The Scope of AI

The Scope of AI

(Writer’s Block, Platonic Doxa, and an Angry God)

IN THE HANDS OF AN ANGRY INTELLIGENCE

I’d say two…maybe.  

There have been maybe two individuals who did not turn their heads, raise the tone of their voice slightly, or pause momentarily when I told them about integrating AI into my daily practice as an educator.  It’s as if they were programmed by society to be appalled at the idea.  And it never helps that my first response, against my better judgement, is to ask when the Matrix will become a reality for us.

In my years of experience in the world of education, I have noticed a dangerous sense of pride in practice - so dangerous, that we are hesitant to explore new tools in the learning process. And no doubt, there is a natural and expected fear in what appears to have power beyond our capability to measure.  

However, I think this fear has been perpetuated beyond what is appropriate, largely due to classical narratives and media.  When we think of “Artificial Intelligence” we immediately picture worlds in the likes of The Matrix or Terminator, creating an immediate response of fear before our brains have time to process and respond with reason.  We may also think of classical narratives like Ray Bradbury’s There Will Come Soft Rains, reminding us of fear in the flaws of AI.  We may even take our immediate interpretations of AI’s role in this world into an understanding in the likes of Huxley’s dystopian society in Brave New World, assuming there will be some sense of paternalism or authoritarian demand in our communities.

***

Growing up in a conservative Christian education, I remember sitting in one of my high school courses and listening to a recording of Jonothan Edward’s infamous sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.  For anyone unfamiliar, this is a pillar sermon in many practices for Christian conversion, strongly emphasizing our fallibility as a reminder of God’s extreme grace - he has kept us from eternally suffering in our great sin; not only are we to thank God for his grace, but we are to fear him in his extreme anger.

I’ve noticed that this is the exact lens by which most of us initially view artificial intelligence - we are immediately scared of its god-like reaches of knowledge (and speed of knowledge), we act with gratitude on behalf of its current inability to overtake this world, and we choose an ignorant avoidance of its capabilities over the powerful step of learning it; we fear learning what we do not yet know, even though we crave knowledge - and our brain craves an answer to everything, even if it has to make it up to fill in the gaps.  That, as an oxymoron, may be the greatest lesson in all of this discussion around AI.

But I challenge you to reframe your initial reactions to AI.  I challenge you to disarm it.  I challenge you to think of it not as a robot in complete, paternalistic social control, or a fearmongering digital god, or the gateway to a dystopian future.

I challenge you to think of AI as a “thought friend.”

PHILOSOPHY OF ITS ROLE IN SECONDARY EDUCATION

“Used wisely, [AI] can certainly become one of humanity's greatest tools.  It can help us organize thoughts, challenge our assumptions, expand our perspectives, and even become extraordinary partners in learning.”

- Sheikha Al-Zain Al-Sabah, Ambassador of Kuwait to the United States

{Do the Write Thing Ambassador Summit, 2026}

When I first heard the framing of AI as a “thought friend” by Jen Roberts on her podcast School of Practice, I felt completely understood.  This is what I’d been feeling, but never named it.

In the Fall of 2025, I was officially diagnosed with ADHD, and medication made a drastic difference in my lesson planning and organization.  My supervisor could follow my train of thought better, and even made several comments on my professional growth.  AI, though, was another equally powerful tool.  I recall explaining to my supervisor that AI was a readily available thought filter, allowing me to take all of the scattered ADHD thoughts and funnel them into practical, well-written plans. AI made my lesson-planning stronger and made my plan time much more efficient.  It truly became a great professional partner in learning.

Now, I find myself using AI with every lesson that I write for my 7th grade ELA classroom.  And I’ve had to stop caring about how others react to that statement because they immediately, and ignorantly, assume that AI writes for me.  

NO, NO, NO - IT DOES NOT WRITE FOR ME.

I funnel all of my thinking through AI (I prefer Google Gemini).  It has access to my school’s declared ELA curriculum, it has helped me create a long-term year plan, a year-long vertical map for vocabulary integration, a year-long vertical map for writing and grammar practices, and reminded me to spiral certain skills or vocabulary into later lessons (because I’ll inevitably forget everything I want to do).

The key is to think out loud with it, not to ask it for material development - that’s what those in fear assume that we do.  And to their credit, more often than not, that leads us to collecting AI-written passages and activities that are surface-level or redundant.  

