AI in Education: A Case For Optimism

The world (at least the LinkedIn world) has been overrun by talk of AI for the last 9 months or so and it’s probably fair to say that it has been a whirlwind of ever-developing changes that began when Chat GPT burst onto the scene and spooked most of those working in education. ?

Whilst some of the initial knee-jerk reaction (like countries and states trying to ban Chat GPT) seem to have faded a little, what has replaced it, are some great examples of people using the tools that have emerged – though not too many examples of these actually happening in schools? ?

Outside of product demos, the future still looks a bit foggy – what is it all going to look like in 1, 2, 5 years from now and who is going to lead the way? And the elephant in the room – what does all this mean for learning? Are teachers going to become redundant? Have we, as one paper from Hamilton, Wiliam and Hattie (you can read it here (it's very interesting!)): EdArXiv Preprints | The Future of AI in Education: 13 Things We Can Do to Minimize the Damage) reached ‘peak humanity’? ?

This phrase suggests that we may have reached the point at which we no longer value learning in the way we once did – that we will never strive as hard to learn and know more as we do right now, because in the future the thinking will be done for us.?

But I take a slightly different view. ?

One of the great turning points in human-computer relations was the moment when, in 2016 DeepMind’s AlphaGo beat European Go champion Fan Hui, 5 games in a row (and subsequently went on to win 99.8% of future matches!). This signalled the end of the line for human superiority in tactical gaming – Garry Kasparov had been dispatched by DeepBlue in 1996, so this was the last bastion of hope for human tacticians. ?

But what is the legacy of these two computer-triumphs? It could be that we’re doomed. Or, perhaps it could be that we have been humbled and forced to think again about what we thought we knew. You see, what happened once the dust settled on the DeepMind victory, was that Go players saw new and formerly unseen ways of approaching the game – they got to relearn how to play and discover new ways of exploring the unfolding of a match. Go, in fact, is not dead; Go rises again and becomes more than it was. ?

This, for me, is the opportunity I see form embedding Ai into our lives, and specifically into education. Undoubtedly there are going to be some bumps in the road – we are going to find AI doing things better than humans in the education system, but the end-result will not be that the AI replaces the teachers (or the pupils – we're not at peak humanity unless we allow ourselves to be), it’s that we will find new ways of thinking about what education is and how we want to do it. ?

People don’t play chess or Go because they’re training to beat a computer – they play for the joy of mastering tactics and competition. Schools do not exist to train young people to either be the best at something or give up. They exist to help people learn to be active participants in their own lives and in the global life of the planet. ?

To mix metaphors a little – consider a pilot - their job is not to be able to fly as well as an airplane; it is to harness the plane to the best of their ability and make it do what it needs to do. Sometimes this will be to safely get from A to B, othe rtimes it will be to push the boundaries of what is possible in the field of aviation, sometime sit might simply to enjoy being up in the clouds. But in every instance, the pilot is in control and the plane offers up the opportunity. The pilot, the Go-player, the teacher, or pupil needs to learn new rules, skills and tactics as opportunities develop, but ultimately, they are going to be richer for the development which allows them to see the sky, the game, teaching or learning in a new way. ?