Aug
26
Here is a problem.
A problem that we must tackle now, and quickly, before the prevalent use of AI in education becomes fully established. If we as a society , ourinternational organisations and governments , professional groups and educators individually do not decide on a framework for the positive use of AI in education, then our neglect will build a framework for the misuse of AI in education.
It could go one of two ways. Either AI becomes the greatest gift to learning and literacy, and to skills-based education generally, that we could have ever imagined, increasing the ability of human beings to acquire skills and knowledge and develop their intellectual capacity beyond the scope of our current educational systems Or AI could become an educational straight-jacket more rigid than anything that we have previously thought possible. To put it in Orwellian terms , it could becomea substitute for education itself, condemning children yet unborn to a serfdom derived from a device culture that delivers the “solutions” that those who created the systems thought were appropriate for learners to have. it could become ultimate political and social control.
I started this train of thought at the beginning of the week as I read through the Eighth biennial report published by Scholastic( see link below) , detailing literacy levels and reading skills through a survey of children of different ages and their parents. There has been a gap between this survey and the last because of the pandemic, but Scholastic are to be commended for staying loyal to this vital public duty. As I read this excellent document, I reflected that I started my working life as an educational publisher, and in the decade that I spent developing learning materials for schools, there was the comforting and satisfying feeling that we were working in a world where literacy was inexorably increasing. As the Scholastic survey shows historically, that trend ceased in the 21st century, and in the pandemic literacy levels declined. If they are now stabilising and even picking up slightly, there is no room for complacency. The survey underlines the importance of literacy by linking it to mental health and happiness, and underlining its importance, in communications in general, but particularly in social and family life.
So what, I wondered, can we do to get literacy off its plateau and begin a steady increase again? Obviously AI could be a key factor. I’ve written elsewhere about the potential for AI in providing personalised tutoring and learning journeys for individuals adjusted much more closely to the l appropriate base of learning and level of accomplishment. AI could be instrumental in finding to right style and presentation of content the maximise learning readiness. It could also help teachers to diagnose learning difficulties as well as suggesting ways around those problems. I am an optimist, and I want to believe that AI can help us to create a better world of education where more young people are able to optimise their skills to a greater level and contribute more effectively to the society in which they live.
At this point I turned to the work of the UK National Literacy Trust for further evidence, and found their current survey work on the use of devices (aka smartphones), and their effect on literacy. This makes depressing reading. I include some headline findings at the bottom of this blog , together with a link, but reading their work reminded me that I was so old that I had lived through the Calculator Moment. After my formal education was over, schools in the UK were instructed to forbid the use of electronic calculators in the classroom. Since I had failed mathematics twice and had to retake it, I was personally unmoved. And it does seem strange now, with a calculator function in every smartphone, but outcry and lamentation went up from every parent and teacher in the land. A vital skills base was going to be lost. What will happen when we run out of batteries? Did this mean the death of algebra and geometry as well as basic computational skills? I feel forced to wonder now, as Apple prepares to launch Apple Intelligence, a generalised AI environment for consumers on devices, whether we are at the beginning of a process where the AI in our device defines what we need to read, and then reads it to us, and which understands what we need to write, and writes it for us. I do see the paradox, I do get the irony. I am an old man with impaired vision and I glory in the fact that voice is now the driver of my interaction with machines, while worrying about the idea that voice driven devices using AI may undermine the very skill sets that I most value.
Friends console me. They pointed out that mankind survived the transition from the gearstick to the automatic gearbox. They point to the huge advances made as we moved through robotic process transformation into fully automated AI workflows. But I have lived in countries and at times when there was not enough electricity to go round and the lights went out every day for a number of hours. So I would just like to see us build the skills= based, literacy enhancing AI modelling before we get to a totally device-dependent, skills-denuded world. My late father, a farmer, decided that if I was not going to follow in his footsteps then I needed to enter the world with some basic skills. He taught me to “lay“ a hedge, build a dry stone wall and thatch a roof. I was not so ambitious for my children and grandchildren: I simply deeply desired that they should learn to read and write so that they could share some of the great pleasures that I have derived from those activities. When I use ChatGBT or Perplexity in my daily work then I feel pleasure that I am extending my skills and building on my knowledge. So, please, can we use AI to develop the literacy skills and knowledge of the learners in our schools today? And can we do it before we tell them that they do not need any of those old literacy skills anymore, because all of the answers will always be available on the device (a charged battery and bandwidth availability will always, of course, be available to everyone everywhere!
PS I did ask Perplexity and ChatGBT4 for guidance on this issue,, and they both answered judicially that, on the one hand, good things would happen, and on the other hand, bad things would happen! Just as I feared!
UK National Literacy Trust survey 2024
- Almost 1 in 2 (47.4%) young people said that, when they use AI, they usually add their own thoughts into anything it tells them, while 2 in 5 (39.9%) said they checked outputs from generative AI as they might be wrong.
- However, 1 in 5 (20.9%) said that they usually just copied what generative AI told them and 1 in 5 (20.6%) did not check outputs, suggesting greater support may be needed to ensure this group of young people have the information and skills they need to critically evaluate AI responses.