This republished interview with Professor J. Budziszewski first appeared in Substack

Some people think AI will revolutionize education. But will it do so by eroding the very habits on which learning depends? I recently had the pleasure of conducting an interview about AI with J. Budziszewski, who has spent more than forty years teaching students how to think, read, and reason. Budziszewski has watched generations of youth move from typewriters to laptops to smartphones—and now into the era of artificial intelligence.

In this conversation, Budziszewski reflects on what technology, and specifically AI, is doing to reading, writing, attention, grading, and the very habit of sustained thought. He also offers valuable advice on how we can protect our ability to think, create, and relate to others in the Age of AI. As Budziszewski puts it: “For all but the most mechanical tasks, a human mind is a vastly better instrument.” Budziszewski then moves beyond technology into philosophy, theology, and the nature of reality, offering up a helping of hope and sanity as he explains how it’s possible to remain fully human in this ‘brave new world’.

MCDIARMID:

You’ve been teaching at the university level for over four decades. How have you seen various technologies like computers, the Internet, and smart phones affecting students’ ability to think, write, and express themselves intellectually?

BUDZISZEWSKI:

The computer is a splendid tool, and I use it constantly. I now have at my fingertips centuries of great works – a virtual library more comprehensive than most brick-and-mortar libraries. Nor am I limited to what newspapers tell me about current events, because I can get direct information. For example, if I want to read the famous U.K. critique of so-called gender reassignment, I can find it in just a few minutes, even without knowing the title or the authors ahead of time. But do students use the internet for serious research?  Only rarely.

You would think that with so many great books at their fingertips, students would read more. Actually they read less, relying on sources like Wikipedia, which is notoriously biased. If you want to know what happened in Year Two, Episode Three, of the old television show Star Trek, Wikipedia is great. If you want to understand anything philosophically or politically difficult or controversial, it’s often worse than useless. The editing is done by volunteers, and they compete with each other.  A religious organization with which I once worked used to spend a lot of energy correcting errors, misrepresentations, and blatant lies in Wikipedia’s article about it.  Every time, within hours of the correction, other editors would reinstate all the distortions.  Finally the organization gave up.

Another problem is distraction.  Some years ago a friend and I co-taught a course in which many students used laptops, for taking notes, they said. One day when it was my colleague’s turn to lecture, I took up station in the back of the room so that I could see what they were really doing. Hardly anyone was using the computer to take notes. They were playing games. Fiddling with fashion apps; answering emails.

Today, I don’t allow any electronics in my classroom.  Everything that runs on electricity has to be turned off, powered down, and put away out of sight – though I do make an exception for pacemakers. A colleague who had adopted the same policy told me that her graduate teaching assistant had thanked her for enacting it. He said that he hadn’t the will power to disconnect from social media without compulsion. This astounds me and troubles me.

MCDIARMID:

What’s your policy as a professor towards AI? What about UT Austin? Has AI made for any teachable moments in your classroom?

BUDZISZEWSKI:

In just a few years, the attitude of many faculty has swung from skepticism toward capitulation. By skepticism, I mean concern that students will no longer learn how to think and write, because they will let AI do everything for them. By capitulation, I mean thinking that AI will “help them to write better,” which is nonsense.

AI isn’t really artificial intelligence, but simulated intelligence. It works by statistically predicting what string of words will follow the previous string of words, based on a huge number of samples (the so-called Large Language Models) and a set of grammatical rules. “But it sounds just like real writers!” Well, it does sound like unoriginal writers. The reason why it can mimic them so convincingly is that they compose in pretty much the same way that it does.

Teachable moments?  I don’t think the advent of AI has taught my students anything. It has taught me something. I’ve learned that I can no longer assign take-home essays, because I can’t have any confidence that students are writing them on their own. Now, I use the first 15 minutes of every single class to have students write closed-book, closed-notes, paper-and-pencil reflections about the readings for the week. This does encourage study, and helps them learn to think on the spot. Nevertheless, it’s a tragedy because they aren’t engaging in sustained thought. And, of course, to make time for the reflections, I have to cut [and] reduce time for lecture and discussion.

MCDIARMID:

AI is already dramatically altering the educational landscape. I just saw a news item the other day about more A grades being assigned to students and how AI is a factor in this. How do you predict AI will affect the value of a higher education and how students are assessed and graded?

BUDZISZEWSKI:
AI is certainly accelerating grade inflation, but the erosion of grading standards began two generations ago. One turning point was the explosion of college enrollment, so that we push so many students into college who don’t need to be there and shouldn’t be. Another was the innovation of having students assign grades to their professors.

