Latest / The Catholic Current / AI and Surveillance Capitalism (Dr. Michael Pakaluk) 5/21/26

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AI and Surveillance Capitalism (Dr. Michael Pakaluk) 5/21/26 · The Catholic Current

0:00
This is The Catholic Current, with Father Robert Metaig.
0:04
I'm going to up my game a little bit.
0:05
I'm feeling rather conspiratorial these days, Dr. Taylor, and if you want to talk me out
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of it, take your best shot.
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Oh no, go ahead.
0:11
Oh yeah, well I'll conspire you.
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I think there's something along these lines.
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We have to separate children from both parents, so that way they can be more subject to social
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manipulation, especially in the classroom.
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Yeah, I don't think that's conspiratorial.
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I think they're actually coming out and saying it.
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That's why I say it's not a conspiracy.
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Praise be Jesus Christ.
0:36
This is Father Robert Metaig of the Society of Jesus, your daily host for The Catholic
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In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.
0:56
We pray, God, through the intercession of St. Ignatius of Loyola, we ask that you pour
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forth your Holy Spirit upon us, a spirit of discernment that might hear your voice and
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obey your command.
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In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.
1:07
Amen.
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Hey friends, a hot topic these days is artificial intelligence.
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There's a lot to be said.
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Everybody seems to have an opinion about it.
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Some people think that this is the greatest thing since electricity.
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Some people think this is the basis of dystopian nightmares.
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There's economic significance, there's theological significance, and there's practical significance
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as well.
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Let's try to sort that out together, and there is an article that came out, gosh, just back
1:36
in March in The Catholic Thing, and I said, I want to talk to the author.
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He's been a guest on the show before.
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He's professor of political economy in the Bush School of Business at the Catholic University
1:47
of America, and he is very widely published.
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I do recommend all of his work.
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Dr. Michael Pakaluk, welcome back to The Catholic Current.
1:55
Hi, Fr.
1:56
McTigge.
1:57
Doctor, what I find really interesting about your article is there's lots of different
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approaches about artificial intelligence, but you cast it in light of Leo XIII's Rerum
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Novarum, kind of the Urtext of Catholic social teaching, and you say that AI represents an
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intrusion into family life and parish life.
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I haven't seen anyone approach it quite that way.
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Fill us in, please.
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Yeah, you've really picked up on something.
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I mean, I think this was actually a new thought in this piece, and I write these 1,000-word
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essays every couple of weeks, and sometimes you have a new thought, and you're correct
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about that.
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So we often think about Rerum Novarum as about the relation of labor and capital and the
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concentration of wealth in the hands of a few industrialists and the massive workers
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being destitute and wage slaves, and that's part of it, but it's actually not Leo's first
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concern.
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His first concern is with the destruction of the family because work is now being farmed
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out to factories, and the father, the whole point about the living wage is the father
3:10
needs to be supported so that the mother and the children don't have to go out to the factories,
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and that he's the one who's supporting them rather than the owner of the factory.
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He doesn't want the owner of the factory to become kind of now the head parent of a household
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because he's the one who's supporting everybody.
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So it's this destruction of family life, the possibility of worship in particular, he's
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deeply concerned about that, the mother's place in the family, which we've completely
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forgotten about because we go along with the secular view that it's great to have women
3:39
working out in the work world as much as possible, and that's not been the church's teaching.
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The church's teaching has always been that it's better for a mother of your children
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to be at home.
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When she wants to do, society has to make that possible.
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So anyway, you know, Verum Novarum, foundational document of social teaching, and everybody,
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you know, now leaps right away to social structures and structures of sin and social justice,
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but it's first of all about the family.
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So now if you look at what's going on with what a Harvard business professor has called
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surveillance capitalism, this is where the whole point of selling is through advertisement,
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and advertisement has to be focused and has to be targeted, and it needs to have your
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time and attention.
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And so as early as possible, kids are being given devices, which are training them to
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work with these devices or other devices, and they're being targeted and shaped, and
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their entire behavior is being cataloged and recorded.
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So, you know, maybe it's not attached to their name, but it doesn't matter.
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You can call it, you know, number 1015, you know, number 1015, they know everything about
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number 1015, like all the websites you've gone to, where you've gone, what your preferences
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are, and they're going to exploit that to make you as addicted as possible to these
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machines.
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So when you have fathers today who, and we see them at the restaurants, right, they bring
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their families to a restaurant, and all the kids are on devices, and nobody talks to one
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another anymore.
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And that's not an accident.
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This is by design.
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It's by design of surveillance capitalism that these kids are not any longer focused
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on the family or certainly not saying prayers or reading a book.
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Like if you drive through the neighborhood, you see kids standing at the bus stop, nobody's
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got a book.
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Nobody's talking to one another.