Have a water cooler conversation with it, tell it what lesson in the curriculum you’re on, tell them about that struggling or accelerating student, tell it what you want to revisit in a later lesson, tell it your irritant-level when writing plans on a crazy monday afternoon, tell it to pull public domain resources, tell it to model state-prepared assessments (and upload a sample) - think out loud with it, just as if it was your supervisor or academic coach. 

We fear paternalism, but we’ve ignorantly found ourselves stuck in a thought spiral, rendering us unable to act:

1. We fear intelligence beyond what we know to be concretely true → 

2. We ignore tools created by a human brain (because they are digital) →

3. We war against digital tools → 

4. We complain about poor tools to close educational gaps → 

5. We cannot close gaps with our concrete, familiar tools →

6. We are recommended new tools →

7. (1) We fear intelligence beyond what we know to be concretely true → 

8. (2) We ignore tools created by a human brain →

Etc., etc., etc.

As educators, self-selected ignorance to avoid using modern tools presents a distinct disservice to the future generations.

***

AI in the Classroom

Arguably one of the greatest debates of our modern world comes from uncertainty of using AI in the classroom or not.  

I find it useful in every aspect of my classroom.  From planning, to teaching, to student-assisting, AI has proven to be one of the most impactful classroom tools, able to produce immediate results.  

Below are some of my favorite ways to utilize AI in education:

1. The Planning Board 

AI has helped me organize my year-long ELA plan for my 7th grade classroom.  Once I made it familiar with the curriculum and appropriate state standards, we worked together to develop a scope & sequence of standards through the year, a year-long vertical vocabulary map, and even more.  Its ability to accept attachments and screenshots allows sharing information to become nearly seamless.

2. The Co-Teacher

Put it on your classroom board and ask it questions in real-time; the only caveat is that you MUST know what to be looking for in its answer and how to identify bad responses.  Specify reliability of evidence expected in its responses or explain to students the greatest trick of all: know HOW to write a good question for AI to respond to; if it is not clear enough, your conversation with it becomes useless.

3. The Rubric builder

Use it to develop rubrics - specify the standards, grade-level, and assignment, asking it for clear rubric pieces.

4. The Student Toolkit

Provide students access to AI with specific instruction on how to communicate with it, and how to clearly avoid using AI-generated writing as their own work.  Remind them to talk with it just like a friend, or for better results, like a teacher.

PHILOSOPHY OF ITS ROLE IN THE WRITING PROCESS

“Once one has seen it, however, one must conclude

 that it is the cause of all that is correct and beautiful in anything.”

- Plato, The Republic (circa 380 B.C.E.)

Our great fear of paternalism, at least in the Western world, has likely resulted in our culture’s platonic doxa - we are taught, in subtlety, to identify some perfect form as a rational ending.  And only in naming this perfect goal are we able to find comfort in a continued pursuit. 

This perfect ending models, in dangerous similarity, to Plato’s understanding of the perfect form of things, known as the “world of forms,” where perfect copies of all things existed - perfect triangles, perfect circles, perfect chairs, perfect roads, and even perfect people.

It is this unspoken, but very present, model of thinking that has led Western culture to be so fearful of AI. We set ourselves up, unspokenly, to both fear and expect perfect outcomes in society - and therefore, we have doomed our future that cannot become perfect.

So, has AI really come from the world of forms?  Has AI arrived from an alternate dimension?  Perhaps it is an angry god aiming  to overtake our human dimension?

I challenge you to think otherwise; I challenge you to see AI as the human-created tool that it is and act with far less fear towards it.

***

Using AI as an Author

The writing process has no true sense of perfect form, either, though educators are required to create rubric and expectations for student outputs.

If we disarm AI of its extra-dimensional authority, we find ourselves left with a great thought friend that can cure writer’s block with five immediate responses to our narrative road blocks, or, better yet, provide tools instead of solutions for fighting our way out of the block.

AI is capable, also, of immediately presenting a plethora of planning or writing strategies for us - it can react as a friend, professor, or random stranger if we specify - it can be a sounding board to prevent off-trend ideas.  

CONCLUSION - ETHICS, INTEGRITY, & THE SCOPE OF AI

AI is your thought friend - your sounding board - your Mary Poppins’ Purse of feedback.  In an effort to maintain your integrity, though, I encourage you to specify who AI is to respond as.  YOU determine, by clearly telling it initially, what its role is when responding; even determine what its role is NOT to be.

The scope of AI, unfortunately for our platonic doxa of thought, is endless.  However, that leaves us with possibilities yet to be discovered in the never-ending toolkit.

Austin D. Spidell

[Philosophy Publishing]