Is AI The End Of Learning?

This morning, I watched a video from Jason Langstorf that made me think about the future of education.

I’m worried about the state of learning now that society has easy access to AI. This new technology has been readily accessible for a little over a year, and while you could argue it’s not very good, it’s also scarily good at the same time. Two years ago, I wouldn’t have imagined being able to have entire conversations with a machine.

The problem is AI already gives us an easy path to creating things that we can’t do in such a short amount of time.

The easy path isn’t the best

We like the path of least resistance that gets us the results we are looking for.

The most common example of this that comes to mind is fast food. We need sustenance, and fast food restaurants provide it immediately. It’s simple, and we don’t even have to stop. Door dash took this to the next level: the food comes to you. Choosing the easy path is a common tendency, and most of the time, it makes sense not to do things the hard way, which is fine until ordering it becomes far more common than cooking.

Once people stop learning how to cook, what happens?

Creating is a skill that takes time to master

Regardless of the type of creation, food, code, prose, images, etc. Learning to create takes time, and you have to be bad at it for a bit.

As a creator, I know that my first tries at any medium of creation are bad. Learning the skills needed for any form of creative endeavor is something that takes time and I see more and more examples where people are relying on AI to do a good enough job. I think that this will lead to less time spent on the hard beginnings of this process.

This easy path may lead to new creators not putting in the time to master the craft they are interested in.

But AI works, what’s wrong with just using it?

I’ve dabbled in using AI for whole cloth post creation.

One of my posts was 100% created by AI. To my chagrin, it’s also one of the posts with the most views. There are other factors than the content that matter, and I’m learning that more each day. I do know that I’m not proud of that post even though it “did well”. There is more to the process of creating than simple success. Growth would not occur if I regularly relied on AI to write for me.

We shouldn’t write off the technology though.

Use AI as a companion not a replacement

Circling back to the video Jason released today, AI makes a great creative companion.

Think about the scene in IronMan where Tony is building the Mark II armor in his garage with J.A.R.V.I.S. This collaborative relationship is one I am excited for. We can use AI to help with creative thinking as, Jason points out. It’s a fantastic companion to discuss your project with and for brainstorming and gaining inspiration. I’m excited about projects like Brainstory that allow you to work with an AI to augment your own creativity.

I firmly believe our future is augmented.