In the nearly 25 years since I finished my doctorate in theology, the amount of knowledge available for humans to absorb has absolutely exploded—especially since ChatGPT came on the scene. I teach courses on contemporary culture and ethics at Acadia Divinity College in Wolfville, Nova Scotia; I’m also president and dean of theology for Acadia University. I’m used to fielding big questions. But now, they’re bigger than ever. In the past, when religious scholars were asked what makes humans uniquely human, they might’ve said “rationality.” Artificial intelligence has blown that theory out of the water. I’m keen on the idea of AI as a co-creator of human creativity, whether in writing, research or other pursuits. But if we’re all using omniscient chatbots as filters for how we see the world, I’ve been wondering, what does that mean for religious education—and religion as a whole?

I started playing with ChatGPT on my own time right after its rollout, asking it questions like, “Do you believe in God?” (Its answer: “I can’t, because I don’t have independent consciousness—or a body.”) Then, about a year and half ago, John Campbell, Acadia’s director of development and technology, stopped by my office. We were casually chatting about AI, and I said something like, “I wish ChatGPT could make my course syllabus for me!” John said, “Let’s see if it can.”

We made up a title, “The Ethics of AI”—which wasn’t a course at Acadia at the time—then typed in some learning outcomes, a key part of designing any post-secondary course in Canada. Once we’d entered them, we said, “ChatGPT, please generate a 12-week syllabus.” It did, instantaneously. It even included classes on practical topics, like when it’s okay to use AI for sermon-writing and how to prepare our students—all future pastors—for community ministry. Then, we said, “Generate the lectures.” It spit those out instantaneously too. John and I looked at each other, stunned. It was exceptionally impressive.

We could have stopped our experiment there, but we wanted to see the extent of AI’s educational potential, to really blow it out. We decided to run the country’s first fully AI-generated theology course, with approval from Acadia’s........

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