The Impact of Generative AI on Education

1.Introduction

AI is changing the world, and renowned investment bank Goldman Sachs predicts that AI will replace 300 million jobs, including 46% of administrative jobs, 44% of legal jobs, and 37% of engineering jobs, through automation ¹. Since the birth of ChatGPT, there has been significant societal response, as it allows humans to engage in natural language conversations with machines, enabling machines to easily understand and execute human instructions. This development has facilitated efficient information collection and comprehension, which is crucial for administrative and legal work, making it easily assignable to AI. I refer to this phenomenon as the “white-collar revolution”, similar to how Ford’s assembly line revolutionized traditional craftsmanship by introducing highly efficient factories. AI is poised to replace traditional white-collar workers.

This phenomenon has already become apparent. The recent writer’s strike in Hollywood, which included demands to ban the use of AI-generated scripts, exemplifies the escalating tension between whether an AI-powered production process will be a dream or a nightmare for Hollywood workers and their audiences, as reported by The Guardian ².

As educators, we are particularly concerned about AI’s impact on education. In this article, I aim to explore the influence of generative AI, specifically on Chinese school education, from a macro perspective, providing insights and references for Western readers.

2.Generative AI: The Super Test-Taker

Generative AI is a branch of artificial intelligence that focuses on generating new content, such as images, text, music, or videos. By training models to understand and mimic patterns in a given dataset, generative AI enables the creation of new, original content similar to the training samples. For instance, in the case of text generation, generative AI models can be trained on extensive text data, such as books or articles, to learn grammar, vocabulary, and writing styles. Subsequently, they can generate new text resembling the training data’s style and content [source: ChatGPT].

ChatGPT was referred to as a “test-taker” ³. Indeed, it is a knowledgeable entity with vast knowledge spanning various domains. It can provide satisfactory answers to almost any question and has achieved remarkable results in many exams. In some aspects, it surpasses many students.

Chinese exam-oriented rote-learning education seems to train students to become AI themselves, continuously feeding them questions and correct answers (training sets) to master knowledge (algorithms). When encountering new questions (validation sets), students are expected to provide the correct answers. The final college entrance examination (“gaokao”) represents the ultimate test set to evaluate the “AI’s” accuracy.

However, this view of education is somewhat one-sided. In the learning process, students also need to develop skills in knowledge transfer, application, communication, and understanding the world, which AI lacks.

But if education is solely based on scores and aim on selection, students will inevitably be surpassed by AI. In my previous article “How to Face Education Pressure? - In Memory of Ken Robinson,” I mentioned Ken Robinson’s observations about inflation of degrees. Today, universities are becoming more like high schools, and graduate schools are becoming more like universities. The emergence of AI will only accelerate the collapse of this educational system.

So, how should teachers and students face education in the AI era?

3.The Era of Personalized Education

To address the above question, I suggest taking a look at the speech “How AI could save (not destroy) education” by Sal Khan, the founder of Khan Academy ⁴. In this speech, he discusses the arrival of the era of personalized education, where AI can become everyone’s personalized learning assistant. AI can not only assist with homework but also collaborate with students in creative endeavors. In his presentation, he showcases the envisioned future of learning aided by AI.

The integration of AI in Khan Academy has bridged the gap between online and offline education. Online courses now truly rival traditional classroom education, and the concept of obtaining a free university education online is no longer a fantasy. To counter the issues of degree inflation, I refer to this as “Micro Education” - an education accessible to everyone rapidly and flexibly. In my article “How Can I Get a Certificate from Foreign Courses for Free?” I introduced methods for free online learning, which you are welcome to review. With the support of AI, online courses will become more personalized, interactive, and capable of understanding individual educational needs better than teachers. Students can choose any subject they want to learn online, quickly grasp knowledge with AI guidance, and receive personalized and interest-based education. This is in stark contrast to the current education system, where students receive the same standardized education and are evaluated uniformly.

4.Transitioning from Teaching to Guiding

To some extent, AI will replace the role of teachers in imparting knowledge. Teachers will transition to the role of guides or mentors. They will facilitate positive interaction between students and AI, assign open-ended tasks, and cultivate students’ abilities to ask questions, work in teams, and think critically and innovatively. The job of teachers will be to help students develop a habit of self-directed learning and the courage to explore. Teachers will no longer shape students into a predefined mold but instead assist them in becoming the individuals they aspire to be.

5.Insights

One might question the purpose of learning when faced with all-mighty AI. They may argue that humans will ultimately be replaced by AI. However, I believe that AI merely consolidates humanity’s existing knowledge, and the answers it provides may contain erroneous or one-sided perceptions of the world. Chinese philosopher Wang Yangming’s philosophy of “knowledge and action as one” emphasizes that we have spent too much time pursuing knowledge, forgetting to put it into practice and genuinely understand and change the world. The emergence of AI allows us more time to cultivate various abilities, unleash our unique insights and creativity, and, in my opinion, it brings positive implications for education.

Note: The above translation and revision by ChatGPT aim to adjust the original passage to be more comprehensible for Western readers. The translation may not capture the entirety of the original text and might introduce some interpretation.

References