Brave New World: AI in education
Monday 14 August 2023
It is about time we addressed the issue of artificial intelligence on the site, although we do so with some reluctance because:
a) we are far from being experts on the matter, and
b) we are adding to the already sizeable number of articles, blog posts and opinion pieces pontificating about the impact AI will have on education.
As such we shall limit ourselves to some recommendations of articles and resources that have helped us develop our understanding, and offer a few thoughts about AI in relation to teaching literature.
Recommended reading and resources
There has been such a proliferation of articles about AI in education that they are almost becoming a genre of their own, with a recognisable set of conventions. One such convention seems to be using sensationalist, doom-laden headlines, a case in point being The Homework Apocalypse by Ethan Mollick. What lies behind this headline, however, is a well-informed and intelligent overview of the challenges AI poses to education, using examples of assignments teachers set (often for homework) to examine what the existence of AI means in practical terms when it comes to the future of these tasks. In short, Mollick argues we cannot avoid the fact that things are changing dramatically and any attempt to ignore these changes or to ban the use of AI will fail. Mollick’s recommendations include integrating AI into the tasks we set for students and embracing the ‘flipped classroom’ approach. As many traditional homework assignments become redundant, an interesting implication is that the growth of AI may mean the physical classroom becomes more important than ever as a place of interactive and intensive learning. This also has implications for the future of online learning where it is harder to mitigate against the challenges of AI.
Another common feature of articles on AI is to present readers with an abundance of questions, as George Monbiot does in How we can teach children so they survive AI – and cope with whatever comes next. As you would expect, the questions Monbiot poses are all good ones and rather than providing answers, Monbiot outlines a set of principles that he thinks should guide us, including an emphasis on metacognition and a move away from a rigid, compartmentalized approach to education. He cites the International Baccalaureate as an example of a programme that is leading the way in this regard.
While there are plenty of ominous and frightening articles out there, there are also those taking a more upbeat approach, declaring that AI may actually be our salvation, as is the case with Sai Khan’s TED talk, How AI could save (not destroy) education. The founder and CEO of Khan academy, Khan argues AI presents us with an incredible opportunity to solve Bloom’s 2 Sigma Problem 1 which states that tutoring a student 1 to 1 improves performance by 2 standard deviations on mastery learning techniques - perceived as a problem because it was deemed impossible for all students to be able to receive 1 to 1 support. Khan outlines how they aim to use a tutor AI bot to provide 1 to 1 support to every student and teacher in the world.
While navigating the many voices and opposing opinions about AI may leave us feeling bewildered and overwhelmed, there are some helpful resources out there for those of us who want practical guidance. This article from the Washington Post, A curious person’s guide to artificial intelligence, offers a clear overview of the key terms and concepts, while this free AI for Education course comes recommended by colleagues and is something we shall be using ourselves to help us prepare for the new school year. The IB have also been quick to adopt and articulate a position as outlined in this blog, Artificial intelligence in IB assessment and education: a crisis or an opportunity? by Matt Glanville, Director of Assessment, and they have also updated their Academic Integrity policies to reflect this position. Of course schools and educators will need to discuss and articulate their own policies and approaches in the weeks, months and years to come and, as ever, we will all benefit from an open, collaborative approach to the challenges AI poses.
What does this mean for literature teachers?
As with all subjects, we will need to consider the tasks we ask students to undertake such as essay writing and reading - assignments addressed in Ethan Mollick’s article linked above, and we may well need to rethink when, where and how we ask students to complete such tasks.
