Dr Lin Hexing: how AI agents enter the classroom — from teaching to theological education and Chinese e-books | Singapore Global International

Education is absorbing AI quickly. Dr Lin Hexing recently discussed how AI agents can be used in teaching, and the conversation did not stay inside the classroom — it extended to two concrete directions: AI in theological education, and AI for building Chinese e-books.

1. How agents differ from older tools

Older teaching tools each did one thing: set questions, translate, or grade. An AI agent can plan steps, call tools and run a chain end to end — read the syllabus, gather material, draft a lesson plan, generate exercises, mark them and give feedback. The difference is not being cleverer; it is carrying the workflow.

2. Three uses in the classroom

• Lesson preparation: hand the agent the syllabus, hours and learning objectives; it drafts lesson plans, slide points and tiered exercises, leaving the teacher time for explanation and interaction.
• Personalised coaching: adjust questions and explanations to each student and drill weak areas; guard against giving answers outright — set rules and spot-check.
• Marking and feedback: let the agent do the first pass and cluster common mistakes, while the teacher reviews scores and what to explain; the standard and the final call stay with the teacher.

3. AI in theological education

Theological education has its own method: original languages, texts, tradition and pastoral care. Where AI helps is quite specific — and so are its limits.

• Original languages: morphological and syntactic analysis of Hebrew and Greek plus verse-by-verse comparison, far faster than before, freeing students for interpretation and commentary.
• Research: searching, comparing and organising commentaries, church documents and journals across the centuries shortens preparation markedly.
• Courses and multilingual material: drafting outlines with references and illustrations, and assisting bilingual translation, so regions short on resources can still obtain materials.

The boundary: spiritual judgement and pastoral care cannot be delegated to a tool. AI can organise material and check references, but it cannot settle an exegetical conclusion; citations must be verified against original texts and published works. Better slower than letting something that merely looks right reach the pulpit.

4. AI for building Chinese e-books

Digitising Chinese books has long been limited by labour: input, proofreading, layout and distribution are each heavy. AI is taking the chain apart and rebuilding it.

• Digitisation and OCR: recognising and correcting out-of-print books, lecture notes and manuscripts, bringing old material back into use.
• Proofreading and consistency: typos, punctuation, simplified-traditional conversion and layout — freeing people from repetitive work.
• Structured indexing: indexing by chapter, theme, scripture reference or keyword turns an e-book from something readable into something searchable.
• Multilingual, audio and on-demand: translation support and speech synthesis give one book Chinese, English and audio editions, while chapter-level publishing suits course and ministry material.

5. Three things to settle first

• Copyright and permission: digitisation, translation and distribution all need clear authorisation; content of unclear provenance stays offline.
• Sources and review: AI output must be traceable and reviewable, signed off by a person before publication.

From the classroom to the seminary and on to Chinese e-books, the skeleton is the same: break the workflow down, let agents take the repeatable parts, and keep people where judgement and relationships live.