I recently asked Bard, Google’s conversational chatbot, whether artificial intelligence will replace teachers. It is said, “It is unlikely that AI will completely replace teachers in the near future.”
I agreed.
During a night of poetry, I remember joking with a friend that it takes a broken heart to nurture and heal another heart. I added, “Until AI experiences sorrows, we must rely on human teachers to nurture the hearts and minds of the next generation.”
However, it is hard to ignore the growing questions and concerns that are emerging from – and about – the teaching community about the impact of AI on their jobs, their classrooms and their vocation.
Governments, foundations and corporations have channeled billions of dollars into researching, developing, and deploying AI systems in recent years, which, in general, can perform intelligent tasks that usually associated with people.
For example, Bard and fellow chatbot ChatGPT can write essays, provide feedback on computer code, and even write elegant poems. AI is also used to power voice assistants like Siri, recommend products on e-commerce sites, and detect deadly diseases and more.
Currently, AI still lags behind humans in most disciplines, especially complex tasks that require a combination of technical abilities and socio-emotional skills. In fact, many experts agree that in the near term, AI will mostly supplement rather than replace humans.
It is important, even with the advancement of AI, that we do not abandon everything that can think to machines. Doing so not only exacerbates dependence on technology but also undermines critical thinking and reflection which are essential aspects of the human experience. We must continue to teach children how to think.
However, AI is forcing us to rethink education as a vehicle for the democratization of thinking and knowing. There is no denying that. About 40% of the world’s population is under 24. If schools fail to prepare this generation of young people for the age of thinking machines, the consequences for social and economic peace will be dire.
AI has the potential to underpin positive change in education. For example, AI-powered computer vision and voice-to-text apps can greatly improve school accessibility for students with visual and hearing impairments. AI can also reduce teacher workloads, especially in environments where the capacity and number of teachers is low. Yet human teachers must remain central to teaching and learning.
On the other hand, technology also has a high potential for harm. Generative AI can help students cheat in exams. In addition, AI chatbots often produce results that are sexist, racist and factually incorrect.
So what should teachers do?
Prepare students to ask better questions
A young Cameroonian university official recently told me that he and his colleagues “are trying to see how our classes can prepare students for technology and AI.”
Going forward, more teachers and education officials should think this way. Above, it requires the review of curricula, syllabi and professional development programs of the teacher, and including the goals and content of AI literacy, risks, ethics and skills, and other things.
At a deeper level, as machines become better at answering questions, teachers need to guide students to ask better questions. It’s more than just writing good prompts for conversational AI. Today’s schools need to encourage students to be curious because it is an important component in conducting basic research, including in frontier areas, where humans have an advantage over AI.
Furthermore, as AI heralds rapid change and transformation in labor markets, socio-emotional skills such as adaptability must become central to the curriculum. Teachers should seek to plant the seeds of adaptability in the hearts and minds of students.
If change is to be the only constant, we must not only help students learn, we must inspire them to love lifelong learning.
Help avoid echo chambers
AI will almost certainly make the misinformation problem worse. Soon, anyone with an internet connection will be able to make strong arguments on any topic simply by inputting a prompt into an AI platform.
Echo chambers can grow louder if we don’t train today’s youth to find common ground and hold peaceful conversations with people they disagree with.
Short of action, AI can feed the flames of extremism and polarization.
Tackling the most pressing challenges of our time – climate change, pandemics, migration – requires an unprecedented level of collaboration at the global, regional and national levels. While AI will open up new possibilities to analyze, organize, and process the information needed to fix these issues, this potential will be useless if we don’t communicate with each other.
That’s why teaching students the ability to find common ground is so important.
Use AI as a teaching assistant
We’ve known for decades that students learn better when instruction is personalized. However, the limited number of teachers and rapid growth of the student population, especially in low-income countries, have prevented adapted teaching methods from taking full effect.
AI can change this.
Adaptive learning technologies powered by AI are already showing good results in literacy and numeracy. Typically, AI-powered adaptive learning solutions assess students’ current knowledge and abilities, identify gaps, deliver content and quizzes at the right level, and provide feedback to improve learning outcomes. learning.
A World Bank review reported positive results from adaptive learning pilots around the world. AI thus helps complement the efforts of teachers and supports significant improvements in educational outcomes.
To be clear, human teachers remain essential to learning. In the same way that libraries and search engines are not taking the responsibility of teaching away from teachers, human teachers must remain central in the age of educational AI.
Teachers still set ambitious learning goals, lead instruction, and motivate and inspire students among other important tasks.
AI needs education
Importantly, the use of AI education solutions should consider issues of privacy, inclusion, bias and accuracy. Currently, generative AI often produces inaccurate, biased, racist and sexist answers.
Academic institutions can help solve this. They can serve as spaces for debate, research and experimentation aimed at making AI safer, inclusive, accurate and compliant. Universities can also apply a rigorous research lens to separate hype from reality and ensure that technology serves rather than harms shared human development.
Academics can also play an important role in helping governments anticipate and manage the disruptive effects of AI. For example, as AI disrupts sectors and jobs replacing old jobs and creating new ones, tertiary education institutions will be crucial to the skills, development, and reskilling of those today’s workforce for the future.
The future
Innovation works in mysterious ways, and we barely witnessed the first moments of AI’s Cambrian explosion.
No one knows what the Age of AI will bring.
However, we know that the pace of change will accelerate. The skills landscape is shifting. Education must improve. Therefore, we can adapt our curricula and teaching methods to fit a world where machines think.
We can teach students to find common ground and hold peaceful conversations, even if they disagree with their peers. We can empower our teachers and educators not only to use AI for adaptive learning, but also to make AI educational solutions more secure, inclusive, secure and compliant.
The trip is long. We might stumble. We might fall. But we must rise again. We must keep walking, to ensure that AI contributes to the creation of a world where knowledge is democratized and used for the common good.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of al Jazeera.
