Artificial Intelligence will make us just another brick in the wall
“I visualise a time when we will be to robots what dogs are to humans, and I’m rooting for the machines.” — Claude Shannon
While AI is evolving more by the day, the number of people using it to execute small problems increase. Slowly, concerns arise when it comes to AI taking over people’s jobs but most of all, destroying once and for all, education. That is because children, are the most vulnerable link to society. They are just now learning how to operate and being born into the artificial intelligence world, are the ones at stake.
The way education is structured, what matters most are the grades and passing the course. This has led students over the years to turn to cheating in order to acquire a better grade when they have not studied sufficiently. Now, introducing AI, this problem takes a whole new perspective.
Yes, it can help students browse through the internet for information quicker, it can help scatter through large data in no time but it also provides an easy solution on doing all the homework based solely on AI. So, an ethical line appears.
How can we teach our children to use the tool that has been given to them intelligently, without destroying education in the process? How can they stay within the lines of ethics?
For now, the answer is simple. AI is not on a level where the content it produces matches the human one. Just by looking at a piece written by AI, we can tell that it was in fact, written by it. More than that, there are websites where you can upload a piece, and it will tell you if it was produced by AI or not.
But, observing how fast it develops and upgrades itself, it will reach in no time, a level that will make it hard to distinguish who wrote it. That is where the danger dwells. If children at a young age use AI as a to go to tool, creativity will slowly disappear. The mind gets trapped in the easy solution and qualities as critical thinking cannot easily be cultivated later on if not acquired at a young age.
Professors are warning about the dangers of students forgetting even how to read and write properly if AI does everything for them 24/7. In fact, in an interview, Stephen Hawking told the BBC that:
“The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race…. It would take off on its own, and re-design itself at an ever-increasing rate. Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete, and would be superseded.”
Others, though, put the blame on education. The reason behind this is that students through the class need to memorise a lot of information, instead of using critical thinking and learning how to study and not just memorise. So, when the students eventually go to universities, they don’t know how to actually study and absorb the essence of the actual information.
In this case, AI cannot destroy what is already not there. At the same time, it can’t replace it either:
“While the tool may be able to provide quick and easy answers to questions, it does not build critical-thinking and problem-solving skills, which are essential for academic and lifelong success’’.
Jenna Lyle, a spokeswoman for the New York City Department of Education, told the Washington Post in early January.
For now, though, AI is still at an early stage. If it will at some point be able to actually replace the critical thinking and problem solving still remains to be seen. But as they say: keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Instead of fearing how students may use it, it would be better to teach them how it could actually be beneficial and to what extent.
Nevertheless, the question that still remains is this: will AI’s incorporation to education actually turn us into another brick in the wall or the education itself has already done just that?
Many claim the first case to be true, but with the way learning and teaching are executed currently, others believe that it is already with its back against the wall. Some years ago, we thought internet would be the end of education. For some it was; while for others it was a start of a new era. Humanity always tends to glorify the past and fear the future. So, in the end, it remains to be seen if AI will be the end of the book or just the introduction of a new chapter.
