You’re 15 years old, a sophomore in high school. Your writing and reading assignments are picking up. You’re expected to read longer selections (not full books, the English teacher had to back down on those assignments two years ago). You’re expected to write short essays based on limited research from internet searches. Your school’s technology officer visited class earlier in the semester to teach about AI prompting. Your English teacher didn’t seem too happy. But obviously your school thinks working with AI is important. So do your parents. They’re using AI extensively at work. No one can imagine you getting a job out of college without the benefit of AI as an essential appendage. You’ll fall behind if you’re not fluent in AI use.
Will you write your research essays from AI prompts? Technically it’s against the rules. So is asking AI for a summary of the selections you were supposed to read. But everyone else in your class is doing it. Your English teacher tried to crack down last year, you heard. Parents complained to the principal when their children got a 0 on their assignment. The principal sided with the parents. There was no sense fighting back. The school’s own logic didn’t allow it. The goal of education (for many public as well as Christian schools) is to get a degree so you can go to college and get a job. Students who don’t use AI to write their college entrance essays and job applications face a competitive disadvantage.
Would you voluntarily accept that disadvantage on principle? At age 15? When your parents don’t mind and your school can’t enforce its own (arbitrary) rules? When even the school itself is showing you all the ways AI can increase your efficiency, including reading and writing? And when you’re already bogged down six nights a week with football practice, Scouts, and youth group at church?
Most likely, you wouldn’t. You’d “write” the essay with an AI prompt.
Varied Reactions
Last week’s announcement of The Gospel Coalition’s AI policy prompted many, varied reactions. Some hated the move (especially on X). Others loved it (especially on Instagram). Several friends and even TGC staff members reached out with specific concerns. Many believe the policy is too restrictive when it comes to AI-assisted research and editing. They guarantee we’ll change this unrealistic policy within two years. More than a few have pointed out that TGC depends in dozens of ways on AI for tech services.
Not everyone will land in the same place on where, when, and how to deploy AI. Just like Christians adopt different approaches to other technology, such as smartphones, social media, TV, and beyond. We’ve already been working for months with various AI experts and ethicists to prepare guidance for churches, schools, and parents on AI use cases. So stay tuned for those resources. We won’t always agree with each other or draw the lines in the same places. Conscience varies.
Some of my wisest friends and closest collaborators think TGC’s policy goes too far, especially in prohibiting research and editing. Other Christian media organizations may allow more AI integration—sometimes even writing as a finished product. The Wall Street Journal last month reported on pastors using AI to write their sermons. Several of TGC’s most insistent critics don’t see any problem with prompting AI to write their Substack posts and X threads.
Readers have inquired what I do when I “catch” writers trying to pass off AI as their own human work. Some of these writers don’t see any problem with what they’ve done. You’re already reading more AI-generated content than you probably realize. Just look up systematic theology books on Amazon. Click on the unfamiliar bios. Maybe you think these books simply reflect the market at work, the inevitable march of technological progress. Humans can’t compete on this uneven playing field with computer-generated content, priced below what traditional publishers and authors can afford.
Then remember how AI models were trained. Ask yourself where the next generation of AI trainers—the pastors, teachers, and professors who labored over their words, taken without their permission or remuneration—will learn and think and write. Your intuitions may not see a problem, given how much AI and other media technology dominate our lives. Or maybe you expect AI to reach general intelligence, rendering human-generated knowledge obsolete. My intuitions, at least, suggest a different future. When computers take over the writing, humans will eventually stop the reading. It doesn’t take an expert economist to explain what happens to the value of writing when no one pays humans to do it.
Or, to put my intuitions another way, what happens to the value of a home run when everyone can hit one with minimal effort?
AI’s Steroid Era
I grew up in the 1990s during what’s now known as the Steroid Era of Major League Baseball. I remember recording the TV broadcast of the game in 1998 when Mark McGwire broke the single-season home run record previously held by Roger Maris of the New York Yankees. In college my friends and I bought tickets in the right field bleachers just down the purple and red lines of the L at Wrigley Field. We reminded Sammy Sosa how many outs there were each inning. We saw Glenallen Hill hit one of the longest home runs in Wrigley Field history, onto the roof of a building across Waveland Avenue. “It’s gotta be the shoes, folks,” Cubs broadcaster Chip Caray exclaimed on WGN.
No, it was the steroids, Hill later admitted. It was almost always the steroids in those days. We just didn’t want to see what our eyes told us.
It was almost always the steroids in those days. We just didn’t want to see what our eyes told us.
There were many reasons back then for baseball players not to take steroids. They were against the rules, for one. They were bad for the players’ health, for another. But Major League Baseball at the time, facing resistance from the players’ union, indulged the home run binge and didn’t strictly enforce the rules. Crowds loved the long ball. Formerly middling players scored record contracts. Business was good. Owners cashed in. The reckoning with personal health and the integrity of the game could wait for another day.
As a matter of basic logic, however, the Steroid Era couldn’t last. The first player to shoot up gained an advantage. So did the next 20. Hitters recovered from injuries faster. But so did pitchers. And when 200 players, both hitters and pitchers, are using steroids, any advantage disappears. The playing field has only shifted levels. Even the clean players feel like they need to take drugs to keep their toehold in the professional game. That pressure cascades down to the minor leagues, to college, and to high school.
And you get 15-year-old aspiring baseball players on steroids. Just like their heroes. Because that’s the only way to make the high school team. That’s the only way to earn a college scholarship. That’s your only hope to play in Wrigley Field someday.
The reckoning with personal health and the integrity of the game can wait for another day.
Full of Grace and Truth
You may not realize the day of reckoning for AI is already here. Talk to the teachers. Talk to the professors. Talk to the editors. If everyone else is writing with AI prompts, would you voluntarily accept a disadvantage on principle? To write slower? To write less effectively? To go to the library and look up sources yourself? To ask a friend to review your essay? To accept a B+ when everyone else you know is scoring an easy A? When Google is asking to help. When Microsoft Word is asking to help. When your teachers can’t do anything. When the tech staff showed you how to do it. When your parents do nothing more than shrug and say, “Back in my day we actually had to pay a friend to write our essays for us.”
Now think of the health of that 15-year-old. Does it matter that he or she won’t grow up knowing how to read a whole book or even an essay? Won’t know how to study something more complicated than a TikTok video? Won’t know how write even a love letter or a wedding toast or a birthday card without AI assistance?
We’re not anti-tech. We’re pro-human. We refuse to surrender our minds to the machines.
I think it matters. A lot. So do my colleagues at TGC. And that’s why we drew the line in the sand, at least for our little corner of the internet.
We’re not anti-tech. We’re pro-human. We refuse to surrender our minds to the machines.
Think about today’s 15-year-olds. What’s best for their health? What kind of world do you plan to leave behind for them?
Leave behind a world of words, our medium to meet the Word full of grace and truth (John 1:14).
