My doctoral students stared at me in disbelief. “That’s right,” I repeated, half-amused. “I want you to invite NotebookLM into your small group discussion.”
My students are understandably surprised. The typical educator has been generally concerned about limiting the use of AI and insisting on proper citation if students must—and only if they must—engage with it. But this default attitude ignores an ongoing shift in our world: We are already working and living in an increasingly AI-immersed reality. Hence, it is our obligation as educators to foster AI literacy among our students, mandate its use by integrating it into their learning so they can learn to use it safely, ethically, and effectively.
Our class had just listened to a short podcast generated by NotebookLM mere seconds after I uploaded a PDF. The podcast, featuring what sounded like a genuine, casual exchange between two people, managed to clarify some rather complex concepts that had previously challenged the class.
“Amazing!” one student blurted out.
“That’s right, and there are so many more possibilities. For today’s assigned reading, I want you to do something a little different. Discuss it in your small groups, but also, make sure to upload the reading to NotebookLM so you can include AI as a participant in your discussion. Assign a scribe to take notes for NotebookLM and don’t hesitate to pose questions to it.”
I heard a few chuckles, but the students eagerly embraced this novel task.
Welcome to the 21st-century classroom, where, like it or not, AI is best viewed as a fellow teacher and learner—or better still, a “co-intelligence,” a concept developed by Ethan Mollick in his 2024 book of the same name, Co-intelligence: Living and Working with AI. It’s understandable that my instructions raised eyebrows; the traditional educational stance has often been one of caution and restriction.
Besides, despite the growing sophistication of AI-detection software, the reality is that we simply cannot effectively police our students’ engagement with this technology. The most pragmatic and productive approach for educators, it seems, is one of “measured enthusiasm.”
This very recommendation formed the core of our report back in 2023, when I had the privilege of heading our university’s task force on Generative AI. The mandate of Ateneo de Manila’s GenAI Task Force was clear: to make sense of the AI phenomenon and its impact on education, to propose university-wide policy guidelines for AI use in learning, teaching, and research, and specifically, to explore ways to reimagine our current instructional models. The insights we gained during this period have deeply informed my current thinking about pedagogy in the age of AI.
In the report we submitted to our University President, Fr. Bobby Yap, SJ, we urged our faculty to actively use and experiment with AI in their work, to learn as much as possible about its capabilities, to appreciate its potential benefits, and to manage any associated risks or unintended consequences.
The launch of ChatGPT in November 2022 sent shockwaves through educational institutions worldwide, prompting debates about traditional assessments and established pedagogy. What indeed is the point of assigning essays if ChatGPT can effortlessly generate well-crafted texts in mere seconds? What value does teaching content hold when an increasing array of AI applications, such as NotebookLM, can dissect intricate ideas, complete with compelling metaphors, in the blink of an eye?
Yet, for us at the task force, much more disturbing than academic integrity is a more fundamental question in education: What is the potential impact of AI on learning and thinking? In May 2023, New York Times columnist Ezra Klein offers a compelling perspective, suggesting that many of us today lean towards what he has called “The Matrix Theory of the Mind.” Recall the pivotal scene in the first Matrix film where the protagonist, Neo, mastered Kung Fu not through grueling hours of practice or sparring, not by enduring the inevitable injuries. Instead, he simply downloaded the needed knowledge and skills in a flash. He skipped the learning process.
Klein’s point is worth thinking about: Because of the pressures to perform and be productive, many of us today are inclined towards “downloading” knowledge and skills with maximum speed and efficiency, desiring the products of education while skipping the often-demanding processes they entail. With AI applications readily at our fingertips, the temptation to completely outsource the processes of learning and thinking becomes increasingly strong. And why wouldn’t it? We can get instant content with the least amount of effort, experiencing little to no intellectual effort. The way things are going, the proverbial “nose bleeds” associated with deep thought and learning may soon become a thing of the past. No more agonizing migraines from wrestling with complex ideas! Thanks to AI, we can now all simply skip the painstaking process of thinking and learning.
