Large language models are one of the hottest areas of AI right now, with ChatGPT crossing 1M users in ~5 days, adoption of consumer AI tools is skyrocketing. Moore's law is unfolding before us for generative AI with GPT-4 on the horizon and Dreamlike Diffusion 1.0.

What’s GPT? (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) is a powerful and flexible natural language processing algorithm designed by Open AI that uses deep learning to produce human-like text and more. The neural network project was funded jointly by Elon Musk, Sam Altman and others, who collectively pledged $1 billion to Open AI in 2015. In 2019, Microsoft matched the billion-dollar funding to accelerate development and gain preferred access to the system.

Open AI’s models have shown incredible results through a suite of consumer facing AI products including GPT-3, ChatGPT, and DALLE-2. But what does this mean for educators? How might we better equip and empower students through emerging technology? Will it be the “end of high school English”? 

There was a time when we were told we wouldn’t always have calculators in our hands. While that mindset didn’t age well, change has been consistent. Today's youth who are experiencing education today will only ever exist in the universe of exponential information expansion. Our students are becoming self-learning machines that will continue to expand our definition of imagination in ways we do not yet realize. However, we as humans often reject what we do not understand, and allow defensiveness to inhibit our learning. If we want to equip students with the capacity to leverage these technologies to release their imagination into the universe - we must adapt our methodologies. 

What we know as education today is often rooted in learning designed for an industrial age. We’re seeing generative AI be a catalyst that is transforming education into a more peer-driven and cooperative process. Ron Rivers, author of Self-actualization in the Age of Crisis and founder of SpiritDAO, proposed a more matrix style of participatory learning. Prioritizing student-selected depth over memorization and regurgitation. ChatGPT can be a powerful research tool and support student creation, collaboration, presentation, and peer-to-peer learning. Educators play the role of mentors and discussion guides instead of being the sole arbiter of information. 

Generative AI supports a form of education that considers each event from multiple perspectives whenever possible — with the ability to end class with more questions left open than answered. This learning style prioritizes the interpersonal, technical, and collaborative skills necessary to succeed in expanding knowledge economies. Students and educators develop their powers of imagination, exploration, learning, and application to the degree that they are empowered to strengthen any organization that interests them.

However, we cannot be blind to the risks of generative AI, which are all very real and require a significant amount of work needed to be done. Handing over huge sectors of our society to black-box algorithms that we barely understand can create more a lot of problems, which has already begun to help spark a regulatory response around the current challenges of AI discrimination and bias. With many tech companies explicitly naming their target as artificial general intelligence (AGI) — systems that can do everything a human can do, we’re at an inflection point in what it means to truly leverage technology that benefits all of humanity. 

Large language models are one of the hottest areas of AI right now, with ChatGPT crossing 1M users in ~5 days, adoption of consumer AI tools is skyrocketing. Moore's law is unfolding before us for generative AI with GPT-4 on the horizon and Dreamlike Diffusion 1.0.

What’s GPT? (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) is a powerful and flexible natural language processing algorithm designed by Open AI that uses deep learning to produce human-like text and more. The neural network project was funded jointly by Elon Musk, Sam Altman and others, who collectively pledged $1 billion to Open AI in 2015. In 2019, Microsoft matched the billion-dollar funding to accelerate development and gain preferred access to the system.

Open AI’s models have shown incredible results through a suite of consumer facing AI products including GPT-3, ChatGPT, and DALLE-2. But what does this mean for educators? How might we better equip and empower students through emerging technology? Will it be the “end of high school English”? 

There was a time when we were told we wouldn’t always have calculators in our hands. While that mindset didn’t age well, change has been consistent. Today's youth who are experiencing education today will only ever exist in the universe of exponential information expansion. Our students are becoming self-learning machines that will continue to expand our definition of imagination in ways we do not yet realize. However, we as humans often reject what we do not understand, and allow defensiveness to inhibit our learning. If we want to equip students with the capacity to leverage these technologies to release their imagination into the universe - we must adapt our methodologies. 

What we know as education today is often rooted in learning designed for an industrial age. We’re seeing generative AI be a catalyst that is transforming education into a more peer-driven and cooperative process. Ron Rivers, author of Self-actualization in the Age of Crisis and founder of SpiritDAO, proposed a more matrix style of participatory learning. Prioritizing student-selected depth over memorization and regurgitation. ChatGPT can be a powerful research tool and support student creation, collaboration, presentation, and peer-to-peer learning. Educators play the role of mentors and discussion guides instead of being the sole arbiter of information. 

Generative AI supports a form of education that considers each event from multiple perspectives whenever possible — with the ability to end class with more questions left open than answered. This learning style prioritizes the interpersonal, technical, and collaborative skills necessary to succeed in expanding knowledge economies. Students and educators develop their powers of imagination, exploration, learning, and application to the degree that they are empowered to strengthen any organization that interests them.

However, we cannot be blind to the risks of generative AI, which are all very real and require a significant amount of work needed to be done. Handing over huge sectors of our society to black-box algorithms that we barely understand can create more a lot of problems, which has already begun to help spark a regulatory response around the current challenges of AI discrimination and bias. With many tech companies explicitly naming their target as artificial general intelligence (AGI) — systems that can do everything a human can do, we’re at an inflection point in what it means to truly leverage technology that benefits all of humanity.