The joy of hard questions
Last week, I was reading journal articles to add to my list of references for a new research article I’m working on. I had a lot of trouble with one article’s reference list: some of the sources were fake, the links led nowhere, and some of the journals mentioned didn’t even exist—and this was an article written by Filipino researchers, published in an international journal.
Dismayed, I shared my discovery online, which prompted virtual groans. I was looking at ghost references, people said, or sources that artificial intelligence (AI) tools invent to fit the information in the paper.
Some people were angry: they blamed people for relying on AI and normalizing dishonesty. I’ve witnessed the same anger at university meetings, impromptu conversations with colleagues, and even in my classes, where students who are trained to be creators are now facing the prospect of their jobs disappearing.
I, too, have sometimes joined the chorus of “What will the next generation be like? Is this the end of thinking, creativity, and patience?”
I carried these thoughts into Gaudete Sunday. In his homily, Fr. Nono Alfonso, SJ spoke of the stark contrast between John the Baptist and Jesus in the Gospel.
John preached a fire-and-brimstone God who would save only the repentant, whose identity was built on perpetual wrath and painful vengeance. Jesus, on the other hand, preached of a God of forgiveness and mercy; a kingdom of healing, not retribution. He came not as a conquering warrior, but as a gentle teacher.
There was an ocean of difference, Father Nono said, between a God to be obeyed out of fear and a God who looks upon us with compassion before meting out judgment. To John, the world is doomed because of human weakness. To Jesus, the world is full of hope.
To extend Father Nono’s reasoning, this is not to say that we must ignore all wrongdoing. Rather, it is a prompt to first ask: Why did someone sin? What structures and circumstances allowed the sinner to feel that their wrongdoing was justified?
These are more difficult questions because they force us to confront ourselves as a society: how have our institutions, taken for granted, also encouraged sin? How have our so-called traditions, assumed as charming in their unchangeability, also perpetuated evil?
This does not mean that all sin is absolved because we are victims of a system. Rather, in focusing on the individual rather than the structure that surrounds them, we might be at risk of perpetuating sin further because we condemn their behaviors without correcting the source or addressing the root.
Jesus’ brand of preaching is not results-oriented: it is a long, slow process of acknowledging and examining the many layers of humanity. It does not assume that there is evil in every corner. It requires a change of heart—the metanoia spoken of in last week’s Gospel. It means living lives full of love while being critical of the world in which we live.
Perhaps that is what we sometimes miss in the despairing look we give AI. To abuse it is to prioritize results over process, but to also blame AI for laziness and dishonesty is to condemn the users rather than ask, “Why did they use it?” and perhaps more critically, “What are our shortcomings that led to people justifying the use of AI?”
In the academe, it is the unforgiving pressure to publish: without research publications, professors can’t get promoted, graduate students can’t receive their degree, and universities can’t rise in international rankings. In our classrooms, it is the unforgiving pressure to finish a lot of work in the shortest amount of time, to get high grades, to move closer to graduation, and get into the job market sooner.
AI tools promise to speed things up—yes, at the price of integrity. But when people are judged, paid, and promoted based on their output, and when people are treated as machines that produce rather than whole persons whose lives and hearts are as important as their creations, then those who do not have the privilege of money, subscriptions to international journals, and time can and will give in to their desperation.
Our world has become like John’s God, who operates on rules, quotas, and fear—on results, not process; on sin, not people. AI, when abused, is an indictment of the focus on products rather than humanity. We might need to first ask: What led us to this point, where desperation is more important than truth, where recognition and numbers take precedence over compassion? How can we live with the tools we’ve created without losing ourselves?
How can we still hope?
It seems absurd to question structures when Gaudete Sunday speaks of joy—but perhaps that is what real joy is. We have to be unafraid to ask difficult questions, because we recognize that we, though fragile and human, also have the power to solve our problems if we know their source intimately.
We can grow only when we see the truth. We can heal when we do not live in dread and fear. And we can move forward only when we do not give in to despair.
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iponcedeleon@ateneo.edu
