TEACHING & LEARNING

"Who’s Doing The Thinking?"

I’ve been thinking about this question a lot recently. I’ve been thinking about it when I teach, and when I see students learning in a variety of settings. Who is doing the thinking, and when are they doing it? (And yes, I’m aware that basically that means I’ve been thinking about thinking!)

I’ve also been reflecting on this question because of the rapid expansion of AI over the last few years - and with it, perhaps a growing sentiment among some people that AI will somehow do away with teaching or even school. After all, the reasoning goes, if we can just use AI to find out information, do we really need to remember anything? Knowing things will become redundant because we can just get that information collated and regurgitated at us without even needing to do a Google search!

Now, it may be true that AI will change what happens in schools (it already has in many ways), but we need to be really clear. Thinking is something that a machine cannot do - it may mimic it, and as we interact with AI we may even forget for a moment we’re not interacting with a person - thinking is something that only a person can do.

I was recently talking with a friend who was saying that a team at the company he works for were assigned a task, which they promptly used AI to complete - and then partway through the project is was realised that the product they were designing was not going to work at all, because the team did not have either the capability or the desire to check that the AI generated information was correct. So months of time and money were wasted…because no human had been thinking through the process.

The usefulness of our young people in the world will be partly dependent on the extent to which they are thinking people - a facility that is ultimately never going to be replaceable by AI, because thinking includes choices, heart, and a moral reflex - something that only a being with a soul can do. Which is why we are interested not only in what our students know, but who they are. Even in an AI world, if students are able to master the use of technology, harnessing it with their own critical thinking, they will give themselves the chance to stand above those who unthinkingly use the technology.

As teachers and a school, we wrestle with the implications of AI, and will continue to do so. I’d invite parents, as you discuss using AI with your children, to ask them the question: ‘who’s doing the thinking?’.