We need to make sure “AI does not end up actually dumbing down the students”
I was interviewed this week by Fox News digital for an article about students suing their school systems for failing to provide an education and allowing them to graduate high school without basic reading and math skills. While most of the interview concerned core problems in education, there was a part where I was able to talk about Artificial Intelligence in education and the promise/threat it posed.
The article did quite well, staying on the home page for a while and generating over 4000 comments.
Illiterate high school graduates suing school districts as Ivy League professor warns of ‘deeper problem’ [archive]:
Two high school graduates who say they can’t read or write are suing their respective public school systems, arguing they were not given the free public education to which they are entitled.Cornell Law School Professor William A. Jacobson, director of the Securities Law Clinic, told Fox News Digital the lawsuits signify a “much deeper problem” with the American public school system.”I think these cases reflect a deeper problem in education. For each of these cases, there are probably tens of thousands of students who never got a proper education — they get pushed along the system,” Jacobson said. “Unfortunately … we’ve created incentives, particularly for public school systems, to just push students along and not to hold them accountable.” ….Jacobson told Fox News Digital that “in fairness” to teachers and school districts, they are “caught between various forces pushing against each other.””On the one hand, there’s oftentimes money tied to performance. And if you fail students, if you don’t advance them, that could affect the funding that the school district gets,” he explained. “There are individual students who have parents who … want them not to fail. And so there’s a lot of pressure there.”The Cornell Law professor added that while he does not see AI going anywhere in the future of education, “we’ve got to be very firm that AI does not end up actually dumbing down the students rather than informing the students, because you can become very dependent on it, and that’s another problem, but it’s one we can’t ignore.”Additionally, Jacobson said, parents should be more focused on helping their children to read and write.”Parents would be better focused on helping their students and their children learn, rather than worrying about the next lawsuit,” he said. “I realize that might be a little unrealistic, because we are in a culture of trying to cash in on lawsuits, but I think our energy should be focused on fixing the system and getting students properly treated, as opposed to: how are we going to sue the school district?”
The full video is below, with my comments on AI transcribed (by AI).
(Transcript Excerpt, auto-generated, may contain transcription errors)
AI for students is a hot topic in higher education, I can tell you that. And it’s even worked its way into the court system with some lawyers getting in trouble for relying on AI, which generates substantive content, doesn’t just summarize what’s out there, and have cited cases that don’t exist. This is a real problem.I’m not personally against students using AI, but it really should be the starting point, not the ending point. If it is used as a substitute for actually learning the material and learning how to figure things out, then it’s a huge negative.But just using the AI that’s built into the Google search engine, I’ve got to tell you, it’s pretty good. But it’s the starting point. It is not the ending point.I don’t think we should be a society, or an educational programming or approach, that says you have to ignore this technology that is out there. That would be like saying you’re not allowed to use spell check on your word processor.But we’ve got to be very firm that AI does not end up actually dumbing down the students rather than informing the students. Because you can become very dependent on it, and that’s another problem, but it’s one we can’t ignore. We can’t pretend it’s not there.We can’t say you can’t use AI because everybody’s going to use it. And you use it even when you don’t know you’re using it. Like on a simple Google search, if you do a simple Google search, the top ranked entry is always the Google AI result. And so it’s unrealistic.I think we need to figure out ways to allow students to use it. It may benefit particularly the weaker performing students, but that’s a plus and a minus. It benefits them in terms of end product. It doesn’t necessarily benefit them in terms of figuring things out on their own.
One thing that got left on the cutting room floor when the interview was edited was my suggestion that schools have a separeate period each day devoted to classical learning – like writing cursive and doing the basic manual and ‘old fashioned’ methods of learning and research to counter the AI downsides.
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