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Each person is looking at his phone.
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This is what we, and again, it's not by accident.
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No, this is very deliberate.
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And I think it's interesting that some of the Silicon Valley mavens don't let their
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own kids get involved with it.
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James Corbett referred to the portable electronic device, he called it the fondle slab, which
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is a phrase I wish I hadn't heard, but I think it is correct.
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But we are meant to be separated from each other, to be isolated, and therefore lonely,
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so that way we can be manipulated.
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And then it stirs up hungers and passions, and then offers a kind of faux nutrition.
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So is it fair to say that we're seeing an accelerated, cultivated culture of addiction?
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Is that fair?
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Absolutely fair.
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And it could be the only way that we get out of this is through lawsuits similar to the
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cigarette lawsuits that kind of broke the tobacco industry.
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Because once you have a lawsuit, there's been some recently been settled, but once you have
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a lawsuit, you have what's called discovery.
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So you can subpoena the correspondence back and forth between the executives of a tech
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company and what the very, very sophisticated psychologists and behavioral scientists they
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hire about how you can get kids to stay glued to screens.
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Once you have that revealed, that could be game over.
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I think my point, you mentioned AI at the beginning, AI can be a red herring here.
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That's not originally the problem.
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The originally the problem is the devices and social media, and AI can exaggerate that
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and turn people almost psychotic.
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But that's in a certain sense, a problem built upon a problem.
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So, you know, if somebody says, well, Leo the 14th is going to focus on AI, my first
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thought is, sorry, that's a distraction.
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I mean, let's focus on surveillance, capitalism.
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That's the more important thing right now, not AI.
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Right.
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I think there, and we see a case of this, I know with the operating system of Linux,
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it offers greater privacy than if you're working with Macintosh or with Windows or Google,
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et cetera.
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But now they want to have age verification, you know, quote unquote, to protect the children.
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But I think what it's really aimed towards is we want to know your exact identity so
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that we can punish you for unpopular opinions.
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And we certainly see this taking place in Britain right now, where police can show up
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at your door because you said something online that someone conceivably might've taken as
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offensive.
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We've only got about three minutes left in this segment.
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Have you given some thought to the idea of surveillance is not only through the advertisers,
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but also through the state?
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Yeah.
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I mean, if one shudders to think about that, you know, it's like, I want to, let's deal
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with one horrible problem at a time, there's the social media and the devices, then artificial
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intelligence.
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And then look, we saw the sinister side of this with the COVID lockdowns, and it was
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so self-righteous.
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But you just take that self-righteousness and this idea that the individual elected
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freely puts everybody at risk.
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And now this surveillance technology is very, very, very dangerous.
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Yes.
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Yes.
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I remember reading in the aftermath of January 6th, which is a narrative that's been rewritten
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several times, but apparently a number of banks without being asked and without receiving
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a subpoena went to the FBI and said, hey, we had customers in Washington, D.C. that
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day.
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Do you want to know who they are?
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And I found that horrifying.
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The people seem to be, you know, rushing towards, you know, our surveillance overlords.
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And then in 2027, your car is going to come with, lack of a word, devices, sensors.
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And so if you are in distress or the car decides that you're not safe to drive, the car will
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turn itself off and report you.
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And someone said, well, what if I'm a farmer and I injured myself and I'm bleeding and
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I need to get to the hospital?
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I'm going to be physically in distress.
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If the car decides you can't drive because you're upset, you know, then I'm going to
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bleed out.
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I'm going to die.
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And let's not forget that, you know, there was some suggestion that, hey, you know, we
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don't like what Russia is doing in Ukraine.
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Okay, let's have Elon Musk turn off all the Teslas in Russia.
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And then we see this with, you know, central banking digital currency.
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This is what the Chinese have perfected with their social credit score, is that you will
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be disconnected from your livelihood if an algorithm decides that you're guilty of wrong
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think in some way.
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So I find this terrifying and I see too many people who should know better rushing into
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the open arms of the machine.
10:55
Friends, we come back and we continue our conversation with a returning expert guest
10:59
like Dr. Michael Pakaluk at the Catholic University of America.
11:02
We're talking about surveillance, capitalism, artificial intelligence, and really the destruction
11:07
of the family.
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13:26
We're talking about Artificial Intelligence and Surveillance Capitalism.
13:30
My returning guest is Dr. Michael Bukalik.
13:32
Dr. Bukalik, two images I want to offer to you first.
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I think of my father, part of the greatest generation, fought in World War II, came back
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from the Navy, got a blue-collar job with his high school education, and supported a
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family of five as a sole breadwinner.
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Everybody had their own bedroom.
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We had a two-car garage with one car.
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We had two weeks at the Jersey Shore every summer, and we had steak on Sundays for dinner.
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So that's one image.
