A few years ago I advocated for the prohibition of cellphones in schools. I proposed that they be lockered between five minutes before school to five minutes after school, for whch I received a not inconsiderable amount of opprobrium and vitriol. Now of course the UN advises such a ban, which has been implemented by an increasing number of countries around the world.
Today I am advocating for the prohibition of AI and Chat GPT in schools, not because I am "anti-child" and "anti-education" but because I am pro both.
My first reason is that both AI and Chat GPT, although I suspect it may be more the latter, have recently been noted for both quoting itself when providing sources and evidence and justifications for particular arguments, and for inventing sources and evidence and justifications. From memory, two lawyers were in fact sanctioned by their respective courts for filings containing such falsities.
K - 12 students are not sufficiently sophisticated to be able to sift truth from fiction, and so are likely to take whatever is given to them by AI as gospel. In essence, the same concern as with using Wikipedia applies but on steroids.
My second, which to me is more significant, is that I firmly believe the process in education is more important than the product, the skills than the content, the competencies than the results. When we accept AI, the message we are sending is that the fish is more important than the fishing to rope in the relevant aphorism. Students already too often feel that the grade outweighs the learning, that the test supercedes the class, and that what they submit is more important than how they got the thing to submit.
If we were to accept AI, we are saying that the student does not need to research, select, discriminate, synthesize and so on and so forth. All s/he needs to do is to upload a question, download the response and education achieved.
The logical extension is that we can now give a K student a G12 advanced algebra question, s/he can upload it (without the need even to read it), download the answer and now has AP Math. But why stop there. Why not award the five year-old a BS or an MS or a PhD? Clearly the need to go through the formative processes no longer exists since it is AOK to use AI.
I am reasonably certain that no-one will accept the K > PhD in Mathematics route, so why open that crack in the Teaching & Learning dam in the first place? The product is evidence only of the process, and not an end in and of itself, a point sadly lost by too many in the chase for grades and the focus on standardized test scores. Students need to crawl before walking before running before olympic hurdles and so on.
Time will tell if I am on the right side of this debate. I hope for the sake of an educated polity that I am.
**Please leave comments and questions below."
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