Category Archives: chatgpt

I, Robot?

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AI has been a fun experiment or toy for me to play with until the last few months. Generative AI came across my TikTok feed last school year and I quickly realized that my students were already ahead of me. They were using ChatGPT. I instantly tried ChatGPT and several other AI sites to see how they worked, but also how we could teach our students to use them ethically. It was clear to me this tool was not going away!

The first assignment we gave our students was to use an image generator using descriptive language to illustrate a story they had written. Our students loved this assignment, for a variety of reasons: they were allowed to use AI in the classroom; the images created were spectacular; and they were learning something new!

We also showed our students a few drawbacks of AI, such as, the information it relies on is often wrong and stereotypical; therefore, this is not a good way to research. Secondly, using it as a writing tool is unethical. 

In my own teaching practice, I have used AI in several ways. EDUAIDE.AI offers a variety of different ways to help teachers including “Lesson Seeds”. When I was struggling to plan Health within the new parameters set out by our government this year (and within a strict timeline), I used this tool. While it gave very specific ideas, I used it as a jumping off point and made the unit my own. I have also used AI to create rubrics and offer feedback for writing. It should be noted that I still need to read the writing, the feedback was for grammar only. 

AI can save us so much time if employed properly. But we still need a human connection. I do not think that people will be replaced. While humans make mistakes, AI makes more mistakes. And it learns from us.

This a prompt I gave ChatGPT to write blog post about AI.

In an instant the ChatGPT gave me three paragraph blog post! I could have used it; but is that ethical? Cheating? I will include it below with the prompt for you to read…

You

Write a blog post the pros and cons of generative AI. Make this post three paragraphs long.

ChatGPT

ChatGPT

Generative AI, with its ability to create content autonomously, has brought about a paradigm shift in various industries, from art and entertainment to healthcare and finance. One of its most significant advantages is its capacity to streamline creative processes, enabling artists, writers, and designers to generate ideas and prototypes swiftly. This acceleration in creativity can lead to increased productivity and innovation, as individuals and businesses can explore a broader range of possibilities without being hindered by traditional constraints. Additionally, generative AI has the potential to democratize creativity, making it more accessible to a wider audience by automating certain aspects of content creation.

However, with its promises of efficiency and accessibility come several challenges and ethical considerations. One major concern is the potential for misuse or abuse of generative AI, particularly in the realm of misinformation and fake content generation. As generative models become more advanced, there’s a growing risk of deepfake videos, forged documents, and other forms of deceptive content being produced at scale. This poses a threat to trust and authenticity in digital media and highlights the importance of implementing robust safeguards and regulations to mitigate these risks.

Furthermore, generative AI raises questions about the role of human creativity and expertise in a world increasingly driven by algorithms. While AI can assist in the creative process, some argue that it lacks the depth and emotional intelligence that humans bring to their work. There’s also the concern that widespread adoption of generative AI could lead to job displacement in certain industries, as tasks traditionally performed by humans are automated. Balancing the benefits of generative AI with these potential drawbacks requires careful consideration and a proactive approach to addressing the associated challenges. Ultimately, while generative AI holds immense promise for enhancing creativity and productivity, its implementation must be guided by principles of responsibility, transparency, and ethical use.

Will humans Devolve? – Generative AI

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When I think of artificial intelligence, I think of robots talking to you, self driving vehicles and the Jetsons. But it isn’t futuristic, it is now and we have been using it for a long time. According to the Alan Turing Institute an “AI system means any computational system (or a combination of such systems) that uses methods derived from statistics or other mathematical techniques to carry out tasks that are commonly associated with, or would otherwise require, human intelligence and that either assists or replaces the judgment of human decision makers in carrying out those tasks.”

As I was doing my research I did not realize how many things I used that is AI. The first tasks for humans I remember being replaced by a machine was thinking of your next word when texting on your block of a phone. Predictive text is AI.  Shout out to my millennials, who remembers T9 texting! Search engines uses artificial intelligence to locate information faster. Siri is AI task manager and researcher summoned by your voice; this technology was inputted on the iPhone in 2011. I use google home to shut my lights off, lock my doors, turn on tunes, and tell me the weather. I know Netflix and other apps give me recommendations which is are all AI algorithms. Generative AI is a category of AI which is defined as programs that learn and train to be able to create products for humans based on the prompts given. Not only can they do tasks, but now they can construct new products.

An industry that has been taken over by generative AI is customer service and it sucks. I feel like the old person that just wants to talk to a real person for help. A lot of the AI I have experienced does not think outside of the box quite yet and the training they get is very black and white. If there isn’t an option given they cannot help you.

Due to EC&I 833, I have been diving into new programs to help make my job easier. I have been using Brisk Teaching Chrome Extension to give feedback, MagicSchoolai to create questions from YouTube videos, showed kids how to use Quilbot paraphrasing tool, used ChatGPT to locate research for myself and used Arlinear to create quiz questions.

The benefit to these tools is they all save us time or make things more convenient. In regard to teaching, generative AI tools gives teachers time to give more thorough feedback, or differentiate lessons quicker and adapt for our students better so students can participate in meaningful ways. My EAL students can watch the videos I have assigned in their own language or translate documents or help them paraphrase. These are all assistive technologies to help them be successful.

In other realms of our world generative AI has helped to detect fraud, identify diseases efficiently in healthcare and facial recognition for security purposes.

The idea that AI can support my career, my students learning, and make the world a safer and more efficient, convenient place is great but there are problems. We need to critically analyze this technology. The training that some AI has raises concerns such as bias, prejudices and discrimination. Also most generative AI does not exhibit emotion, interpersonal skills and morality. Humans have emotions which play a role in doing a job well in my opinion. Considering other emotions is critical. With that said, AI’s ability to understand humour and emotions is advancing. I experienced this recently when the AI DJ on spotify used humour by playing a song they thought was a summary of all my favourite music this year and it was a yodelling song. If artificial intelligence can do a task with consideration of all societal constructs, law, feelings and without bias and discrimination that would be amazing, right? Maybe yes, but machines doing all tasks better than humans, I don’t think is great either, some yes, but not all. Humans bring value to some tasks and those tasks also bring value to humans. Interaction between people is important and I think AI might slowly take this away. We will only have relationships with machines. I don’t think that would help our economy or benefit society for machines to be doing everything. Humans will lose their knowledge and livelihood.

I understand this is a bold statement and maybe far in the future, hopefully, but I think it is something to think about.

It is important to be weary of new technology. We have seen already what search engines, and social media apps have done to our society. This technology with these AI algorithms has created a confirmation bias with in our society. In history I am unsure if we have ever seen such divide between people among what is right and wrong. Social Media apps use AI to manipulate you into using their apps to make money. How is that a good thing? So this generative AI that creates a paraphrased piece of work for a student, is this beneficial? It is assisting them to help them be successful, but it also does not help them learn to critically think on their own. They will lose the skill of using a thesaurus and finding new words and to create their own work. Is this a pointless skill to have because the machine will do it for you?  As Ted Talk explains humans knowing how to do the task or having the knowledge how to do it can be beneficial. I think machines doing some tasks to make our lives easier is great but we need to keep the enhancing our skills of connecting, constructing, evaluating, and critiquing to be functioning intelligent beings. We need to stay smarter than the machines! If we don’t machines will pass on knowledge to machines and humans won’t have a purpose.  For now I am still going to be cautious about generative AI but I do believe we should embrace it as well and adapt our education accordingly because this is where the future is going.