AI (anti intellectual)

We had the annual professional development day for many of the secondary teachers in the Wellington region on Friday. After the keynote I went to hear about AI in schools because there was nothing else that I thought looked interesting for me. The presentation on AI was well researched, well presented and nonsense. Not the kind of nonsense that can be ignored; the kind of nonsense that is the dangerous kind, like drinking bleach to beat COVID.

The presenter was determined to show us the uses of AI in schools. Some of the things he showed us I would strongly suggest are the worst things you could do as a teacher.

Firstly

The presenter tried to have us believe that students could get AI to help them plan their essays. He asked AI the question for the essay he was pretending to write on Romeo and Juliet. The AI produced about three pages of broken down notes organised by theme and character with quotes. Let me quickly say that the idea that most students would do this instead of just getting the AI to write the essay is pretty naive. I only want to say that quickly because the thought that students will cheat using AI has been pretty well covered. That’s not actually the main thing that bothers me.

Everything that the AI just did when it generated its plan for a Romeo and Juliet essay takes the student straight past the learning and to the outcome. All the learning comes when students are given a question, and then go back to the text with that question in mind, and then build up their notes, and determine which quotes fit and which do not, and then make some decisions. The AI is not planning the essay, it is doing a simulacrum of “thinking” which enables the student to to write an essay without thinking for themselves.

We learn new things through repeated exposures over time and I don’t believe that can be shortcut for a student. No student using AI in the way proposed above would ever learn a section of Romeo and Juliet by heart after coming to realise, personally, over time, all the layers within it. No student using AI in the way proposed above would ever be able to get into a heated argument with someone else over the ending of Romeo and Juliet because they haven’t done the work to care about the ending of the play. No student using AI in the way proposed above would ever develop a love-hate relationship with Romeo and Juliet and propose an alternative interpretation of the play turning everything on its head.

Secondly

The other thing the presenter demonstrated was the ability of AI to give feedback on student work, and to mark assessments. This is also very troubling.

If you spent time working on an assessment and you were told that AI had marked it and not the teacher, how would you feel? I would feel quite demotivated. It might also encourage me to just get AI to write my future assessments. Then we end up with no humans involved: the teacher gets AI to set the questions; the student gets AI to write their response, and the teacher gets AI to mark it. Perfection. No learning and no thinking for anyone.

Using AI to give feedback perhaps better illustrates how it breaks one of the fundamental principles of education: the need for relationships. If I don’t read a student’s work in progress then I don’t learn about that student. If AI “reads” the work and gives feedback then I am not a teacher in this scenario: I am an AI administrator.

I have actually experienced a version of this. When daughter number two was at intermediate a lot of her reading, writing and maths was done using paid for programmes on laptops. Various dashboards showed what she had covered and what was next, but the teacher in the room appeared to have no idea how she was going. They could tell me what the computer said about how she was doing, but they didn’t know my daughter as a reader, a writer or a mathematician and that was profoundly disturbing.

Thirdly

The presentation came with two features that have been typical of technology-focused talks over the last two decades: a warning about inevitability and no evidence. We are always told that this is what’s coming anyway so we need to prepare regardless of our concerns, doubts or scepticism. Not in my classroom buddy. No devices at all in my classes 95% of the time. Get out your book and your pen and think.

Evidence that use of AI improves learning for students at secondary school level? There is none. “It’s so new,” we’re told. Well, let’s wait for the evidence to accumulate in independent studies over about two decades. There are countries out their who are making their populations test cases. The high flying Estonian education system is going all in on AI, and the UAE has just given paid ChatGPT licences to all its citizens. If that pans out in a generation I’d be happy to reconsider. Until then I refuse to experiment on the kids in my community.

Finally

I’d like to tell you something. You’re special. You’re not. You’re unique. You ain’t. You’re wonderful and fucking frustrating. You blaze and you wet blanket. You are 100% right and you are a hypocrite. You never change and you have changed. I love talking to you and I wish you’d shut up. I love you Monday and you get on my tits Tuesday. You’re just like everyone else: mass murderer, cathedral builder, troll and sonnet writer, Nazi administrator and St Francis of Assisi, all the shades of evil to joy, all the greys of mediocrity. You are partly composed of every heartbeat spasm, laugh, cry, and belch from womb to tomb. Do not ever believe in the people who tell you about the machines. You are not to be replaced by a huge, energy devouring auto-correct. Go out and look at the leaves turning to mulch in the hungry earth. Go out and hold hands. Unplug the machines and let being alive, which is the great act of learning we are all involved in all the time, let that teach you something else today.

Prompt: Speakers lecturn at a full conference on fire