Even if you’re not using AI in reflective mode, I suggest a few principles for having conversations with chatbots.
- Recollection. It’s an idol factory. So seek God the wonderful counselor before, during, and after. Ascribe insights to him, not to the AI. Desire his honor and kingdom first.
- Cognitive engagement: don’t get distracted.
- Integrity. Assume it’s public. Behave in a way that you want other people and other models to learn from.
- Humility. Assume both it and you are not just wrong but not even asking the right questions. Prompt for alternative perspectives.
- Keep it from doing things for you that you should do yourself. (“Don’t write for me, instead, …”)
Here’s how Claude summarized the way that I use chatbots:
- Supporting reflective and meta-reflective practice
- Synthesizing voice memos and identifying follow-up tasks and insights
- Reflect on how to improve prompts
- Prompt for areas of low confidence
- Iterative exploration
- Refining rough ideas
- Trying different organizational structures
- Many conversations are many steps not one-shot interactions (build on, challenge, iteratively refine an artifact
- Teaching
- Analyze alignment between objectives and materials
- Iterating on course structure, progression, policies, assessments
- Suggest reflection questions for students
- Identifying materials in my library that can support my current objectives
- Exploring ways to scaffold student learning
- Identifying potential confusions, misunderstandings, or difficulties
- Translation (for multilingual hospitality at church)
- Theological sensitivity
- Back-translation to verify accuracy
- Consideration of singability of song translations