A.I. Will Make Learning Virtuous or Obsolete

The choices before educators and students are stark and foundational

Photo by Immo Wegmann on Unsplash

Education, particularly higher education, has long wrestled with the tension between the functional aims of job readiness and the more spiritual and less measurable good of whole-person formation. The former is indifferent to questions of the good life or implies that the good life is found in a career or money. The latter, at its best, teaches that the good life is found in virtuous living and pursuit and alignment with the Good: God. The former teaches skills for a flourishing career, the latter teaches those same skills in context of a calling. The former requires courses that can directly support job training or credentialing. The latter requires courses that directly cultivate the wisdom of students. The former has dominated the missions of many secular and some Christian universities. The latter has fallen out of favor, in part because it’s less measurable. The former has historically been easy to justify based on efficiency, technique, ROI, and economics. But as A.I. continues to develop, the value proposition of college as career training will decrease. Students will game systems to cheat their way through school, tanking the credentialing value of a degree. A.I. bots will offer to train students faster and cheaper (free?) than with a course in college. The latter, however, will continue to justified based on the fundamental human need to live a full, flourishing life of purpose. Although this tension between job skills training and whole-person formation has existed for a long time, A.I. will bring it to its logical conclusion. Institutions which have devoted themselves to the service of the former will, I predict, fold. And institutions that devote themselves to the latter will, I predict, survive, by-in-large. A.I. will make higher education obsolete or virtuous.