The topic of last week’s “Life Lines” was human intelligence, IQ —the ability to analyze information, think critically and predict realistic outcomes. A high IQ makes you good at that brain work; a low IQ means you have more trouble with mental tasks.
An IQ test doesn’t test your knowledge or memory. It tests your ability to think.
As I said last week, parents often agonize over their children’s IQ, hoping that it’s higher than average so that the kids will have an easier time negotiating life’s challenges, especially that of getting an education.
The purpose of that education is not to dole out information to be memorized, spit out and forgotten, but to give students the tools to be able to think critically, analyze, understand and predict their way through life’s coming challenges.
This week I’m moving on to AI, “artificial intelligence,” a term we’re hearing more and more as that technology takes over more of our mental tasks.That includes the things that kids are assigned to do at school to increase their mental abilities.
It’s the term that Biden’s VP and AI “czar,” Kamala Harris tried so lamely to explain to us low IQ idiots: “It’s this... thing... spelled A and I,” she said, giggling. Well, Kamala, I guess artificial intelligence is better than no intelligence. That’s spelled “N” and “O.” Perhaps her own education didn’t stimulate Kamala’s brain enough.
Artificial intelligence programs have proliferated online. I haven’t used one because they seem so much like cheating. But I understand that you submit your material, tell the program what you’re aiming for, such as “List the main points of this text,” and the program shoots you back a list that you didn’t have to work for, or read the material to comprehend, or even understand.
An AI program can write an essay or a speech for you, create a project list, design an ad — any intellectual thing you’ve been assigned to do and would have to sweat to produce.
Adults are using the programs for everything from business to creating art, and students have caught on to the joys of handing in essays and reports that they didn’t think up or write and math answers that they don’t understand, but their answer is right. Just give the program a topic and a goal and sit back while it does the work for you. Which is great, right?
Yes, if the result is the only thing you care about.
But if parents care about their children’s brain development, there is much to be concerned about with AI.
I’m coming at this from the standpoint of having taught English for 31 years. What I learned from my experience is that teaching students to write is teaching them to think. As they create something out of their own brains, they must practice analysis, critical thinking, judgment, prediction and clarity of expression. They must continually analyze what they write for logic and appropriateness — all features of intelligence.
As they have to read things for themselves and use what they read to form concepts, they build intelligence from the effort of reading. Reading and writing are hard work, but we’re strengthening our brains as we’re doing that work.
With the world scrambling toward AI technology to help in every human endeavor, parents now need to be concerned about the effect of this “artificial”— meaning machine-made and created by someone else — “intelligence” on our children’s mental development.
Using an AI program teaches them little except how to operate the program.
It has been proven that when we rely on a tool to do our work, our brains step back to conserve energy, then stop having the ability to do that mental task at all. Reliance on calculators is the reason fast-food clerks can’t make change and most kids can’t do a math problem in their heads. The Spell Check feature on computers has led to students’ inability to spell correctly without it.
One of the most dangerous features of AI is that it takes away creativity. The wording of an AI-created text is correct and pleasant sounding, but it lacks what we call “voice” in writing. AI doesn’t sound like any particular person with a personality or any personal point of view wrote it. It’s predictable.
And studies have proved that students who use AI to produce a text can’t even remember what they “wrote” later. Which makes you wonder if they learned anything from the project.
In a recent edition of the Epoch Times, Prof. Mohamed Elmasry said, “When the human memory atrophies through lack of stimulation and challenge, as we age, we become more vulnerable to earlier and more severe dementia and other forms of cognitive decline.”
But knowing the dangers won’t stop the development of AI. It’s here to stay. It’s one of those things like social media that can do good, but it comes with serious trade-offs.
