Will artificial intelligence ever replace teachers?
We are living in the Internet revolution, where everything is connected and available at our fingertips. In tech jargon, this is called the "Internet of Things." All industries are working on solutions to diminish human resources dependency as complexity increases and professionals are not ready to fulfill the market needs. Consider Watson, for example, an artificial intelligence (AI) created by IBM, which can process large amounts of data like no human being. Watson has solutions for healthcare, logistics, translations, weather, and so much more. Watson even won the quiz game Jeopardy in 2011 over former champions Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings. Machines are capable of processing data way faster than a human brain, and therefore, they can give us faster and more precise information.
A member of my family was diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer in January 2018. The symptoms started back in October 2017. Doctors were unable to correlate the symptoms because each had a different specialty: rib cage pain, stomach flu, jaundice, headaches, etc. On the other hand, Watson would link these symptoms with the patient's blood work history, family history, other cancer patients' patterns and give us a precise diagnosis. That would have helped immensely with the speed of treatment.
Reflect on this: it takes 10 to 12 years to educate a doctor and many more years of practical experience to have an outstanding doctor, not counting all the accumulated student debt. This doctor will be serving a limited number of patients in one specific state and city. On the other hand, Watson needs minor adjustments in its algorithms here and there and voilà: it is ready to serve patients anywhere in the world at the comfort of their homes. That is AI.
Machines help us become more productive and even more precise with what we do in the Internet revolution era. However, it can also be a menace. In the past, battles would take days, and wars would take years. With a push of a button, a cyber-attack can create chaos at the worldwide level, such as the shutdown of airports, the compromise of banks' data, or the malfunction of nuclear plants. On May 12, 2017, at 9:45 a.m. a malware called WannaCry infected computers in the U.K., Russia, Spain, Taiwan, and other countries in smaller proportions. The virus encrypted computers' data and required a ransom to unlock it, or otherwise, it would destroy everything. Britain's health service computers were all infected in a matter of hours. Imagine all this data erased in seconds.
Not long ago, only humans could do specific work to recognize patterns and make decisions upon them. Now computers identify those patterns faster than humans do, and therefore, anything that can be in the form of an algorithm will have the potential to replace this human capacity. Various professions will lose their economic value; thus, we need now, more than ever, the ability to create and recreate ourselves and the world around us.
Our dependency on AI grows as technology reaches mainstream and becomes more affordable. There are more cell phones in the world than people! We rely on cell phones to connect with others, wearables to tell us how to improve our health, and apps to suggest what to watch on TV. We cannot stop AI! Some countries may limit AI applications with policies, but others will open the gates for innovation, and the latter will most likely dominate the planet.
Most learners, anywhere in the world, grow up with the mindset of how they can get things done as fast as possible, fulfilling the minimum requirements to be done with school and get into a profession. AI is replacing most of the jobs we know and performing them significantly better than us. So, what will be left for human beings? We must wake up and get ready to enable children to create, regardless of the pathway they choose for their future, and to foster non-hackable beings. The only way to do it is by developing cognitive awareness through learning. In other words, we must learn to use our brains effectively.
Will AI ever replace teachers? Though AI is growing and will continue to grow significantly, there has not been an advancement in computer consciousness. Even if computers were to gain it, our human consciousness has a more robust power to understand it completely. AI may replace teachers with repetitive tasks. Nevertheless, I believe AI will doubly replace the human connection.
The brain interprets basic information from someone's facial expressions in just 33 milliseconds, and it immediately reacts to it. Dr. David Eagleman, a neuroscience professor at Stanford University, measured these tiny facial expressions through an experiment where he recorded people's reactions to pictures of faces, some frowning, some smiling, some crying, and so on. Participants mirrored the same facial expressions of the images they saw. Why? Our brains are wired to connect and influence other human beings. Therefore, if we have good or bad habits, if we are happy or sad, joyful beings, or have addictions, we will influence others to do the same. That is our human connection.
To explore this bio-connection concept, French scientist Rene Peoc'h at Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) lab experimented in 1986 with how the mind has power over matter. He programmed a robot to move randomly around an area. The robot moved around every space in the first 100 control runs. Peoc'h then brought newborn chicks to the experiment's area. Chicks identify the very first moving thing around them as their "mother." The chicks started following the robot, "imprinting" the mother role in the moving robot. The chicks were then put in a cage next to the area, and, to everyone's surprise, the robot moved closer to the cage even though it was programmed to move randomly everywhere. Did the chicks' desire to want their "mother" near them influence the robot to spend more time near their cage? Somehow, they "overrode" the robot's programming.
Another mind-blowing proof of human consciousness's power is the science of Epigenetics, or our ability to change gene expressions. For many years, scientists believed humans were just biochemical machines controlled by genes. It meant that, from birth, we were pre-programmed to be who we are, to think the way we think, and to have the traits we have. Just recently, further exploration questioned the role of proteins embracing the DNA. The conclusion is that environmental signals change the shape of the protein and, therefore, can control genes' expression. The environmental influence on our genes makes sense. Have you ever noticed how loving couples who lived decades together look alike? Or how someone who grew up in Florida's warm weather is less tolerant to cold compared to the ones who grew up in Alaska? Many Canadians spend the wintertime in Florida, from November through April. They go to the beach shirtless in Fort Lauderdale on 50-Fahrenheit degree weather. That is crazy for Floridians' standards!
Our bio-existence will be redefined with the Superintelligence Singularity, the term that sets the time when AI will eventually surpass humans' biological intelligence. Scientists say it will happen before 2030. If AI is doing all humans did before with higher capacity, precision, and quality, two things may happen: we may thrive with unimaginable creation and discovery of our consciousness capacity, or we will be condemned to live on falsehood in virtual worlds created by ourselves or by AI. It is time to get ready for this rapidly approaching future. Still skeptical? Just search "robot Sophia" on YouTube and think again.
Perhaps the next significant human evolution is discovering that our brains are under-utilized, and we transform our education practices to explore our maximum potential. The world of AI is highly personalized to each user, and so should be learning in this new normal. We can then uncover every human talent, making this world a better place to live. To personalize learning means becoming a catalyst for students' learning experience. Catalysis is "an action between two or more persons or forces, initiated by an agent (teacher, parent, business leader, coach, and so on) that itself remains unaffected by the action." It means learners are the ones who initiate learning, who have the initiative to move forward. Personalize learning means coaching learners to discover their passion and guiding them towards developing the necessary knowledge and skills to excel in it.
Think of each learner as a seed on your hands. Your work is to plant it and take care of it, so it flourishes. The seed will grow according to what it is inside. In other words, an apple seed will give you apples, not orchids, just because you want it. Thus, let us refrain from telling learners what to be and start supporting and guiding them to flourish what they have inside: their passion. Our starting point is not a blank page of learners' lives but a full potential just waiting to be realized.
Learn more about this topic in my book Becoming Einstein's Teacher: Awakening the Genius in Your Students.