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The other is Sam Cannon.
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It's a book called Fire in the Belly, that there was a time when boys grew up where you
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would go with Dad and all the men of the village, and you would do the family work in the fields
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and so on, and you were initiated into the company of men.
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With the Industrial Revolution, Junior wakes up, Dad is already working like a dog in the
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factory, 12 or 14 hours a day.
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He spends his time only with Mom and female teachers, and he sees Dad come back broken
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and defeated in his encounter with the world.
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And I want to say, the image of what Dad is living, most people, Gen Z and Gen Alpha,
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can't imagine, and the horrors of the Industrial Revolution we're seeing now, but Junior is
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growing up with a device, because Mom is in the electronic factory, too.
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What are your thoughts about these images?
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Well, I want to say something about the Greatest Generation.
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First is that they were so much more modest than we are.
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We're tremendously wealthy compared with them, and look at the tiny little houses, like the
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tiny house that Robert Privost grew up in in Chicago.
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It's like 1,000 square feet, and that was fine.
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But other towns were tiny little houses, and people were very modest, and they accepted
15:24
modest things.
15:26
So we're very wealthy today.
15:28
So that's one thing.
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Then another thing is you have two incomes generally chasing these things in most urban
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areas.
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So that's going to elevate the prices of everything.
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That's just simple economics.
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So if the standard is that two incomes are chasing houses, then a single income is not
15:48
going to buy you a very good house.
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I mean, that's the most elementary economics you can find.
15:54
And then there's another factor here, which is the erosion of the value of money, which
15:59
I disagree with strongly.
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The Federal Reserve has this 2% inflation per year.
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It's price stability.
16:05
You know, go to an inflation, an interest rate or a calculator, and look at what happens
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to the value of money if you presuppose a 2% interest rate over 50 years.
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It basically diminishes to, I don't know, 10% of its original value.
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So it's being eroded, I would say, through fiat currency and government expenditure,
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the dollars being dragged through the dirt.
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So all of these things are combining, and they're warring against the family.
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And I think what's called social teaching needs to change its focus.
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We're no longer in the era of labor versus capital, that's the big social question.
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It's really the sustainability and the livability of the family as the basic cell of society.
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That's related to marriage and divorce.
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If you read Leo XIII in Pie of C11, divorce was the worst thing to think of.
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Divorce became widespread, basically the whole game is up.
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And we just take divorce for granted.
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We don't even think that can be changed.
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So there's divorce and, of course, sexual immorality and pornography.
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That's all related to society.
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How absurd would it be if you were a physician and you said it doesn't matter that bacteria
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are infiltrating cells because what's really important about the body is the structure
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of the skeleton?
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That's just ridiculous.
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That's basically what the attitude of the social justice warriors is.
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I think that's because they're caught up primarily in a Marxist analysis, and that's the outgrowth
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of critical theory and the universities and so on.
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Not acknowledging, for example, that not only was Marx a poor philosopher and a worse economist,
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he was an absolutely miserable, horrifying human being that any person of good sense
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would rightly condemn.
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And yet, it seems that the Marxists and the critical theorists have the ear of very many
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influential Catholics and institutions as well.
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But I want to come back to the family, that we have to say very simple, clear things,
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that God made men and women for each other, and good things happen, and citizens for heaven
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are produced, and they need to be begotten and educated and formed.
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And the best place to do that is in the home, and there is an indispensable role for motherhood.
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And I think one of the reasons why people get so spit-fleckled angry about defending
18:47
an abortion is because we haven't taught women for a couple of generations how to be anything
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other than sex objects.
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And once you take away the security of abortion, that's going to lower your market value as
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a sex object, because we're not training women how to be mothers and homemakers and
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acquire the skills and virtues to be a good wife and mother.
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So the irony is that the feminist movement has made women exploitable objects even worse
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than before.
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Is that a fair assessment?
19:22
Yeah, it definitely is.
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And I want to ask, how can a house be a home unless there's somebody there?
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So, you know, I love the university campus in the summer when there are no students,
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because it's just free, and I'm a scholar, and I can wander around, and it's got this
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feeling of, you know, just like a park, but that's not a university, and that's not a
19:44
college.
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Or you can think of other analogies, like, I mean, even a Catholic, what's the difference
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between our Lord being in the tabernacle and not being in the tabernacle?
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The church has turned into a home because our Lord is present there, and so somehow
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the mom is not going to be in the household, and kids are supposed to think that that structure
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makes a home for them.
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Well, you know, that's your teaching.
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If you expect that, you're teaching them materialism, which is unworkable, but it's also completely
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false.
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Right.
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There has to be somebody there.
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And, you know, maybe it doesn't have to be the mom, it could be, you know, Aunt Chutka,
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and you know, and some cousins, or, yeah, exactly.
