Artificial intelligence will affect classrooms

I spent the last 30-plus years of my professional life as a professor at a local university. I’ve learned a few things. Here’s just one.

Technology in the classroom is here to stay. Its influence will only grow. Consider the new, free, public AI called ChatGPT that can write literate, grammatically correct essays, reports, poems and even rap lyrics, on any topic.

What impact will such a technology have on schools?

Nobody today needs to know how to do long division by hand or how to use tables of logarithms. With Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets, Mathematica and so on, we can do sophisticated analyses of many data sets without knowing the underlying “by-hand” algorithms. But we still need to know what’s valid and be able to recognize wrong or bad assumptions, formulas and results.

We still need critical thinking and technical skills.

With the advent of ChatGPT, not only do high school and college kids no longer have to do long division, they may no longer need to write essays.

There’s a recent editorial in a Scientific American newsletter written by ChatGPT “in the manner of Scientific American editorials” on the topic “Why AIs like ChatGPT should be regulated.”

Well. I read the editorial. It was well-written and balanced. And formulaic. And with a summary that largely agrees with what the user implies by the wording of the request.

This AI may be the beginning of an Excel for the liberal arts. It may no longer be necessary to know the “by-hand” algorithms for writing reports and essays.

But it is still non-negotiable that students be able to critique its assumptions, methods and results. And then improve the work with their critique. Verbally. In class. (But … except for the verbally part, ChatGPT can also critique itself. So there’s that, too.)

Are high school and college faculties ready for such a technology? Well, as little kids shout, out on the playground, “Ready or not, here I come!”

Robert Todd Shelton