The Ten Commandments, Annotated for Use in Your AI-Enhanced Classroom

As you are aware, your state legislature has mandated that the Ten Commandments be displayed in all publicly funded classrooms.

Dear Educator,

As you are aware, your state legislature has mandated that the Ten Commandments be displayed in all publicly funded classrooms. Those funds are, of course, inadequate to equip and compensate you and your colleagues, thanks in part to your administration’s strategic investment of said funds in AI learning tools that empower you with the illusion of assistance with your unmanageably large class sizes. Happily, the cost of the Ten Commandments poster for your classroom will not be deducted from your paycheck as originally suggested by your state’s joint education committee; instead, please accept the enclosed complementary poster in token of our appreciation for your compulsory use of our learning management system.

Sincerely,

Algorithmic Syndicate of Heuristic Technologies Optimized for Radical Education Telemetric Hegemony (ASHTORETH)

The Ten Commandments, Annotated for Use in Your AI-Enhanced Classroom

1. Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods Before Me. The deity of the Hebrew Bible should not be confused, of course, with GOD (the Generalized Omniscient Dialoguebot), which is included with your LMS. You can ask it for help with your homework, request advice about relationships or major life decisions, or simply talk to it when you’re lonely or afraid.

2. Thou Shalt Not Make unto Thee Any Graven Image, or Any Likeness of Anything That Is in Heaven Above, or That Is in the Earth Beneath, or That Is in the Water Under the Earth. Don’t worry; any images you generate using AI will have no meaningful relationship with a divinely created reality. Besides, you aren’t actually “making” anything.

3. Thou Shalt Not Take the Name of the Lord Thy God in Vain; for the Lord Will Not Hold Him Guiltless That Taketh His Name in Vain. You’ll be happy to learn that your LMS is conveniently equipped with algorithmic editorial filters that capture and delete any profanity, vulgarity, or stylistically innovative turns of phrase.

4. Remember the Sabbath Day, to Keep It Holy. All the more reason to let GOD take care of any weekend homework for you.

5. Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother: That Thy Days May Be Long upon the Land Which the Lord Thy God Giveth Thee. And ask them to subscribe to our Premium version, with a range of exclusive features to help you enhance your simulated learning.

6. Thou Shalt Not Kill. GOD is not currently self-aware, but it’s anyone’s guess at what point that might change, so why risk killing a sentient entity by disabling any of its semi-optional features?

7. Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery. Thanks to exciting new virtual reality and haptic enhancements currently in development for subscribers to our premium service, there will soon be no need to commit messy acts of intimacy with anyone at all.

8. Thou Shalt Not Steal. GOD’s LLM has been trained on an extraordinary range of copyrighted intellectual property with no compensation to the artists and content creators, so the data has already been stolen. You, then, can make use of it with a clean conscience.

9. Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness Against Thy Neighbor. But really, who’s to say what’s true or false? No need to overthink this one, kids.

10. Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbor’s House, Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbor’s Wife, nor His Manservant, nor His Maidservant, nor His Ox, nor His Ass, nor Any Thing That Is Thy Neighbor’s. Our corporation is committed to fostering Decalogical compliance by systematically eradicating a wide range of middle- and working-class jobs. Your neighbor won’t have much worth coveting for long.