Members of our Community Editorial Board, a group of community residents who are engaged with and passionate about local issues, respond to the following question: With the new academic school year beginning, students and educators are still wrestling with artificial intelligence\u2019s role in the classroom. Your take?<\/p>\n
As an old dog trying to learn new tricks, I am hornswoggled by AI. Is it a clever trick or the key to humanity\u2019s utopian future? Today, what troubles me most are the people currently deciding how fast to create, develop and implement AI without guardrails. Profiting from electronically harvesting thousands of years of hard-won human creativity is exploitation at the highest level imaginable. Just because it can be done doesn\u2019t mean it SHOULD be done.<\/p>\n
Replacing the horse and buggy with motor vehicles now appears to have worked out, but it took decades to complete the transition. We were able to adapt over time, sort of. AI is happening fast enough that the newest versions of ChatGPT-5.6 and Claude Opus 5 are now generating their own future iterations, coding faster and more accurately than their initial human creators. Ironically, the first jobs being destroyed will be the coders themselves, but if your work involves a computer screen, you may be next.<\/p>\n
If the only governor on this engine of change is entrepreneurial capitalism (can more money be made plugging into the data centers than engaging with these pesky employees?), job layoffs are inevitable, even if there will be no customers left to purchase stuff when all is said and done. Oops. The handful of tech bros on the top of the AI food chain are harnessing their ill-gotten gains and political access to complete their compounds and spend the rest of their days enjoying the high life at our expense.<\/p>\n
Recent AI \u201csuccess\u201d like AI\u2019s possible development of empathy and the ability to intuit the right call from a technically correct poor one, on the one hand, stands in sharp contrast with the generation of new viruses and cyberattacks following escape from digital containment, on the other.<\/p>\n
Warp speed \u201cprogress\u201d without an ethical hand on the tiller or discernment of a safe harbor pre-deployment could render all of us either saved or damned. Who\u2019s to say which? In my honest opinion, neither Elon Musk nor Peter Thiel should be steering this civilizational transition alone. Our currently dysfunctional Congress and administration are only making matters worse.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m glad BVSD is searching for ways to effectively prepare our students for a future featuring AI. I just hope the students will eventually be able to find fulfilling work, and an adequate paycheck when it arrives \u2014 likely sooner than later. Time to pump the brakes \u2026<\/p>\n
Ed Byrne, edbyrne@smartlanduse.com<\/a><\/p>\n When I received my teacher certification in 1976 from CU Boulder, the last obstacle to classroom autonomy was to exhibit proficiency in current technology. I had to demonstrate effective use of a mimeograph machine, properly employ the laminator without injury, feed 16 mm film through a projector and master the intricacies of an intercom system so as to effectively communicate with administration. I passed. Forty years later at Boulder High, I was the last teacher to use a chalkboard, still cautious about a future that is forever changing.<\/p>\n Artificial Intelligence is the tool of the future, and students should be prepared for that future.<\/p>\n I have a confession: for all my bi-weekly opinions, I have never used ChatGPT or Copilot to write. I do use ChatGPT to collect data, archive information and fact-check. I also use spell-check and grammar check. I choose to make my own mistakes and insights.<\/p>\n Teaching is about relationship. I would often tell my students that my job is to make them \u201csuffer,\u201d as in the archaic testamental use of, \u201cSuffer the little children to come to me.\u201d Allow or permit kids to be exposed to a new thought that may alter their current perspective. Learn to bear the burden of new information and struggle to understand new people, places and modes of thinking. Integrate knowledge into your moral and civic identity. This is not easy, nor is it a job I\u2019m willing to surrender to AI. Students need to grapple with an intelligence that is not artificial, but authentic.<\/p>\n A teacher is more than a broker of information providing market tools for some prospective employer. The skilled teacher educates. The etymology of the word educate (ex duco) means to \u201clead out from.\u201d The student is already in possession of knowledge and experience, and the artful teacher helps the student capitalize on what they already know and add to it in a meaningful way. Teachers help students create meaning: mathematical meaning, scientific meaning, historical meaning and artistic meaning. Teachers help students utilize the voice they already have.\u00a0<\/p>\n My fear is that a useful tool like AI can become a burdensome crutch. Bret Stephens, in a New York Times opinion<\/a>, noted that a recent review of 100 doctoral dissertations found that \u201c56 percent of them contained \u2018more than negligible\u2019 A.I.-generated writing and 19 percent had \u2018more than 50 percent A.I.-generated text.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n The very act of writing and critical thinking are closely intertwined. AI undermines that capacity and is already leading us into what Rose Horowitch of The Atlantic Magazine calls our \u201cpost-literate\u201d age<\/a>, a time when reading and writing are no longer an ethical and democratizing force, a time when we have surrendered ourselves to the protocols of an algorithm. She goes on to assert that Donald Trump is our first post-literate president. He communicates through memes and reduces language to its most simplistic components. \u201cLasers: Bing, Bing, GONE!!!\u201d There is no analysis, no evidence, no critical understanding, no sustained argument embedded in text. We want more for our children and expect more from our schools. We want our kids to be able to think through difficult problems collaboratively, not just look up answers.<\/p>\n We should allocate resources to provide for best practice.<\/p>\n Ask any teacher in Boulder Valley, at any grade level, which they would prefer: ChatGPT software or a limit of twenty students per class. No need to raise your hand; we all know the answer.<\/p>\n Jim Vacca, jamespvacca1@gmail.com<\/p>\n To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online<\/a> or check out our guidelines<\/a> for how to submit by email.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Members of our Community Editorial Board, a group of community residents who are engaged with and passionate about…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":140868,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,25,11905,2853,1651],"class_list":["post-140867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ai","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-editorials","tag-latest-headlines","tag-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140867\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/140868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}