The real Impact of AI in education

The use of new technologies causes a certain collective instability that is related to the uncertainty of the times to come. The fact is that we see every day new technologies emerge, and their use changes the way we work and live.

Recently, with the advance of Artificial Intelligence, debates such as plagiarism in universities have come back to the agenda. When I see a debate about the impact of ChatGPT, for example, in the academic environment, I get worried. Not because of what might happen, but because the concerns that arise suggest to me that we are working in the wrong way in our universities.

A teaching-learning process built on a daily basis, fluid, that has evaluative elements connected to the reality of what was produced in class, and practical productions connected to the students’ reality, cannot be generated by computers, or any artificial intelligence.

A text about the future of social networks, or about the Roman Empire, can be produced by technology. However, content related to the experience built in an environment of engagement, with exchanges between students, and between students and educators, will not be produced by something outside this environment.

Maybe it would even be interesting to have AI helping us in this, to consolidate innovative, practical, contextualized, and high-impact pedagogical experiences. However, these experiences depend on the interaction, the group of people, the day, the time, the environment, the physical space, and so many other variables.

But, of course, if we go back to the idea of a traditional classroom, with an environment that separates teachers and students, with little interaction, little collective work, and little interest in what we can learn, then I see many usual possibilities for these technologies.

In these cases, the fear that many of us are bringing to the agenda can become a reality. But then it seems to me that we cannot complain because these environments are not really learning environments. They are simulations of hierarchical relationships, where one speaks and the others listen, where one gives and the others receive. A “banking”concept of education, as Paulo Freire said.

With this kind of education, it is hard to learn, and in this perspective, we already see students as machines: machines to absorb content. As a consequence, we treat people like machines.

Maybe this is why we shouldn’t be scared when machines pretend to be people.

It seems to me that this is the price we pay for the simplification of the human being.