AI cannot enable a student to ‘see a world in a grain of rice’

It is easy to get carried away by every new piece of technology. It is tempting to believe that the techno-scientific revolution can take us to a promised land. I am, therefore, not surprised when I come across bands of over-enthusiastic proponents of artificial intelligence. In fact, many of them believe that AI can revolutionise every sphere of life, including the domain of education.Take, for instance, Sanjeev Sanyal, a prominent member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister of India. Recently, in a podcast hosted by the Indian School of Business, he said that AI would render traditional undergraduate lectures unnecessary. He said, "You don't need to spend four years in a university listening to something you can just easily learn from AI."Sanyal's faith in AI seems to be as strong as a traditional believer's faith that a bath in the 'holy' river can free him from all sorts of 'sins' that he may have committed over the years!"Whether you are in Harvard or Bathinda, the access to knowledge is the same," added Sanyal. Indeed, for him, nothing matters, be it the social milieu of the learning community, the pedagogic art of the professor or the dynamics of the classroom. What matters is the packaged knowledge capsule that AI provides instantly and smartly.The irony is that this kind of religious faith in modern techno-science to solve all human problems seems to have become the latest fashion.I am not a technologist. I am a teacher; and I have always loved the vibrations of a living/interactive classroom. And, hence, I can say with a reasonable degree of confidence that the culture of teaching/ learning, far from being a mechanical act of dissemination of information, hard data and theories, is primarily an act of deep communion. It is a relationship. And, a living classroom is a dialogic space: a teacher and his/her students walk together, learn and unlearn, expand their mental horizons, sharpen the art of listening, evolve life-sustaining relationships and explore the new frontiers of knowledge.No machine, however sophisticated, can replace this humane and relational aspect of education.Take a simple illustration. As a student of political philosophy, you can always ask AI about, say, the theory of justice, and get an instant answer. However, it cannot replace, for instance, the experience of sitting in Professor Michael Sandel's class at Harvard, listening to his amazing lectures on justice and feeling the warmth of his dialogic interaction with his students.Well, you can equip the classroom with smart boards and computers; you can even encourage young students to use AI occasionally. However, there are limits to this sort of technological solution.There is yet another mistake the over-enthusiastic proponents of AI like Sanyal make. They fail to realise that technology is not and should not be our master; instead, it is for us to decide when and how to use it.If we allow ourselves to be completely hypnotised by the miracles of technology, we invite a danger. We tend to lose our creative agency and subjectivity.Hence, I have no hesitation in saying that if our students and teachers become excessively dependent on new technological devices, including AI, it will lead to the poverty of critical thinking and creative spirit.Let me give an illustration. Once I met a professor of educational philosophy in a seminar. Yes, this techno-savvy professor was ready with his laptop for the Powerpoint presentation. However, because of some technical fault, he could not open his laptop. Believe me, he refused to deliver the lecture because, as he said, he was so used to the Powerpoint presentation that it would be really difficult for him to speak anything substantial spontaneously.Think of it. Technology, far from enriching him, had disempowered him.If it can happen to a senior professor, imagine what would happen if for everything — even for writing a small essay on, say, one's own college — a student begins to rely on AI! It is certainly not a good thing if we begin to devalue our own intelligence and surrender unconditionally before AI. It is not smartness; it is stupidity.Unlike those who worship modern technology as an idol, I value human 'imperfection' rather than technologically mediated 'perfection'. For instance, a techno-savvy student can use ChatGPT, write a 'smart' essay on, say, Franz Kafka's literary creation, and impress her teacher. However, in this process, s/he will miss the experience of reading Kafka mindfully; s/he will fail to become sufficiently empathic to experience the existential pain and agony of Kafka that led him to write a story like 'Metamorphosis' or a novel like 'Castle'. S/he will fail to learn through his/her own reading, life experience and interpretative skills. Her reliance on ChatGPT for writing a 'perfect' answer is essentially her tragedy.Possibly, in the near future, the worshippers of AI will have to be told that the likes of Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud and Albert Einstein trusted their own intelligence, sharpened it, worked on it and enriched our understanding of culture, politics, economics, psychology and science. They became what they were without AI.Well, one might say that AI is so advanced that it can even write a better poem than what, say, the likes of William Blake, Walt Whitman and Rabindranath Tagore wrote. Yet, AI cannot make us familiar with the experience of being a poet. Possibly, it is only a sensitive teacher of literature,or a great poet who can make a young student understand what it meant for William Blake "to see a world in a grain of sand, and a heaven in a wild flower."Let the orthodox worshippers of AI not deprive young learners of the company of great teachers in an interactive classroom.Avijit Pathak is a sociologist.

AI cannot enable a student to ‘see a world in a grain of rice’

Avijit Pathak

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