AI in Teaching

Last week, we wrote a post on this topic. A week later, I’m feeling like the message about AI in teaching wasn’t strong enough, so here’s essentially part II. The following expressed my own values around this issue, so take it or leave it.

The Harm in Using AI in Teaching

Regarding the question of AI in teaching, I never ever use it to come up with the content of my lessons and I would never let my students use it for their assignments. Why? It is because I want my students and I to remain fully human.

The purpose of a teacher is to learn about the world and then generate, out of his or her own self, the lesson for the student(s). Think of it as providing a meal for the soul of the student. It can also be likened to a musical composition. In either case, it is a free, soul-to-soul gift from teacher to student. Even something like a mental math problem falls into this category because there is human intuition even in the wording of such a problem. Believe me. I’ve been doing this a long time.

If we let the machine do even these seemingly simple things for us, we start losing the ship, for then our human capacities being to atrophy. If I am true teacher, I myself as the teacher must do everything I am asking my students to do. So, for example if I want my students to figure out mentally, what is 5/12 of 108, then I myself should first do this problem mentally in exactly the language I intend to ask the question of my students. Then, I will know what is best. What need, then, for AI in teaching?

Then, What is AI for?

I’m going to preach for a moment because I’ve heard parents say things like, “But, AI is part of their world. They need to know how to use it.” They say these things to justify letting their 8-year old use AI. Sometimes people don’t seem to think these things through, so here’s a dose of reality. If your child never used AI until their first day of college, it would take them about 35 seconds to figure it out. Enough said.

Your children are young. Teach them how to become HUMAN. At this age – i.e. before 18 – we must develop human capacities. That is the point of education, and how do we teach that? First and foremost, it is by becoming fully human ourselves. If you want to become a true teacher, therefore, you must continually develop and strengthen your own human capacities.

So, what is AI for, then? Honestly, if it went away, I think we’d be fine as a species. That being said, it seems to be that AI can be used for the procedural elements of the world, like predicting the weather or keeping track of appointments. Perhaps it can even work on complex computations to generate target compounds in the development of new drugs. That’s all conceivable to me. However, AI is not for those capacities of soul we human beings must develop and sustain within ourselves to remain human. It’s not that AI can’t do our thinking for us. Oh, it certainly can, but should it? No! Artificial intelligence shall not replace organic human thinking, neither in daily life and nor in our teaching.

AI is a Beast

AI, like other technology, may bring ease to human life. But if we are to save human civilization, we must understand what it is and is not for. Think of AI as a beast. In one sense, it is beastly in the same way a big and powerful ox is. We would use an ox to help us do things we can’t do with our limited human capabilities. Should not AI be used in the same way while continuing to do those essentially human things for ourselves? Human things include teaching, art, music, writing, and other such cultural activities, among others. Even math falls into this category. Just because we use a supercomputer to cure cancer doesn’t mean we should stop doing mental math every day.

In another way, AI is a beast like nuclear technology with the power and potential to wipe humanity off the face of the Earth and turn this planet into a prison of metal and stone. I don’t think such a thing would happen like in the Terminator movies where AI suddenly decides it should turn on human beings and destroy all of us. Rather, I think becoming so dependent on AI and not putting proper wraps on it would destroy us by atrophying our own innermost human capacities. We would become like soul-ghosts as the machine has hollowed us out to our core. We would forget who we really are. Then, we would find that instead of creating the machine in our image, the machine would have re-created us in its own.

So, O human being, hark! I beseech thee NOT to give into the temptation to let AI become your child’s teacher. Restrain yourself from relying on it in your own teaching. Keep the beast under wraps and in his proper place.