Tampa Bay Times: It is not OK to ignore AI. Florida’s students deserve better
In the classic fairytale “Chicken Little,” the quote “The sky is falling!” is uttered by the main character in response to an acorn hitting her head. This spurs panic among the other animals, as they believe the world is coming to an end.
Education is undergoing its own “The sky is falling” moment.
It is difficult to find any publications, from higher education trade journals (see The Chronicle of Higher Education or Higher Education Ed), to mainstream press like The Wall Street Journal and The New Yorker, that do not contain articles bemoaning how generative AI is ending or at least upending the (educational) world as we know it. In these articles, solutions are proposed to avert the end of the world, which usually romanticize a time before the internet existed, when professors gave students pen and paper to complete assignments.
The proposition of a “machines finally won” mentality that pervades most articles about AI misses the point. Machines, and I include AI as a “machine,” not only did not “win” but have served to make us more productive, and I would argue, happier.