Our Illiterate AI Future
Technology is in a constant state of evolution and change and we can either move with it and accept it or protest and rage against the machine. However, I do think there is something to say for a smooth transition as well. I look back to my own prehistoric past when programming was done using Fortran on decks of punched computer cards. One of the first real video games, Pong, was played by connecting to a large TV console which allowed players to engage in a crude version of tennis. I played my first “electronic game” with a suitcase size console connected with alligator clips to a traditional landline, in turn connected to a room-sized computer at my university. It was a game of golf that gave me feedback via a dot matrix printer. It was amazing!
In my elementary grades I was required to learn multiplication tables, do long division and mental math problems and as a result, although never a math whiz, I could do mathematical estimations, and even do magical wizardry like give change when I worked as a cashier in a fast food restaurant. The pace of life has moved on at warp speed leaving my childhood in the technological dark ages. Toys and even computers I first played with are now artifacts and museum pieces. It is a humbling experience.
Technology of course is instrumental in serving us up a certain quality of life, but I believe at an increasing cost as today the most recent changes revolve around progress in artificial intelligence (AI). It is both invigorating and frightening at the same time. As a student and now as an educator I know first hand that it has always been easy for students to cheat and plagiarize. In this new era we as educators are open to new levels of threat in these arenas never before realized, so is this modern marvel of technology, AI, here to save us, or to destroy us?
Apps like ChatGPT and others like it can now generate reports, essays and any form of writing, and style within seconds utilizing any content implementing the collective knowledge and ignorance amassed on the internet. To date it won’t engage on political or religious topics but it does seem to have strong “opinions” about “Flat Earthers”. I have enjoyed my time engaging with and I don’t know whether to address AI as friend or enemy at this point.
Students have been using calculators, translators and other devices for years and as a result has this had the net result of strengthening, or weakening their math and writing skills? In the final analysis are these new technologies just new tools to play with in order that our students can be even better researchers and writers, or are they crutches that bring the whole academic system crashing down?
I’d like to say time will tell, but the fact of the matter is time, in this case, moves so quickly and change of this nature is so rapid we do not have the luxury to let this scenario idly play out and then one day, from an armchair, casually and leisurely draw our conclusions. By then fate has been sealed and AI may be calling the shots as it may be smarter than the collective by that time.
My own impressions are that many of the new technologies that do the work for us, bring us information and “knowledge” at high speeds, in the end warp our education, influence our bias, slow our senses, cloud our judgements, pollute our politics, weaken our democracy, spread hate and generally act as the change agent that weakens and erodes. Although, I hasten to add I have seen many funny cat memes.
I don’t wish to be labelled luddite and therefore recognize that AI is also an inevitability. Therefore, we must learn how to understand it and use it for a tool to expand our abilities. I say this however reluctantly and with very little optimism. My real fear is, as I look at a society that is presently mathematical illiterate, with its smart phones, social media and the rest and progressing towards being socially illiterate as we fixate on our devices and monitors for endless hours, we are about to enter the era of actual illiteracy in a written sense.
As an aside cursive writing is long gone, now we will begin the much more important, real and rapid loss of the ability of writing actual sentences based on research, real thought, while personally formulating opinions with meaning on a range of relevant topics. I doubt if we will be able to react smart enough and fast enough to integrate AI effectively into educational systems in such a way that we can adequately measure adapt and control standards of use and control it in acceptable ways before IT controls us.
This essay was written by ChatGPT, using a translator and spell check, or was it?
Marty Rempel
