Fears of Science and Technology and the Future of AI in Education

1. Fears of Science and Technology and the Future of AI in Education

2. The field of artificial intelligence feels like future technologies that we are going to have to face one day, but the reality is that the concepts have been around since the early 20th century. Alan Turing’s test has stood as the test of true artificial intelligence and that came back around the time of World War II. In fact, we can see through media how artificial intelligence has fueled both intrigue and fear throughout the century. There are many films and books on technology and the dangers and artificial intelligence is all a part of it. Firstly, we can consider i, Robot, a book by Isaac Asimov and a hit movie with Will Smith about a robot that develops sentience. There were three rules posited about robots in this that have stood with the Turing test about how robots should behave, including that robots can’t kill humans, something that is our existential fear when it comes to artificial intelligence.

3. In fact, that is why we have seen so many films and books on science that are exploring those exact fears. Even one of the biggest blockbuster franchises of all time, if not the biggest, the Avengers series touched on this in the second team-up film, Avengers: Age of Ultron. Tony Stark, aka Iron Man, famously had Jarvis, an AI butler that also served as his on-board sidekick. He expanded on this to create a defense AI called Ultron, which took on thoughts of its own to decide that the human race needed to be eradicated and his robots would reign. Transcendence was a film about a man uploading his brain to a quantum computer in a way that his human brain becomes artificial intelligence. Upgrade is about a man who gets a Six Million Dollar Man style rebuild after an accident and has an intelligent system taking control of his body to perform incredible action stunts. This imagining on new technologies ends with the computer system locking out the human brain and essentially killing him. We look at artificial intelligence often as our fears of the machine, but it is much harder to make it entertaining to see the wonders that artificial intelligence can bring.

4. As much as we dream when it comes to science and technology, we are also exaggerating how far it goes. We can incorporate artificial intelligence into our lives without it becoming a sentient murder robot because it does not have to go as far as a fully functioning and feeling brain like we are projecting. Instead, we can take advantage of the computer’s computing power without having to know all of the code to access it.

5. Artificial intelligence in education will one day help students by procedurally adapting to the student’s learning pace and abilities and adjusting the lessons accordingly. While we might fear the true power of machines, we can also look at the ways that we can unlock new insights through artificial intelligence and make it so the computers are an extension of us, rather than a competitor. Source: https://medium.com/@bellacross1488/fears-of-science-and-technology-and-the-future-of-ai-in-education-b6e67144e6ad