However, as I often remind my fellow educators, in this AI-driven era, content is cheap, but process is precious. The internet and particularly AI grant us access to virtually any information we seek. But there are trade offs when we opt to save on time and effort by bypassing the very act of thinking and learning. We risk losing the opportunity to engage our minds and to cultivate understanding. Moreover, we deprive ourselves of the benefits of “cognitive struggle”—the taxing effort and the difficulties we experience when grappling with a new or challenging concept. Neuroscientists affirm that cognitive struggle is essential to learning and thinking. It is the very sign that our brains are working, that we are actively learning and growing. In fact, many of our most innovative ideas emerge precisely from this process of cognitive struggle. When we become overly reliant on AI, prompting it for instant answers, we circumvent the crucial processes of thinking and learning, thereby losing the profound experience—and the considerable benefits—of cognitive struggle.
It is for this one single reason that I firmly believe educators today face a critical paradigm shift in our approach to education: We must consciously move our primary focus from merely transmitting the products of education—facts, concepts, established theories—to designing the very processes of education—thinking, learning, knowing. Educators committed to learner-centered approaches have long championed this shift; the recent emergence of sophisticated AI technology has only made this transition more urgent than ever.
Fortunately, those of us working within the tradition of Jesuit education can draw upon the rich resources of the Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm. In particular, the Learning by Refraction approach to the IPP (Learning by Refraction: A Practitioner’s Guide to 21st-Century Ignatian Pedagogy) clarifies that Ignatian Pedagogy is not primarily about the delivery of content; rather, it is about the creative and purposeful design of the learning experience itself. The teacher’s most vital role today—especially with AI increasingly accessible to every learner—is that of a learning designer, one who ensures that students will do in our classes what they most likely will not have the opportunity or inclination to do outside: to undergo the processes of experience, reflection, and action. In essence, Ignatian learning designers must grapple with these central design questions: Given our students’ unique context, what experiences should they encounter in the classroom to truly learn? What should they be guided to reflect upon? And how can we best guide them to apply their newfound understanding?
Ultimately, our deepest desire for our students is—to paraphrase the transcendental precepts of the great Bernard Lonergan, SJ, or what I call his “four commandments of knowing and thinking”—that they become individuals who are (1) attentive to their experiences, (2) intelligent and (3) reasonable in their inquiries, and (4) responsible in their actions.
However, as if this weren’t challenging enough, we cannot simply design effective learning processes for our students without including AI. We educators need to consider the integration of AI technology into our pedagogical designs, strategically leveraging its potential as a co-intelligence to enhance the student’s experience, reflection, and action, rather than diminishing or, worse, entirely replacing these crucial processes.
Consider this: I’ve heard many argue that while it’s undeniably a form of academic dishonesty to ask ChatGPT to write an entire essay, it’s perfectly acceptable to upload a draft and request it to refine or revise the text. Yet, for many writers, the act of revision is where deeper learning and critical thinking occur. Could we not be forfeiting a valuable opportunity for our students to think, to reflect, and to learn when we delegate this crucial task of revision to AI? What if, instead of asking AI to perform the actual revision, we request it instead to generate three or four thought-provoking questions to guide the students’ critical evaluation and revision of their work?
In this age of AI, when learning itself is endangered, Ignatian Pedagogy provides a helpful roadmap. But even as we draw from its resources, we need to remember the central challenge for us Ignatian educators today: How can we strategically leverage the power of AI to enhance our students’ experience, reflection, and action, rather than allowing it to diminish—or, even worse, supplant—these indispensable learning processes altogether?
After all, our goal is not to produce second-rate AIs who will never be able to equal this new technology. Rather, the aim of our mission of Jesuit education is to produce first-rate human persons who seek God in all places and are committed to making a difference especially for those in the margins.
Editor’s Note: The author is the Founding Dean of the Gokongwei Brothers School of Education and Learning Design (GBSEALD) of the Ateneo de Manila University and the originator of the Learning by Refraction approach to the Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm. He was requested to head the university’s Task Force on AI in 2023.