Fears concerning artificial intelligence, AI, seem to be on the rise among educators, economists, and government officials. Some scientists too. Will AI allow students to cheat more easily? Will jobs be lost to increased automation? Will such systems achieve some degree of sentience, and perhaps imperil humanity? Are those fears justified, or are they just science fiction-influenced paranoia?
As for the fear that AI will achieve sentience, whether benevolent or malevolent, that seems to be based on an unstated application of what is known as Moore’s law. Named after the digital electronics guru Gordon Moore, the founder of Intel, Moore’s law states that technological advances (particularly with the computing capacity of integrated circuits) will occur at a predictable rate — always upward.
Applied to AI, Moore’s law could thus describe either a coming utopia or a nightmare. But Moore’s law is not, thankfully, an immutable law of the universe — it’s more like a thesis.
To be clear, I see the current forms of AI as nothing more than complex sorting devices. In response to queries, they can quickly scan, gather, and assemble exceptionally large amounts of information. AI involves masses of complex code, but the systems are incapable of human judgment, as they lack the “divine spark.”
Further, what AI programs generate now often includes errors because of problems with the information used to train those systems. And the information that AI chucks out, say a written report, is what used to be called “boilerplate,” without nuance, inflection, or opinion, the stuff that marks the workings of a human mind.
We’re not taking learning loss seriously
Rather than be concerned with the possible negative outcomes of humanity’s embracing of AI, I am more concerned with our neglect of HI — human intelligence. One example is our failure to take seriously the decline in learning among schoolchildren.
Although I’m not a true believer in educational test scores as a measure of learning, they can’t be totally ignored. Last fall, elementary test scores in English and math tumbled at the national level, in Illinois, and in Chicago Public Schools. This spring, test results in history and civics were released, and they too had declined.
Apologists for the students, the teachers, and the schools would declare, “It’s because of the pandemic!” That excuse doesn’t wash with me anymore. During the height of the pandemic, when distance learning was proving itself to be inadequate —if not grossly inadequate — I gave such an excuse a degree of currency. But the pandemic has been over for more than a year, classes have long since resumed, yet students are still in the throes of academic distress.
Technology and AI will not fix the problem. No device or application will ever replace a well-trained, intelligent teacher — no matter the grade or level — with a firm but supportive personality. And a piece of chalk.
AI will erode thinking
To make a point about AI and its potential use in education, consider this scenario. Which is best: a student in, say, a college freshman literature class who uses AI to generate a boiler-plate essay on Homer’s The Odyssey, or a student who actually read that hallmark of Western civilization and then wrote their own essay with personal insights, questions, and opinions, thus proving to their professor that they learned something, and that they have been, ideally, changed by the experience?
Why have I focused on education? That’s where it all begins, in developing creative, questioning individuals and expanding overall human intelligence, the foundation of civilization.
Some would say, with the speed of a mouse click, that technology is an essential part of civilization! And AI can play a role! True, but it should only play a supporting role, not be a lead character. Human intelligence is built on language, literature, history, music, and art. Qualitative things, not quantitative things.
Our ongoing reliance on high-tech, and our seeming rush towards AI, potentially erodes human intelligence. As human intelligence erodes, so does democracy.
Ask the Greeks.
John Vukmirovich is a Chicago-area writer and book reviewer.
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