Artificial intelligence (AI) is the new Rincon del Vago, the website for exchanging notes and student work born in Salamanca 25 years ago and which became a huge success. The new applications, more sophisticated in their innards, but simpler in their use, have become widespread in classrooms. Enma Linares, 17 years old and a student in her last year of high school, hardly remembers the last time she finished a job rummaging through documentation. “I ask a general question and then some more specific ones to differentiate myself from other colleagues, who also use ChatGPT [una de las plataformas mas populares junto a Bing, Bard o Llama]. I copy, paste, rearrange, give it some personal touch and that’s it. The last work, on Hernan Cortes, took me half an hour,” he says. UNESCO has recognized that artificial intelligence is a tool of enormous potential with risks and challenges, a duality that is shared by the educational community.
Copy and paste is not a new practice in academia. Adrian Gonzalez, now a professor at Enma Linares, remembers that, during the degree, a classmate who knew that one of the teachers, obsessed with the enormous lengths of work that he later skimmed, did not know English. So he would turn to a book in this language on the subject and translate it, including the references.
“Now, I get ahead of my students and also raise the issue with the applications to know in advance what they are going to present to me. But the work ends in class. About Hernan Cortes, ChatGPT talks about domination, colonization, exploitation and devastating consequences for indigenous peoples. He states that ‘Cortes’ legacy is complex and opinions about him are very varied.’ That complexity is what we work on in class and it is what ultimately matters to me,” says the teacher.
Last December, the Los Angeles Unified School District blocked ChatGPT on school Wi-Fi and public computers. New York followed as Imperial College London and the University of Cambridge warned students against using ChatGPT to cheat on papers.
“While the tool can provide quick and easy answers to questions, it does not develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills, which are essential for academic and life success,” justified Jenna Lyle, from the City Department of Education. of New York, after the prohibition.
But students have continued using it on their personal devices. A few months later, the majority of educational authorities admitted that the ban was useless and rectified it.
James Basham, a researcher at the University of Kansas, together with a team of educators, has prepared a study on the potential of artificial intelligence in education and concludes that “prohibition is not the answer.”
“AI should be considered as a tool that can potentially benefit students, especially those with fewer abilities,” he says. But he also admits: “The writing process is complex and artificial intelligence can do it, quickly and quite well. Naturally, some students have used that to avoid school work.
Basham prefers to focus on the benefits for students who have difficulty expressing themselves in writing. “Artificial intelligence can help with that. So we have to think about what questions we should ask or what problems to think about.”
Educators, students and family
The study, clearly against its ban, urges educators to “think about what they want students to learn and how technology can help that process.” “Students,” the study continues, “need to learn how and where to find valid information, as well as to discern true from false information, think critically, and evaluate issues to avoid misinformation. Educators should also avoid the trap of too rigidly assessing writing skills. Parents also have a role to play.”
The authors equate artificial intelligence with other already common tools, such as computers, tablets, smartphones and other technologies. “These tools are not prohibited in classrooms. Likewise, although technologies like ChatGPT could be used to trick or reduce student workload, they could also be a resource,” he reflects.
Although technologies like ChatGPT could be used to deceive or reduce student workload, they could also be a resource.
James Basham, a researcher at the University of Kansas
“Technology is a social experiment. We can use it effectively or ineffectively. But the education system needs to get on the front foot and figure out how to use this particular technology to promote human development. What we need is not to be afraid of change, but to focus on critical thinking and problem solving, teaching students to do it, whether with or without AI. We need to reflect not on today, how it will change our lives, but on what it means for the future,” Basham concludes.
The study coincides with the lines of UNESCO. “We are approaching a time when artificial intelligence will transform every aspect of our lives. We must guide this revolution in the right direction”, warns Stefania Giannini, deputy director general of Education of the world organization during the last International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Education.
Jorge Calvo, an expert teacher in technology awarded by the BBVA Foundation, goes further and affirms that artificial intelligence is clearly a tool to help in the learning process and in the management of the centers. But, in addition, in his opinion, it is important to teach students how programming languages work, what algorithms or the machine learning (machine learning).
“It is necessary for them to become familiar with these technologies from a young age, with the process by which a machine can make projections from the data provided to it. This is what they are going to find when they leave school,” explains Calvo in information released by BBVA.
Tools
The MIT Media Lab has a website to share online resources that Primary and Secondary students can use to learn about artificial intelligence, IBM has created the MachineLearningforKids and Code platform, a non-profit organization, disseminates educational content for teachers and students to learn to program.
In Spain, the School of Computational Thinking and Artificial Intelligence (EPCIA), of the Ministry of Education, offers resources with information from INTEF, National Institute of Educational Technologies and Teacher Training.
Emiliano Blasco Donamayor, vice chancellor of Strategic Planning and Digital Culture at CEU San Pablo, assures that, since the emergence of artificial intelligence, “the university is making efforts to integrate this tool into the learning process.” “It is not a merely instrumental use. We work so that our students and teachers know how to work with it in an ethical and correct way, knowing its advantages and limits, but also emphasizing how necessary it is to know how it works and how to get the most out of this tool in order to obtain information. truthful, of quality that allows academic growth.”
The future will be divided between those professionals who understand and manage AI to a greater or lesser extent and those who do not.
Emiliano Blasco Donamayor, Vice Chancellor for Strategic Planning and Digital Culture at CEU San Pablo
To this end, as Professor Adrian Gonzalez reported, he advocates combining the “theoretical approach”, for which applications can provide information, with “critical reflection” that allows not only to evaluate the data obtained, but also to relate them to the object of the study. job.
They also incorporate training on artificial intelligence itself, on its operation and use. “The future will be divided between those professionals who understand and manage AI to a greater or lesser extent and those who do not,” says Blasco.
The vice-rector admits that one of the great challenges is the bias in the algorithms, in AI programming. And he recalls a ruling handed down three years ago by the District Court of The Hague in which an algorithmic system (SyRI) used by the Dutch Treasury and Social Security to assess the risk of fraud was considered discriminatory.
Blasco rules out that these tools replace teaching, although he recognizes their potential for training, for example, corporate staff. Also in internal teaching management, such as applications to identify situations of stress or risk for students and that allow specific action or those that alleviate the bureaucratic burden.
But he insists that, in teaching, “human interaction is not going to disappear.” “Should not. It is the basis of the society in which we live and the only way to maintain the essence of the human being,” he assures.
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Source: EL PAIS
