AI Education Navigating The Future For Graduates

Commencement season is a time for deep self-reflection. While honorary speakers prompt graduating seniors to look inward, educational institutions themselves are facing a critical question: What is the true purpose and method of education in an era of profound technological change?

As an educator and writer, I find this question perplexing, much like the textile weavers of the early 19th century likely felt witnessing the rise of industrial factories.

The Rise of Generation AI

It's evident that generative AI has ushered in Generation AI. Since its debut as the fastest-growing platform in internet history, ChatGPT has become synonymous with the concerns surrounding AI. Within just two months of its launch, a survey revealed that 90% of college students were using it for homework. More recently, a significant study by AI company Anthropic confirmed that students are outsourcing higher-order cognitive functions such as creativity and analysis. We have seen obituaries written for the out-of-class essay, writing teachers understandably giving up and quitting, and the humanities facing yet another existential challenge.

For further reading on this topic, consider the article: I Quit Teaching Because of ChatGPT.

One undergraduate student devastatingly summarized the situation by saying, "College is just how well I can use ChatGPT at this point." Such sarcasm starkly contrasts with the six-figure costs of tuition, room, and board. Pedagogically, this presents a false dilemma: education must surely learn to work both with and against artificial intelligence, even as challenges persist in both approaches.

The Pedagogical Crossroads Working With or Against AI

The approach of working against AI calls for a return to traditional methods: blue books, oral exams, and similar practices. This perspective often draws a comparison to the calculator, arguing that its invention didn't negate the need to learn basic mathematical logic by hand. It correctly emphasizes cultivating intellectual skills rather than accepting their AI-augmented decline.

Some students incorrectly assume that the product – the final paper – is our main goal. This transactional mindset is a result of high-stakes testing and grading systems. However, the process – the steps taken and lessons learned – is what we ultimately aim to refine. AI can rewire this relationship, creating a shortcut between effort and output.

How can we better measure this process? Does it require students, wary of AI accusations, to absurdly upload hours-long screen-recordings to self-monitor their work?

This is the challenge posed by the “work against AI” advocates, who look to tradition for answers. They value not just ancient wisdom but also the very conditions that fostered it. We have, for instance, benefited from the calculator, much like other disruptive technologies such as writing itself and, later, the internet, which initially induced suspicion.

Conversely, for those who advocate working with AI, a different question arises: If reading and writing are to be outsourced to machines for efficiency's sake, what should educators assign, assess, and indeed, idealize as a proxy for thinking?

Literacy has had a remarkable 5,000-year impact on human advancement. It's possible that Generation AI is pioneering radical new ways of thinking, rather than simply adopting a lazy substitute. However, this is something for ed-tech to prove, not for us to accept blindly.

Understanding AIs Influence The Bigger Picture

Educators' suspicion of AI is justified because AI is an epistemological challenge disguised as a technological advancement. It's also a massive, ongoing sales pitch. Enormous sums of capital are being invested in Silicon Valley, and these investments only pay off if we all integrate AI into our daily lives, both personally and professionally.

This training starts early: note OpenAI offering its "Plus" tier free through finals season. It's perpetuated by the ubiquitous swarm of AI assistants eager to read and write for you across various apps and platforms. Such outsourcing fosters dependency and deskilling.

Tech companies are racing to secure first-mover advantage, aiming to become synonymous with AI, much like Google did with search, Amazon with online retail, and Meta with social networking. For OpenAI – valued at $300 billion but reportedly losing $5 billion a year – this is a bet they can't afford to lose.

This leads to the increasingly common cliché, especially among indebted undergraduates: “AI won’t take your job; the person who knows how to use AI will.” However, this sounds more like a corporate cost-cutting threat disguised as historical inevitability. No technology is truly inevitable, no matter how fervently its proponents preach to make it so.

A Balanced Approach The Need for Intellectual Humility

Intellectual humility requires education to hedge its bets, working both “with” and “against” AI, because we cannot predict which technologies will succeed and which will fade into obscurity. Some become Facebook; others, the Metaverse.

Beyond AI Cultivating Humanity and Focus

While colleges determine ChatGPT's precise role in the curriculum, we can focus on delivering what Generation AI also critically needs: the experience of humanity, a quality machines can never possess and must never replace. This includes experiential learning through volunteer service, immersing students three-dimensionally in the lives and worlds of society’s marginalized communities.

It also encompasses the social and communal aspects of campus life, which can help counteract our nation's crippling crisis of alienation and loneliness. Yet, here we must be cautious that college doesn't become merely a lifestyle project, reducible to “day in the life” TikToks.

Ultimately, what Generation AI may need most, beyond large language models, is a space to unplug; a space to think, to discover oneself; a space to strengthen the muscles of focus.

Your attention is the most valuable asset you will ever possess, college graduate. Recognize it as your superpower – the purest and most generous expression of love. Never squander it on anyone or anything undeserving, least of all, a machine.