Staying One Step Ahead Of AI

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If you spend time on social media, you may have seen the “I forced a bot to watch” gimmick. A user claims that they programmed a “bot” to process thousands of hours of a show, and then produce a script based off of what it “saw.” The accompanying script features a presumably automated, hilariously bizarre and unnatural exchange between the characters. Here’s an example of “The Office” from a Twitter user:

The imitation is not quite right, but it strangely doesn’t feel that far off, either. The format makes for a good laugh, which was the intent; most of these tweets and posts were revealed to be made up by comedians rather than an actual bot’s output.

Even if this is just humans poking fun at the tropes of a sitcom, the gag taps into a revealing question: are humans becoming so formulaic that automation replicating us seems plausible, including in areas that are supposed to be unique to human creativity? While automation isn’t producing an award-winning series or movie anytime soon, scientists are striving to reach that. This technology — known as generative artificial intelligence — is already creating pop songs for musical artists, creating images of human faces, and writing news articles for the Associated Press. After all, like human intelligence, AI works by simple pattern recognition, identifying a template and then repeatedly following it.  

This rapid transition should give pause to both educators like me as well as businesses seeking to hire the next generation of workers. As we marvel at the speed with which technology is changing our world, we must reassess whether the way we educate today’s students gives them the skills they need to be agile, innovative and ready to perform in an ever-evolving work environment.

As a general rule, if a robot can be designed — or, through AI, figure out how — to execute a task, then it may eventually replace a human. Knowing that, my peers and I in higher education must consider how we prepare the future human workforce to not adhere to rigid structures so much so that it deters original and critical thinking.

Engineers tend to have a passion for the definable and the measurable, and as such we pride ourselves on the precision and rigor of our methods. We engrain this in our students who are now used to homework assignments and exams, designed by educators like me, whose answers are numerical and unambiguous. While more open-ended assignments, such as course-based or independent research projects, have great value for our students, they typically require more subjectivity and time to grade.

Take the rubric, a standard grading practice used in engineering and non-engineering courses alike. Detailed rubrics help limit biases, but they can inadvertently encourage students to obsess over their grades rather than mastering the subject matter. Unfortunately, we know such an obsession can undermine actual learning. One recent study found that their focus on grades can “diminish students’ interest in whatever they’re learning, discourage students from taking academic risks, and reduce the quality of students’ thinking.” We need to encourage our students to take the rote skills they are learning and apply them to broader queries instead of incentivizing them to chase a half-point or only to study the material they’ll be tested on. It’s critical thinking — not applying formulas — that will help them stand out in the workplace. 

Some educators in STEM, particularly those that teach design courses, often use reports, presentations, and projects to assess student learning. Project-based classes have often been a welcome change for students, especially for kinesthetic learners and for those who struggle with written exams as a tool to assess learning. STEM faculty can look to their colleagues that teach design courses and that work in the humanities and social sciences to provide further insights on grading open-ended assignments.   

While generative AI suggests that humans can be distilled to “bots” who just regurgitate what we take in, the reality is that our current era is one of unprecedented technological disruption that has been driven by human ingenuity. Even the existence of generative AI showcases how visionary we are.

This may suggest, then, that there’s actually no shortage of outside-the-box thinking, negating my earlier concerns about conforming to detailed rubrics and dwindling human creativity. The reality is that these competing forces can simultaneously be true rather than contradictory, which makes expanding our creativity all the more important.

In other words, as technological advancements shrink the gap between an algorithm’s capabilities and our own, we must be even more deliberate in choosing to flex our creative muscles. This is not to prevent a robot takeover, but to ensure our unique abilities as humans are at full strength, so that we can apply our ingenuity to finding the next great idea. In a 2019 MIT Technological Review article, Harvard philosophy professor Sean D. Kelly warned that if humans “treat artificially intelligent machines as so vastly superior to us,” then “we will naturally attribute creativity to them. Should that happen, it will not be because machines have outstripped us. It will be because we will have denigrated ourselves.” Humans have much to offer, and our students are the next wave of innovators who can bring that to the forefront.

Orienting education to focus on cultivating originality, problem-solving and hands-on experience will drive graduates, and our society, forward. This approach will be even more engaging for students and lead to technology that we can’t yet imagine. Standardized and quantifiable assessments shouldn’t be abandoned — they serve an essential purpose. However, a student who loves learning, and is inspired to innovate, is much more likely to thrive in the workplace and ultimately change the world.