote well about uh the you know beyond the book was Beyond Professionalism, in which he talked about how you know we become professional schools. Uh Ted Smith, um, and I want to I don't want to ignore anybody because it's a great series. Um but you know, Ted Smith talked about talks about what you're what you just mentioned, the isolation and and the lack of affiliation that people have. So there's this uh we're already, I think, at a move of which schools have a reckoning to to figure out well, how do we fit in this? How does the church fit in this at this time place? But now we've got this AI thing in which I mean, if you think about a theological school, if you have a PhD program, you know, one of the the huge things in a PhD when you get to a dissertation is your literature review. Your literature review now can be done in uh a seminary president who's who's worked in this tells me he goes, Oh, you do literature review in an afternoon now, um, and probably less time.
SPEAKER_01:If you want AI to do it, it'd just take you, you know, right now. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:It's now granted, the formative work of how you distill that knowledge and where it comes isn't necessarily done. But you you'll we'll get there. So it I mean at this point, what I hear you say, because I see there's a there's kind of a sense of who we are as schools. You know, we are professional, academic, and now NEF formation. What I hear you saying is it's more than that now, it's community engagement, discipleship formation is an area which perhaps you're you're seeing the calling for school.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, but I think I think that's what we were formed for. I mean, you can talk about the professionalization of schools. Um, we probably were following higher education lead in that. It makes sense that you know that's that's the way things are. If we follow the higher education path now, I think we might get lost. I think theological educators can lead the way on this one because we're thinking deeply about the sense of meaning and we're thinking deeply about what community is. And at least for us as a school, we're our whole raison d'atch is to be here to um produce, uh produce, to encourage, equip, grow leaders for the church. Um, we're not here to create uh uh standalone professionals. I hope that I do hope that we don't lose a sense though that that um there are professional ways of behaving when you are a leader. Um and sometimes that also goes out the window, and I would decry that. But um if our if our job as a seminary, our job is as a seminary is to uh equip leaders for the church and servants for the church, then they need to understand the world that they're going to be ministering in and the and the ways that they're going to have to um help the discipleship and formation of people in their care and the care, the mental health care of their people, and the building of community within the community. Um and they're gonna have to be able to be equipped to do that in the world in which we exist, which means if you take Ted Smith seriously, it's you're not gonna gather 500 people to do that anymore. Um, but you can use the AI tools to gather groups of people in a way that wasn't really possible before. Um, and and to use it to organize your calendar, your pastoral visiting, your, I mean, those are very traditional things, but to also, you know, have it have AI companions for your certain, you know, um study groups or however it is that you organize things, AI is going to be able to help us facilitate that in all kinds of ways. And and this is the time to engage that. I think it's very fun, the curious imagination of of what it could look like. Because we I think we're fooling ourselves if we think it's going to continue to look the way it does now. It's going to be something really different. And so I'm excited, not because I like to see things that are familiar to me pass away, um, but I'm excited because I don't believe that uh the spirit of God doesn't go before us. I believe that the spirit of God is there before we ever get there. So um I'm excited to see what it is because we still get to are invited to participate in that. That excites me a lot.
SPEAKER_00:Right. Right. And the the time we have remaining, and this is uh, I mean, you know, we could have this conversation for several hours or several days, but uh tell me a little bit about what you think what you're learning. Because again, it at Acadia, I should mention you've you've got a futuring lab, you've engaged AI, uh, you ran a class that was developed by AI uh with with an avatar. Um, you know, your own avatar, uh, taught the class. Um tell me some things that you're that you're pulling out of this, you're learning that would benefit the rest of the field to know about.