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It needs to be the place where the family is, where people are living there.
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Right.
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I think that our current economic structure reduces the home primarily to a dormitory,
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and incidentally, that's where the Wi-Fi is.
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And so it's the place of entertainment and consumption, and ultimately addiction, but
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there's no real reference to, you know, that this is, you know, the domestic church, or
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the school of love, et cetera.
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And it seems to me that Catholic Cadres, or the people who should really know better club,
20:59
are falling down on sounding the alarm about that.
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Why do you think that is?
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Probably it's not, there's not a full embrace of the call to holiness, because the call
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to holiness means all of my time is yours, everything that I own is yours, the way I
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structure my life is yours, let me rethink everything in relation to what your purposes
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are, and I'm willing to give it up if I need to, but that's not what we do, you know, it's
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just my life is formed by what celebrities are doing, and influencers, and people in
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general are doing, and we pat ourselves on the back if God is somehow has a place there.
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Now we're really being good, because maybe we say some prayers, or we refer to God when
21:51
we win a football game, or something like that, but that's not Christianity.
21:56
No.
21:56
So, you know, the people who are pioneer families, or, you know, going back to farms,
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and so on, okay, look, not everybody has to go back to farms, but everybody has to have
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the same willingness to restructure their lives in accordance with the demands of the
22:14
gospel, and not in a way that's heavy-handed, and authoritarian, and makes everybody feel
22:21
oppressed, like, but in a way, and maybe in a way that's gradual, in a way that's free,
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and maybe not as complete as you'd like if you're the parents, you've got to be moving
22:30
in that direction.
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Right.
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The father has a big role here to play.
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Jim Stenson is a great teacher on fatherhood, but you said the house becomes a kind of
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dormitory, a place of entertainment and consumption.
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And Jim Stenson used to say, this is a trap that fathers can't fall into, because they
22:49
don't appeal to their children if they're viewed as frivolous consumption persons.
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Maybe they're highly skilled professionals, where they have tremendous respect, because
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they're so accomplished in their field.
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But then if they go home, and they just get silly, you know, having a drink and watching
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TV, they don't look very impressive to their children.
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Right.
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So, there has to be some way in which the children see them at work as something they're
23:18
really good at.
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And if it can't be the professional work as their brain surgeon, then maybe it's, you
23:23
know, building something together, or studying something together.
23:27
Or, you know, cultivating a life of prayer, you know, letting your kids see that you go
23:33
to mass on holy days and not just Sundays, and you go to confession regularly and are
23:39
glad for it.
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And I think that leading by example is absolutely indispensable.
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And I've worked with a lot of families where fathers express frustration, because they
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feel they are absolutely entitled, when they come home from work, to stare into their phone
23:59
in isolation for an hour.
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And what does that communicate to the children?
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What also does it, you know, dad doesn't want to connect with us.
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And I'll wrap up this segment with a story I've told about before.
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I was at an airport, and I expressed my moral superiority by reading paperback books and
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also writing with a fountain pen and a journal while everyone else was locked into their
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devices.
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And there was a mom and a toddler.
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They were sitting back to back, each one absolutely immersed in a different device.
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And one could have disappeared for an hour, and the other one would not have noticed.
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And I've always insisted that in addition to the faith, the most important gift you
24:42
can give your child is to say in word and deed, you are worth my time.
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And when we isolate ourselves before the beatific vision of the electronic device that relativizes
25:01
children, it relativizes your spouse, and again, reinforces the idea that the family
25:07
home is merely a house where the beds, the microwave, and the router are.
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I think that's destructive of family.
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I think it's corrosive of the possibility of prayer and worship.
25:21
And I really would like to see more church leaders speaking about this.
25:28
Friends, we come back to continue our conversation with Dr. Michael Pakaluk of the Catholic
25:31
University of America.
25:33
We're talking about technology and its corrosive effects on family life.
25:38
After the broadcast today, go to thestationofthecross.com, get our resources list, download our audio
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My returning guest today is Dr. Michael Bakaluk of the Catholic University of America.
27:27
We're talking about technology, surveillance, capitalism, and its corrosive effect on family
27:33
life.
27:34
Dr. Bakaluk, you're married, you're a father of a large family, you have a better sense
27:39
than most, I would say, for what works and what doesn't.
27:42
You see what takes place in the life of your students, the crushing of attention span,
27:48
the distractibility, and you and I can wax eloquent for unsolicited advice to the hierarchy.
27:55
I don't think we're likely to be listened to, but I know there are a lot of parents
27:59
and young adults out there.
28:01
What's your recommendation for putting our own homes in order?
28:04
Well, I think a lot of dads think that things are out of control and they have no ability
28:09
to change them.
28:10
So the first thing I want to say is, yeah, I think you do have the ability, although
28:13
it may take some time if things have gotten out of control.
