I must confess here, I am (still!) one of the nay-sayers of AI and self-styled Don Quixote who with his pen and penchant for nature wishes to ride towards the windmills of data-centres that power AI and big tech and claim a chivalrous, romantic fight (or flight).
I have, on certain occasions, used AI to correct, edit what I write and generate some images for me. I might learn some new AI tools as I see my colleagues use them and finish the work that used to take us a few days or weeks in minutes. However, my Quixotic refusal to get swayed away by AI as the panacea for all troubles, including the even more quixotic claims that they can solve some of the most pressing global problems such as hunger, extreme poverty and climate change puts me in a small minority.
In particular, when it comes to my own sector, education and learning of young children, I am not too sure if it’s helping or hindering or transforming the already fragile process of learning! Sometime back I wrote and presented a paper on how digital technologies (including AI) are needed for an outcome-oriented education system, where I discussed their need and use-cases (a favorite term of all tech-enthusiasts!) for at least four areas - tech4governance, tech4teaching, tech4assessments and tech4learning. I stand by my view that the potential of technology is largely under-utilised in our country and it could certainly improve things. I see tons and tons of data collected on paper (registers, forms), (whatever sounds big) bytes and bytes of data collected but scarcely used well. We can keep blaming capacity, capability, scale or anything till the cows come back home but, the problem is we invest huge sums of money and thousands of hours of human effort to collect & store the data - it’s comes at an opportunity cost, of spending that in teaching-learning process for teachers & school leaders. If AI, new digital technologies can solve that: I will be a big cheerleader and welcome the same.
But, when it comes to the process of young minds interacting with technology without, I have some discomfort with that. Mostly for three reasons,
Most of these products are designed in a way that they are addictive
The child does not have the full understanding of the nature of the engagement, pros-cons and consequences of the engagement with the product/technology
Even we do not know the adverse impacts fully well or we do not know them yet
I will share some news and briefs that I came across recently about all these three concerns.
Recently, there was a case in an US court where the parents of a child sued the company meta saying that their daughter was using the app(s) for 16+ hours a day. While meta argued (as one can imagine) that there is a consent, age etc. etc. one of the major reasons that the parents cited was that the algorithms and product were designed in a manner that they increase the engagement time almost to the point of addiction. All of us know this from personal experience too. Take a look at your screen time data and it reflects nothing but helpless succumbing to a habit of doomscrolling, digital engagement, notifications and alerts. The courts actually gave a verdict in favour of the family.
Children are different from adults. Hence, while sale of cigarettes, tobacco, alcohol etc. is allowed after a certain age, they are prohibited for children. I am not comparing these “substances” with technology which has many wonderful uses but I am making the case for guided supervision and use.
Finally, even medical science is realising through evidence and data the impact of recent technologies such as AI on our mind. Particularly on our memory and other cognitive functions. In many ways, AI uses some of the key characteristics of our brain against the brain itself. We are creatures of habit and our brains love grooves of patterns so that we take less and less effort to do something. So, making a good prompt for AI and getting the answer will almost be natural after repeated use. It could do the long-boring stuff, it could do the hard-stuff, it could do the creative stuff and it could talk and almost impersonate a human. So why not!
Well, all of it comes at cost, more than just the subscription fees we pay. It’s our own mind and us. We have all been listening to how in social media and other platforms, the product is our time, and our attention, which is milked by the big tech companies. Similarly, the more and more we share prompts, feed data, “train the models” - the AI will get smarter, which could be good but the risk is are we getting dumber?
Any muscle not used gets weaker and weaker, the same is true of mind and even more so. Like Short to long-term memory loss and even dementia.
Many researchers believe that to be the case, calling it almost a “cognitive surrender”. Please check this out.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260417-ai-chatbots-could-be-making-you-stupider
Finally to end this, sharing a small real incident. The other day I was on a call with one of my colleagues, when I heard his young son, all of two come and make some demand or complaint. I was keen to know what the commotion was all about. My colleague explained that apparently the ipad that he was using wasn’t working and his way of explaining the situation was “ mera dimaag kharap ho gaya!”. (brain isn’t working) My colleague then added, that his son refers to laptops, ipads as “dimaag” !
Take that in !
