There is some concern about ChatGPT in the educational sector, as there should be. The opportunity to reflect on what it means to be the sort of humans we are—the kind that converses and learns—is still a valuable one. Here are a few additional considerations that would be wise for us to bear in mind.
To start, imitation is not replication and reality is not what it seems to be. Even though the talking van doesn’t actually talk, it appears to. Even though the chatbot seems to grasp, it actually doesn’t. Instead, it speaks in ways that are typically said by people thanks to brilliant individuals who developed it. It is because it repeats things that other humans have said and thought before that it sounds uncannily like a human.
Second, the astonishment that fuels learning occurs in the interval between posing a question and receiving the solution. It is not sufficient to just sound out a question to ask it. The question must make one feel something deep inside.
Third, essays don’t exist because teachers enjoy marking them. Essay assignments serve as opportunities for learning, exploration, and awe. Sometime throughout the writing process, something clicked, connections were established, and learning occurred.
When you write, you are assuming the role of the reader’s teacher. And since you can only convey what you have fought your way to understanding, teaching is the highest kind of learning. The method, not the product, is what counts; the grade only serves as a testament to the process’s success as evidenced by the work turned in.
All undergrads at my institution read Nietzsche’s On the Advantages and Disadvantages of History for Life, which claims that modern education runs the risk of turning us into walking encyclopaedias, producing robots that think but not humans who live. He exhorts his audience to use their plasticity, or the ability to mould their learning into a purposeful whole.
He compares the strength of the mind he refers to to food and metabolism. We consume food, disassemble it into manageable portions, digest what is beneficial, and allow the remainder to be expelled into the bathroom. The same is true of knowledge. We take in stories and facts, apply what is significant to our own understanding of the whole, and disregard the rest.
We are not merely tools for our machines, which can sort the available data using algorithms. In the life of the mind, we are primarily hunters and gatherers, and we do this out of a need for food. We must have a strong desire to communicate the entire in words and a strong desire to be brought into contact with it. If we don’t, we will lose a piece of who we are and what it is to be human, and our culture will continue to sink deeper and deeper into the infantilism of the sea of pictures.
We now have a chance to take up a pen and share our most profound ideas thanks to the most recent development in automating the intelligence of absent programmers. These are not the ones that are handed to us; rather, they are the ones that we discover within ourselves when we gaze into the mirror with awareness and candour.
