AI, Education, and Social Mobility
Teachers may not like it, but ChatGTP is here to stay. Educators should not fight AI coming into academics. Instead, they should open the classroom door for AI and embrace the opportunity it brings,.
We need to equip and prepare our kids for the economy of today and tomorrow, not the economy of previous generations. Artificial intelligence (AI) use and application will explode in the coming years. Its growth is rapid and unabating. It is analogous to the calculator in its early stages. Over enough time, the teacher’s stigma faded, and now, you’d be hard-pressed not to find a calculator in a college math course or even advanced high school. Fundamentally, we prepare and position our kids for success beyond graduation day. As a component of that, they must be equipped and prepared for technological work, which increasingly means competency with artificial intelligence, most seen in the form of a “chatbot,” however with recent innovations, some familiar AI systems, such as AI behind the popular ChatGTP, are evolving into multimodular systems. There are multiple ways to interact with the AI, such as visually with images or verbally through speaking. This breakthrough can’t be overstated regarding what it means for AI. Many suggest that multimodular capability is necessary to reach a level of artificial intelligence called “artificial general intelligence,” or more simply, it means that the AI’s ability to learn and adapt is on par with that of a human. Many systems will be launched in the coming months and years, and the forms AI will take will likely be limitless. Still, for now, you can find “assistant” text-based solutions embedded into productivity apps such as Microsoft Word or Excel.
For readers that may not be familiar with the new AI systems, here is some background on what they can do. For general understanding, these AI systems can be prompted to write any number of things, ranging from highly technical to catchy songwriting, to introspective poetry, complex essays, summaries of user text, and much more, at a very high level. On your first use of a sound AI system, such as OpenAI’s chatGTP, you will likely be left stunned and possibly a little concerned. They can reasonably understand and respond to advanced queries. They can edit material, and they remember the history of communication with the user so that future answers can be improved. They can be used as search engines, rapidly generating highly accurate results in the blink of an eye. Impressively, they can transform usually written English into complex computer code. This skill has rendered anyone with a grasp of the English language capable of building software or websites. I will continue with my thoughts and how to apply AI in the context of education and why it’s so critical.
What is essential about education and AI is that teachers shouldn’t look at systems like chatGTP as a threat or a means of cheating. They are just new tools to put into teachers’ academic arsenal. They are tools that increase productivity, often quality and they mitigate the need to spend sustained periods of time on minor task level details, but rather have the opportunity to truly teach the context of the work they are doing, how you can imply the work, the industries and social settings where it’s relevant, in short, you can focus on the stuff that matters and allow trivial tasks to fall to the side It’s not a complete abdication, AI can only go so far, so there is a lot to teach in regards of how to use these tools. Teachers must teach our kids how to master these tools, not condemn them; realistically, it’s hard to catch, and worse, it pushes kids into creative ways to break the rules. You could call it the academic black market, and just like anything in a black market, it comes with dangers. In this scenario, the danger is twofold, one, your students have broken the little rules, and detected or not, it will slowly erode the wall that keeps them on the right side of the rules. Secondly, the fact that when you break a small rule, it quickly becomes a slippery slope. A lot of evidence suggests that one becomes slightly more prone to breaking big rules if one gets comfortable breaking a small one. The other issue is the student’s cost of missing out on how to maximize their leverage with these tools. Ultimately, the students will use these tools one way or another now that the genie is out of the bottle. It’s better to say OK and teach them best practices rather than sending them into the “black market,” where the teacher ends up getting substandard work quality, fails to stop them, and, most importantly, fails to help them realize their maximum potential.
In ten years, basic copy, across any discipline, throughout the economy will be delegated to these tools. This applies to many scenarios and subjects. The future is here, and it’s not going away just because the system you understand, and are comfortable with, is dramatically different from this new reality. You are either looking backward as the metric to measure success, or looking towards the future, adapting new powerful tools to enhance the quality and quantity of a student’s future work contribution in the real world.
