Artificial Intelligence: The Good, the Bad, and the Educational
This hot topic has got many people polarised. Parents, teachers, learners and policy makers are scrambling… and for good reason! Artificial Intelligence (AI) has already made a massive impact on education, and more is surely to come.
Some see AI tools like ChatGPT as a dirty word that should be stamped out of schooling at all costs. Others see it as a sort of magic potion which will heal our broken education system. Many simply seem to be hunkering down, waiting to see what happens next.
So how do I think we should be approaching AI in education? Well, if you’re in a rush, then here is the very short version of the rest of this article: I’m excited, with eyes wide open. But since this is a complex topic, let’s unpack it a bit more.
Just what is AI?
Artificial Intelligence is when machines (particularly computer systems) solve problems by taking an input and using a set of rules (called algorithms) to perform a task. AI is actually very broad and has been around for a while now. Google Maps on your phone, checking into a flight through WhatsApp, and even coffee makers that ‘know’ how you like your brew in the morning are all examples of AI.
Terms like Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Natural Language Processing and so on are all subsets of AI.
ChatGP-WHAT?
ChatGPT is an AI tool that has grabbed the attention of many people with its ability to perform more complex AI when it comes to language. This chatbot tool was created by OpenAI and can have a ‘conversation’ with you on just about any topic you can think of. If you have not yet explored ChatGPT yourself, I’d encourage you to give it a go right now. Watch this quick intro: https://youtu.be/40Kp_fa8vIw then create an account to explore it for yourself on https://chat.openai.com/.
Addressing the Issues
While AI is not a new concept to us, it seems that the applications of AI are now reaching a tipping point where we are starting to take more note of them and ask the question “Is this really a good thing for us?”. Geoffrey Hinton left Google last month so that he can be more outspoken about some potential risks relating to AI. He puts it like this: “We are heading into a time of great uncertainty where we are dealing with things that we have never dealt with before. It’s as if aliens had landed, but we didn’t really take it in because they speak good English.”
While some people are mostly using ChatGPT to write their anniversary cards (to varying success) we’re more interested in the educational implications. What do AI tools like this mean for a child’s learning? Let’s address just 2 of the main concerns. In each case, I hope that you will see a common underlying theme that has to do not so much with simply what the technology is, but how it is used.
Will it undermine core skills, like writing?
ChatGPT is so good at generating new written text in just about any style, it is much harder to pick up writing that was plagiarised by a learner through ChatGPT. This is clearly a potential pitfall. But does it mean that learners will lose the ability to effectively generate their own thoughts in writing?
Sal Khan, creator of Khan Academy, believes that the key lies in how AI tools are deployed in the language class. When used well, he says that they can actually be beneficial for developing writing skills by “not writing for you, but writing with you. It becomes a writing coach.” When writing, a learner can ask ChatGPT for key concepts that should be included in their writing, they could enter their own writing and ask ChatGPT to analyse it, they can even invite ChatGPT to debate them on nuanced ideas in their writing. Used strategically, a tool like this has the potential to do what many language teachers would love to have the capacity for: individualised and personalised support of every single learner.
And our Independent Examinations Board agrees. At a recent school head’s conference, the IEB’s assessment specialists encouraged us as leaders in education to be proactive and thoughtful, teaching learners that our role is to be the human - factoring in common sense, ethics, empathy and context. In fact, said the IEB, a tool like ChatGPT may just be most beneficial for a complex subject like English studies. The subjects that are more under threat are the ones primarily based on hard skills, like coding. Isn’t that interesting!
Issue 2: Will it stop my child thinking for themself?
At first glance, ChatGPT seems to do a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to thinking and learning. After all, if I can simply ask ChatGPT to produce a 5-page evaluation of the rule of Tutankhamun for me without knowing a single thing about ancient Egypt, then what do I actually learn?
When evaluating the impact of new technologies in the classroom, Anne Watson from Oxford University points out that - again - the problem does not lie so much in the technology itself, but how it is implemented. “It’s a pity that current policy is retrogressive in this respect” she says.
Imagine a learner who is taught to use ChatGPT as a personal tutor. Khan describes a learner named Sanvi from World School in Arizona who was battling to understand part of the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. She asked an AI chatbot to take on the personality of Jay Gatsby and then had a lengthy conversation about the characters and plot, igniting a rich and personal appreciation for the text.
This idea of AI becoming a sort of ‘personal tutor’ is a potential game changer. Benjamin Bloom’s once described what he called ‘the two sigma problem’, claiming that the way to holistically increase the performance of all learners in an educational system is through one-on-one tutoring support for everyone. This has always seemed logistically impossible. With the introduction of AI, much of the support typically provided by a person can instead be provided by the AI. Not thinking for the learner, but providing the support for them to really think for themselves.