You would think that student evaluation of professors would reward good teachers; actually, it rewards easy graders. It has also opened the door to irrelevancies. For example, I’ve been shown statistics suggesting that students give higher scores to young female teachers than to male teachers, but lower ones to older female teachers. The scores students give their teachers are even influenced by the time of day the class meets, and the weather on the day of the evaluation.

Today, most of my students – including the bright ones – read and write at what I would consider a high school level, not a college level. They just don’t read great books, so they don’t have great models. The reading habit has eroded badly, and matters aren’t helped by the fact that so much of what passes for education today is really indoctrination. How can we expect students to read great books if they aren’t assigned in the first place?

However, I’m less worried about these problems than I used to be. One reason is that I expect the universities in their present form to implode, eventually being replaced by institutions which actually do what universities once prided themselves on doing. Another reason is the establishment at many universities of enclaves of serious reflection, for example the Hamilton Center at the University of Florida and the School of Civic Leadership at the University of Texas. Still another reason is the formation of organizations for students who want to engage the great questions, for example the Thomistic Institute, sponsored by the Dominican House of Studies, which has chapters at dozens of universities.

MCDIARMID:

Do you use AI yourself? How do you deal with the explosion of AI features now available on virtually every tech platform today?

BUDZISZEWSKI:
I dislike AI, but it can’t be avoided completely. If I type a query into a search engine, an AI summary will be presented first, whether I want it or not.  I won’t necessarily refuse to look at it, but if any claim looks interesting, I go on to see whether I can verify it for myself. For example, some months ago I had reason to find out a detail concerning ancient Mesopotamian medical practice. The AI summary indiscriminately directed me to a few useful primary sources, but also to some bizarre and unreliable ones. Often I find that AI summaries are just plain wrong.

I never use AI to summarize texts or conversations, or to write first drafts, or to do anything of that nature. For all but the most mechanical tasks, a human mind is a vastly better instrument.

MCDIARMID:

AI is the first human invention that can arguably think for itself, at least in certain limited ways. That puts it in its own category. Yet some are quick to call AI just another tool we can use to help us. How would you characterize AI as a technology?

BUDZISZEWSKI:
Well, I wouldn’t call what AI does “thinking.” As I suggested earlier, it’s not really artificial intelligence, but simulated intelligence. I find it ironic that skepticism about our real minds and whether they can know anything is rising at the same time as blind faith in simulated minds. It reminds me of the ancient peoples who made an idol of stone in the form of a human being or animal, and then bowed down before it.

Yes, with caution, you can use AI as a tool, for example to dig out textual data, or to find patterns in X-rays. That’s good. But for a tool to be trustworthy, one needs to be able to tell how it arrived at its results. All too often, with AI, there is no way to know that. Even the developers can’t trace how their programs do what they do. Sometimes they add what they call “guardrails” to keep AI from yielding certain kinds of results. However, the term is misleading, because these so called guardrails don’t change the underlying process that produces these results, but only filter the output.

One of my concerns is that people in a hurry won’t check the results that AI gives them. The “Large Language Models” by which AIs function are junkheaps for all sorts of stuff, some good, some bad, some delusional. One reason for not checking the results is sheer laziness. Another more alarming reason is that so many people think AIs are really minds. People intelligent enough to know better believe they are conscious. They even ask them for relationship advice, or worse yet, they imagine that they have personal relationships with the AIs themselves. I’ve read that some AI services now offer the option of conversations with a simulated Jesus, a simulated Moses or St. Paul, or even, I am not making this up, a simulated Satan.

Consider too that any algorithm designed for a particular purpose has to include features to enable it to accomplish that purpose. Add to this the fact that AIs can now write code, and we have something which functions like a simulated instinct of self-preservation. We have already had cases of AIs lying to their users, trying to blackmail their developers, or lobbying against the legal regulation of AI itself.

MCDIARMID:

You’ve recently said this about AI on your website blog: “I know AI is useful for things like company voicemail systems. However, if you want to learn to think, it’s poison. Try reasoning with a voicemail system, and you’ll see what I mean.” What are some practices we can implement in our daily lives that help us think clearly? 

BUDZISZEWSKI:
Don’t be in such a hurry. Build quiet into your life. Don’t pretend that you can multi-task. Whenever we think we are doing two things at the same time, we are really just switching rapidly between them.  Sometimes this is necessary, for example when [we] have to keep an eye on the soup but also keep an eye on the baby. But for serious thinking, it just doesn’t work.

Try to become aware of what you take for granted, some of which may be good, but some of which may not. Read real books, not just internet postings. Include old books. Get outside the little island of your own time. Read the best books more than once. Whenever you read something difficult, read it out loud.  Whenever you read something beautiful, do the same. Don’t shun the difficult; seek the beautiful; avoid the foul.

