“I feel it in my work as a teacher, where I recognize that we are so close — so, so close — to a world where teaching looks like AI-generating lesson plans and delivering those lesson plans using AI-generated slides, and then assessing the skills of those lessons using AI-generated tests, and then grading those tests using a form of AI. The content of AI producing student work that is then fed back to AI for AI to assess. And for what? And at what cost? It pains me. It pains me deeply. And then I sit down and I read about clams. And it’s not just that I am reading about clams. It’s that I am reading the perspective of someone who thought that it was worth paying attention to clams. There. Remind me again why we read? I think that’s part of it. You pick up a book and someone has you by the arm. There, they are saying, look over there. They are pointing now. They are holding something in their hand. Little clam in the palm, refusing to open. Look at that thing that loves being alive, how it resists the same sun we turn our cheek towards. Crazy world, beautiful place. Down in the deep somewhere, a clam smaller than my hand is withstanding the pressure of a few dozen full-size trains just hanging out on top of its body.”
— Mary Oliver’s “Clam” - by Devin Kelly
My teenager had an entire physics class taught by a guy reading off of his AI lesson plan, with no awareness of the material and no ability to notice when he missed key concepts. The only missing part (potentially) is AI grading, as he had the students grade each other’s work, though he might have fed it through AI also. This is already happening.
While reading this, I was reminded of one of the recordings you find in Subnautica, from a person who had the kind of “I don’t need to bother actually LEARNING this skill” mindset people develop when they’re overly dependent on AI:
“I’m not really a doctor. I know that’s what my ID says, but I never have been. Cheated the medical exams. What does a doctor these days need to know about manually resetting bones? When was the last time a top surgeon actually cut someone open? That’s what the robots are for!
"Doctors these days read diagnoses off of computer readouts. For that, I’m perfectly qualified.
"But what good is it when I’m not connected to the main network? I’m bleeding. I’ve got glowing green pustules growing on my hands. I run a self-scan and it tells me I’ve got skin irritation. The only thing I studied in medical school was how to lie convincingly. What the hell do I know how to treat an alien disease?
"I think I’m actually going to die down here.”
