Artificial intelligence and education: Just thoughts...

 Dr FM Lucky Mathebula (Prof)*

Humanity has constantly been interrupted by its advances to upend the status quo established as the basis of coexistence with the self and the natural environment. The need to overcome time and distance is central to humanity's pursuit of betterment. Speed to arrive, contact, complete, and produce has been responsible for most industrial revolutions. Twinning has been the urge to do at the least possible time without compromising the quality of the outcome. Necessity grew commensurate with the time it took to address it. The essence of being human is understood through time and experience. 

With its precision in determining human endeavour's outputs, the advent of the digital revolution has unleashed a cognitive revolution, fast outpacing humans' capability to cope, notwithstanding its being a creature of human competence. As the convergence of disciplines and constellation of technologies come together as intelligence beyond organic human construct but an outcome of artificial intelligence, the diverse nature of its prowess generates a myriad of questions. 

Second to the complex questions of what faith is, where it starts, and where it ends, is the question of what artificial intelligence is, where and when artificiality starts and where it ends. Suppose faith is accepted as that which concerns the metaphysical and supernatural when the mind cannot comprehend cause and effect, and yet holds on to the embraced limit. In that case, artificial intelligence is equivalent to what is in the physical and natural environment and experience. 

AI is the conglomeration of the gamut of human cognitions interlinked through algorithms whose finiteness is only limited by the ability of humanity to be infinite in the questions it subjects the algorithms to. They can be considered rules based on objective empirical evidence and data. It is, therefore, human input-dependent and thus vulnerable to human fallibility and subjectivity. Its dependence on sequencing makes it prone to the hegemony of sequencers. The depth of information in the AI system and how it has adapted to answering questions begs the question of what, then, is the role of education.

 

The traditional role of education is the transmission of knowledge and skills, the development of critical thinking, and the fostering of personal and social growth. This role has role assumptions by those positioned in the learning and teaching occurrence. The transmission concept establishes two nodes of power, one that possesses and one that must receive -transmitter and recipient. In the AI context, knowledge is assumed to be progressively leaving humans and residing in spaces accessible through decoding devices through questions that can follow established sequences linked according to several search capabilities. The speed at which answers or solutions are fed back is the new competitive edge of knowledge and skill communities as human wisdom grows and develops. 

 

What then should education and its role be in an AI world? The depth and accessibility of information, learning content, and related data, packaged to desired levels of learning, have revolutionised education and learning. Content targeting, adjustment, learning pace management, and support are redefining the role of education intermediaries, including the system's administration. A full-blown embrace of the AI scale and depth in the learning and teaching environment will alter the esoteric dimensions of the learning experience. While there is a risk that human intelligences, such as emotional, cultural, conversational, social, and political intelligence, may be overshadowed by the non-human efficiency of AI, there is also the potential for AI to enhance the learning experience in ways we have yet to imagine. 

The human demands of numeracy, literacy, self-reliance, improved living standards, and personal and societal growth from education will, in an AI context, be vulnerable to the dictates of algorithms that shaped AI in context. However, what provides solace is that the more AI tries to reach the human side of its purpose, the more it becomes subservient to the beings that humans are. Its teaching technology, such as the blackboard, overhead projector, and PowerPoint, has been complex at work, trying to run against the Socratic grain. The truth is that what it introduces always becomes a return to conventional learning methods.

Dr FM Lucky Mathebula is the Head of Faculty, People Management, and founder of The Thinc Foundation, a think tank based at the Da Vinci Institute.