At the beginning of the fall semester, a college professor assigned her first-year students a 10-page term paper due in three weeks. Michelle, who was taking an overload of courses, feared she would not be able to meet the deadline. Her roommate Tasha came to her rescue with a quick solution formed by two magical letters: “A” and “I,” which stood for artificial intelligence.
Tasha told Michelle, “All you have to do is type in the topic and the number of pages you want and in minutes AI will produce the completed assignment for you along with any required documentation, footnotes, and bibliography. Then you just have to sign it and hand it in for an easy grade; no sweat.”
Michelle had never cheated on any of her schoolwork in the past, and she wasn’t happy about the idea of beginning her college career with a forgery. However, she couldn’t see any other way out of her dilemma.
Tasha assured Michelle that it was perfectly fine because AI was already assisting many esteemed professionals in the real world. She claimed that some medical doctors regularly used AI to help identify a variety of diseases. For example, a physician could simply input a patient’s gender, age, weight, height, and presenting symptoms and automatically receive an astoundingly accurate diagnosis along with a suggested regimen of drugs. Tasha admitted that AI wasn’t taking over all the surgical procedures as yet but declared the world shouldn’t be surprised to see AI robots assisting in all hospital operating rooms in the not-too-distant future.
Is artificial intelligence helpful or hurtful?
The quandary in the classroom at every level of education is whether AI is becoming the easy go-to substitute for all homework assignments. Are we looking at a tool that genuinely helps students work smarter rather than harder, or will AI stunt critical thinking skills and substitute moral integrity with society’s expedient definition of success?
Cicero warned that if we don’t learn what happened before we were born, we will remain children forever. Having said that, here is AI’s history together with some expert analysis.
On Dec. 5, 2017, the AI computer AlphaZero defeated the reigning chess champion computer, Stockfish, in a time-controlled 100-game tournament with 28 wins, 0 losses, and 72 draws. Stockfish had been fed all the known human moves of the game. AlphaZero was only told how each chess piece moved and that the goal was to capture the opponent’s king. Then it was allowed self-play for 24 hours. What surprised chess masters was the strategy AI used to win. Different from traditional, human chess moves, the AI computer didn’t hesitate to sacrifice its bishops and even its queen to accomplish checkmate. AlphaZero won because it was not “hindered” by the human propensity to protect valuable or even vulnerable pieces. Its logical sensors reasoned that the end justifies the means. Being heartless and uncompromising, AI pursued its solitary objective — to win the game — even if that meant eliminating anything that got in its way, including its own most powerful pieces!
Whether AI will be helpful or hurtful in educating our students depends on how we humans program it and how closely parents and teachers monitor its use!
Holy Homework:
Let’s play a game of chess or checkers facing a friend and then play the same game facing a computer program. Then let’s take some time to examine the difference and offer a prayer that all future professionals will be people of integrity and caring who are assisted by AI without succumbing to it.
Comments can be sent to FatherBobPagliari@Yahoo.com
