1 April 2024 by Mondo2.0
The “strange case” of the suspended university students. But how much does this A.I. scare us?
The debate over university students’ use of A.I. tools suddenly flared up after 82 students were suspended in Sweden. Once again, instead of examining and interpreting this new generation of services in depth, opposing football-style camps have formed on the Internet and in traditional media, for and against. I do not know the case of the 82 Swedish students in detail, so I cannot judge it or discuss its merits, but I can point you toward what A.I. really is and the impact these services are having on our society today.
To explain the relationship between students, not only university students, and conversational chatbots, I need to take a brief step back. I need to explain to you, dear readers, some of the elements that underpin the “digital transformation” we all talk about and whose hashtag we dutifully use:
- There is a T0 (t zero), a moment when one or more innovative elements or services suddenly replace the previous ones, making them immediately obsolete, or at least obsolete within a short period. This happened with SMS replaced by chats, FAX replaced by e-mail, CDs and DVDs displaced by streaming. It is happening progressively but just as inevitably with printed newspapers, whose readers are disappearing, and with paper money progressively replaced by digital transactions. These massive, global changes often involve everyone within a short period, including that part of the population that prefers, is attached to, or only understands the previous way of doing things. Another example? Don’t like SPID, the public digital identity system? Get used to it: you have to use SPID.
This “T0” happened a few months ago for university and high-school students, who learned to use ChatGPT, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, … conversational agents to which they can ask questions, even complex ones, and obtain equally complete answers. For every 82 students caught doing their assignments using A.I., there are millions using these services, even now as you read this article, in every part of the planet and in every language. - Companies are encouraging the use of these communication tools to generate information and content for customers, improve their services and response times. A student who reaches the end of university without being familiar with digital conversational agents will have a gap to close, a “digital divide”. A communication professional, someone who explains and delivers services, will increasingly ask a conversational agent for help over the next five years, improving the way they present a problem or describe a solution or event. A professor too, to better organize a lesson or research, will ask an A.I. service for advice.
- The professional role known as “prompt manager”, to which I dedicated an article a few months ago, will play a decisive role in training and reinforcing this A.I. New generations will be responsible for guiding the behaviour of artificial intelligence services, ensuring compliance with current regulations and with the rights of individual users: highly responsible tasks that require knowledge of the tools and interaction techniques.
For this reason I completely agree with Jacob Farnert, president of the Swedish National Union of Students, who said in an interview that these new tools can facilitate learning.
Tools that must be understood, not stigmatized, and whose use must be guided.
Having a conversational chatbot available is no different from having a book with billions of pages and an extremely simple index to browse. A text with endless possibilities that allows new generations to acquire concepts and compare information, people, historical periods and solutions.
I ask the detractors of A.I.: if the same information were available in a large, interactive printed book, would it be any different?
Before moving toward my conclusions, I should state with equal force that plagiarism and copy-and-paste are never justified. Sources must be cited, a bibliography and webography must be added to one’s assignment/work, and the work done by others must be respected.
But when the “others” are an artificial entity, what kind of ethics and relationship should be established?
If I asked A.I. for information, probably by asking several questions, am I a co-protagonist of what was produced? Did I steer the A.I. toward one of my needs, or am I merely a passive user?
It is also true that copy-and-paste, and even copy, “change it a little” and paste, existed long before the Internet. It is the responsibility of the individual both during the learning process and during professional life (where, in my opinion, it is frequently present; I know many striking cases).
It is also right to point out that A.I. tools are emerging whose task is to detect content generated by A.I., such as AI Text Classifier.
I raise an ethical dilemma by asking whether professors’ use of these A.I. tools to check the originality of a text should be considered equally inappropriate.
The point is quite different: this generation of services is spreading. High schools and universities, like Blockbuster stores and newsstands (forgive the comparison), can remain in their previous positions, before “T0”, become outdated and reject change, or they can change strategy.
It is clear that, as these tools spread, written assignments make less sense; within a few years they will probably make no sense at all, especially in some subjects.
Faced with such a broad change, it is necessary to rethink the paradigm, the assessment model, which cannot be based on a facsimile of a sheet of paper, on something I can easily obtain in real time from an artificial intelligence.
Our society has become so thoroughly and rapidly permeated by digital services that it is forced, just as quickly, to apply countermeasures.
New learning methods, new forms of online communication and new tools for receiving information require new assessment methods.
Not only that: exercises and assigned tasks must make it possible, starting precisely from what is generated by A.I., to add personal considerations, comparisons and observations. In this way the student is “forced” to reason independently, to develop an overall view starting from what a conversational agent proposes, rather than pretending that this intelligent source does not exist.
Let us also remember that this generation of A.I. interfaces is subject to “hallucinations”; those who use them can improve them.
The student must expand, correct and strengthen the digital conversation,
not retreat into analogue silence.
And in the meantime? In the meantime, as I write, millions of students are asking ChatGPT or Gemini to do their assignments; no one can prevent it. Some of them, while rereading what the conversational agent proposes, are learning new concepts that are not in their printed textbook and were not mentioned during the lesson; others are simply copying text from one interface to another, passively.
I will add one final note: I ask the television, online and print media to stop associating A.I. services only with the word “risk”, and to begin explaining this generation of services more broadly so that they can be used as well as possible. I understand that communication that “scares” always attracts a larger audience, but in the face of such a broad change we need new communication strategies; frightening the public does not help and will have no effect in the medium term.
These services are changing the way we work, study and communicate with one another; they will create a direct relationship between person and machine. Let us try to get the best from them without indulging in catastrophic scenarios; let us address the change seriously.
After all, it is impossible to escape this world 2.0.
Mondoduepuntozero
I want to ask ChatGpt what it thinks of my article … I’m off to have a digital conversation …