Pepperdine announced its Institute for Wisdom and AI on September 25. The Christian university plans to bring people from several fields together to study how AI affects human life and prepare students to work with it. Some of its expansion depends on further funding, so there is still a difference between what the university has announced and what the institute will accomplish.
I welcome the effort. Decisions about AI are already decisions about people: what we ask students to learn, which tasks we give to software, and who answers for a mistake. Christians have reasons to care about those choices. We need enough knowledge of the technology to help make them.
What faith asks of us
I believe our ability to study the world and build useful things comes from God. The mathematics and engineering behind AI draw on those gifts. That gives me a reason to learn, while remembering that a tool can be impressive and still be used carelessly.
For example, a student can ask AI to explain an argument or to write the assignment. Both may produce a finished page, but they ask very different things of the student. A teacher needs to understand the tool well enough to see whether the student is learning to reason or simply handing in an answer. My belief that people are made in God’s image affects what I want education to do: help a person develop the ability to understand and judge, even when software can complete the task faster.
Pepperdine names the effects on work and education among the questions it wants to examine. A Christian university should be able to study where AI helps and where its use weakens something we need to preserve. That requires people who know the subject and are willing to test their assumptions, including their enthusiasm for AI.
How I’m learning to use it
I increasingly use AI early in my work to investigate a question or challenge an idea. Jordan Wilson’s work at Everyday AI has helped me think more carefully about how to do that. I’m learning to attempt work I might once have thought was beyond me, and to examine the result before relying on it.
A convincing answer can make that second part easy to skip. If a model gives me an explanation, I need to understand why it is right. If it cites a source, I need to check what the source actually says. Otherwise, I may be passing along an error with more confidence than I would have had on my own.
Prayer and dependence on the Holy Spirit remain part of how I make decisions. They also belong in the ordinary work of admitting I don’t understand something, asking for help, and correcting a mistake. Using AI well doesn’t make me less dependent on God or less responsible for what I do with the answer.
I hope Pepperdine gives students a place to develop both technical skill and thoughtful Christian judgment. I’ll be interested in the research and teaching that follow the announcement, especially work that helps a teacher or employer decide when to use AI and when a person still needs to do the work themselves.