ARTIFICIAL intelligence, like motor engine cars, electricity, computer and the internet, is about to revolutionize the way we live and interact with each other. This revolution has lately been a cause of enormous anxiety among people in general, who think they may become jobless and redundant because of robotic humanoids, for example. Social scientists also share the AI anxiety that it would threaten human existence. The impact of AI will indeed be felt in every walk of human life and it will prove a multidimensional and multi-layered project of human life, which calls for a massive human effort to deal with. But herein, AI anxiety and education would dominate the argument. It’s not wrong to be anxious about the preparedness to face this new technological revolution, but it will not wipe out all the traditional ways of life. For example, even for 100 years, cars have been unable to remove the use of horses for loading and travelling. Similarly, messaging through email and SMS has not wiped-out letter writing. Books are still in our hands even when we have book readers in our hands. So, it is possible that a more significant part of our world, especially education, may take a new shift, but much of the system will retain itself.
The need of the hour is not just to be anxious. The anxiety must be transferred to finding ways and means to survive the new revolution. In the case of education, the teacher must get trained differently. He must equip himself with the skills to use AI for the benefit of his students and manipulate information sources and find solutions for complex problems, which, so far, he couldn’t. It is a fact that the ones who would not synchronize with the changing world would be left unneeded. The well-renowned educationists responsible for designing syllabi and teaching methodologies may come forward to initiate new methods of teaching classes in an era of AI technology. They may also revamp the existing syllabi and course contents by analyzing these initially, including much-needed aspects of the disciplines concerned and removing all that needs no repetition.
If Pakistan needs to stand equal to the developed nations of the world, these initiatives must be taken in time to avoid any rush toward the new normal, especially when our neighbouring countries are already focusing on making their space among the upcoming world of AI. It is high time to do so because we are already teaching redundant and obsolete course content which needs to be replaced with doable and workable solutions for the modern world. It should also be stressed that reputed universities must come forward to take the initiative of training and learning courses in this regard, especially focusing on the next 20 years of AI technology because the survival and fitness of Pakistani people depend on it. The government is already taking the initiative in this regard, but that needs to be strictly monitored by responsible and dedicated professionals so that the opportunity hardly found may not be lost.
This new technology is invented by humans just as all other ones have been to support human life. Has not already available technology helped humanity to make the world more beneficial for him. But we must tune up with it. We cannot simply close our eyes to the new sun and its shine. After every decade, specific new ways of working come up and replace the old ways and the efficiency they bring. Has not the cell phone reduced the need to carry a torch, camera, watch, calculator, radio, gramophone and landline phone?
The need is to get ready, embrace this new tool and make it a part of human intelligence instead of shunning it because it is coming and would show its muscle rather more vigorously. Students will have access to the readymade material and would not be required to read and write books and books to find an answer to a question. And the teacher would no longer be required to teach how to read, write, or solve a complex problem. In such a situation, we need to train ourselves in a different way of teaching that would be more practical than theoretical. Teachers must give the tasks of exploring the information and manipulating that to solve some issues and then debate it effectively in the class. The material downloaded from the AI may be employed to fasten the speed of learning and acquiring skills. The understanding can further be enhanced by accessing the AI’s analysis. Are we not already employing online material for our learning and teaching? Now the teacher and the taught must take one more step to embrace this new mode of learning and teaching.
Pakistan and its people can embrace any new technology very quickly, as we have seen in the case of mobile phone use and laptops for working in business and studies. And so, it is expected that once we have overcome our negative anxiety to a positive curiosity and desire to learn, we will use it for our benefit very cleverly.
Besides embracing it, we also must develop new parameters of ethics, limits and manipulation so that we may not become a victim of the negativity of AI. New cyber laws are to be brought and enforced to keep the evil mongers in control. Industrialization and computational automation with AI must be employed to run shoulder-to-shoulder with the rest of the world. We cannot keep our upcoming generation from lagging by keeping them unaware of this new revolution. We resist change initially, but the world around us controls our resistance and we become forced to change, as happened in the case of online teaching. So instead of running away, we need to get prepared to welcome and to put the technology to as good a use as possible.
—The writer is a Professor of English at Emerson University, Multan, and has a vast international exposure.
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