Twelve days ago, ChatGPT was released, and the impacts have been staggering. It has since exploded in popularity and its power is just beginning to be understood. Some are expressing fear and concern about the implications of unleashing our creations into the world. I believe ChatGPT is an extremely beneficial tool for many people and social verticals, and this essay will explore why that is very accurate for our educational institutions.
Luddism is not a new phenomenon, and if the past is any indicator, academic institutions may attempt to suppress and punish the use of these AI companions. We will resist what is in favor of what was. Demand will create a market for monitoring services similar to those for plagiarism. A battle of AI versus AI, each making the other more complex but never concluding outside of moving resources out of educational institutions and into the hands of some private firms. It is a Sisyphean effort rooted in fundamentally incorrect first principles—an attempt to hold onto a model of education and ranking that is now changed radically. Instead, we embrace it and redirect ourselves alongside it to maximize its collective benefit.
Many older millennials will remember being told we wouldn't always have calculators in our pockets. One of the many learnings and predictions now obsolete given our collective progress. Change is the single truth, and the children inhabiting primary education today will only ever exist in the universe of exponential information expansion. These self-learning machines will expand humanity's imagination and powers in presently unimaginable ways. Their conflict with the existing order should not be assumed to be negative.
We want to equip our collective population with the capacity to leverage these technologies to release our imagination into the universe. Who better than our youth to lead that charge? Consider also that Pandora's box is already open, and academia at all levels is unprepared for and lacks any respectable defense against its infiltration. It does not serve us well to ignore or deny the problem because we prefer old dogmas of our own making.
Instead, we recognize that we can never be anywhere but here, and in our immediate present, this is happening whether we resist or not. To that end, it creates an incredible opportunity. The present-day organization of education is rooted in learning designed for an industrial era. ChatGPT can be the ideal catalyst to transform education into a more dialectic and cooperative process.
We approach education through 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 leading learning pod workshops. Educators play the role of mentors and discussion guides. ChatGPT also supports a form of education that considers each event from multiple perspectives whenever possible—for example, teaching children about humanity’s colonial history from the standpoint of both conquerors and the conquered. Each class ended 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.
When prompted with “explain the benefits of ChatGPT for primary and secondary education in one paragraph” ChatGPT returns “As a large language model trained by OpenAI, I am not able to provide information on specific technologies or applications developed by OpenAI. In general, however, the use of natural language processing technologies in education can have several benefits, such as improving student engagement, providing personalized learning experiences, and allowing for more efficient grading and feedback. Additionally, such technologies can facilitate collaboration and communication between students and teachers, and can potentially help with language learning and language accessibility for students with disabilities.”
A significant implication of ChatGPT for education administrators is its blow to the hierarchical ranking of individual students. Students with access to ChatGPT can create essays in minutes that would have taken many hours. Some may even add a personal touch to put it in their own words. It will be challenging for educators to determine what is and is not ChatGPT-influenced. Again, we return to the preference of dogmas over the reality of our circumstances. The competitive organization of education is no longer an ideal or necessary learning framework. Early in life, it classifies the child and can play a significant role in their future access and agency.
Education professionals should prioritize the integration of ChatGPT into lesson plans as soon as possible. Instead of resisting the changing nature of the universe, we embrace it. Directing our focus and energy towards teaching youth how to use these new powers towards the genuine expansion of self and the uplifting of others—leveraging it to reinforce the values of dialogue and cooperation necessary for transcending the various crises we inhabit. Empowering students to practice agency, better develop their interests, create in their image, and communicate their ideas and learnings more strongly. It's an incredible opportunity that presents endless possibilities. Let's not squander it in a vain attempt to preserve what was over what will is.
Ron Rivers is the author of Self-actualization in the Age of Crisis and founder of SpiritDAO. Learn more about him at ronrivers.com or say hello.