AI can be scary, or it can foster a return to reliance on humanity

At an educational conference on artificial intelligence this month, tables of stone-faced teachers listened to industry executives talk about a future they’re not ready for yet, and by the sounds of it, might never be.

Many were too concerned about real-time problems — kids who in the wake of COVID have lost any sense of community, cooperation or focus — while others wondered how they are supposed to bone up on AI when state governance controls about every second of every school day.

AI struck them as just one more headache in a school day that is already headache-rich.

Those who did understand something of AI saw it not as a blessing, but as a threat of inmates about to take over the asylum. “If you don’t know anything about AI you better get on it, because I guarantee you 99% of your students know more than you do and are using it already,” one teacher said.

Software designed to detect student use of AI doesn’t work well, and even when it does, kids are finding workarounds faster than new programs can be introduced, she warned.

The proper response to this is, So what? Fifty years ago, math teachers were having some of the same fears about hand-held calculators; the solution then among some of the more aggressive (read, male) teachers was to smash a contraband Texas Instruments hand-held calculator beneath the heel of their shoe.

Maybe most fearsome/unfair/awesome is that Artificial Intelligence democratizes education. Bodybuilders and beauty pageant contestants are now capable of writing computer code. A college student who has taken four years of Chinese suddenly has no advantage over a shipping clerk in a Cleveland warehouse who can speak English into the phone and have it translated real-time into perfect, accent-free Mandarin to a supplier on the other side of the world.

No wonder this is unsettling. Students, with AI, have been handed the Teachers’ Edition of the textbook. Everyone has access to the answers. But it shouldn’t be the teachers who are worried, it should be the kids.

If, upon graduation, everyone has equal knowledge, how will employers choose among job candidates? Almost certainly, the winners will be those who can most quickly pick back up the “soft skills’ lost because of COVID and social media. A Beautiful Mind is well and good, but if any old chatbox can replicate or exceed human thought capability, the people who get ahead will be skilled in two-way communications, flexibility, teamwork, problem solving and critical thinking.

We have been told that AI might drain away our souls; it might in fact do the opposite.

It will restore reliance on the human touch, because by definition that’s an area in which machines will not excel. Machines cannot know that a co-worker needs to be cut a little slack because his girlfriend left him last night; machines can’t read the dark expressions and crossed arms of a team member who’s not on board with a corporate policy change. A machine can’t pick up someone who’s down, or celebrate another’s success.

Maybe most importantly, a machine can’t take a look at its own answer and think to itself, “Something about that doesn’t seem right; I better ask that question another way.”

Compassion, intuition and critical thinking will become more valuable to an employer than a wizardry with numbers or chemical formulas.

Schools that have been pouring resources into STEM at the expense of the humanities will need a quick course correction if they want to stay current. Even in industries reliant on the hard sciences, like Southwest Airlines, corporate recruiters are on the prowl for, dare we say, English majors capable of the nuance it takes to explain the same set of data in ways that management, legal, scientific and public relations teams will all understand.

In a world where technology is making us even more isolated (just when we’re getting over virtual classrooms, along come virtual reality goggles that make strangers of family members), those who succeed are going to be the ones who specialize in relationships. Dale Carnegie’s hoary old book “How to Win Friends and Influence People” might become a new bestseller.

In the classroom, the word “teacher” may become an anachronism. Educators sensitive to the coming AI revolution say “coach” might be more appropriate, as students are taught how to manage all these data that are suddenly at their fingertips.

If state administrators will only allow it, education might become exciting again as AI takes over the drudgery of lesson planning, grading and responding to parental questions about their child’s progress — leaving teachers and students free to learn together as they explore the truly incredible capabilities of this technology that, like the printing press, internal combustion engine and the Internet, is on the cusp of changing the world.

Tim Rowland is a Herald-Mail columnist.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: AI can be a scary thing … or it can foster a return to reliance on humanity