Technology must not dehumanise knowledge creation

The human interaction where students might throw up interesting questions in the class, challenge the teachers, go for introspection or extend their debate from the classroom to corridors and canteen is gradually vanishing as the academic project becomes individuated, and alienating

Former Open AI CTO Mira Murati feels that there cannot be ‘zero risk’ when it comes to technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI). In September, scientists and intellectuals issued a statement in Venice that “Loss of human control or malicious use of these AI systems could lead to catastrophic outcomes for all of humanity. The global nature of these risks from AI makes it necessary to recognize AI safety as a global public good, and work towards global governance of these risks”. 

AI has intruded into every aspect of our existence. It is not only limited to the literate but also to the illiterate as everyone wades through the uncontrolled waters of technology, ranging from taxi booking apps, voice assistants, chatbots, entertainment apps, personalised marketing algorithms, social media algorithms, smart keyboard inputs, accident detection, speech to facial recognition, etc. Knowingly or unknowingly everyone uses it, such is its penetration. Soon, AI will play a crucial role in military conflicts. Analysts claim that it is already being used in ongoing conflicts.

As robo-writers, robo-coders, and robo-translators take the place of humans, there is huge job loss across sectors. Corporate capital suggests that AI and robotics will add higher economic benefits to the global GDP, and it will substitute existing jobs with new ones. They want to allay fears of job loss, but the truth is that the Internet, AI, and robotics will make a high number of existing jobs redundant. Even voice-over artists have been complaining about AI. The creative industry has been in turmoil leading to long strikes as well. However, Open AI’s former CTO felt that “some creative jobs maybe will go away, but maybe they shouldn't have been there in the first place.”

The creative industry is only one place where AI’s intervention in determining the nature of the intellectual arena as well can be seen. The Covid-19 pandemic presented IT investors with a huge possibility to rake in profit as the existing form of the classroom got replaced with the presence of the Internet, bots, and other forms of AI tools.

Today, schools tell students to take the ‘help’ of bots to write an essay or even have mathematical puzzles solved. Any parent would agree to the changes brought about by the dependency on computer screens after Covid-19. It aggravated as the pandemic became an opportunity for the market to reshape the production of knowledge. It is reported that in India alone ‘the education technology market is projected to reach $30 billion by 2030’, and AI will be playing an important role in this growth.

Corporate research that prepares the ground for policy making in favour of the market is already saying that “AI-led products such as DeepGrade are addressing issues such as shortage of teachers”. Even fieldwork is being recommended to be virtual. The social complexities will be studied through a virtuality, which will be, obviously, dependent on the orientation of those controlling the affairs. Hence, the caste, gender or religion-based strife will be understood through “AI-powered AR (augmented reality) and VR (virtual reality) immersive simulations, virtual field trips, and interactive visualizations”.

We already live in times when news portals categorise their articles as four-minute reads indicating how the attention span has reduced. Teenagers are spending more time on screens and their attention span has reduced. A University of Virginia and University of British Columbia study pointed out that “smartphone interruptions can cause greater inattention and hyperactivity – symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder”.  Research has shown that short videos/reels produce dopamine, and children give up other tasks which do lead to dopamine production such as studying, reading books, or doing homework, etc. This has huge implications for knowledge production. Neuroscience has already indicated that writing by hand makes you smarter and thinking than typing on a keyboard.

Classrooms in higher education have become an interesting site after technologies became a part of it. Technology appears like a panacea for all problems within education. While teachers may be asking students to look up the Internet for any answers, the students are also disengaging as technologies claim to do the heavy lifting for them. The very act of going to a library had a pedagogic purpose. It allowed students to go through works and encounter newer dimensions while looking for something around their relevant research theme. With apps doing the review of literature, they do not even need to read through the texts.

In institutions where internal assessment write-ups effectively meant skill building and training in writing and comprehension, the bot-based assignments are deskilling. The human interaction where students might throw up interesting questions in the class, challenge the teachers, go for introspection or extend their debate from the classroom to corridors and canteen is gradually vanishing as the academic project becomes individuated, and, therefore, alienating.

Thousands of students get enrolled in online courses and claim credits. One wonders how are these students taught through the online mode. Yes, what it does is it enhances the profile of teachers highlighting their popularity and adds a fancy-looking course title to their course card. Would this not be better if the classroom transactions were without machines mediating between humans?

Technology cannot be shunned. That is a reality, and it is beyond the control of normal citizens as they have lost a say in how it governs their lives. Getting duped because one unknowingly permits newly installed apps to access one’s complete information is only an example of this absence of how technology works beyond our control. It will be difficult to even manage technology due to the undemocratic manner in which it is created and run. The only way is to create a counternarrative to it.

Classroom spaces can become sites of that counter-narrative. Humans teaching humans as the primary form of engagement and technology in an assistive role is one way out. Given that publishing houses are selling authors’ work to AI companies, things have gone beyond the control of even individual knowledge producers.

People can churn out much better research even without attending a class, taking humans a step further into a self-emaciating alienating zone. Classroom as a site of engagement and engagement as a form of knowledge creation must be reinstated. The processes of knowledge creation need an overhauling — from teaching and learning to evaluation, everything needs to be conversational across disciplines if the sanity in the educational process is to be revived and maintained.

Technology is out to colonise and the more it focuses on profiteering the more it deviates from the agenda of creating an equitable and just society. Democratisation does not emerge simply from handing over access to software or a machine but it becomes real only if there is decentralised mass participation in the making of the technology and determining its usage.

(Ravi Kumar is Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, South Asian University.)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.