Replying to
@odr_k4tana @GossiTheDog
Okay, I went and read your blog post, and I have some thoughts:
1) Overall, this was a very informative and thought-provoking read, so thank you for writing it and linking it here!
2) I think you do overlook the issue of how AI is wrecking havoc on education in your enumeration of serious issues with AI. I don't know if this is true everywhere (I read that you're in Germany, and I feel that education is going better in the EU than in the US right now). In any case, I'm currently (for the last roughly two years and the next two and a half weeks) a public school teacher in the Mississippi Delta, USA and AI is causing (and exacerbating) a LOT of problems. I teach a lot of functionally illiterate 10th and 11th graders (these students are 14-17 years old), and the general lack of critical thinking and problem solving skills is ASTOUNDING to behold.
Of course, this isn't CAUSED by AI. The historical cause is, of course, repercussions of slavery, Jim Crow laws, and systemic racism in this region, leading to huge rates of illiteracy and a (valid) cultural distrust of establishment. BUT I believe firmly that AI is making it far, far worse:
AI has made it easier to cheat than ever before. I cannot assign any sort of homework, because 90% of it will be completed using AI, so it's basically an unethical grading practice to accept it, but it's quite hard to "prove" that it's AI enough to satisfy parents that their child deserved a zero on the assignment.
I've been having to require that students complete all writing on paper in class, but still I sometimes get AI stuff that they copy onto the paper from students hiding a phone or apple watch effectively enough that I don't see them doing it despite walking around and monitoring the classroom all day. I feel like my job at this point is just to be the behavior police and not even to teach anything.
But beyond THAT I am inundated with professional developments and trainings urging teachers to accept that AI is a tool and use it to create lesson plans, reading materials for the students to read (instead of actual literature????), and use it to take the pressure off of grading writing. Essentially, in the US at least, teachers are perpetually being expected to do more and more and more tasks without more pay or more time during the workday provided, and heavy AI use is the recommendation to make this workload viable.
And beyond THAT, the state writing test is graded using AI. At a certain point, I question why we're even having school if the teachers are using AI to make the assignments, the students are using AI to do the assignments, the teachers are using AI to grade the assignments, and the state is using AI to assess proficiency. It feels like we're a robot cosplaying as a school.
Of course, some of this is the American education system, which has been problematic and inadequate for the task of giving young people a worthwhile education to become productive citizens for at least three quarters of century at this point, coming to a head. But I think AI is somehow both enabling it and exploding it all at once.
In conclusion, I'm terrified for the future of critical thinking in the US, and I think AI is a serious contributor in that collapse, in that it's poisoning any last hope of sufficiently educating young people without a serious system overhaul (which is necessary for sure, but also not currently politically favorable, because the current disaster system of education is productive for the (evil) powers that be.
Which is all to say, in long-winded (but context-providing) terms, I'm not convinced AI is destroying the critical thinking skills of people who had already developed them, but I think, in the United States at least, AI is widening the percentage of people who will enter adulthood never having learned them, and that is a serious problem.
1/2