The decision to use or approve the use of AI in school is not difficult. Yet educational journals are littered by the debate. As school people, we like our rules to be clean and definitive. “No running in the halls” is one of those dictums we uphold. Yet, when the weather is too cold or the ground is too snow covered for the track team to run outdoors, they run in our hallways after school. Most rules are two-sided coins. “Do not” on one side and “do when” on the other.

Thus, we need a two-sided rule for artificial intelligence. The right rule “of thumb” is — AI is approved when the goal is investigative, consensus building, problem solving, and efficiency AND AI is not approved when the goal is original thought, critical thinking, and skill development. Using AI should not be generalized to all student work but attached to the goals we are teaching children to achieve.

Human and artificial intelligences – what do we know?

In the annals of homo sapiens, intelligence has guardedly been a human characteristic. Scientists acknowledge that certain animals display specific kinds of intelligence. Dolphins and whales communicate with each other, dogs are trained to sniff everything from humans buried in snow to traces of drugs and explosives and to be empathetic to humans, and parrots can parrot human speech. We acknowledge that birds and other migratory animals travel great distances returning to seasonal, ancestral locations. Being trainable or being guided by inbred DNA is not intelligence.

Until recently we reserved intelligence for humankind. We defined our intelligence as “… the ability to learn or understand or to deal with new and trying situations: to reason or use skilled reason; the ability to apply knowledge to manipulate one’s environment or to think abstractly as measured by objective criteria: or mental acuteness.”

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/intelligence

The term “artificial intelligence” was the stuff of science fiction. AI was Hal, the master computer in Space Odyssey 2001, that helped manned space travel so well that it took control of its human passengers. It was “brainy.” We labeled smart computers as artificially intelligent and placed AI below human intelligence.

Ooops! Humans made AI intelligent.

Icarus lives to fly again. The hubris of our species created algorithmic machines that successfully meet our definition of intelligence. Was it inevitable? Probably. In some ways we are too smart for our own good.

When asked a question, AI finds an answer. Asked if A is better than B, AI will evaluate and judge the two. Asked to assimilate, assess, and evaluate data using the questioner’s values, AI provides an informed and weighted response. AI is better than sliced bread!

When I asked AI to provide me with an outline for writing this blog, within seconds my screen displayed a concise statement of pros and cons and suggestions for reconciliation between the two. Yet, I write on.

Artificial intelligence has been a contradiction in school. Our tradition is to foster human intelligence along the continuum of our academic, activities, arts, and athletics curricula. We strive for educated and mentally nimble children who will become intelligent adults. While intelligent thinking and problem solving has always been human, we are long accustomed in school to using scientific calculators for higher math and science problems and computer-assisted modeling, engineering, and manufacturing. We want the preciseness and ease of the CAD CAM systems we program in our maker labs. We want to do the thinking and use machine intelligence to do the work.

As teachers of academics, we want children to remember and use facts. Yet we, and they, reach for our smart devices to Google information we cannot recall or investigate the facts of a question we cannot offhandedly answer. Googling is both part of our vocabulary and accepted practice in our real world.

I recently had robotic surgery and accepted that my surgeon sat at a computer console to manipulate machine arms and hands cutting and sewing inside my abdomen.

The old lines between human and artificial intelligence seemed clear but now are blurred. We need to deblur the lines between our intelligences.

Which fork should I use? Contextual applications.

When I sit at a formal dining table, I recognize the various silverware. In the Emily Post setting, there are five forks – oyster fork to my right, dessert fork above the plate, and fish fork, salad fork, and entrée fork to my left. Each is designed for a specific use, yet my mouth and stomach do not know which fork I used once I am chewing and digesting my meal. However, prying oysters from a shell with the forks to my left would be difficult and messy. There is a purpose for each fork, and we abide with those defined purposes.

The uses of intelligence can and should be associated with educational purposes and contexts.

Definitions of purpose:

• Think about human intelligence when the teaching/learning goal involves original student thought, critical thinking and judgement, defined skill building, and personalization of outcomes. Human intelligence, like physical conditioning, requires purposeful and continuous mental and emotional exercise. As educators, we build student capacity for originality, critical judgements, and value-laden decisions when we pedagogically teach these. The arts give significant examples of separating humans from artificial intelligences. AI has a difficult time with “beauty” and “that painting appeals to me.” In student work, we attach words like integrity, honesty, and ethical when we want to ensure human ingenuity and avoid plagiarism or “cut and paste” submissions. Beauty and integrity are in the eye of the human beholder.

• Think about artificial intelligence when the teaching/learning goal is efficiency and the outcomes not the process for achieving outcomes is the priority. AI can ethically be used as a tool for gathering, assimilating, and cataloging information. The speed at which AI can assemble and categorize information is beyond human ability. AI can ethically be used to suggest and consider the best solutions. AI can ethically be used to gather and categorize samples of art, music, and poetry but leave it to human intelligence to enjoy and appreciate them.

The Big Duh, Icarus!

Real world — In the real world, few people care how a person can remember, recall, or find information. The issue is “what is that information?” In their out-of-school lives, students use Google and AI naturally to get access to information, directions to where they want to go, and conduct comparative shopping. Using artificial intelligences for these tasks is part of their real world.

In their real world, our graduates are learning use and work and prosper in AI-assisted careers. As educators we need to be well-informed about how AI is changing the world around our schools and even our personal lives.

School world — In school, we hold artificial rules about artificial intelligence. And this begs the question of why? Part of my answer is that I do not want our students to become Icarus-like flying too close to a modern-day Hal and now know they have succumbed to the great fall. As educators we need to keep Icarus flying but not too close to the sun. We need to teach students to use and build their real-world AI contexts in school AND we need to teach students to use and build their human intelligence contexts in school and in life.

To further mix metaphors, the genie of AI is out of the bottle. Children need to use their AI-genie constructively, positively and contextually in their real-world and school lives.