The vast and serious question of what the effects of developments in artificial intelligence (AI) will be on us is very hotly debated at the moment. Rather positive? Rather negative? Even worse ?
ChatGPT has made these questions more pressing than ever, and thousands of experts are rightly asking for a six-month break to think about them. The least we can say is that the predictions could not be more divergent.
Predictions
Meet Yuval Noah Harari, the author of the famous book Sapiens. He is one of the three signatories of a powerful text that opens with a question that could not be easier to answer.
You are informed that half of the engineers who built the plane you are about to board estimate that there is a 10% chance that it will crash, killing everyone on board. Are you boarding? The answer is self-evident.
However, continue the authors, interviewed last year, half of more than 700 luminaries (researchers, academics) working for the main artificial intelligence companies estimated that there is a 10% or more chance that if it does not does not lead to the extinction of the human species, it will cause very severe, even irreversible damage.
The argument of Harari and his two co-authors basically maintains that humanity thinks of itself, creates itself, exists through language and the symbolic universe to which it gives access. The AI is threatening to take it over, devour everything we’ve produced, digest it and start pouring out a flood of new cultural artifacts. “Not only school dissertations,” assure the authors, “but also political speeches, ideological manifestos, holy books for new cults. In 2028, the race for the presidency of the United States may no longer be led by humans.
Of course, even if the worst does not happen, AI will undoubtedly continue to have important repercussions on the institution which transmits all this symbolic heritage: education. And not just on school essays…
But here comes Michael Shermer, undeniably one of the most important skeptics of our time. He refused to sign the letter from Bengio et al. In conversation with David Brin, one of these experts like those who were consulted above, he converges with him on the idea that AI will be, basically, a personal assistant that we will have from now on and that once the usual precautions taken. There is nothing to worry about, let alone give in to what seems to them collective hysteria. Let’s admit.
But in the meantime, what are we doing in education? Because the question is already there. And all is not always simple, far from it. See.
Examples
Here is a beautiful but complex function whose integral must be calculated. The student who rubs shoulders with it has written it by hand. He can’t solve it.
He could, of course, ask his teacher how to go about it and the latter, wisely, would show him all the steps that lead to the correct answer. Alas, the student is at home and the teacher is, of course, not there.
But the student can simply use Photomath. He takes out his cell phone, takes a picture of the fearsome hand-written equation. And in the blink of an eye, the correct answer and all the correct steps leading to it are presented to him!
What will such applications, which will undoubtedly multiply, change in education? What else can a teacher do? How and what to teach?
But all, of course, is not rosy.
I asked ChatGPT to tell me about learning styles. He explained to me: “Cognitive science teaches us that people learn in different ways. Some people are visual; others are auditory; still others are kinesthetic. It is important for a parent to know the style of his child in order to offer him learning conditions that correspond to him. »
Owl ? Except that in the unanimous opinion of the experts, the learning styles are… a pedagogical legend, pseudoscience. In short: beware, danger!
We should therefore not be surprised. Opinions differ widely on the use of AI in the classroom.
Éric Martin and Sébastien Mussi, who sign Welcome to the machinesay they are very worried.
Others see it as a revolution, inspiring ways to teach better and even a valuable tool to help students at risk and to fight against school dropout.
Your keyboards !
Faced with so many unknowns and differences of opinion, and given the importance of the issue, we must, I think, congratulate the government for inviting, on May 15, the players in the world of education to a day of reflection on the place of AI in CEGEP and university — and hope that we will soon hold one for the other levels of education.
In the meantime, I would like to hear you tell me very concretely what you are doing (or not…) in class in this dossier. Do you refuse to use these tools? Why and how do you do it then? How do you use it, if any? And how do you frame them and measure their effects?
A future column will report your answers. To reach me: [email protected].
And don’t forget to tell me if you want to remain anonymous.
Looking forward to reading you.