The Human Hand In an Artificial Age
Did your favorite teacher share a love of teaching by somehow touching your soul? Did they offer a comfortable tone of voice, a reassuring smile, or a kind word at the right moment? As you got older, did they introduce you to new ideas, perhaps other people or teachers who would inspire you?
How might Artificial Intelligence be changing the face of education? Let’s begin to answer this question by studying the word, artificial. The Latin adjective artificialis referred to something produced through human art, skill, or craftsmanship.
Throughout history, artists have recorded and interpreted the human experience through their work. Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel and Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper are two extraordinary examples of artists interpreting biblical narratives. On the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo gave us one of the most enduring images in Western art: two hands reaching toward one another, their fingers nearly touching.
The beauty of these works of art created by human hands evokes an emotional response from the viewer. In that sense, the art speaks to the viewer. The original meaning of artificial, then, does not necessarily suggest something false or inferior. It describes something created through human skill. That distinction becomes important as we consider the place of artificial intelligence in education.
Leonardo's The Last Supper and Michelangelo's frescoes in the Sistine Chapel represent human intelligence as a divine gift. The human mind requires nourishment, intellectual exercise, experience, and care to develop its capacity for imagination. Neither Michelangelo nor Leonardo da Vinci developed their extraordinary gifts in isolation. Both learned within communities of artists, mentors, patrons, and thinkers who challenged and expanded their abilities and inspired them to develop their God-given talents and intellectual gifts.
An early axiom in the use of computers was “Garbage in, garbage out.” Artificial intelligence systems are trained using enormous quantities of human-created information. Inevitably, that information contains human insight and achievement, but also human bias, error, contradiction, and misinformation. The reliability of artificial intelligence should always be questioned and verified, as scholars do with other sources and educational tools.
Technology should support, not replace, the human relationships, critical thinking, empathy, and sound pedagogy at the heart of education. AI may make human connection more valuable precisely because AI can perform more of the tasks we once associated exclusively with human intelligence.
For example,
AI can explain a concept.
AI can generate a lesson.
AI can provide feedback.
AI can suggest questions.
AI can help a student revise an essay.
But AI cannot care whether that particular child walks into the classroom tomorrow morning.
Educational organizations and the systems that are developed have a moral and ethical imperative to design pedagogy and establish cultures of respect, compassion, and equality.
Artificial intelligence cannot offer the touch of human hands, the comforting word, or the smile that resonates with a person’s soul. Today, perhaps more than at any other time in recent history, education must be a human endeavor that celebrates the principles of kindness, compassion, and equality.