There is nothing artificial about AI
Once, when travelling, I stayed overnight at a beautiful B&B. It was a work trip, though, and I was not in the mood for socializing. How irritating, then, when I realized it was one of these ‘shared table’ breakfast arrangements where I would have to earn my bacon and eggs by sitting opposite a complete stranger - themselves chagrined by the set-up - and make small talk prefaced by the dreadfully inane ‘so what do you do’?
It turns out that he actually had a most unusual job. He was an engineer who travelled the world commissioning robots. Not just any old robots, though. This engineer’s life work (for the moment at least) was commissioning robots that would then go on to commission robots without the help of humans. Apart from being complicit in his own redundancy, he was a fascinating breakfast partner as he explained the future of machines, robotics, machine learning, and AI. Far from being worried that these things were threatening his future, he was, instead, enthused by the possibilities that these new technologies provide.
And, as in any technological revolution there will be immediate casualties (when last were you able to speak to an actual human being on your first attempt to make contact with a business?), and we as teachers will have to work hard to ensure that we can give our students the best possible advice as to what the future of ‘work’ will look like - the world has become a very different place in a very short time, and will never be the same again.
As educators we are in an exciting place – far from being an existential threat, AI will revolutionise classroom practice. Even though the technology is in its relative infancy, we can already train our students to use Chat GPT (and other tools) as a personal in-class tutor. Chat GPT can provide instant, expert answers, and explain step-by-step as it goes. It provides a personalized learning supplement that is always available – that ‘expert in the room’, capable of multi-strand conversations (thus far uninhibited by cunning corporate algorithms), no matter where you are. Classroom assistance, research support, language support, and even code writing is within reach of anyone trained to ask the right questions.
Of course, it is not all good: we can ask Chat GPT to write essays for us without thinking, and it can short-cut to answers in a way that negatively impacts on our critical thinking skills - and so, just like the rest of the world, teachers need to adapt – some old methodologies are no longer fit for purpose - but far from trying to prevent the inevitable, we need to embrace it – using new teaching methods to augment real learning.
We live in a world where knowledge is a commodity and expert information no longer requires a human expert. That requires more, not less, human interaction in the classroom – inculcating values, ethics, methods of inquiry, presentation tools, and opportunity spotting. And, in taking a lot of the ‘legwork’ out of access to knowledge, it has the potential to make quality learning much, much more equitable.