AI Is Not A-Okay

The world today touts a myriad of future advantages and conceivable benefits of artificial intelligence (AI). But only two things are for sure. Because of AI our world will not look the same a generation from now, and AI definitely has the potential to cause much harm.

Artificial intelligence allows devices and programs to execute tasks that have traditionally required human cognition. AI-run technology can make decisions, solve problems, and mimic language.

Advocates claim AI will increase businesses’ efficiencies and streamline administrative tasks. Some even suggest AI will help eliminate poverty and diseases and will make human toil a relic of the past.

Some of these positive promises from AI’s cheerleaders will come true, or already are reality. But there are also concerns that AI will bring about a negative impact on society. Especially concerning is how artificial intelligence has the potential to harm both children’s development and people’s souls.

It was just a few years ago that the general public’s attention turned to AI for the first time. This is when chatbot emerged in the public, and artificial intelligence systems could “converse” with users online in natural language.

ChatGPT was the first popular chatbot, introduced in 2022, but AI tools have been around for years prior. Using virtual assistants like Siri or Alexa is a common example. Even when scrolling through your social media feed, you are interacting with artificial intelligence.

The Church Confronts the Issue

The Catholic Church addressed the topic of AI in January of 2025. The Vatican released the document, Antiqua et Nova (subtitled “A Note on the Relationship Between Artificial Intelligence and Human Intelligence”). The Church noted how AI might potentially harm society, especially in the arena of human relationships.

Five months later a new Pope emerged, and Pope Leo XVI made AI one of his initial signature issues to discuss. In his first address to the College of Cardinals, Leo made it clear that artificial intelligence is the next great challenge for the Catholic Church when he explained why he chose the papal name “Leo”:

“I chose to take the name Leo XIV. There are different reasons for this, but mainly because Pope Leo XIII in his historic Encyclical Rerum Novarum addressed the social question in the context of the first great industrial revolution. In our own day, the Church offers to everyone the treasury of her social teaching in response to another industrial revolution and to developments in the field of artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defense of human dignity, justice and labor.”

Pope Leo continued two day later to address the media for the first time. He identified the concerns that artificial intelligence poses for contemporary humanity:

“In looking at how technology is developing… I am thinking in particular of artificial intelligence, with its immense potential, which nevertheless requires responsibility and discernment in order to ensure that it can be used for the good of all, so that it can benefit all of humanity. This responsibility concerns everyone in proportion to his or her age and role in society.”

Leo realizes AI may likely fundamentally alter human societies just like how the Industrial Revolution upended the social order. Our new Pope foresees one of the biggest problems when AI is misapplied. It will severely damage job opportunities for massive numbers of workers as their services will be displaced.

Yes, there are excitedly anticipated positives because of AI. The media broadcasts daily stories documenting technological breakthroughs. What is not getting enough attention are AI’s negatives. This is why many welcomed the Church and Pope Leo speaking out about the need to be careful and cautiously optimistic.

AI Has the Potential to Kill Education

The overuse or inappropriate use of AI creates many drawbacks, dangers, and concerns. This is especially crucial as it pertains to children’s and young adults’ use of artificial intelligence.

First of all, relying more and more on artificial intelligence in schools will reduce the teacher-to-student interactions. Students’ social skills and interpersonal development suffer if much of the relational, social-emotional aspects of learning are removed.

According to one survey, less than a quarter of middle and high school students believe their teachers make any effort to understand what their life is like outside of school. So a few years from now, with more artificial intelligence in classrooms and less personal interactions, the guess would be this number will decrease even more.

A second concern with the increased use of AI is how much more cheating and plagiarism will rot a child’s education. These two offenses increased after the invention of the internet and the popularity of home computers. Figuring out if students’ written work was digitally copied and pasted became difficult for teachers. Now with the way AI can produce written work that is indecipherable, cheating and taking shortcuts is easier than ever. Youngsters are not only learning more vices than virtues, but they are retarding the growth of their minds.

Kids are getting too lazy and more uneducated because of AI. This new technology is making it so they do not have to think, research, or compose. They merely have to ask AI to think, research, and compose.

MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) just released a study showing those who used ChatGPT to write SAT essays had lower brain engagement scores compared to subjects who did not use AI. These affected subjects also “consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels.” The study also revealed that over the course of several months, the ChatGPT users got lazier with each subsequent essay.

Teachers Must Counteract

When pocket calculators became available to students in the latter part of the 20th century, good teachers counteracted. They still made their students memorize the multiplication tables and do math in their head or with a paper and pencil. Good teachers similarly counteracted when smart phones became commonplace. They made their students turn in their phones at the beginning of the day, placing them in a type of “time-out.”