28:17
But I mean, there's some simple rules that we've observed that it seems to have worked.
28:22
And one is not to have smartphones in the hands of kids until there's some need.
28:28
So the use of the phone corresponds to responsibilities, like they have to travel to ballet, or they're
28:35
drivers for a carpool or something like that.
28:38
So generally, that's 13 at the earliest, and maybe around 15 or 16 when they start driving
28:44
or traveling.
28:46
Then they get a smartphone, but it's understood to be connected with responsibilities and
28:50
that's the main use of it, not distraction or social media.
28:53
And then we can control also, I don't know how my wife does it, but I think the phones
28:58
that they're using, at first they get dumb phones, but she can control what apps are
29:03
allowed to use and how long they can be on the phone.
29:08
And there's a curfew and it shuts off and they have to put their phones, the ones who
29:13
have smartphones, the older ones, they have to put them in a drawer.
29:16
So they're never in the room with the phone alone.
29:19
And apart from that, from a very early age, read to the children and use books, Audible,
29:27
which is fantastic.
29:28
I mean, to listen to books, it's like a million times better than looking at a phone, right?
29:32
So have them fall in love with listening to books and a smart kid will just become completely
29:37
entranced with listening to books.
29:39
That's a good addiction.
29:41
And then find friends.
29:45
So it's really important to have families, to kind of associate with families who think
29:51
in the same way so that your children don't feel like they're complete oddballs.
29:56
And even if you could, a family which is even stricter.
30:00
So we have some good friends, actually, a well-known philosopher who is even far stricter
30:06
than we are.
30:07
Actually, we're more severe about movies and he's far stricter about devices.
30:13
So it balances out well.
30:15
I think that's tremendously, when we were at Ave Maria together, one of the things I
30:21
really admired about the smartest families was they let their children see healthy, sane
30:28
adults.
30:29
They say, this is what you can become if you live rightly and look at the love and happiness
30:37
and effectiveness that they have.
30:40
So parents control who comes in through the front door.
30:44
I think they need to control who comes into their home via their different devices and
30:50
cables and so on.
30:52
I think that's tremendously important.
30:55
And then also the way that you're raising your kids, that's not the common way.
31:02
What about when your kid goes over to another kid's house where there are no rules?
31:07
How do you begin to navigate that?
31:09
Well, that doesn't happen very much.
31:12
But then I also think, by the way, I just want to step back one step, which is that
31:16
there's a great documentary about social media and I can't remember the name of it.
31:20
There's only one.
31:21
But it really conveys quite well how when you're using the phone, you are being used
31:26
by the companies.
31:29
And so this old maxim, if you're not paying through the use of the phone, then you're
31:33
actually the product, you're not the customer.
31:37
So I want to have that consciousness as soon as my child is reaching adulthood, understanding
31:43
that there are people who want to use that device to make them addicted is probably too
31:49
strong, but to control them, and they have to be aware of that.
31:54
And then I kind of mock them gently when I see them attached to the phone.
31:59
And usually it's texting friends.
32:02
When a kid is 16 or 17, it used to be that he'd be on the phone, and you know, the phones
32:07
with the...
32:08
Remember the phone with the long cord?
32:09
Oh, sure.
32:10
And the kids would be in the hallway and they'd wrap the cord around the doorway so they'd
32:14
get some privacy and talk to their friends for hours.
32:17
Well, that's fine if it happens on a phone.
32:19
It's the same thing.
32:20
You know, human nature stays the same.
32:22
So that will happen.
32:25
But still, it looks ridiculous for my son, older sons or grown men, you know, for like
32:30
a grown man to be staring at a two by four screen, and I'll make fun of them and say
32:35
how ridiculous they look, and they laugh at it too because they understand it's ridiculous.
32:41
But I wanted to say about this, I think it's really the ancients understood this well,
32:47
that contempt is very important, you know, and a lot of our clerics would have no room
32:51
for it.
32:52
But it's true that contempt is a highly important part of being a virtuous person, and you have
32:59
to have contempt for certain modes of doing things, and, you know, certain types of music
33:04
and certain modes of speaking and certain vulgarities and certain lack of discipline
33:09
and lack of control.
33:10
It shouldn't be simply that you don't do it, it's that you actually have contempt for it.
33:15
So I do try, I do, I'm enough of an Aristotelian that I foster, try to foster this kind of
33:21
good contempt in my children.
33:24
I think that is tremendously important, because you've got to let your kids know there are
33:28
certain things that are unworthy of you, that are inconsistent with your dignity as a human
33:35
being or inconsistent with your baptismal character, you know, hey, you receive our
33:39
Lord in the Eucharist, you can't behave like that.
33:42
And no one ever, it's a very rare thing.
