AI is Unsettling

            Today, I watched and read about different types of Artificial Intelligence in classroom settings.  I had heard of Watson, the super computer that IBM computers had built for the Jeopardy competition, but I was unfamiliar with the concept of computers teaching in classrooms.  My initial reaction in learning this information was that I thought it was completely bizarre.  The interactions the children were having with the computers appeared awkward and unnatural, and it demonstrates definite limits with what we can do with computers.

            Affluent schools will be the only facilities that could even entertain AI teaching their children for much of the foreseeable future, because who else would be able to afford this type of teaching?  Many schools here and around the world are still struggling to get adequate textbooks and computers for their students.  As time goes on and the price of this technology begins to lessen substantially, I am afraid that the computer as a teacher will shift into the new norm.  Society has become so digitized and dependent on machines, that it seems as though AI teachers are inevitable in our future.  The video states that the computers would be assistant/ complimentary teachers, but who is to say that they will mot eventually replace human teachers altogether?  It sounds laughable right now, but so did many other ideas of computers taking over in areas that they eventually have, in fact, done so.

            One of my biggest issues with this concept is that there are certain invaluable intangibles that cannot be taught by a computer. Students need to interact with adult teachers to help guide them in proper etiquette, learn gesturing, learn to read adult’s facial expressions, and get positive feedback that a computer just cannot properly give a child.  There is only so much personality that you can create in a computer.

Sometimes it feels as though writers are slowly making their way onto the endangered species list.  Computers are processing and outputting at a much faster rates than humans, and the beautiful art form of writing and publishing hard-copy books are being suppressed by the age of technology.  Computers may someday be able to write informational books, or even fictional books from a specially designed program, but they cannot create deep metaphors, or language that evokes powerful feelings in its readers, because AI will never understand the beautiful experience of being a human being.