Google’s Bard is a generative and conversational AI chatbot, similar to ChatGPT and Bing Chat. One of these three or something very much like all three that we don’t know about yet will be a much more prominent feature in our upcoming lives and the lives of our children.
These systems use Large Language Models. Essentially LLM’s are huge databases of human interactions on all subjects which are used to “train” AI to more accurately duplicate typical human output on given intellectual tasks. After “training” AI can generate text and images comparable to what the average human can do. Eventually, it will graduate to generating video. As technology progresses, the results will be more and more useful. The implications for the future are humongous.
One of the biggest impacts will be in the medical field, especially x-ray imaging where it is thought that AI will be able to analyze images and find indications of cancer better than humans.
With apologies to my friends and colleagues who are teachers, AI will also be better at presenting building block information on any subject or discipline. AI will be better at quizzing students as to their level of understanding and mastery of any given concept or topic. AI will become the educational tool of the future, and it will be extremely adept at the Socratic Method, presenting the fundamentals but never jumping ahead to the end, leading students in the desired direction without giving them the answers.
The source of the information that is fed to AI is crucial, but that in itself presents a conundrum. In order for the AI to be flexible and adaptable and up to date it will need to draw from the internet. As we know, the internet is full of accurate and useful information. However, as we also know, it is also rife with crap. The challenge is to correctly filter out the crap, which inevitably leads to these questions: Who is doing the filtering, and what are they filtering in or out?
Many very smart and well-funded people have been working hard on this technology for forty years, and break throughs are suddenly promising. Chat Bots are on the Move. Predictions of how long it will be before AI will accurately mimic all the best aspects of General Intelligence or Knowledge are being bumped up rapidly because the technology is starting to bear fruit. A plausible number is five years, maybe less.
Buckle up!
No need to apologize to old-school teachers–those who truly want the best for students will welcome this technology.
“Think outside the box” can be realized by using these new tools. Public school teachers are urged to individualize instruction while students are boxed in the same room at the same time with the same curriculum and the same tests, all determined by government bureaucrats and occasionally influenced by elected politicians and vocal taxpayers.
Technology controlled by private individuals and organizations leads to increased freedom and abundance. Free markets and free minds produce the greatest good for the greatest number of people.
Richard, you said, “No need to apologize to old-school teachers–those who truly want the best for students will welcome this technology.”
I am agreed! Teachers, like myself, should back this technology. It will lead to improvement in educational outcomes. A new dawn in Education is on the immediate horizon. We should be happy about it.
AI displacement will be the inevitable downside, not just in education, but in all sectors; but the upside will be worth it.
I only apologize to my friends and colleagues in the teaching profession in that a long period of stressful adaptation to the future is at hand.
Buckle Up!
Buckle down! This technology is for the People, not for profit. Only a progressive government can filter and determine the correct information. Don’t let capitalists exploit this.
Leon said, “This technology is for the People, not for profit.”
Ideally, that statement would be true, Leon; but you contradict yourself in the next sentence. A “progressive government” is still a government, and the people would still be left on the outside looking in.