33:47
And you also say, you know what, this is not what healthy, happy people do.
33:52
And you know, we've all seen, you know, horrifying stories of people having car accidents, getting
33:57
texted, etc.
33:59
Let's shift a little bit and talk about attention span and prayer.
34:03
I had some friends who were traumatized, they undertook the heroic task of trying to get
34:07
young teens ready for confirmation.
34:10
And they started naively with, oh, we'll just start with a silent holy hour.
34:14
And the kids were astounded, outraged, that they would have to sit in front of the Blessed
34:20
Sacrament and not look at their phones.
34:24
What does this do to us spiritually?
34:25
Yeah, and it's even worse than looking at the phone, I guess, studies have been done
34:29
that if you simply have the phone in your pocket, right, that distracts you when you
34:33
think about the possibility of pulling out the phone and using it, right.
34:36
So it's, it's a very, very strong thing.
34:39
I think it's the sight is the most informative sense.
34:45
And the glowing screen is similar to looking at a fire.
34:48
I mean, it really does speak to, you know, very, very primal things within us, the use
34:54
of these devices.
34:55
So we have to acknowledge that.
34:57
But yeah, I see this with professors, and we discuss this from all around the country,
35:02
they see the same thing.
35:04
It's not apparently not possible for the typical college student to sit and listen to an hour
35:09
lecture any longer, they all seem to have to get up at some point.
35:13
And they say they're going to the bathroom.
35:15
But what that really means is they need to go and look at their phone in the bathroom.
35:19
Yeah.
35:20
And for half an hour at a time, yeah, it takes them a while to come back from the bathroom.
35:24
Yeah, it's very, yeah, it's very distressing.
35:28
And this requires I think we have to have some pity for people because again, it's an
35:32
uneven battle.
35:33
We have very wealthy tech companies hiring the best experts to make them like this, right?
35:39
They didn't decide I'm going to become a wretched, addicted person and waste my time.
35:43
That's not how it happened.
35:45
Right, right.
35:46
It's analogous to, you know, putting chemicals into cigarettes or adjusting certain fast
35:52
foods, Doritos, which is a weakness of mine, which is why I can't have them in the house.
35:57
So it just makes you crave more.
36:01
So is it fair to say that we end up becoming dopamine addicts?
36:06
I suppose you could say, I don't know if that's the main neurotransmitter that's at
36:10
work here, but we're definitely some kind of.
36:14
It's analogous to the slot machine in Las Vegas.
36:19
I once went to a wedding outside of Las Vegas and the hotel we're staying at, I had to walk
36:25
across the casino floor to get to breakfast and there's nothing sadder than a casino at
36:33
seven in the morning because the place reeks of cigarette smoke and stale beer.
36:38
And there are very desperate people like it's mixed between an automaton and a zombie just
36:44
pulling the lever on the slot machine over and over again, because maybe this time it'll
36:50
be different.
36:51
Maybe this time it'll be a payoff.
36:54
And it's analogous to, you know, tick tock videos and short form videos that maybe the
36:59
next one will bring me the happy that I'm looking for.
37:05
What does that do to us psychologically, socially, spiritually?
37:08
And I'm mindful I asked you a vast question with three minutes left in the segment.
37:12
Oh, it kind of hollows us out.
37:14
I think it's, I mean, all the spiritual writers write about this, the kind of the pools of
37:18
distraction that we can basically lose our souls in.
37:22
We don't have that collection.
37:24
We don't have this self-possession that Bishop Eric Fardin has written about so well.
37:31
We really don't even exist.
37:36
So there needs to be interiority and it's one of the great contributions of Christianity
37:40
because I don't think it was really pursued as a good in the classical world, just an
37:47
interior life.
37:48
So you lose it.
37:51
You can lose interior life by endless distractions.
37:54
Yes.
37:55
And you certainly can't live in the presence of God if you're living in the presence of
37:59
tick tock and Instagram.
38:01
Right.
38:02
That sense of constant noise.
38:04
I mean, I think back to my undergraduate days.
38:07
I had a summer job working for an auto insurance company and they had to make the 40, some
38:12
of my colleagues who were just a few years older than me and all college graduates had
38:16
to make a 45 minute drive from East Orange to Trenton.
38:22
And there was a panic about whose car to take because everyone's car, the radio was broken.
38:28
And what would they do for 45 minutes without the radio to listen to?
38:32
Now, that was over 40 years ago.
38:36
Things haven't gotten much better, have they?
38:38
Yeah, that's so innocent, right?
38:41
In comparison.
38:42
I know.
38:43
But again, but I add, these were all college graduates who had spent some time reading
38:52
and this was well before the internet.
38:55
So they spent time reading, they spent time doing research, they spent at least a little
38:59
time with great books that maybe they wrote papers and letters by hand.