You can prepare them for getting a job and excelling in the prior era, or you can have them ready to enter and succeed in the workplace of today and tomorrow. Almost all the l students in Erie come from disadvantaged. Situations. The best thing we can do for them is to educate them in a way that will give them strong, competitive new entrants into the labor market. This is how the cycle of poverty can be broken. Significant changes in how the system operates provide enormous opportunities for social mobility. While the old system had some groups at a disadvantage with limited opportunity to move up the social ladder, early adopters of the new status quo will have, if seized upon by parents and educators, the chance to leap ahead of their peers and upend the cycle of the past. We should be doing everything possible to turn them into quality candidates, eligible and ready for any high-income role soon. A future in which these tools are optimized for and their use standardized across virtually all our industries.
It’s not as simple as telling someone to ask AI a question, and then you’re done. It goes far beyond that. There is an art and skill to using AI chatbots/tools. Without thorough guidance, it won’t make a document, solve an equation in each context, or generate code for you. If you don’t prompt AI well, it is immediately apparent when reviewing a generated response. With poor prompting, answers are very vague and filled with empty words. Prompt it well and get a solid, concise, detailed work product.
In math, teach students what calculus or another form of math means, why it matters, what the calculations yield, and what their use applications are, i.e., how to use the math function of the AI to bring you a meaningful result and why precisely it is calculated the way that it is. Teach how to form equations and best practices in promoting AI, and then take those answers and apply them to real-world situations, such as how to use them in a specific scenario they might encounter in their future employment. Teach them the meaning of proofs, why they are essential, and how to use AI to replicate or apply them to other contexts.
In history, help children build a framework to organize events and social developments, teach students the valuable lessons of history, and provide them a 30k foot view/macro-outlook on all human history. With that, they can fill in the blanks with details provided by an AI system. Require them to write meaningful essays with examples of those big lessons in history. In that vein, help them determine/verify the small details that can be quickly referenced. Teach them how to cite and properly footnote an academic paper. Have students find quotes from relevant historical figures, how to incorporate them into a broader text with a strong thesis, and how to use them in ultimately forming a persuasive work product.
In science, teach students what is, and broadly, how to use the periodic table. Help them understand the components of elements and how those things can be used in scientific applications in the future. Teach them how to apply scientific details to a more holistic understanding of our universe. Teach how to form a scientific experiment report into a concise, well-defended hypothesis and its results. Like history, focus on the macro view of science as an evolving history and how to fit AI-provided micro details into a broader, more helpful context. Show how to prompt AI with specific data from a student’s experiment and guide it in forming written work. Teach them the essential science lessons and their use in understanding life and other systems.
For computer science, show them the structure of computer languages, how objects are treated, how the system is made with code, and the best way to prompt AI to produce valid code that achieves the student’s goals. If the intended result needs to be noticed, show them how to use AI to troubleshoot and work out errors. Show them how to use AI to fix the mistakes in user-generated code and how to leverage those tools for a dramatic increase in both qualities of code and productivity. For example, one student could traditionally complete a simple coding component of a larger product in an hour or two. With AI, one student can complete the whole project, producing what a team of 5 could have in that same timeframe.
In writing, teach students how to form a thesis statement and organize new facts into a persuasive document. Teach them how to structure quotations and apply details provided by AI. Teach students to follow up on that information and properly reference and cite authoritative sources. Show the best practices for structuring AI-generated copy and knowledge snippets in a well-formed and argued paper. Educate the basic grammar and structuring skills needed to modify AI-generated work so that a student is prepared to make manual edits and review the quality of the AI-generated material. Teach them to recognize good writing and understand why it’s good.
