AI Challenges Education

Overview

Introducing AI to the Classroom

The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced language models like Chat GPT has revolutionized the educational landscape, particularly in high schools and universities. The use of AI-powered tools has offered numerous benefits for students, enabling personalized learning experiences, improved research capabilities, and enhanced collaboration. However, concerns have emerged alongside these advantages regarding the potential bypassing of critical thinking skills.

The Structure of AI and Chat GPT:

AI represents the integration of a) a data model that has collected and tagged virtually all publicly available internet information by topic.  Chat GPT is a natural language application that processes user requests to the AI data model. 

Personas:

Personas represent a profile of your preferences, personality, Internet activities, interests, and political affiliations. Personas are being made available to the front-end natural language models, such as Chat GPT, to customize the response from the AI data model engine.  Students are just beginning to be aware of the personal information they are freely providing to AI applications. 

Disruption to Pedagogy

One of the key research benefits of employing AI and Chat GPT in educational settings is the ability to provide students with access to a wealth of information. With the vast amount of data available, AI-powered tools can assist students in conducting comprehensive research, analyzing complex topics, and generating insights that might have been challenging. Chat GPT, with its natural language processing capabilities, can serve as an intelligent tutor, guiding students through various subject matters and offering in-depth analysis.

The Potential Loss of Critical Thinking

Concerns have arisen that students may overly rely on AI tools, potentially impeding the development of critical thinking skills. While AI can offer valuable insights and assist in understanding complex concepts, it is crucial for educators to encourage students to engage in independent thinking, question assumptions, and critically evaluate information. By integrating AI as a complementary tool rather than a substitute for traditional learning methods, educators can help students strike a balance between leveraging AI’s benefits and nurturing their critical thinking abilities.

Today, every teacher in every school is looking to find the right balance between AI and encouraging student accountability and creativity.  Similar to language and reading, there is an age-sensitive window when critical thinking, analysis, and deductive reasoning are ready to be developed.  Educators are rightly concerned about students developing a dependency on AI.  

Strategies to utilize AI

To mitigate these concerns, it is essential for educational institutions to foster an environment that encourages active learning and critical thinking alongside the use of AI and Chat GPT. In an ideal world, Incorporating project-based assignments, collaborative discussions, and real-world problem-solving tasks can help students develop the necessary skills to analyze, evaluate, and synthesize information effectively. 

One Starting Point:

Educators can start by emphasizing the importance of verifying information from multiple sources and questioning AI-generated outputs to ensure a well-rounded approach to research and analysis.  Teachers can also change the emphasis to requiring notes and drafts showing the student’s process in creating their responses.  Implementing these “process steps” will be essential to address concerns about bypassing the development of critical thinking skills. However, it is unknown if a process approach will yield the desired results at this early time.

Join us in this conversation about the structure of AI, personas, AI engagement with students and teachers, and the looming issues that need to be addressed in secondary education.

My guests are Punitma Malhotra, CEO and Founder of BlueAstral.ai, and Baron Cannon, a high school educator at a private school in Silicon Valley.

The topics addressed in this interview are:

• 00:00 Intro to the great debate about AI
• 01:41 The structure of the AI model
• 03:54 The Educator’s Perspective of AI in the Classroom
• 05:16 Using Chat GPT to address a problem
• 07:43 The danger of exposing personal information
• 09:00 The risk of sharing private information with AI
• 12:05 The challenges of learning with AI
• 12:43 Teaching Critical Thinking Processes
• 14:23 The AI threat to the development of writing long prose
• 15:20 The Problem in Using AI to create content
• 18:04 Educational Positives and Negatives of Using AI
• 21:39 Follow-up show about AI, contact information