39:04
And even 40 years ago, the very idea of driving on the New Jersey turnpike for 45 minutes
39:12
without a radio.
39:13
I said, you know, there's five of you in the car, maybe talk to each other.
39:18
And they looked at me like I was crazy.
39:21
And maybe I was.
39:23
And so now, I even know good families, there's a family, they've got young girls, freshmen,
39:30
sophomore in high school.
39:31
And her mom said, you know, Sally, put your phone down when I'm talking to you.
39:36
And she said, okay, mom, but can I at least leave the phone where I can see it?
39:42
And that reminded me of Richard Pryor talking about overcoming his drug addiction and how
39:48
his pipe used to talk to him.
39:52
And the pipe became the master and commander of his soul and of behavior with very, very
39:59
great harm.
40:00
And I think we're setting up a culture of distraction and addiction and manipulation.
40:09
And that's not good for souls.
40:11
It's not good for family life.
40:12
It's not good for civil polity as well.
40:16
And I really would like to see the church take the lead, because I think Catholicism
40:21
really does have the remedy for that.
40:24
Friends, when we come back, we're going to continue our conversation with Dr. Michael
40:27
Bakaluk of the Catholic University of America.
40:30
We're talking about surveillance, capitalism, technology, and its corrosive effects on families
40:34
and on souls.
40:36
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Praise be Jesus Christ.
41:52
This is Fr.
41:53
Robert McTague of the Society of Jesus, your daily host for The Catholic Current, where
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we bring Christ to the world and the world to Christ.
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You're listening to us from the Station of the Cross studios, your local radio station,
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Please do support us at thestationofthecross.com.
42:25
My returning guest is Dr. Michael Bakaluk of the Catholic University of America.
42:28
Dr. Bakaluk, we've been talking about the intrusion of technology and AI and surveillance
42:33
capitalism into the home, into family life, into spiritual life.
42:38
What about in the classroom?
42:42
How has this been affecting your teaching and your students?
42:45
Well, first of all, there's a dispute among professors as to whether devices should be
42:50
allowed in the classroom, like laptops and tablets, or whether they should be completely
42:56
banned.
42:57
And I've gone back and forth.
43:00
When I've had them in the classroom, I've had students sign an honor code statement
43:06
that they agree not to be on the internet, you know, before God, you know, I would ever
43:11
solemnly promise that I will not be on the internet during class.
43:15
I think that that worked.
43:16
But in my school, a determination was made for the school as a whole, that devices were
43:23
no longer to be allowed in class because teachers thought that this was better, that they'd
43:28
get the attention of students, look them eye to eye, work on this kind of, you know, talking
43:34
extempore.
43:35
I'm in a business school, so that's very important in business.
43:40
So that's the way we've gone as a school.
43:44
You know, I've taught a lot of professionals, and they all have their laptops and they probably,
43:48
you know, they do their professional work while they listen to my class, and that's
43:53
fine, but students are in a different place, right?
43:56
So there's that issue.
43:57
Then there's the other issue of how you do work, any take-home work.
44:02
And my conviction, and that I share with a lot of colleagues, is that it's no longer
44:07
possible to have any kind of safeguard about the originality of work, given how easy it
44:14
is to write things using AI, and I don't want to be involved in the business of trying to
44:19
identify AI use.
44:22
In fact, you know, I think AI, everybody should be using AI, but it has to be used appropriately
44:28
and not to cut corners, and only after you've developed certain skills and thinking.
44:35
So what we do is, some people go the whole European method of an oral examination, but
44:42
you know this, with a 20-minute oral exam, it's like a dentist with a probe, you can
44:48
very quickly find out where the weak spots are and where the strengths are, just by drilling
44:53
down and targeting, questioning.
44:56
So there's a reason why it survived for so many years in Rome and in Oxford and Cambridge,
45:01
it actually does work.
45:02
But what I do is, I will have essays on exams, where they prepare the essay, and I'll even
45:10
allow them to bring a crib sheet with quotations that they might want to use for the essay.
45:14
So they have to work it all out, they have to plan the essay, and they have to think
45:18
about it.
45:19
If they're smart, they'll write it at home before they come to the exam.
45:21
And then what they do when they come to exams, they just write it into a blue book.
45:25
So you know, there are no computers, they have their phones, you know, the phones are
45:30
put away, so they just sit down, come in, and write their essays into a blue book.
45:34
So I know that it's theirs.
45:36
When I was teaching and students would tell me, oh father, I take better notes with a
45:40
laptop and I'd give them a piece of paper, what's that?
45:43
Oh, that's your learning contract, that if you have your laptop in my classroom to take
45:48
notes, you have to email me your notes before you leave the room.
45:51
And then nobody was interested in having a laptop in the classroom, so what might a reasonable
45:57
man infer?