However, as well as presenting us with challenges, AI also offers some great opportunities in our subject, not least a chance to reflect on why we read, write and study literature. For many of us, articles and questions such as this - Will an AI in the Booker? - may be depressing but can also serve as an interesting prompt for discussion with our students as a means to reflect on why we are studying literature. What is it about the whole process that is distinctly human? Can this ever be replicated by AI? Our students will certainly have views on this and there are also plenty of writers we could explore as a means to find answers. As an example, we will offer one writer’s thoughts here for consideration. The excerpts below come from Annie Dillard’s wonderful piece Write Till You Drop, written in 1989. Essentially it is a piece offering advice for writers, yet we cite it here as there are implications for readers and students of literature as well. These exceprts, or any others you may like from other writers, can be used as prompts for discussion: ask your students if AI is capable of replicating the human needs Dillard attributes to writers and readers here:
Write as if you were dying. At the same time, assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients. That is, after all, the case. What would you begin writing if you knew you would die soon? What could you say to a dying person that would not enrage by its triviality?
Write about winter in the summer. Describe Norway as Ibsen did, from a desk in Italy; describe Dublin as James Joyce did, from a desk in Paris. Willa Cather wrote her prairie novels in New York City; Mark Twain wrote ''Huckleberry Finn'' in Hartford. Recently scholars learned that Walt Whitman rarely left his room.
[...]
The writer knows her field - what has been done, what could be done, the limits - the way a tennis player knows the court. And like that expert, she, too, plays the edges. That is where the exhilaration is. She hits up the line. In writing, she can push the edges. Beyond this limit, here, the reader must recoil. Reason balks, poetry snaps; some madness enters, or strain. Now gingerly, can she enlarge it, can she nudge the bounds? And enclose what wild power?
Every book has an intrinsic impossibility, which its writer discovers as soon as his first excitement dwindles. The problem is structural; it is insoluble; it is why no one can ever write this book. Complex stories, essays and poems have this problem, too - the prohibitive structural defect the writer wishes he had never noticed. He writes it in spite of that. He finds ways to minimize the difficulty; he strengthens other virtues; he cantilevers the whole narrative out into thin air and it holds. Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed? Can the writer isolate and vivify all in experience that most deeply engages our intellects and our hearts? Can the writer renew our hopes for literary forms? Why are we reading, if not in hope that the writer will magnify and dramatize our days, will illuminate and inspire us with wisdom, courage and the hope of meaningfulness, and press upon our minds the deepest mysteries, so we may feel again their majesty and power? What do we ever know that is higher than that power which, from time to time, seizes our lives, and which reveals us startlingly to ourselves as creatures set down here bewildered? Why does death so catch us by surprise, and why love? We still and always want waking.
[...]
The sensation of writing a book is the sensation of spinning, blinded by love and daring. It is the sensation of a stunt pilot's turning barrel rolls, or an inchworm's blind rearing from a stem in search of a route. At its worst, it feels like alligator wrestling, at the level of the sentence.
At its best, the sensation of writing is that of any unmerited grace. It is handed to you, but only if you look for it. You search, you break your fists, your back, your brain, and then - and only then -it is handed to you. From the corner of your eye you see motion. Something is moving through the air and headed your way. It is a parcel bound in ribbons and bows; it has two white wings. It flies directly at you; you can read your name on it. If it were a baseball, you would hit it out of the park. It is that one pitch in a thousand you see in slow motion; its wings beat slowly as a hawk's.
Furthermore, rather than AI signaling that our subject is becoming a thing of the past, you could argue that instead it highlights that it is a subject for all time. Literature has been ahead of the game: as Stuart Roberts argues in this piece for Cambridge University, From Homer to HAL: 3000 years of AI narratives, literature has been exploring the issue of artificial intelligence for as long as stories have been written. Within the article, Dr. Sarah Dillon is cited and her words quoted below may also be something to share with students and use as a prompt for discussion:
All the questions being raised about AI today have already been explored in a very sophisticated fashion, for a very long time, in science fiction.
Science fiction literature and film provide a vast body of thought experiments or imaginative case studies about what might happen in the AI future. Such narratives ought not to be discarded or derided merely because they’re fiction, but rather thought of as an important dataset. What we want to do is convince everyone how powerful AI narratives are and highlight what effects they can have on our everyday lives. People outside of literary studies have tended not to know how to deal with this power.
What sort of stories are told – and how they are told – really matters. Fiction has influenced science as much as science has influenced fiction, and will continue to do so.