Teach them critical general tenants of the writing process and how to best incorporate them with AI solutions. Shift the time allocation from focusing on tiny minutiae to, instead, creative work. This work is still very human, and exercising practice in creative thinking/work helps learning and growth in many ways. AI will alleviate the burden of technical writing, but it will never have the human ability for spontaneous, creative thought. It may be one of the last refuges of life that remains very human. This thinking should be promoted and fostered with more classroom time, using time gained from sourcing laborious writing tasks that can primarily be entrusted to AI.
In border life lessons, show students how to query and take meaning from information provided by AI. Help them determine how to structure and optimize queries to the highest benefit and then how to apply critical thinking to understand and assess the quality and validity of AI-provided answers. This is especially true now with so much “misinformation” propagating online.
Teach students how to think critically and what tools / how to verify information that can, and often does, gets manipulated by bad actors with an agenda. Show them how to use primary source documents about the information AI provides. These are incredibly invaluable skills in the new economy/society. Use the newly freed time to teach students how to apply those lessons to media in general.
This will occupy each subject area in due time. We should encourage the earliest adoption possible, as it will position our kids ahead of the crowd in the mastery of tools that enhance both the quality and quantity of work products. Everyone will eventually be educated this way, with AI woven into every subject and the blunt realities of what it means regarding basic writing tasks. However, for now, it’s still early days. That means there’s an opportunity to jump to the front of the line. We have that chance; we must commit and follow through with it. Students should be equipped with iPads or laptops as soon as possible. Being able to work with a computer is already an essential skill, and due to many families not being able to afford a computing device or internet connection to use it, our children are falling even further behind.
Missing the boat on the opportunity the AI revolution is creating would only compound this problem even further. If this opportunity is missed, I fear the possible consequences. Social mobility is, sadly, already a profoundly steep mountain, and if this new world is not well prepared for, it will only become exponentially insurmountable. That truth is a function of the reality that the gap between those who can and those who can’t is dramatically increased by learning and adapting new systems. Ultimately, this leaves the group that can’t behind, relegated to the lowest functions of the economy, if any exist (which in due time, I believe, will be the case. In my lifetime, I expect to see almost all basic labor being replaced with AI/automated solutions). That circumstance significantly constrains the financial capacity to buy these new technologies, hindering a real learning opportunity. It also doesn’t allow for any time to self-educate oneself, let alone teach the next generation the skills to catch up or get ahead. Meanwhile, the group that “can” and the world will accelerate forward and never look back. We can’t slow this dystopian reality from coming to fruition. This tech literacy and proficiency gap is, in my opinion, a more significant problem than the wealth gap.
The wealth gap is a snapshot of current financial ability, quality of life, and adaptation capacity. The information gap is a snapshot of one’s future economic power, quality of life, ability to adapt, and the opportunity to adjust. In one sense, the wealth gap is a static fact about now, while the tech gap is a proactive force about now and your future opportunity. This reality is a result of the lack of capacity to adapt and the chance to adjust, all of which leads to a lower quality of life, limitations on what one can do now and, in the future, and the capacity to move from the bottom half of the wealth gap to the top half. More simply, the wealth gap is now, while the information gap is about the wealth gap tomorrow. Due to all this, I believe the knowledge gap is an even more severe dilemma; it is directly relevant to addressing the income gap. It also impacts every other aspect of life, such as primary navigation in society or the ability to connect with people over an extensive network, a significant source of opportunity.
Technology is at the heart of communication, productivity, mobility, entertainment, and nearly everything else. With the pace of AI adaptation and its rapid evolution, it will quickly become a broad, critical, overwhelming technology component, with few areas untouched. With education and preparation for basic and advanced competency in these areas, students are destined to be second-class citizens relative to their peers who were correctly educated in a technological application. Those educated will excel and exponentially advance, leaving those that weren’t behind in different world trapped back in time (further compounding this is the earning power advantage capital has over labor as a result of capital’s ability to generate new wealth much faster than wealth could ever be built up through manual labor, but that’s a topic that deserves a more concentrated, thorough examination in itself). Few areas in our society are more pressing than this developing reality.