Over the past few months, I have received an increasing issue of emails from my students that begin with the phrase, "I hope this email finds you well." At first, I was surprised at how well they suddenly wrote, as well as their good wishes. However, it was not long before it dawned on me that this expression, so common in English, but strange in Spanish, had been provided by ChatGPT.

There is no doubt that ChatGPT writes well. Very well, in fact. His writing is clear, structured and grammatically impeccable. So much so, that the average student is unable to correct the linguistic expert. It is not that I am worried that the students use this tool, but that they are not able to detect that this expression is not ours, nor that they have the capacity to look for its correlate in our language. This reveals a more worrying form of ignorance: it is not a matter of not knowing, but of not knowing that one does not know. Or, even worse, of demonstrating that one does not know by believing oneself capable of pretending otherwise.

In the third episode of the 23rd season of The Simpsons, Homer buys some subliminal pedagogy tapes that, listened to at night, promise to lose weight without effort. However, the workers in charge of the shipment, due to the lack of these tapes, decide to send him a copy to enrich his vocabulary. Homer begins to use the most exquisite language that leaves his gifted daughter Lisa speechless. Since he does not lose an ounce, Homer decides to stop the hypnopedic mechanism, so at the end of the chapter we see him asking Marge what do you call that with what you do "taca and eat", to which his patient wife responds "spoon". Homer continues with the same weight and the same ignorance.

This episode of the yellow family reflects well that using certain tools in a non-conscious way does not lead to the internalization of this internship. That is, the fact that my students now write emails or papers correctly does not mean that they are learning to write for real. On the contrary, all the reflective exercise involved in looking for the right words to name reality, financial aid to understand it. Avoiding the cognitive effort involved in this task inevitably makes us closer to Homer's intellect than to any other.

Who dares to speak?

Felipe Muller's recent book, Nadie habla. Inteligencia Artificial y muerte del hombre (Eunsa, 2024), addresses this issue. Muller analyzes from a philosophical perspective how extensive models of language, such as ChatGPT, speak without the intervention of a conscious subject. Inspired by Foucault's theories, which he knows well, he argues that these models produce language autonomously, without a direct reference letter to reality or to a human communicative intention. His conclusion is that for there to be language there need not be a subject. The essay is brief, but incisive. It raises questions about how human beings relate to language and what its existence implies for us. Is language a mask, a fiction of who we are, or a window that opens us to reality?

It is inevitable to keep asking questions after closing the pages of Nadie habla. Although the author ends up being more interested in human language than in artificial language, the reader is left with many doubts about the effects that extensive models will have on us. To imagine what effects it may have, it may be worth thinking about the impact of Edison's invention of the phonograph in 1877. Since then, music went from being exclusively linked to live performance to an experience that could be repeated, stored and transported. Music became independent of the musician, and with it changed both its symbolic value and its relationship to time and space. In addition, the phonograph also gave rise to debates about authenticity. The question of what is "authentic" and what is "artificial" was, and still is, central in the case of music. Is something essential lost when the machine average in the creative process?

Undoubtedly, for a long time what this implied was that authors and directors did not seek to make new versions, but rather to try to copy the perfection of what they heard in the recordings. In the case of language, these issues become more pressing, since language is not only a tool, but the medium through which we understand ourselves and others.

These questions lead me to a much older text, that of Mecanópolis, by Miguel de Unamuno. In those pages, the philosopher imagines a city in which there were only machines and nothing but machines. When a traveler finally ends up among its streets, he is overwhelmed by the unique automated technology. Everything worked perfectly, but they worked for no one. Loneliness began to torture the new inhabitant so much that he had to leave the place. Even if he managed to disappear from there, we suppose that the machines continued their incessant work, but what is the point of an electric train that arrives punctually, if there is no one to catch it?

It is possible, as Muller says, that a language without a subject is possible, such as sample ChatGPT. But what good is language then? Machines, language and the whole of reality are meaningful as long as there are human beings who understand their meaning. Language is not just about generating sentences coherently but about understanding their meaning. There is no meaning without people, without context and without language. Today's extensive models of language fascinate both students and teachers with their way of speaking and writing in such a way that we do not stop to think about what is really being said.

The challenge for Education: educating the soul

Beyond language, I advocate meaning. Beyond words, I defend the importance of dialogue. Beyond the incessant production that we demand in universities, I claim the need for reflection, full attention and assumption of responsibility. These demands belong to the sphere of schools and universities as to no other, because educating is not only transmitting knowledge, but forming people capable of inhabiting the world with depth and meaning.

Josep María Esquirol, in his work La escuela del alma ( Acantilado, 2024), stresses that Education cannot be reduced to an accumulation of practical knowledge or to mere functionality. The authentic Education must be oriented towards the cultivation of the soul: a training that promotes attention as an essential virtue, contemplation as a space for interiorization, and creation as a genuine expression of our humanity. In the face of a culture that privileges speed and efficiency, Esquirol invites us to value slowness, closeness and care as pillars of a truly human life.

Faced with a model educational that often focuses on production and skill, Esquirol claims the need for a teaching that allows us to stop, contemplate and fully inhabit the world. To educate is not only to transmit knowledge, but also to teach to discern, to listen, to contemplate. It is about forming people capable of looking with attention, of dialoguing with themselves and with others.

In this sense, educating is a spiritual task, because it involves helping students discover what really matters to them, what gives meaning to their existence. As teachers, our challenge is not only to transmit information, but to open spaces where students can discover themselves and the world. This implies cultivating silence, reflection and the capacity to wonder. To educate the soul is, ultimately written request, to form complete human beings, capable of inhabiting the world with meaning and of committing themselves to their own existence.

This article was originally published in Ethic. Read the original.