Norway is, by any measure, a deeply successful nation. It is rich, democratic and relatively free of corruption. It is not a socialist country, but supporters of a strong, high-tax welfare state see much to admire in the very progressive Norwegian model. It also benefits from having the largest and arguably best-managed sovereign wealth fund in the world.
And yet Norway almost ruined its children.
In 2016, Norway, flush with cash and progressive values, gave every child in the country, ages 5 and up, their own iPad or similar digital device. A decade later, young Norwegians struggle to read. “About 500,000 Norwegians, in a population of only 5.6 million, cannot read a text message or simple instructions,” reports The times from London. “Of the 65 countries measured for children's enjoyment of reading according to Pirls (Progress in International Reading Literacy Study), it ranks last.”
Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store launched a program to address the problem in August. “Norwegian children used to be among the best readers in the world,” he said at the time. “But today, 15,000 students finish primary school without knowing how to read correctly.”
Now imagine giving every child an AI chatbot to answer all their questions.
I am not a catastrophist when it comes to artificial intelligence. But given Norway's experience with iPads (or ours with smartphones), I worry that the mass introduction of AI, particularly in schools, will be very bad for children.
As a curmudgeon and a writer, I hate almost all clichés about children, even the ones that are accurate. With that caveat, it is simply true that children are the future. They will be the next generation of parents, voters and citizens. And all the clichés about how children learn by doing are true.
AI eliminates the doing.
Just as you can't learn to ride a bike by reading a book, you can't get the benefits of reading by asking AI to read a book for you. The same applies to math, science, computer programming, and almost every other aspect of education.
Our army is the best and most lethal in the world. But before you learn how to operate a drone or launch a cyberattack, you still need to complete basic training.
Education, both at home and at school, is a basic training for civilization.
Americans love technology, but not every technological advance is an advance in all spheres of life. There are machines that can lift weights, but using a weight lifting machine does not count as exercise and does not strengthen your muscles. Using a machine to think for you is the path to mental flaccidity.
AI fans don't like this argument. They use terms like “cognitive change” and “improvement of skills”. By eliminating drudgery, smart people can use AI to be smarter and more productive. I think this has a lot of merit when talking about existing highly skilled workers. But how did these workers become highly skilled in the first place? Doing the work.
Educators learned a similar lesson when cheap calculators became widely available in the 1970s. As you advanced, you could use calculators for certain problems. But first you needed to learn how to do the basics. You also needed to learn to think mathematically. AI is essentially an improved calculator for almost all mental tasks. Again, this is usually, but not always, great for adults who grew up in a pre-AI world.
That's why I think education should mostly stay in the pre-AI world. That will be very difficult. It will require more memorization, more classroom testing, and an educational establishment that can resist the seduction of technological fads. If the goal of education is to develop muscle memory about how to think and how to do things, letting kids go home and having AI give them the answers isn't much different, educationally, than letting kids cheat. For the same reason that having a robot do 50 push-ups for you would not be acceptable for a fitness test, having a robot read a book should not be acceptable either.
The goal of education in the age of AI should not be to teach children how to find answers as efficiently as possible, but rather to equip them to be prepared to ask the right kinds of questions, including the ability to ask an AI chatbot why it gave you the answers it did.
UNKNOWN: @JonahDispatch