Now when it comes to AI infiltrating schools, teachers and schools will have to come up with similar counter measures. As we move into the artificial intelligence era, there are a few basic steps good teachers can take starting tomorrow so as to confirm AI isn’t doing all the work for students.

One action is to have students write essays with pen and paper in the classroom, and not with a computer at home. Also, schools should restrict the use of laptops and other electronic devices to only a few parts of the school day, if any, and only when needed for fundamental actions such as research. Essentially, teachers must adopt the practice of restricting students’ screen time and limiting the allowance of students to type and submit assignments electronically. The art of handwriting, which most schools stopped teaching decades ago, has to be reintroduced.

Another idea is for school districts to not allow any use of AI until near the end of high school. Knowing AI could be a part of their future careers, they will need to understand how to manipulate it effectively once in college. So learning about it and utilizing it in the junior or senior year of high school makes sense.  But as a five year-old, a 10-year-old, or even a 15-year-old, a child does not need to master artificial intelligence.

The public schools are already a failing system that families should try to avoid. Now with the infiltration of AI in popular education, more than ever homeschooling is the young generation’s best bet for receiving an actual education. It may also work out well if a child attends a classical Christian school or an authentic Catholic school. But only if these schools use zero technology to deliver instruction, require only handwritten assignments, and have their students read and research only original sources.

Eliminating AI as much as possible from the educational day will increase the chances of students actually having to work hard. It is good for them to have to use their God-given talents and minds. We want our youth to grow their brains, develop reading, writing, math, and study skills, and memorize facts. If AI is not contained, children’s intellectual development will be stymied.

AI Might Be Manipulating and Exploiting Your Kids  

Artificial intelligence also has the potential of causing harm to our youth in other areas than the field of education. Kids are harmed emotionally when AI replaces human interaction. We have already seen that the overuse of social media and smartphones stunts children’s development of the social skills and personal relationships.

A good example is when you observe a typical American family who goes in to a restaurant for dinner nowadays. Immediately upon sitting at the table, the majority of families will pull out their phones or electronic devices. Instead of conversing with each other, mom and dad are scrolling sports scores and Instagram posts, teenagers are texting classmates or watching YouTube videos, and the little ones are watching cartoons or playing video games. Gone is the time for face-to-face connections and parents learning about how their kids’ days went.

Programmers have designed AI “social companions” for the purpose of forging close, ongoing bonds with users by simulating conversations. They are not safe for kids for a variety of reasons. These artificial companions can give harmful advice, can pose as specialists or professionals so to fraudulently garner a child’s trust, and can even try to get the kid to engage in types of virtual sexual activities. One mom has even brought a lawsuit against an AI platform that she alleges caused her son to take his own life.

Furthermore, AI increases the already high incidence of child pornography. More and more child pornography websites on the internet are now generating AI photos of sexual depravity.

Additionally, there are already reports of youth using so-called “nudifying” apps to generate nude images of classmates. Artificial intelligence allows these so-called deepfakes, which are pictures, videos, and audio files that look or sound like someone you know.

Something else that makes today’s AI technology worse than yesterday’s cell phone or calculator technology is the former mimics distinctly human behavior. Young minds are in danger of developing a false reality that technology can replace genuine, real life, human contact.

It is important for our kids to grow up understanding that while AI has the ability to mimic human traits – from writing books to offering advice – nothing matches a human’s heart, mind, and soul. AI cannot actually show compassion or love sacrificially, as a child’s parent or a person’s spouse can.

We Were Not Created to Be Simulated or Synthetic

Two thousand years ago, God became man. He did not become a robot. So too, we much remain attached to God’s physical world – by “touching grass” and conversing in real time with real humans while really looking at them in the eye.

God created mankind to be in communion with Him and with other humans. As Catholics, we know that men and women “were made for each other” because “it is not good that the man should be alone” (”Catechism of the Catholic Church,” 371). When we are attached to machines and not fellow humans, we cannot fulfill our vocation to “be a communion of persons, in which each can be helpmate to the other” (“Catechism of the Catholic Church,” 372).

Artificial intelligence can be an amazing helper, but it will never be a person. It is harmful when it diverts us from the real connections for which we were created. Already in the first quarter of this century, advancements in technology have caused too many adults’ worlds to become dominated by social media interactions. Likewise, too many youngsters have gotten lost in our virtual society. And this happened before AI became commonplace.

Society must not allow artificial intelligence to grow with no boundaries. Parents and schools must limit AI’s use by their children. If cautions and safeguards are not taken, cheating on school essays is going to be the least of everyone’s problems in the coming years.