Oct 19, 2026 · 53 min · 10 segments
In this special installment of the University of Notre Dame Press's Books for Better Understanding, Paul Scherz, the Our Lady of Guadalupe Professor of Theology with the University of Notre Dame, and…
I thought you did this admirably in questioning the implementations of certain technologies.
Obviously, many of us are particularly interested in that and its recent developments.
The part that I thought was most interesting was your linking of the use of AI in medicine with de-skilling of physicians.
And I think that connects up with the sort of prudential reasoning you're talking about.
I'm wondering if that's a broader problem for us as sort of a humanity issue.
I'd love to hear you just sort of like expand on whether you think de-skilling might be a problem beyond medicine.
And if so, how do we go about talking about this without coming across as like regressive or anti-technology or sort of closed-minded given sort of the direction AI seems to be going? I'm just curious how you're wrestling with those kinds of questions.
Yeah, so I mean, a lot of my work right now is about AI ethics and like this virtue, the virtue of the loss of skills is a major point.
I mean, Shannon Valor has talked about this a lot with kind of the loss of skills of even caregiving and things like that.
I mean, I think if you see our students in universities, there's many who are starting to lose the ability to write papers because they can get chat GPT to write the papers, right? And I think that's a major problem.
And I think, how do we respond? I think we have to respond by going back and saying, both recovering virtue ethics, which I really like, but also the good of engaging in these practices of excellence and what those mean for a flourishing life, right? You know, how these practices kind of shape us and lead to good things.
It's like, yeah, Matthew Crawford and craft, right? You know, saying like, you know, you don't have to get rid of everything and go back and live out in the woods, but you should be involved in some kind of craft in your hands, because that's going to make you much happier over the long term.
And I think in part, it's because of their they're just becoming functionaries in a lot of cases.
And so saying, like, is it going to be happier? We're going to have a better society if we use AI where it's appropriate and figure out those, but in a way that doesn't doesn't diskill us.
And I was, yeah, I mean, I think you have this beautiful recovery of practices as a way to kind of turn back to the kind of wrestling with this reflexivity.
I mean, both embedding yourself in traditions, which I want to also talk about, but also like, you know, just engaging in practices of prayer and Eucharistic practice.
And the Eucharist, well, and communion and various kinds of things as ways to kind of recover that for yourself.
I thought you did this admirably in questioning the implementations of certain technologies.
Obviously, many of us are particularly interested in that and its recent developments.
The part that I thought was most interesting was your linking of the use of AI in medicine with de-skilling of physicians.
And I think that connects up with the sort of prudential reasoning you're talking about.
I'm wondering if that's a broader problem for us as sort of a humanity issue.
I'd love to hear you just sort of like expand on whether you think de-skilling might be a problem beyond medicine.
And if so, how do we go about talking about this without coming across as like regressive or anti-technology or sort of closed-minded given sort of the direction AI seems to be going? I'm just curious how you're wrestling with those kinds of questions.
Yeah, so I mean, a lot of my work right now is about AI ethics and like this virtue, the virtue of the loss of skills is a major point.
I mean, Shannon Valor has talked about this a lot with kind of the loss of skills of even caregiving and things like that.
I mean, I think if you see our students in universities, there's many who are starting to lose the ability to write papers because they can get chat GPT to write the papers, right? And I think that's a major problem.
And I think, how do we respond? I think we have to respond by going back and saying, both recovering virtue ethics, which I really like, but also the good of engaging in these practices of excellence and what those mean for a flourishing life, right? You know, how these practices kind of shape us and lead to good things.
It's like, yeah, Matthew Crawford and craft, right? You know, saying like, you know, you don't have to get rid of everything and go back and live out in the woods, but you should be involved in some kind of craft in your hands, because that's going to make you much happier over the long term.
And I think in part, it's because of their they're just becoming functionaries in a lot of cases.
And so saying, like, is it going to be happier? We're going to have a better society if we use AI where it's appropriate and figure out those, but in a way that doesn't doesn't diskill us.
And I was, yeah, I mean, I think you have this beautiful recovery of practices as a way to kind of turn back to the kind of wrestling with this reflexivity.
I mean, both embedding yourself in traditions, which I want to also talk about, but also like, you know, just engaging in practices of prayer and Eucharistic practice.
And the Eucharist, well, and communion and various kinds of things as ways to kind of recover that for yourself.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.