Many times, I have expressed the view that we train dogs, but we must educate people.
The critical difference is the ability to solve problems from the mundane to gordian complexity, and to plan, turning reactive into proactive. These both require critical thinking and creative skills.
Neither of these are available, yet, and perhaps never will be in an AI chatbot.
Rather than banning the emerging wave of AI tools, we should embrace them.
The challenge is twofold.
Teachers who spend their days in front of students are overworked and underpaid for the long-term value they are being asked to deliver, at least in this country. Asking them to rethink the way they are organising their lesson plans and manage the intellectual development of students is a big ask. Many will not willingly take on the task without help and appropriate training, as they have lives outside their roles as teachers.
Asking the education bureaucracy and academia to change their spots is at least as challenging. Most have built their careers on the perpetuation of the status quo in one way or another.
However, the case for change is compelling.
Rather than focussing outrage on the sudden availability of answers to questions, we should be rethinking the process of asking the questions. Anyway, what is different here to when Google first hit the streets? The easy availability of answers to questions, and essays on everything from an easy recipe to string theory, should force us to consider the ways this technology makes the classroom more interactive. It delivers the opportunity for personalised plans that match each kids abilities, and removes the burden of admin that seems to have built up inexorably.
Many good teachers leave the profession after a few years seeking to make their living in less demanding but more financially rewarding ways. Perhaps this AI revolution is a part solution to that problem?
As a final rock into the pond, if an AI tool makes the production of an answer too easy, requiring little or no student understanding, should we throw out the tool, or revise the question?
What if the assignment was to generate an AI response to the assignment, to which the students annotated their commentary on the relevance, effectiveness, accuracy and utility of the points in the AI generated answer? Teachers would also give marks on the prompts used by the students, another marker to understanding.
That would be education.
AI will, or should be, a boon to educators. They need to think creatively about how it will be used, rather than throwing their hands in the air and banning them.
King Canute found the hands in the air strategy did not work.
Header credit; King Canute fighting chatbots courtesy Dall-E, as envisaged by Sal Dali