SPEAKER_01:Sure. Um happy to do that. Um you're right. There's so many things we could talk about. But uh in an in a nutshell, um, we had um we had an aha moment, I suppose, here. Um I was sitting with my um technology guy and we were kind of, you know, as grumping about having to do a syllabus or something. I said, wouldn't it be great if I could do my syllabus? Because we're already kind of playing around with AI at that point. And uh and he said, Well, let's see. And so I have a large screen at the end of my table. He said, we pulled it up, you know, uh, Chat GBT, and and said, you know, write a syllabus for a course on the ethics of AI. Boom, boom, boom. In seconds it was there. And we kind of just silently looked at each other when we realized it was actually quite good. And so we said, let's pull back and make this a much bigger experiment. And so uh we started by he he taught, um, we we bought the professional uh ChatGBT and uh and then started to teach it who we are. And so we we gave it our calendar, our bunch of literature, our learning outcomes for our programs. Um, we gave it how we learn, we use a pedagogical approach using Bloom's taxonomy, indigenous ways of knowing, everything that was kind of part of who we are that we could think of. We taught it who we are. And then and then we said, okay, now given that in our context, now generate the learning outcomes for a course on the ethics of AI. And boom, there they were. They gave it gave us 10. And I said, How about four? So it reduced them to four. Well, they were better than what. I could do if I'd spent the whole morning doing them. And normally it would take me that long, just because I want to get the wording right. And professors notoriously hate writing learning outcomes. But if you and this is one that anybody can use now, you can teach it your program outcomes, and a professor can say, Okay, I need learning outcomes for my course. Can you give them to me? And and you might have to tweak them here and there a bit, but they're usually pretty good. So that's one, you know, half a day saved for every course you're teaching, right there, potentially. Um, and then we said, How about um you take that those learning outcomes now and do us a 12, I think we did, I can't remember if we did 10 or 12 weeks, 12-week course. Um, give us the topics of each week, and it did that. Give us the readings, it did that. Um, the readings at that point were a little bit um narrow for us. And so we said, because we think it's we're about we're we are a Baptist seminary, uh, but we're also a university department. So yeah, you know, we do it in a university context. So we want a much broader reading. So we said now broaden the reading list. It did that, it was good. Um and then you could quibble about those things, but you would between professors anyway, right? So I'd rather use this book than that book, that sort of thing. It was good. And so then we said our pedagogy here is that we teach in videos um asynchronously, and then we meet weekly um synchronously in a flipped classroom mode. And we've been doing that since the pandemic. And so um we said, write the scripts for the videos for this week, and and and and it did that and then produced the videos. And so uh that was kind of amazing. That blew us away a little bit because it had video and voiceover and it didn't sound automated at all, and kind of blew our minds. And so then as we went on through the development of the course, by that time we had hit upon uh the software where we it was easy to produce an avatar of me. Um and that was kind of that blew our minds a little bit. So we kind of played with that. And then within, again, it changes so fast. Within a couple of months, I could speak five languages and now I can speak 80 languages, right? And so doesn't this change everything? I mean, I'm calling this Pentecost for the seminary. Um, because you know, in a world that's multicultural, uh, whether you're talking about domestic um theological education or global theological education, suddenly the world can come together. And I find that hugely exciting. Right. Uh so we did a lot of a lot of experimentation around that. Anyway, that kept rolling out. So the course was there. We enrolled six uh students uh who volunteered to be part of this experiment. And the the upshot is the entire course from the learning outcomes to the marking to the everything was run by the AI. Um and then we uh, you know, met in with them at the end to do a debrief and have had their feedback now. And of course, you know, the feedback that the students have given was very helpful. Um, they were critical about the lack of personal connection. They love, they want to be relational. They want, they don't, many of them are online students anyway, but they want the personal connection with the professor. They felt duped. They said that, you know, that it was my avatar, but it wasn't me. They felt the level of material they were getting wasn't to the level of what I would give them. And most of them I've taught them before, so they have a familiarity with that. Um that yeah, they said when the marking came back, it came back quickly. The feedback was fulsome and relevant, uh, but they felt again like they were being patronized because, you know, it was telling them, oh, really good job. And they'd say, well, you know, it doesn't mean anything if it doesn't come from a professor. So they gave that it was, and that was not surprising, that feedback. Um, on the other hand, I said, but what about the learning outcomes? We went through them and they had to agree they met all the learning outcomes. So so that was interesting. Um, and going forward, I mean, our intention was never to have AI entirely teach a course. Um, but going forward, we realized, for example, the development of learning outcomes, great. Um, some dialogue on the on the um creation of lectures, I think is good. I found in other contexts, sometimes if I uh if I give it a lecture and I'll say, who have I missed here? And it's really helped me to diversify something. Maybe I've forgotten something or I've missed somebody. Um, and so I think it's really good for for some of those things. It's great for coming up with creative assessments. If you if you're doing the same assessments over and over, and especially now where people, they don't really want students just to chuck out an AI created uh assessment. It'll it'll help you devise really creative assessments, which can't simply just be, you know, here's an essay that AI wrote. Um and in my courses now I have hardly any kind of here's a soul writing piece. It's it's other things. It can do so many things. We're we've we're we're using it to um to provide uh a counseling tool for count students who are studying counseling. So they will counsel the, not that the bot counsels them, they'll cancel the bot, and the bot will then mark them and give them feedback. Um we're we're experimenting with the potential of you know students meeting and having a discussion with Martin Luther and church history and all these kinds of things. It's it's it's it's the possibilities are endless. Um, but we we can never be devoid of the human contact. That's what we learned from the student experience, which we we would have guessed that anyway. But the possibility of offering a much broader theological education globally and so on, um, in cooperation with with others in a global context is something I can talk about all day. And that's a whole other thing. Um, when