This principle is even true for us as adults in our work! I had to analyse a marking rubric the other day, so I copied it into ChatGPT and asked it to debate against me on the merits of the rubric. I had to express my own ideas clearly and concisely and it got me to think critically about things that I had not considered. It was as if I had one-on-one academic support!
A Helpful Comparison
This is not the first time we have been around the block when it comes to new tech in education. Many people have made a helpful comparison to calculators. Despite the recommendation in 1967 from NACOME that all learners have access to calculators, 72% of teachers and parents remained opposed. While there are some fundamental differences in these technologies, they cited strikingly similar concerns that we hear today about ChatGPT. The calculator will stop my child from learning basic Maths functions! They won’t be able to think for themselves!
But the evidence is clear. Just to name a few, studies have consistently shown that calculator use increases problem solving skills (NCTM, 1978), does not reduce pen and paper skills (Ellington, 2003), increases learner motivation (Muthomi, 2011), and results in higher test scores even in tests taken without a calculator (Watson, 2014).
What is clear in many studies, is that the way in which calculators are used in the classroom is of real significance. It matters how well teachers are trained and how the learners are then taught to use it. Sounds a lot like the points above about ChatGPT. I hope that, unlike the calculator, we don’t end up 56 years on, still wondering about whether this new technology has a place in learning.
Acknowledging Other Issues
Before we close with a personal challenge, I’d like to mention a few other issues which, while not directly related to education, certainly will impact it. These issues are complex and pose real challenges for our young people today. As parents and educators, we should be aware of these issues and be committed to helping our children navigate them carefully.
AI models like ChatGPT are inherently biased. Some can even be intentionally designed to produce fake news that appears real. We need to learn how to treat them as sources of information and not truth.
Historically, technological advance has often initially widened the wealth gap, first benefiting those in a position to leverage it, emphasising the importance of collaboration and empathy in our young people.
AI tools will be criminalised and weaponised, with bad guys already finding smart ways to use them. We need to be aware and build healthy guardrails.
AI has and will have an impact on the job market, making soft skills even more important for success in the future world of work.
Weak applications of AI such as Snapchat’s ‘AI friend’ are easily misused by our children. (I’d recommend following Klikd to find out more about AI in social media: https://klikd.co.za/snapchats-ai-chatbot)
As a principal, when I think about these issues, they highlight the importance in my mind of us being proactive in education when it comes to raising young people who are well-equipped to navigate AI in everyday life. Strong, smart, adaptable.
Our Final Challenge
None of us are passive observers. We are all, to some extent, active participants when it comes to AI being deployed in education. I often remind our Koa learners (quoting Spiderman) that ‘with great power comes great responsibility’.
As educators at Koa, we are actively shaping our approach. Naturally, we are already benefiting from ChatGPT in our workflow: we ask it to draw up exciting lesson plans, or to suggest different ways to ask a question in an assessment. These all help teachers to save a LOT of time that they typically spend on repetitive content tasks, allowing them to focus more on the learner. We’re also always on the lookout for future applications, like AI-produced narrative based reports for parents, or AI facilitated group work sessions for learners. But we are also thinking critically about our pedagogy, and how best to train our teachers on AI - not just knowing what the AI does, but how and why we use it. In fact, we believe that a good pedagogy is so important, we even ask candidates in Koa job interviews about their perspectives on AI in education.
Our learners need to be taught how to leverage the benefits, while being smart about the risks of poor engagement. Knowing how to use AI as a personal tutor doesn’t just happen - it has to be taught. And there are many additional applications which young people can benefit from. For example, log into ChatGPT now and ask it for career guidance for your 16 year old. You might be surprised by the nuance and depth in the conversation that follows!
Policy makers need to be thinking long and hard about how we assess in general. This is actually one of my biggest hopes when it comes to AI in education. You see, for a very long time, our assessment models have been broken. Summative, standardised assessment needs to change, and it is a very difficult thing to change. Hopefully, tools like ChatGPT will prompt - even force - exam boards, policy makers and universities to rethink our general approach to assessment. Hopefully this significant technological shift will be enough to budge our assessment standards out of its 100 year time-freeze.
And as parents, my exhortation is for you to engage. Engage with the AI tools to better understand them, engage with your children about how they see them, and engage with your schools on how they are deploying them. I challenge you to go in eyes wide open: aware of the challenges and the pitfalls, while also not slipping into a fear simply rooted in things being very different to what we used to experience in our own education.
AI gives us a chance to drive change in a very outdated education system and potentially solve a lot of problems. Yes it's going to be challenging to find healthy balances and good guardrails, and yes there are going to be teething issues along the way... but there are such good opportunities for us to leverage AI in education. Not doing so means that our kids leave school even less prepared for real life. While there is still much to discover and navigate in this technology, we can be sure that by approaching it with all the faculties that make us truly human - critical thinking, common sense, empathy - then we stand to gain much from it in education.
