On Artificial Intelligence and Human Intelligence

I prefer HI over AI, but AI does have its merits. The sheer volume and speed of output of AI is impressive. But at present, AI is a powerful sportscar with a toddler at the wheel. Remember that the A stands for Artificial, not Actual. At the moment, AI still needs lots of human verification. Although truth be told, so does some human intelligence.

As we continue to use and grapple with AI, and enjoy its benefits, we have to be careful not to rob our students of the building blocks of knowledge necessary to be effective learners (and paradoxically, effective users of AI).

Learning is the ability to make sense of the unknown by connecting it to the known. The less you know, the less you can make sense of the unknown. Another way of defining learning is to see it as change in our long-term memory.

If, as Daniel Willingham argues, memory is the residue of thought, then we need to think to learn. What we remember, what we know, becomes the building blocks that help us make sense of the world. What we know is the expertise we carry in our heads that lets us interpret each new thing.

If and when we use AI, we need to use it to help us build knowledge rather than steal it. There is no point going to the gym and letting a robot lift weights for us. That’s not a workout. That’s WALL-E.

The same is true of students and schoolwork. There is no point letting AI do our thinking for us. Using AI to complete thinking tasks robs students of the opportunity to think. Their intellectual muscles are not used and therefore do not grow. None of us will remember what we haven’t spent time thinking about.

Learning is what gives us our ability to make sense of the world. Learning is what enables us to avoid being overwhelmed by the deluge of information available in the information age. Knowledge, and our use of it as learners, helps use sort truth from lies, information from disinformation, propaganda from reality, sense from nonsense, the plausible from the ridiculous. If we outsource our thinking to AI, there will come a time when we won’t be able to tell whether it is feeding us rubbish or not. Use AI by all means, but keep thinking.

Tim Watson
Principal