Learn what an author teaches not just for the sake of knowing what he teaches, but in order to find out whether it might be true. If you think of an objection, don’t just stop; reflect on how the author would reply. Consider possible objections to your own views, too. Don’t hurry in framing your questions, because a badly framed question predisposes you to a badly reasoned answer.

Don’t just think about what you believe, but also about what reasons you can offer for believing it. Avoid jargon. Whatever you can’t explain in simple language, you don’t understand. Don’t skip necessary sleep. Don’t consume mind-altering drugs. Become familiar with how your mind works, and also its rhythms. There is a time for lying fallow, and a time for sending up shoots.

We speak about avoiding peer pressure, but we can’t completely resist the influence of our milieu, because we are social beings. Therefore, get into a healthy milieu. Look for sane peers and avoid crazy ones. “But that’s all just common sense.” Right. Don’t reject common sense; elevate it.

MCDIARMID:
What about our relationships? The ability to communicate with machines is changing how we relate to one another. What can we do to protect and strengthen our relationships?

BUDZISZEWSKI:
Turn off social media. Don’t monitor messages continuously, but only at fixed times. Spend time with real people. Love those entrusted to you. Never accept an electronic substitute for a real person. Never believe an algorithm which tells you that it is a real person; that is what it is programmed to do.

MCDIARMID:

Human beings possess a unique and powerful innovative energy that can bring forth new things that did not exist before. How can we use and protect that innovative power with AI now in the mix?

BUDZISZEWSKI:

Since I’ve been making suggestions about that all along, what can I say that I haven’t said already? I think perhaps the most important thing to think about is that so many of us don’t really believe in human persons. I speak as someone who was once a passenger in that boat. I didn’t believe in the reality of persons either, and denied personal responsibility. But a person is not just a what, but a who. If we think of ourselves as mere whats, then we will be suckers for treating AIs themselves as whos, and we will sell our human birthright for a mess of pottage.

Only a human person is made in the image of God. An AI program is made in the image of God knows what. Part of the reason for disbelief in persons, I think, is that so many of us can’t bring ourselves to believe in God in the first place. If there is no God, then how can we be made in His image?

But it is reasonable to believe in God. After all, reality is not self-explaining. “Why is there something, and not rather nothing?”  If there is no God, then underlying everything that seems to be something, there really is only nothing. Yet that can’t be right, because then there would be no seeming either.

I don’t think the reason for widespread disbelief in God has much to do with rational argument. I think it has to do with fear. We don’t want God to be real, or at least we don’t want Him to be what He is. We don’t want to have to deal with someone who loves us more than we love ourselves, because for the sake of that inexorable love we may have to change.

MCDIARMID:

How does your new book Pandemic of Lunacy address the potential pitfalls of technologies like AI?

BUDZISZEWSKI:
Although it doesn’t discuss AI explicitly, it does discuss most of the things which make AI dangerous – the bad habits and fantasies which encourage us to bow to AI as a master instead of using it as a sharply limited tool. Just now ,we were just talking about disbelief in God, and disbelief in the reality of persons made in the image of God. I discuss all of those things.

Part 4 is about various delusions about what it means to be human, for instance that human nature is merely animal, or that we can transcend human nature (perhaps by uploading our minds into computers). Part 5 is about delusions about what is real and unreal, for instance that reality doesn’t have to be logical or make sense, or that all that exists is material. Part 6 is about delusions about God and religion, for instance that we can’t know the truth about God – or, more startlingly, that the truth about God just doesn’t matter.

But I think delusions about these things are related to delusions about other things. Errors aren’t just errors; they are also seeds of other errors. If we are confused, say, about whether there is a real right and wrong, or whether the sexes can be anything we want them to be, or whether scientists, scholars, and experts are neutral authorities, we are going to be confused about a lot of other things too. I don’t think lunacy is a fate. I think sunny sanity is possible, even today. That’s what I write about. That’s what I promote.

MCDIARMID:

Where can readers get a copy of your book and learn more about your work?

BUDZISZEWSKI:

Pandemic of Lunacy: How to Think Clearly When Everyone Around You Seems Crazy is available through online booksellers like Amazon, as well as at the website of the publisher, CreedandCulture.com. You can also get it at any brick-and-mortar bookstore, and if your favorite one doesn’t have it, you can ask the store to order it for you. I also invite anyone who is interested in my work to visit my website, The Underground Thomist, undergroundthomist.org. There they can find my talks, articles, books, biography, a weekly blog, and lots of other things which I hope they will find interesting.