EDITORIAL —–FOR MAY 7 , 2023
TEASER ON THE FRONT PAGE
EDITORIAL
This is a glimpse of this week’s Editorial entitled AI in the Classroom:
Issues and Challenges. “With AIs in the classroom, students are
supposed to control the AI application and use it to their own
benefit. Again, AIs can learn tons of information at a fast speed.
The danger, therefore, is when machines can already outsmart
human beings. By that time, our sci-fi movies will no longer be
considered fiction. We will have a world controlled by machines.”
For the full text of the editorial, please turn to page __.
AI in the Classroom: Issues and Challenges
Using calculators in the classroom was the subject of intense debate
among education stakeholders. While the public debate on whether or not
calculators should be allowed at school had intensified, educators grappled
with how the devices would change math instruction.
Calculators were initially thought to bring about a negative impact on
the learners’ skills, habits, and attitudes, especially in mathematics
subjects. But several pieces of research on using calculators in the
classroom presented strong evidence that its benefits far outweigh the
disadvantages. Fast forward to the present, calculators are now
indispensable tools in teaching and learning mathematics and other
subjects requiring numerical analysis.
Recent developments in computer science have unveiled a
revolutionary tool for teaching and learning – advanced Artificial
Intelligence (AI) tools. While we have become familiar with chatbots that
provide standardized answers to keywords or questions, we are surprised
by how advanced AIs have become. AI applications like ChatGPT now
conversationally interact with humans and answer questions with relatively
accurate information presented in well-organized human language.
While calculators have aided learners in doing mathematical analysis,
they do not replace the learners’ responsibility to analyze and think
critically. AI applications are capable of giving coherent and logical
answers using conversational language. Unlike calculators, modern AI
tools practically remove from the learners the task of analyzing data and
presenting them logically, thus, bringing us to the question: What is left
for the students to do?
Like in the past, when the calculator was new, today’s educators are
apprehensive about how AIs will affect the teaching-learning process.
Geoffrey Hinton, also known as the “Godfather of AI”, decided he had
to “blow the whistle” on the technology he helped develop after worrying
about how smart it was becoming, according to a CNN report. He said he
is just a scientist who suddenly realized that these things are getting
smarter than us. It knows how to program, so it’ll figure out ways of
getting around restrictions we put on it. It’ll figure out ways of
manipulating people to do what it wants.
The calculator, although capable of performing complex mathematical
computations, is not capable of learning by itself. Modern AI is entirely
different as it can learn tons of information that could be beyond the
capacity of the human mind.
One educator criticized the outputs provided by AIs as heartless and
soulless. Hence, they can never replace the human mind and the human
heart.
With AIs in the classroom, students are supposed to control the AI
application and use it to their own benefit. Again, AIs can learn tons of
information at a fast speed. The danger, therefore, is when machines can
already outsmart human beings. By that time, our sci-fi movies will no
longer be considered fiction. We will have a world controlled by machines.