Amplified need to teach Skills and AI
A potential, and I’d argue almost inescapable positive influence of AI tools will be true focus on skill development for students. If we allow students to explore with AI tools there will be several skills that need to be developed and sharpened. A few that immediately come to mind are:
Informational literacy
Critical Thinking
Creativity
Collaboration
I know there are more but that was my 10 second brainstorm and here’s how we know these skills would be necessary for effective use of AI.
Informational Literacy: If you do a basic course even some crash reading on where chatbots are pulling information you can see that its an internet scrap for several bots and therefore sources may not be accurate and indeed the information really is just a pattern from the topic you searched and AI giving an answer. Sometimes this is amazingly accurate, but also there are hallucinations where the AI just does the best patter to make sense This means immediately students will need to verify the answers that their chatbots are feeding them. This can be an even trickier question when we start seeing organizations using self-contained AI, considering what bias may be amplified intentionally or otherwise.
Training students to question what they are reading and the skills they need to do this will be essential in properly using AI and build student understanding of the AI itself.
Critical Thinking: Closely linked to the above is the skill of analysis. This means that we need to strengthen the skills of knowledge transfer, which AI cannot currently do, and strengthen this skill in students. AI will allow students to ask better questions and to evaluate the information they are receiving in the answers. Analysis will be HUGE as far as connecting ideas and finding the patterns that allow students to firm their own world views and examine data.
Creativity: A skill that AI does not possess is creativity. While we see a fear of artists and writers worry about AI taking jobs, the truth is currently that is a human skill. If we allow students access to AI tools- we allow them to use one of the truly human traits to be creative in conjunction with AI rather than be in competition. Interestingly, I think this idea of creativity will also be a platform to discuss ethics.
Collaboration: Final skill to think about is collaboration. How we look and think about AI together as people as well as thinking about how we will collaborate with the AI itself. What can AI make easier for us so makes sense to outsource once students have an understanding of a concept and what needs to be done by a human or group of humans.
There are plenty more skills to consider and this is basically a quick thought on areas I think many of us are thinking about as we begin seeing AI in society and specifically in schools. Curious what other skills you think this will be necessary to focus on and what do you think are the parts of education we can pull back on?
