The conversations about artificial intelligence have accelerated recently, especially since ChatGPT came on the scene. Dr Cheryl Doig explains what it means in an educational setting.

For those of you not connected to the hype, ChatGPT is a natural language processing tool that is trained on vast amounts of language data. It looks for patterns and relationships, and generates new text based on the language it’s trained on.

Of course AI is already embedded in much of our lives, even though we may not realise it. ChatGPT may simply have made AI more visible. The AI landscape is accelerating exponentially with newer iterations such as GPT-4 being faster and more powerful. Many companies have integrated ChatGPT into their apps and the race is on to create new AI offerings. What could possibly go wrong? 

Let’s consider the ways this technology is manifesting itself in the greater learning environment. It is already scoring well on medical board examinations, writing essays for students and creating lesson plans for teachers. Art generated initially by AI has won a major art competition with text-to-image programs like DALL.E, Midjourney and Stable Diffusion creating art at the tap of a key. 

So what are the implications for you and your children? Well for starters, the need to regurgitate knowledge and to write essays has passed its use-by date. I am not saying knowledge is not important, but that it will be found and displayed in new ways and applied in context. AI has accelerated the realisation that critical thinking, creativity, ethical behaviour and human relationships are the things that currently set us apart from machines. The ability to ask good questions, explore multiple viewpoints and rigorously interrogate data from AI are more important than ever. 

These are the things we need to be amplifying in schools, tertiary institutions and workplaces. Let’s use AI to help us learn while at the same time accelerating our uniquely human abilities to connect while we still can. 



We can’t go ‘back to basics’ when we live in ‘forward to uncertainty’ times. So the best insurance is to top up your tanks with strong relationships, a healthy dose of ethics and keep informed.