it comes to the boards, we we didn't I didn't answer that question before. But when it comes to board responsibilities, um, there are policies that are going to have to be in place around um so many of these things. For example, we're we're trying to prepare a policy on um who uh avatars. Who owns the avatar? Does the college or this or the prof? Um what happens to avatar if this if the prof leaves? Uh, who could do what with the avatar, who's legally responsible, you know, all of those kinds of things around some of those. Um, there's so many policies that we're we're kind of figuring out which ones are essential and which ones are need to be in process and that sort of thing. Um, I think for strategic planning, it's it's wrestling with not only what is what is the impact of AI going to be and how are we positioning ourselves as a school is one big question. Uh, but but I think there are other questions along with that too, in terms of can you actually use AI for strategic planning? And I would say that you can. And uh learning how to dialogue with it in ways that you get the answers that you need. Um, we're gonna have to understand what we want to do with this academically. So um I just wrote an article for um our faculty every two years writes a book together. And um, my article, um, I didn't have a lot of time. So no, wait, wait, hold on. Um There we go. There we go. Hold on, hold on, hold on. So I dumped um three lectures that I did for a formal lecture series, and there was a sub-theme in them that I'm writing on. And so I say, out of these lectures, and and I used our Chat GBT, so it doesn't learn from us, it's it's only ours. It knows how to write in my style. They've taught it how to do that. And I said, only using these lectures and the material in them that I've created, I said, can you pull out that theme into a, I don't know, I think I asked for a 4,000-word paper. Well, this was weird because it took it way too long, it took it days, days. And I thought there was something wrong. Every time I checked in, it was all apologetic, like, oh, I'm so sorry, I'll get it done soon. And what was going on? Eventually it turned out a thousand words, which was really lame. But within it, there was this really good outline, and it had done a really excellent job at integrating and pulling out that theme so that I was then able to flush stuff out. And then we worked back and forth, and I'd say, okay, in this section, it really needs to say more about that other thing. Can you go back to lecture three and pull that section out and put it there? So we had this kind of back and forth all the way through that I really found super enjoyable. And I think my work was better for it. And but I think that I did something that AI couldn't have done on its own. So it's almost this co-creative aspect. I find it hugely enjoyable. Um, but people get really suspicious when you say it. So then as a faculty, we had to have a huge discussion, which we still really haven't settled about is AI then a co-writer? Yeah, do we have to give it credit? I think we do need to be transparent, give it credit. And I'm just going to explain exactly how I used it. That these were, and I had a huge long conversation with AI about that too. And that's also an interesting thing about, you know, does did the chat DPT think it deserved credit for what it did? And um it was fantastic. But so we will have acknowledgement, and I'll be very transparent. But part of me was really tempted just to put it down as co-writer, as co-author, just to be provocative. But I think that was a little bit unfair. Um, yeah, that's a lot. It's like a fire hose. Sorry, Matt.
SPEAKER_00:It is a fire hose, but I think that's appropriate given the subject. I mean, I think anybody coming to it, particularly those of us who've been um who have been brought through education in traditional ways, we're in a fire hose situation. We're in a fire hose situation. So as we close, because we've got a couple minutes left, give me a couple things, just some framing thoughts as we close. I mean, I've heard you talk about engagement. I've heard you talk about the the the kind of big picture transformational time we're in, a printing press era. I've heard you talk about I mean, all these really cool ways that you're all futuring and using this. Um I've also heard you talk about the Spirit of God moving in this. So closing thoughts about last things you would want somebody, you know, and again, understanding that this is just a piece of a larger conversation. I'm sure, you know, the field's having, and you and I will have, I'm sure, over the years uh to come. But it's some closing thoughts that you would want to leave folks with.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I think one of the things I I think a lot about in those kind in that kind of conversation is how we need to approach it with a a sense of humility. And I think for a long time, um, people in uh theological schools and in higher education generally, we kind of, you know, we're the people who have arrived. We've learned so much stuff, and we got PhDs, and aren't we the smartest people? And um, I think uh when we recognize that the world has changed so much that maybe it's a different kind of knowledge needed. That can either come to us as a threat or as an invitation. And I think that that in theological education, we're prepared for the invitation, but we have to be able to be hum humble enough to recognize that okay, was my PhD on the wall ever really what I was called into this for? And and and and yet now it can be used in a way that helps guide, I would suppose, in some ways, our interaction with AI, with wisdom, um, rather than knowledge. Um, and so developing a humble wisdom as we approach all of this, I think is really key. And recognizing uh as, I mean, I'm convinced that there's nowhere in the world that the spirit of God can't be and isn't. And so um finding how the spirit how Holy Spirit is leading us in this, uh, I think is is a great adventure. Um and uh I if there's any way that we can use uh the emergence of AI and its potential in a positive way to serve the church and uh people uh coming to know God better and more Christ-like in our context, um then I'm all for it. But uh but I think we have to be humble and uh reliant and listening and uh and uh theologically reflective in the all the time because you know I have had people say to me, you know, are you just jumping in? What about the ethics? You need to take time for the ethics, and like, well, we're reflection and action, right? But the reflection piece is crucial to to to not just embrace it because it's exciting, um, but to be thoughtful about who who gains from this and who pays and um what what's this gonna cost humanity in the end and and to recognize the environmental costs and some of those things that it's not adjusted. Um but we also can't stop it. The genie's out of the bottle and the toothpaste has been squeezed. You can't get it back in the tube. So what are we gonna do with it? Um, is the challenge and the invitation is the opportunity.
SPEAKER_00:That's a great place to end. Anna, thank you for your work in this, and thank you for your time and and your thoughtfulness to the discussion.
SPEAKER_01:Pleasure. Thanks, Matt.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you for listening to the Intrust Center's Good Governance Podcast. For more information about this podcast, other episodes, and additional resources, visit intrust.org.