Robert Wesonga
You do not have to be a cynic to doubt who has written this.
Not even a Thomas, or a jealous person who goes green with envy when they see
glitter from some place that is not theirs. Because, by the time you are done
reading this article, you should be able to imagine that it has been written by
Artificial Intelligence (AI). In its entirety. For that is how far along we
have come, since the arrival of AI, and its attendant machine learning.
We are now happy to cheer AI, and marvel that soon we will be
able to graduate with AI assisted accolades. In which case, you wonder, whether
it will be AI or human beings graduating. In retrospect, it should not take a
cynic to know that AI has made teaching and learning efficient; it has bettered
on the functionality of search engines like Google, or information repositories
such as Wikipedia. AI is driving the teaching and learning agenda, faster than
the legendary Concorde could ever fly from London to New York.
Recently, while having innocent banter with friends, some
naughty fellow mentioned that soon, human beings will be able to leave the task
of conceiving and bearing children to Artificial Intelligence. It was all
funny, until one of us mentioned how this situation was going to put all men
out of work. What followed was a debate about how the most unimaginable of
stuff now happens – courtesy of technology and innovation.
Before we try to get serious, a little opening up on Scylla
and Charybdis will put us into the loop. A story in the Greek mythology is told
of two sea monsters separated by a narrow seaway: Scylla and Charybdis. Scylla,
a six-headed monster, was always waiting by a cliff, to pounce onto sailors and
eat them. On the other hand, Charybdis was the massive whirlpool that swallowed
entire ships three times in a day. When returning home from the War of Troy, Odysseus,
a mythological Greek hero, must find out how to navigate this sea dilemma; he
must choose how to navigate his ship between the two monsters up to Ithaca. It
is obvious that faced with the AI conundrum, like Odysseus, we must find means
to navigate the AI dilemma, and get home safe and dry.
The beauty with AI is that it has made learning easier – even
brought it home. Whereas we had to read through volumes of information from
search engines like google, and information repositories such as Wikipedia, AI
allows you to ask for exactly what we want to read. If you are a student, you
can then even ask AI to frame it the way your teacher or professor likes seeing
it. The only problem with this that we have to ask who really did the task: AI
or the student? In all these online interaction, you do not even have to be
polite! For AI does not care about sensibilities, and the aspect of courtesy
and the humane when answering what you have asked.
AI enhances accessibility to learning, is flexible and offers
personalized learning experiences. It can facilitate differentiated learning
whereby learners with various or special needs are accommodated and served far
much better than the traditional school would.
For teachers, they do not have to spent man-hours (or is it
donkey hours?) doing the laborious – and sometimes loathsome task of looking
for content in books, and organizing it. AI will even prepare for them how to
deliver the content to an often disinterested generation, which the luxuries of
technology have turned learners into. If
you are a lazy teacher, a little stroll to an ever eager Gemini, ChatGPT or Deepseek
is all you need so you can ask them to do your bidding, as you scroll through
betting odds on your phone, or read the latest football gossip. In short, AI is
so generous, that it gives us an opportunity descend into the flabbiness that
comes with comforts.
Of course such teachers and lecturers will argue that using
AI is better than the ‘yellow notes’ of the erstwhile professors, but they do
not shudder to imagine how in a couple of years, they will be 20 years dead
academically. An academic who surrenders fully to AI without painstaking,
rigorous research is a masquerade who merely serves the interests of the
big-tech companies in dreaming up solutions to drive the world into potential laziness.
However, if used creatively, AI will assist teachers can come
up with relevant test items, mark assignments, and grade them objectively for
instant feedback to the learners. Besides, teachers can use AI to track and
predict what their learners’ future learning interests and career prospects
are.
I will go back to the learners in explaining what we must
fear about AI. The world over, we now have students whose entire semester’s
lesson notes cannot fill the one side of a matchbox turning up to take
examinations, while fully relying on AI to make up for their laziness and
irresponsibility. Before Elon Musk and Gates make good their threat to replace
doctors and teachers with AI, we must check against AI ruining the integrity of
the global workforce. Unmitigated use of AI portends that the world will one
day operate at the behest of big tech companies and Information Technology
bigwigs.
All said and done, it is obvious that we cannot avoid AI,
lest we get trampled upon by the tides of time, and by those that will continue
to use it. Like Odysseus in Homer’s classics, The Iliad and The Odyssey, we must choose between sailing too close to Scylla, and
losing six sailors, or veering too close to Charybdis, and risk capsizing the
entire ship – with all the life and treasures in it. Avoiding one danger
certainly means falling into another – we have to choose the lesser. Prudence,
then, will demand that we find means, policies and structures that will enable us
to use AI positively, and ethically.
Note: You
may now believe that this article has been written by a human being. 100%. For
AI will not be happy to say the things
I have said above about itself – or will it?
Robert Wesonga is a freethinker who writes his own things
