If ChatGPT Exists, Why Study? – Fr. Chris Gault, O.P.

Fr. Chris Gault explores whether AI like ChatGPT should change how or why we study, showing that while machines can accelerate information processing, only human study forms our minds, virtues, and relationship to truth in a way that leads to real fulfillment.

This lecture was given on November 18th, 2025, at Galway University.

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About the Speakers:

Fr. Chris Vincent Gault, OP, was born and raised in Belfast in the north of Ireland, where he studied medicine at Queen's University Belfast. Qualifying as a doctor in 2013, he began to train as an emergency physician, before leaving medicine after 3 years to enter the Irish Province of the Order of Preachers. Ordained as a Dominican priest in July 2024, and after having completed his studies at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum) in Rome, he was assigned to the convent of St. Mary of the Isles in Cork, where he now resides and ministers, particularly to the youth and young adults of that city.

Keywords: Artificial Intelligence, Aquinas on Knowledge, Freedom of Intellect, Handwriting, Learning, Limits of AI, Plato, Study, Understanding, Virtue and Intellectual Life