Making us human

Makerspaces are in-person experiences. You have to be in the room to cut the cardboard. But who is “you?“ One of the things that we keep hearing in the dialogue around artificial intelligence in education is that AI can never replace teachers. (Everyone in the room typically nods their heads in agreement.) But is that true? Will teachers never be replaced by AI? Let’s start with online classes. For the moment, let’s assume that all of the students want to be in the class and are not using bots or avatars. Every function of the teacher can now–today–be convincingly simulated by AI. The teacher‘s face can be generated in video and synchronized with a nearly flawless colloquial, idiomatic voice. AIs have been able to answer questions with a fair degree of accuracy, for years. That accuracy increases daily as models grow more sophisticated. The more specialized an area of discussion, the more reliable the AI responses.

Image from ChatGPT

It’s human nature to prefer that the entity one is dealing with be an actual human. Nobody likes dealing with AI customer service. There's something vaguely insulting about it. But what if we can’t tell the difference? Even if we know that we are dealing with an AI, if it’s sufficiently convincing, after a while, we forget and start interacting with it as if it were human. Have you said "please" or "thank you" to ChatGPT? People will anthropomorphize the heck out of almost anything. When the “thing“ is convincingly human, we will almost certainly emotionally process that relationship in a way that is equivalent to that of an actual human. People have already engaged in romantic relationships with AI’s. AIs have become celebrities with large fan bases. Human psychotherapists have migrated from the office to the screen. There have been experiments with AIs in that realm, albeit with significant legal indemnification.

Look, I love my teacher colleagues as much as anybody. I think that what they do in the classroom is magic. But there’s really nothing magic protecting teachers from being replaced by artificial intelligence. It won’t happen today, but it will happen very soon in online environments. In-person teaching, particularly in elementary and early childhood education, will take longer. It will require convincing robotic human analogues, which are likely decades away. Kindergarten and preschool teachers will be the last to go.

But we live in a pragmatic world. If something works, or if it makes money, it will be implemented. Unless we exert our collective will, the forces that drive education will be economic ones. Machines are cheaper than people and easier to manage.

• Artificial Intelligence and Relationships: 1 in 4 Young Adults Believe AI Partners Could Replace Real-life Romance - Institute For Family Studies
• Create AI Video from Pictures - VisionStory
• Meet the Spanish AI model earning up to €10,000 a month - euronews
• The (artificial intelligence) therapist can see you now - NPR
• Why AI Struggles With Education - Forbes