45:59
Now, I want to put parentheses around the issue of I think AI can be a useful tool in
46:04
the right hands, etc., but that's not most people most of the time.
46:09
What is it doing to the student's view of learning?
46:11
I know there was a discussion, I think it was an Ivy League school, where there was
46:15
a kerfuffle of this young man admitted after graduation that he did all of his final exams
46:20
his spring semester, senior year, with AI, and so he met the requirements, so therefore
46:25
he earned the credential.
46:27
Have you heard of that and what are the conversations among your colleagues about that?
46:31
Well, a couple of things.
46:33
First, AI compounds issues that we already have, and they're more important, they need
46:37
to be addressed first in my view.
46:39
So what you're seeing at colleges all around the country is tremendous grade inflation,
46:44
where 70% of students in class are getting a straight A, not even an A-, and so there's
46:51
no way of discriminating good work from bad work, and this penalizes the really excellent
46:56
students, and the really bad students are getting maybe B-plus or something like that.
47:01
There's still, nobody's failing, and they need to fail.
47:05
So that's the first thing that needs to be reformed.
47:08
It's impossible for individual professors to do it, because then your enrollments drop
47:14
and your teaching evaluations drop if you're the only strict person in the whole school.
47:19
So this needs to be done at an administrator's level, and administrators don't like to do
47:23
it because it can affect numbers.
47:26
So that's the much more serious problem.
47:31
When I was, I gave a talk at MIT a couple of months ago, and I asked the students over
47:36
lunch while they're using AI to do their problem sets, and they said something as, maybe this
47:42
is only at MIT, right?
47:43
And the students said, no, no, we're not going to use AI.
47:45
First of all, we want to get 100%, and AI is going to make mistakes, and it's going
47:50
to make mistakes similar to students' mistakes.
47:52
So first of all, that's really good.
47:54
I was with students who actually didn't want to use AI because it wasn't good enough for
47:57
their problem sets.
47:58
And then they said that, you know, whatever, 98% wasn't good for them.
48:04
So then the next thing they said is that, well, if we use AI on our problem sets, we
48:08
won't learn the material, and 70% of the grade is going to be the final exam, and they can't
48:13
use AI in the final exam.
48:15
I don't know about the student you're talking about, who said he did all his exams on AI,
48:21
but they can't.
48:23
So they need to learn the material.
48:25
But so then I said to them, well, how do you use AI?
48:28
And they said, well, we use it like a collaborator.
48:31
At MIT, collaboration is encouraged.
48:33
So we can form study groups, we can work on problem sets together.
48:37
So in the same way, now, here's where your concern might be, well, AI might crowd out
48:42
working with a fellow student, it might make studying less social at MIT, because students
48:49
now will choose the convenience of working with a bot, rather than getting together with
48:54
a mate to, you know, to work on a problem set.
48:58
So all that seemed very sensible to me, what the MIT students were saying, it all seemed
49:03
pretty right to me.
49:04
Well, you know, one of the things that I wanted to encourage among students, and this is my
49:08
own experience studying philosophy at the Catholic University of America, is to get
49:13
your classmates together as peers, and walk through an issue or a problem together, not
49:20
only to say, hey, you didn't write down properly what the professor said, but no, you're, you're
49:25
misreading Aristotle here.
49:28
And so that way, if you can begin to correct each other and show the why of the correction,
49:33
then that elevates everybody.
49:37
That's part and then also, that's the basis of great friendship.
49:41
And it just says, you know, comrades in arms, you have, you know, you have comrades in arms
49:46
struggling together to work out to understand a philosophical concept.
49:50
And I think a lot of that intellectual friendship, not to mention spiritual friendship, is vitiated
49:58
if you're dependent only on a machine, and only for the sake of getting the credential,
50:03
rather than mastering the knowledge and learning the skill.
50:08
Dr. Michael Bukalik, thank you for an absolutely fascinating conversation.
50:12
God bless you.
50:13
Very good work.
50:14
And I do look forward to next time before long.
50:16
This is so much fun.
50:17
Great.
50:18
It's great to be on your show.
50:19
Thank you.
50:20
Thank you so much, Dr. I'm Deirdre Father Robert McKay, your host here every day at
50:23
The Catholic Current.
50:24
You want to join us tomorrow.
50:25
You know what happens on Fridays at The Catholic Current.
50:28
Let's talk about this.
50:29
You and me, we walk through a complex issue together.
50:31
And of course, you'll want to stay with us for the whole hour, because we wrap up with
50:35
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50:39
scriptures.
50:40
So we all prayed up for Sunday mass.
50:43
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50:56
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51:00
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51:02
May Almighty God bless you, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, go in peace and please do
51:06
pray for me, for I am a sinner.