2024 – Our Year of Magical Thinking

The Year of Magical Thinking, by the late Joan Didion, is a poignant meditation on loss, grief, and life thereafter. In it, the author shares how sometimes she had to resort to magical thinking to deal with the sudden and unexpected loss of her husband and her daughter′s grave illness.

The sudden advent of Generative AI, shepherded by ChatGPT, has been a death of sorts for the traditional model of learning, already languishing, barely holding on through recalcitrant systemic rigidities and the last ditch spontaneous confabulation of those who have more to lose from this long overdue disruption, as, for example, publishing companies and the eternally disconnected intellectual elites in education.

It has been clear for many years already, since the generalization of the Internet, that a contents-based, rote learning pedagogy and a one-size fits all model of assessment were hopelessly outdated. Generative AI has been the final nail in the coffin, a ubiquitous savant accessible to anybody with an Internet connection, decisively opening up infinite learning possibilities and helping to make true on the unfulfilled promise of personalized and engaging learning.

And, yet, like the author in the book aforementioned, we have collectively resorted to magical thinking. This past year I have had the immensely good fortune to work with school systems all over Latin America, the US and Canada, and various countries in Asia and Africa, so I can attest firsthand to that, even in innovative schools in Silicon Valley or in the most advanced educational systems like Singapore, Denmark or Finland, implementation of AI at the school level has been languid at best.

In most schools around the world – any generalization is intrinsically unfair and I am sure that there are model implementations of which I am unaware – AI, this marvelous, once in history technological disruption, is still viewed more as a threat than as what it really is, the ultimate opportunity for lifelong learning.

Our magical thinking features various dimensions:

• Instead of evolving our anachronistic assessment methods, vulnerable, of course, to generative AI systems, we engineer cumbersome anti plagiarism systems, doomed to fail since AI generated contents are undetectable.
• Standardized, pen-and-paper, closed book sit down tests continue to reign supreme as the ultimate benchmark for educational achievement, despite them being a completely artificial way to demonstrate real world mastery in a word that is irreversibly open book, real time and contextual.
• Schools are still rooted in their tried and hitherto true pedagogies of success, preparing students for a world that does not exist anymore. High performing schools are living on borrowed time, unable or unwilling to change, victims of their success, capitalizing on that parents – our clients – are yet unaware of the profound changes needed and are only timidly demanding a different model of schooling.
• Despite the undisputable fact that our students will live in a world dominated by AI, with the not too distant promise of AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) looming in the horizon, we opt to ignore the urgent need to have our students become technologically, and, specifically, AI literate, in order to be able to critically accompany the frenzied tech developments that, literally, occur every week.
• Instead of placing it at the center of our discussions, planning and reflections, schools generally end to ignore AI as some irritating background noise, a passing fad, an ephemeral disruption.

Last year I titled my end of year reflection “2023: The Greatest Year That Never Was”, in an attempt to describe how, characteristically, we educators were lagging in our adoption of AI to improve teaching and learning, mostly due to the ingrained inertia in our systems and the illusory need to step on firm ground before committing to change. Now, at the end of 2024, after more than 2 years since ChatGPT appeared in November of 2022, we have been witnesses to its life changing impact in all orders of activities and the many breathtaking advances that even challenge the essence of our sensorial perception (as of this writing, December 2024, ChatGPT can not only converse seamlessly but also see in real time), there are no more excuses.

Granted, there are risks and concerns, such as the imminent loss of jobs and the risk to cognitive development due to overreliance on AI in the formative years, but we cannot bury our heads under the sand and go on with business as usual. If anything, generative AI is the most powerful tool to democratize learning, to extend the joy of learning in ways that were unimaginable even a few years ago. That should be our ethical and moral imperative, to make the best use of this dangerous but wonderful tool, to finally transform our education systems for the benefit of these future generations who need our guidance more than ever.

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