Page 72 - EW November 2023

ANNIVERSARY ESSAY

AI, Freedom & Human

Development

SHEILA BAUER RAY RAVAGLIA

RTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, FREEDOM, AND Artificial Intelligence and more
Human Development are subjects which could
be written at book length without scratching specifically ChatGPT and its generative
Athe surface. We will try to make some important cousins Bard and Claude won't replace
points about all three in this 800-word special essay.
As regards Artificial Intelligence (AI) — and more teachers but they will certainly
specifically, ChatGPT and its generative cousins, Bard transform how teachers do their jobs
and Claude — the first point to note is that though they
won’t eat our lunch, they may still prepare it. They will not
replace teachers but they will almost certainly transform wrong does not mean ending the journey and going back to
how teachers do their jobs. And, as much as this may starting point. It requires finding a pivot, moving laterally,
disappoint many teachers, they will not replace students, and identifying a third way.
or even students’ parents. With most education systems, schools, universities,
The important truth about ChatGPT is that it is not a and careers there’s a mismatch at the intersections. The
reliable source. It is, however, a master of the plausible. transition from one to another can be jarring even for the
And this is the most dangerous type of unreliable source. most prepared. And this renders every stage of the journey
What ChatGPT says is not so often wrong as to make its worse for the experience. In the US, only 60 percent of
wrongness obvious. Instead, one needs to validate and domestic and international students complete their degrees
verify each claim, making it a time-consuming tool to in six years, and one in four drops out after the first year.
use. This is also not the most interesting way to use AI in It is in moments of transition that failures are most likely
education. to occur.
AI is most useful when it is assigned to tasks that are not he solution to this problem is to blur the transitions.
possible for a teacher to do in a class full of students. This TIf you make it routine for students to begin their
is not content generation but close observation. university coursework while still in high school, it becomes
Ideal teaching is always one-on-one. When teachers can less of a leap across a chasm and a more gradual ascent.
watch the student in the learning process, they can see what Expose students to careers early and make internships
the student knows and where confusions lie, if any. Cleverly commonplace. This way the career leg of the journey will
employed AI can help surface such things by watching each become familiar.
and every student. This is how it should be used. It’s also important to make sure that universities are
What AI can’t do is provide a sense of purpose or a reason listening to the needs of industry. Yesterday we learned
to do anything at all. Finding a reason to study, to make from a panel discussion that as many as 80 percent
extra effort, is a very human characteristic fostered best in of engineering graduates from Indian universities are
interactions between students, their families and teachers. unemployable. Back in the US, the situation is not much
Education is a journey. Therefore it needs direction. better with ever larger numbers of students incurring large
The Latin root of education is educare, meaning lead out debts to study subjects that make them less qualified for
or bring forth. But the road to enlightenment is seldom a employment than they were before they went to university.
straight path. It often requires a change of direction, and Exposure to work will not fix this. But ensuring students
sometimes requires spiraling around mountains as we work are exposed to the requirements of work, getting universities
to attain the summit. to understand the needs of employers, and making it
The summit of education is not the university, it is possible for students to change course if they realise they
knowledge. Moreover, university education is expensive. are headed in the wrong direction, will certainly improve
So we should tell our students that it is better to make your the situation.
inevitable bad decisions before you get there. If perfection In the new age of AI, there will be two types of jobs. Those
prevents us from making mistakes in high school, those where you tell the machines what to do, and those where
mistakes will revisit us in college, and they will have gotten the machines tell you what to do. If we want to prepare our
bigger. students for the former, we need to ensure that they have
Just as secondary school is the place for structured purpose (what they want machines to do) and that they
thinking, university is the place for unstructured thinking. understand their freedom. So if they find themselves on
But university is not an end in itself. University has value the wrong side of this equation, they can take the steps to
only as part of the path to a meaningful life and career. get to the right side.
It’s at this stage that being aware of freedom is important. (Sheila Bauer is CEO of AccessMCA — A Better Way to College & Dr.
Choice of career can provide purpose and motivation, but as Raymond Ravaglia is former Director of Pre-Collegiate Studies, Stanford
with any choice, it must be allowed to be wrong. And being University)

72 EDUCATIONWORLD NOVEMBER 2023