Inevitable rise of ChatGPT and other AI tools must be managed rather than resisted
- Teachers fear the end of mainstream teaching with the advent of AI tools that can spit out instant essays, displacing our ability to think, create and collaborate
- But a ban is not the answer, instead students must be taught to analyse and challenge received wisdom, to wield the power of technology and sidestep the limitations
We live in an age of technological bonanzas. From virtual learning to wireless exchange, we are consumed by the euphoria of technological convenience. Such astonishing developments underline how beholden we have become to technology.
Pandemic shutdowns galvanised education innovation and online learning has become an accepted alternative to classroom learning. But online interaction cannot simulate the experience of speaking face to face. Even with the much-touted metaverse, it is quixotic to assume it can displace physical learning.
Such AI ecosystems and their progeny have sent many educators into a frenzy. Many fear the end of mainstream schooling. Who needs teachers when a computer can halve the teaching and learning time while doubling the reach?
Such skills used to be founded in deep-rooted pedagogy, refined through classroom discussions and forged collaboratively. Now, all could be replaced by the click of a mouse.
Effectively taught students think around doxa to arrive at wisdom. Whether through reading, writing or Socratic debates, schools should teach students not what but how to think. As Harvard president Larry Summers, a former US Treasury secretary, said: “The most important kind of learning is about how to learn.”
Yet ChatGPT would unravel the warp and woof of learning by spitting out answers – possibly spurious – in an instant.
Even if it were possible to completely ban the bot, we would question the utility of the endeavour. Should we engage in a game of whack-a-mole against an illusory foe that will reincarnate in yet another form? It also smacks of hypocrisy.
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Another reason not to ban AI from classrooms is that computer-based physics is endemic to the 21st century. Students must learn to wield the power, and sidestep the limitations, of such technology. It will not be easy, but what safer place to experiment with it than in school.
There are other ways to prevent harm. Online lessons or assignments should be replaced by in-class assessments to minimise the temptation of cheating. But this is at best a stopgap. AI-powered tools will only get better at mimicking human intelligence.
The sooner we accept this, the better we will be at avoiding the pitfalls. There is already a subconscious deferral to technology as the answer to any problem. The tendency to assume that online search results are the only form of truth is dangerous and counterproductive.
Googling answers to everything also subverts learning, when the pursuit of genuine scholarship entails discipline, patience and diligence. As the paradigm of truth continues to shift, so should our methodology to analyse and challenge received wisdom.
Like it or not, technology has made inroads into education. It will always carry the undesirable offshoot of reducing students’ critical reasoning and trivialising the virtue of labour. Technology and education need not be antithetical, however. They spring from the same desire.
But we are all obliged to teach students how to proceed by curiosity, doubt and experimentation, and to resist lunging after immediate rewards. To achieve this, we must find ways to coexist with any new technological tool.
Adam Au is the head of legal at a Hong Kong-based healthcare group
