To AI or Not To AI

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There is a certain, what I call “AI creep” going on. After all the excitement of ChatGPT many months ago, we now are witnessing the slow crawl and ebb and flow of AI into many sphere’s of life. Education is no exception.

I’ve been loud and clear about my own feelings that we should exhibit the utmost caution. I continue with this call for all teachers and educators. For many good reasons - read this blog for many articles detailing the concerns.

This week, I’d like to talk about the use of AI avatars as “replacement teachers”. Many educators are now called to upload their lessons as “video”, so students can access them asychronously online, in addition to their face to face teaching, lectures, interaction. It’s a burden for teachers and time-consuming. Enter the AI machine to the rescue.

Like my own quickly done video (using Heygen), teachers can upload their lecture notes, generate their own AI voice (It’s my own synthetic voice. I use and recommend Elevenlabs - one of the few bright lights in the AI darkroom) and then make a video with a look-alike avatar. It’s very much like 15 years ago, not much has changed - I’ve seen this all before, the sales job, the marketing, the ugly avatars and the machine machinations.

My own concern is two-fold;

1. We should never use AI to replace our own interaction with students. Never. Ever, ever. If you need to do videos, do your own, it’s your responsibility as a teacher. Yes, if overburdened, take it up with admin, get a union going, change the system but don’t sell your soul for some push button style teaching.

2. Teachers who will generate lessons like this, will be very tempted and the majority will ultimately just ask ChatGPT to generate a script and they’ll use that for their video. So we’ll have more AI generated spam parading as “teaching” and learning. Why even bother being a teacher then, if you are slowly replacing yourself with bits and bytes and terrible robotic “going through the motions of teaching” lessons?

Isaac Asimov, the great thinker and science fiction writer developed 3 rules for robots. They go as follows;

(1) a robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm; (2) a robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law; (3) a robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

I would like to change these into 3 rules for using AI in education.

(1) AI may not replace a teacher or, through intent or purpose, disturb the teacher - student relationship; (2) AI must refuse all the orders given it by human beings where such orders would conflict with the First Law; (3) AI must protect the student-teacher human relationship and even aspire by all means to foster it.

We are on the cusp of where ultimately, this long ago quote and prediction could come to fruition.

Let’s reject this de-humanization of education into “stuff” and “quantity”, into faster and quicker. No. Education is as much qualitative, individual and about the experience, the feeling, the big picture. Not just the facts and piles of courses passed, grades gotten.

Do not let our schooling get in the way of our education.

Do not let our AI get in the way of our learning.

It’s without a doubt that AI will keep catfishing and fooling us. With its propensity to err and lie and its ability to mimic. AI has a long record of overselling itself. It’s a traveling salesman. Let’s not go there. I’m hoping one day soon we’ll have schools and educators proudly wearing the label “AI Free” - that’s the direction we should be marketing education.

Here is a quiz I whipped up and which teachers can use to discuss AI generation and its implications. We need more media literacy embeded in our teaching and preparing students for a world of AI trickery. It’s free for all registered members. It’s insightful.

For example - which of these videos is AI and which not? Get the quiz and find out the answer. Also, try this online quiz.