Cover Photo Credit: Grace Schramek
My father’s work is centered around understanding, developing, and educating companies on Artificial Intelligence. My work is founded on the desire to understand, develop and communicate my Human Intelligence. As you might imagine, this has been the source of an ongoing discourse between the two of us for years. Recently, my father has been sending me articles on the integration of AI in education, and why we shouldn’t resist it. While I try to accept his vocation with an open mind, every fibre of my being rejects even the slightest inch toward this. As a student who has entered post-secondary education in what feels like a technological warzone I wanted to share a message I sent to my father on Humanity and Hope with my fellow students, and most importantly, I wish to ask you the same questions I had posed to us both:
“From what I’ve been gathering from the articles you’ve been sending me, it’s not a matter of whether AI is a ‘Good’ or an ‘Evil,’ it’s become an inevitability. The question is no longer ‘should AI be a part of education;’ it has now become ‘how do we integrate the software into the system so as to maximize the benefits and minimize the harms.’
“The dilemma people are faced with now, particularly in education, is figuring out what side of history we wish to be on. Do we surrender to the inevitability of the Technological Revolution (i.e. ‘Everyone else is taking the easy route, why should I have to work twice as hard for the same recognition?’), through either incorporating it into our lives in a temperate and progressive fashion, or letting it rule our decisions entirely (the latter being what I call ‘Intellectual Suicide,’ ‘Voluntary Cognitive Incompetence’ — or perhaps more simply — ‘The ChatGPT Phenomenon’). Our other option is resisting the force that has cognitively imprisoned so many of our minds. To choose the latter is no easy feat, as these softwares are meticulously designed to entrap us, to grant us an easy escape from our ‘cognitive burdens.’ To choose the latter is to dedicate oneself to picking up the boulder, and pushing it up the hill each time it comes crashing back down in a world where life is ‘made easy,’ and where this ease is right inside our pockets.
“The question we ought to be asking is whether we wish to place our faith and resources into a tool designed for our ease and convenience (although it doesn’t take an expert in any discipline to recognize the intentions of such a tool’s creators are less than than pure), or whether we wish to place our faith and resources back into humanity. The choice is between tech and intellectual competence, cognitive and emotional development, discipline, authentic expression of the self, meaningful relationships, creation, patience, mindfulness, and love.
“The Technological Revolution has provided us with a whole arsenal of tools that claim to have all the answers; so what happens when we stop asking questions? What happens when we accept its consequences as inevitable, becoming placid, complacent, and malleable? What happens when we lose the capacity to think for ourselves? What happens when we forget what it means to struggle and overcome? What happens when we become so engrossed in a manufactured reality that we stop noticing the gifts we are given every day? And what, dear God, happens when Human Intelligence becomes obsolete?”
