Education’s Cortés Problem
In a recent linkedin post I equated Cortés’ 1519 arrival on the Aztec’s doorstep with the arrival of AI in our schools.
The Aztec’s should have dominated Cortés, instead they tragically misunderstood the relationship until they were wiped out. The primary thing the Aztecs could have done to protect themselves at the time would have been to know who they were dealing with. Once Cortés was there they should have respected just how different he was from them and controlled him like the mortal threat he was.
And with that idea in mind, what should educators know about AI in our schools?
The long and short of it is that BigTech has called the shots in education for a long time. In the 90s when Apple couldn’t crack the corporate market with their machines they targeted schools in an attempt to stay afloat. It didn’t work, exactly, as they almost went bankrupt in ‘97 having to get a hand up from frenemy, Microsoft. But in their desperate bid for relevancy they doubled down on their long held strategy of owning the education market and flooded schools nationwide in low cost Macs.
So, it’s not exactly correct to say that parents and schools were demanding these machines. There were plenty of PC clones that weren’t reaching this level of ubiquity in the schools. No, it was more a function of Apple’s need.
And for those of you who have paid attention to the BigTech water they’re swimming in, AI will look awfully familiar.
BigTech is attempting to sell education the illusion that ‘artificial Intelligence’ will augment natural intelligence. It’ll be a force multiplier, allowing for a hyper-personalized, differentiated education for all learners. On demand chatbots will always be available to wrestle with the most difficult of questions; ready to teach learners, when where, and how they want to learn.
So, that’s the illusion BigTech wants us to believe. However, for us to believe it we’d have to delude ourselves into believing that we haven’t heard this very argument for 1:1 device programs in the 2010s.
The idea of a 1:1 direct relationship to the information an individual most wants at the time they most want it was the exact idea behind 1:1 device programs. The device was a differentiated force multiplier.
We know now that this is a delusion. It simply hasn’t borne the expected benefits in education so why would we accept a broad swath of AI in education predicated on the same promise?
Artificial Intelligence will proliferate but schools have a unique purpose to develop and promote the native kind of human intelligence. Bluntly put, AI is a threat to that mission. It must to be tightly controlled by the institution elsewise the institution might get wiped out.
It’s not all doom and gloom, though. The good news is that if we allow it AI could be the stone that sharpens our steel. If we dominate it, question every logical deduction, every suggestion, and every conclusion, dictate when and where it has a voice and what weight that voice will have. Then we’ll probably end up better thinkers, better able to depend on our thoughts to solve problems, and masters of a large and powerful domain.
Alternatively, we could end up ceding a lot of this territory to computers, and that future doesn’t look as promising. Our thinking ability may atrophy. We may not problem solve as well. We may not be able to train our minds to serve our needs. We may find ourselves dependent on algorithms we understand poorly if at all.
I’m reminded of the Tolkien quote:
“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo. "So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” - J.R.R. Tolkien
These will be challenging times for schools. The most successful will take control of and dominate AI in the institution.