After finishing that up and validating it essentially works (still gotta clean up some format conventions and whatnot), I kept tinkering with the underlying tools to test constraints and to see if there was anything else that might be worth adding into the mix for discussion. Sticking with my own particular idiom, I expanded one of the iterations to include more philosophical works in its base of knowledge.
Admittedly, it's mostly frivolity, but why not have some fun whilst working? Besides, I stand by my assertion that even frivolity can be a Crucible of Truth. Or whatever. With that, I present A Debate Between Aquinas and Sartre on GenAI:
AQUINAS: My friend, let us consider this generative artificial intelligence through the lens of first principles. All human knowledge and creativity participate in the divine intellect—the lumen intellectus given to us by God at creation. GenAI, as a tool crafted by human reason, can serve the natural law if directed toward truth and the good. It extends our God-given capacity to organize knowledge and reflect the divine order. However, we must ask: Does it serve human flourishing? Does it lead us toward our ultimate end, which is union with God? A tool is judged by its proper use and whether it aids virtue or vice.
SARTRE: Ah, Thomas, you immediately flee to your comfortable essences and divine purposes! But there is no human nature given by God—existence precedes essence. Humans must create their own meaning through radical freedom and authentic choice. GenAI threatens this authenticity. When we delegate creativity and decision-making to machines, we act in bad faith—we pretend we are not free, that we can escape the burden of choice. The writer who uses AI to compose, the thinker who lets algorithms decide—they abdicate their responsibility to create themselves through their actions.
AQUINAS: You speak of freedom as if it were absolute, untethered from truth. But true freedom is not license—it is the capacity to choose the good, guided by reason. The lex naturae inscribed in our intellect shows us "what should be done and what should be avoided." GenAI becomes problematic only when it obscures this natural law or when humans use it to evade their rational nature. But used properly—to illuminate truth, to serve charity, to help humans fulfill their duties—it participates in the rational order. The pen is also a tool; does it make writing less authentic?
SARTRE: Your "proper use" assumes a predetermined essence, a blueprint for humanity! But we are "condemned to be free"—there is no instruction manual. Each person must choose what they will become through committed action. GenAI is different from a pen precisely because it *replaces* the human in the act of meaning-making.
It reminded me of the legendary admonition in an IBM training manual from 1979: A computer can never be held accountable, therefore a computer must never make a management decision.
In other words, we must not outsource our humanity to silicon. AI likely does have some good, practical uses, but there is a vast gulf between this shiny new toy and the mighty pen (or automated textile machinery, for that matter).
I think Sartre's simulacrum has the better argument, because putting ink to paper involves friction (literal and figurative), and requires continuous, imperative volition. Sure, with AI you might have to toil at prompt engineering for a time, and engage your mind a bit to tweak the output, but ultimately you have ceded the cognitive heavy lifting to a computer.
And where does it end? Today I saw somebody whining about having to come up with prompts, and I don't think it was parody or rage bait. Whatever the case, it mirrors some attitudes and behaviors that I have seen of late in my early career learners, who readily acknowledge they've relied very heavily on AI tools during their educational journeys.
Generally, these tools ain't democratizing creativity, or learning, but rather go a long way in diluting and devaluing it. Extraordinary computational prowess aside, it seems to me they to give more light than heat, yet are extinct in both. Pretty fucking nihilistic when you get down to it, but here we are.
In conclusion: what a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason...
Each AI deployment is an act of radical freedom, for which we bear total, anguishing responsibility. When we create a system that generates text, we are not merely using a neutral tool well or poorly—we are *choosing what humans shall become* in our relationship to language, truth, and each other.
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