There is a lot of fear around how the Artificial Intelligence (AI) tool Chat GPT is going to disrupt teaching and learning. I’ve already written about this chatbot:
Next level artificial intelligence
And,
Teaching in an era of AI
And,
The future is now.
To get an understanding of the disruption that is upon us, in the second post, Teaching in an era of AI, I had Chat GPT write an essay for me. Then I noted:
“This is a game changer for teaching. The question won’t be how do we stop students from using this, but rather how do we teach students to use this well? Mike Bouliane said in a comment on yesterday’s post, “Interesting post Dave. It seems we need to get better at asking questions, and in articulating them more precisely, just like in real life with people.
Indeed. The AI isn’t going away, it’s just going to get better.”
And that’s the thing about disruptive technology, it can’t be blocked, it can’t be avoided, it needs to be embraced. Yet I’ve seen conversations online where people are trying to block it in schools. I haven’t seen this kind of ‘filter and hide from students’ philosophy since computers and then phones started to be used in schools. It reminds me of a blog post I wrote in 2010, Warning! We Filter Websites at School, where I shared this tongue-in-cheek poster for educators in highly filtered districts to put up on their doors:
Well now the fervour is back and much of the talk is about how to block Chat GPT, and how to detect its use. And while there are some conversations about how to use it effectively, this means disrupting what most teachers assign to students, and this also disrupts assessment practices. Nobody likes so much disruption to their daily practice happening all at once. So, the block and filter and policing (catching cheaters) discussions begin.
Here is a teacher of Senior AP Literature that uses Chat GPT to improve her students’ critical thinking and writing. Note how she doesn’t use the tool for the whole process. Appropriate, not continuous use of the tool:
@gibsonishere on TikTok
Again going all the way back to 2010, I said in Transformative or just flashy educational tools?,
“A tool is just a tool! I can use a hammer to build a house and I can use the same hammer on a human skull. It’s not the tool, but how you use it that matters.”
And here is something really important to note:
The. Technology. Is. Not. Going. Away.
In fact, AI is only going to get better… and be more disruptive.
Employers are not going to pretend that it doesn’t exist. Imagine an employer saying, “Yes, I know we have power drivers but to test your skill we want you to screw in this 3-inch screw with a handheld screwdriver… and then not letting the new employee use his power tools in their daily work.
Chat GPT is very good at writing code, and many employers test their employee candidates by asking them to write code for them. Are they just going to pretend that Chat GPT can’t write the same code much faster? I can see a performance test for new programmers looking something like this in the future: “We asked Chat GPT to write the code to perform ‘X’, and this is the code it produced. How would you improve this code to make it more effective and eloquent?”
Just like the Tiktok teacher above, employers will expect the tool to be used and will want their employees to know how to use the tool critically and effectively to produce better work than if they didn’t use the tool.
I’m reminded of this carton I created back in 2009:
The title of the accompanying post asks, Is the tool an obstacle or an opportunity? The reality is that AI tools like Chat GPT are going to be very disruptive, and we will be far better off looking at these tools as opportunities rather than obstacles… Because if we choose to see these tools as obstacles then we are the actual obstacles getting in the way of progress.
