Mr. Everett McNair: “Ethical and Wise AI Use”
These posts summarize the forums that our Living Education-Charlotte students attend each week.
Everywhere we look, our modern world is brimming with AI. Whether we are scrolling, texting, using a Word document, or navigating with Google Maps, we interact with it every day. As a result, many have asked how we should use Artificial Intelligence in our lives. Should we embrace its capabilities full force or reject it as much as we can? Should we fear its consequences or excite ourselves over its most recent advances? How can we use AI wisely anyways? Mr. Everett McNair, the current ministerial trainee in Charlotte, addressed all these questions in his recent forum. He focused on the current state of AI, providing principles for using and interacting with it ethically.
The Hype Around Technology
On AI today, Mr. McNair first discussed data centers. He explained how companies like Meta plan to build them across the country, with a goal of launching AI to a higher degree.
The idea, however, has proven extremely controversial, as AI in general has. Mr. McNair touched on that and showed two snippets from a podcast with arguments both for and against AI. On the one hand, for example, some see the technology as a destroyer of creativity. They view it as having the potential to unravel our society and strip thousands of employment. Others, however, believe AI will revolutionize our world, creating more jobs in the long run and multiplying efficiency.
Regardless of what is claimed, though, we should beware of the hype. As defined by Amara’s law, people tend to overestimate technology’s effect in the short term and underestimate it in the long term. Mr. McNair emphasized this, warning against catastrophization.
- Learn to Use AI
Rather than hide from AI, Mr. McNair advised, we should also learn to use it. The reality is pretty much everyone already utilizes the tool, and many workplaces have implemented it, and for good reason. AI can speed up an employee’s job significantly, increasing the efficiency of a company and helping it produce more output.
Learning to use AI, though, does mean we must do so intentionally. We must understand how models like ChatGPT and Claude work while regulating their involvement in our lives. AI, Mr. McNair highlighted, can sometimes hallucinate, for example, displaying information and sources that don’t exist. We should be aware of that so we avoid the trap of taking its word for it. Our responsibility is, after all, to fact-check what we are given.
- Beware of Cognitive Offloading
Another point Mr. McNair made was that, while using AI, we should avoid cognitive offloading. That is, we should stay away from lending our brain over to AI systems, letting them do all the thinking for us. This is because when we wholly rely on, say, ChatGPT, we come away from a task having learned nothing. If we let it write our essays and summarize books, we gain no deeper understanding of a topic. We ensure, then, that any knowledge gained will not stick.
Instead, we ought to prioritize using our own minds, conducting research, and creating products ourselves. Only after that–at the very end–should we ask AI to then give us constructive feedback. We can use the technology for grammar and spellcheck, too, but it’s important to remember that in doing so, we are simply giving up another skill.
- Don’t Let AI Replace Others
In his final segment, Mr. McNair pointed out that many today have far fewer friends than in times past. While interaction online explodes, that connection isn’t real or in person.
In response, some tech companies have launched AI tools claiming to help by providing therapy sessions and digital friends to those without in-person relationships. The tools, however, have only driven the loneliness epidemic, providing nothing but a sugary coating of pleasing words to the user. They do not help, Mr. McNair declared, calling for students to avoid using them for personal issues.
- A Supplement
Ultimately, we must keep in mind that AI is not going away any time soon. If anything, it is spreading rapidly across all industries and all sectors of life. Therefore, we must learn to use the technology as a tool, intentionally, building our understanding of how it works so we can utilize its capacities responsibly.
Author: Mary Wissinger | Living Education
At the same time, we must take care not to let AI replace our minds. As the phrase goes, “If you don’t use it, you lose it.” Mr. McNair told students, “Think about whether you’re using [AI] to make yourself weaker, … whether you’re substituting with it. Is it taking your ability to think, or is it augmenting what you’re already doing?” At the end of the day, we should use AI as nothing more than a supplement for our daily tasks.
