The Rise of A.I and What it Means for Education by Wendy Long

Every technological advance in human history has, to a greater or lesser degree, brought with it not only the promise of great benefits, but also the possibility of dark and unintended consequences. It is a theme as old as the myth of Prometheus, and his theft of fire from the gods. And so it is with recent developments in Artificial Intelligence (AI), which have lately spawned a flurry of concerned commentary that has broken out into the public domain and provided the subject matter of many news stories. On the one hand, many commentators have stepped forth to extol the exciting possibilities and benefits of these new advances, whilst others have voiced concerns with regard to their safety, and the potential for unintended consequences leading humanity to rue its invention.

 

In one such article that recently captured my attention, ‘We May Be History’ (The Spectator, May 2023), Ben Lazarus informs us that Geoffrey Hinton, the ‘godfather of AI’ has announced his decision to leave the tech giant Google, because he believes ‘after decades of working on artificial intelligence’ that it has the potential to ‘wipe out humanity’. Hinton’s impressive body of work has included the development of ‘neural networks’ in computers, building structures similar to the human brain, and the ability for them to engage in ‘deep learning’, allowing them to ‘refine and extract patterns and concepts on a vast quantity of data.’ He asserts that AI is now ‘at least as competent as a human thinker’, and points out the obvious benefits of such an intelligence, giving the example of enhanced medical care and diagnosis, especially in cases of rare conditions where, instead of seeing one doctor whose experience may be limited, AI would enable us to benefit from the experience of ‘a doctor who’d seen 100 million patients, including dozens who have this rare condition.’ As someone with a comparatively rare heart condition that took well over two years to be fully diagnosed, I can instantly see the advantages of AI, so why, we may well ask, is the topic so contentious? And, more worryingly, why has a man whose life’s work has revolved around its development walked away, proclaiming his fears of his baby morphing into a monster that destroys us? 

 

As a computer scientist, Hinton’s concerns arise from his observation that AI will quickly outstrip human intelligence, and ‘biological intelligence’ will be ‘replaced by digital intelligence.’ While some people appear to be of the opinion that this doesn’t really matter – as long as the work gets done, the means of getting should not concern us – as an educator and creative being, this worries me greatly.

 

Over the course of the last year, I have on several occasions found myself in the position of assessing students’ compositions and feeling absolutely sure that they were not the students’ own work. I tried all of the usual checks for plagiarism, and yet drew a blank. I even went as far as pushing the students for an admission of at least having had some help with their writing (I didn’t want to go as far as accusing them of cheating, but let’s face it, that’s what it amounts to), but they insisted they had written it themselves. At the time, I wasn’t aware of the existence of ChatGPT, but when my daughter showed me this marvellous technology and its capabilities very recently, the scales fell from my eyes and I instantly knew how my students had produced compositions that were well beyond their capabilities. 

 

Why does this matter? If a computer can write our essays and save us time to do more of the fun things in life, surely that’s a good thing? Well, no. Not really. For a start, the point of an essay is for a student to learn something new, and to demonstrate that learning for the purpose of showing advancing progress. If the essay has been written on their behalf, in the very best case they may learn a little from reading what has been thought up for them, and in the worst case, they may well just submit their essay unread. This may not matter very much in the grand scheme of things if it’s just an occasional transgression, but what are the potential consequences if it becomes a habit? In a recent article, Sophie Makhoul points out that ChatGPT can ‘basically do all of your homework for you’, adding that there is ‘a very fine line between using ChatGPT because you’re stuck on an assignment and using it to write a whole essay for you’, as it’s a ‘very slippery slope’, (The Chimes, May 21st 2023 – https://cuchimes.com/) and it’s easy to see how one ‘assisted’ essay could become an entire body of coursework, university assignment, or dissertation. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I for one don’t want to be treated by a doctor who has cheated their way through their medical degree!

 

Another concern is what could happen to language if AI is allowed to take over. George Orwell demonstrated the power of language in his novel, 1984, showing how the corruption of language, and the removal of linguistic concepts, can change human thought and erase concepts that controlling powers deem unattractive or not useful in working towards the realisation of their ideology. He asserted that ‘language is the basis of human thought because it structures and shapes the way we think and the way we see the world,’ adding that ‘It can also limit the ideas that we are capable of formulating and expressing.’ (George Orwell, 1984, Book 1, Chapter 5: The Principles and Purpose of Newspeak in 1984 – https://www.llceranglais.fr/). It could be argued that this strikes right at the heart of Hinton’s concerns – if AI becomes the superior intelligence, as he predicts, it will have the power to change the way we think, and not necessarily for the better. 

 

Less alarming, but equally significant for me is the potential for AI to erode, and eventually destroy, human creativity. For many years now, music and art have gradually been taken over by technology, so that students can now ‘play’ their own music at the push of a button, instead of investing the many thousands of hours required to become proficient at really playing a musical instrument, or produce ‘art’ in a similar way, instead of actually picking up a pencil, paintbrush or other real tool for producing a work of art ‘the old-fashioned’ way. While many would argue that they are still producing music or art – and yes, to a point they are – my concern is that, as a species, we are de-skilling ourselves, losing the artistic abilities that have been developed and passed down over hundreds, or even thousands of years, and deferring to computer ‘brains’ that have no concept of human emotion and the link between emotions, thoughts and creativity – in essence, humanity. With the new wave of AI, and programs such as Midjourney and ChatGPT, enchanting ‘works of art’ can be produced effortlessly, and author Rob Parnell recently advised budding authors who subscribe to his newsletter to use an AI program, Sudowrite’ to write their novels for them, waxing lyrical about the benefits of getting ’writing projects finished in a fraction of the time’ because you can ‘get Sudowrite AI to write your entire book for you’. While I can see the advantages in terms of time-saving, and let’s face it, we’re all very busy people, I can’t help feeling that authors who choose this method of ‘writing’ are somehow cheating their readers of the experience of reading real human emotions, as well as cheating themselves of improving their authorial skills. 

 

My fear is that, by deferring to AI, we risk exposing ourselves to a greater intelligence that may not remain benevolent, and losing our abilities to be effective communicators, able to fully express our hopes, fears and the entire range of human emotions. Alongside these grave concerns, runs the tragedy of deskilling ourselves: by pursuing the AI route, we risk losing something of our humanity – that indefinable difference between ourselves and machines – our spirituality, souls, essence, or however we choose to define it. And in its loss, we will lose ourselves and become mere machines of flesh and bone – in effect, we will be history.

 

By Wendy Long