AI is finally good at stuff, and that’s an opportunity

 “My eighth grade math teacher told me not to rely on a calculator since I won’t have one in my pocket all the time when I grow up,” Phillip Dawson, an expert who studies exam cheating at Deakin University, told Recode. “We all know how that turned out." - Vox: Recode.

Prompt. Technology: Android mobile phone

In high school I had two Texas Instruments calculators with glowing red LEDs, one on each hip. The rechargeable batteries only lasted 20 minutes or so. Now I am typing on a device that has more computing power than a mainframe computer of my youth, a device that also rides on my hip but has a multi-day battery. Oh, and it also has a calculator. 

This is early days of AI, but the educational impact over the lifetime of our students will be more profound than that from calculators to smartphones.

First paragraph of ChatGPT response

The first reaction of educators will be to ban the use of AI, just as math instructors banned calculators back in my youth. And in that era when pocket calculators were new and banned, I failed mathematics. Fortunately my senior year of high school my progressive, forward looking teacher encouraged the use of calculators. I discovered that with the assistance of technology, I could do math. Today I am a mathematics instructor at the collegiate level. Thanks to an instructor who embraced a new technology.

Second paragraph of ChatGPT response

AI is in its glowing red LED stage. Over the coming decades AI will only improve and expand in capabilities. This is the world educators have to prepare students to inhabit. Many instructors will say, "But this is different." Yes, this is different.  Calculators only impacted mathematics. AI impacts every discipline. Art, music, history, writing, political science, and, most especially, teacher education.

I gave ChatGPT the prompt, "Explain the political status of Taiwan in a three paragraph essay."

Third paragraph of ChatGPT response

I ran the essay through an online plagiarism checker.

100% pure original work. Unique.

Some faculty may hunker down, ban technology in their residential classroom, and have all papers written by hand during the class period. In online courses some faculty will turn to cameras and lockdown browsers. But this is the ban calculators approach some of my teachers took in 1977. And as Phillip Dawson noted, we all know how that turned out.  

Students are facing a future in which AI tools are a part of their work environment. Education is being called to rise to the occasion, to prepare students for the technological landscape they face in the future.

The challenge will be how to integrate these rapidly developing technologies into meaningful learning experiences that lead to mastering the appropriate learning outcomes. AI is finally good at stuff, and that's an opportunity.

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