ChatGPT, A.I. and the excessive dependence on technology

Like other universities, there is talk of ChatGPT in our department. One of the concerns has been on assigning term papers for course projects. Personally, I remain unfazed. This may have to do with the fact that I am a child of the 80s. We grew up with shows like Challenge of the GoBots and the Centurions. In the latter, “Doc Terror and his cyborg companion Hacker unleash their forces to conquer Earth”. So yes, I am familiar with the existential threat of A.I. even before Elon Musk raised the alarm. 

I recall peer reviewers attending my class in October 2011 to check whether I was a good hire for MacEwan University. One of them wrote, “Junaid did not display any technological wizardry during the lecture … he called students by name, and elicited responses”. And to this I hold. 

I grew up in pre-skyscraper Dubai when we were not allowed to use calculators until grade ten. We were given logarithm sheets to figure out the solutions to the log and anti-log problems even though such answers were a click away. The technology was there but we were forbidden from accessing it. 

The point was to understand what we were doing and to limit the dependence on machines. This continued well into grad school in 2001 when we used Shazam for regression analysis. I had to construct the Hausman test step by step instead of using more sophisticated software programs where the Hausman test was just a click away. 

All of this shaped my orientation towards teaching. I have refused formula sheets to first year students whom I expect to have the fundamentals on their fingertips. At higher levels, even as I allow formula sheets, I caution students against dependence on a crutch. It’s like that scene in Kung Fu Panda where Shifu uses a dumpling to train Po, who realizes eventually that he didn’t need that dumpling. 

My classes are based on active participation where technology is only an ancillary tool. The students are there to learn from me, not PowerPoint slides, video clips, or even my recorded lectures. Our engagement remains human. They have the right but not the responsibility to engage with me. Those who do, learn to think on the spot, develop confidence and hone their presentation skills, as I draw them towards the white board to solve problems in real time. 

The alternate mode of education is reliance on educational platforms prepared by corporations. Such online teaching tools include resources that are impossible for a single teacher to provide. These include inbuilt quiz questions, media articles and clips, the capacity to highlight the online textbook and create flashcards, and tips from the automated algorithm that directs students to their weak areas. ChatGPT is merely the next stage in the evolution of online education. It comes after sites like Chegg where students already have access to “homework help” for a subscription fee. 

However, the pandemic showed that there is no substitute for in person teaching with human connection. This is reminiscent of taking notes by hand as opposed to typing, for one’s mind is forced to absorb, filter, and focus instead of willy-nilly typing everything on a laptop. In other words, not every technological development is an improvement. Just as the industrial revolution deskilled workers, the current information revolution is numbing the minds of citizens. This, of course creates the conditions for authoritarian demagogues to take over as democratic norms are weakened with a dull citizenry. 

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That technology is making people mind-numbingly dull and self-consumed is based on a simple observation on how they walk in hallways, form social relations, and how they treat the social contract. Many of us will have noted walking in corridors, that people walking towards each other from opposite directions do not move to create space for the other to pass. They swipe left and right in a culture that rests on the objectification of human beings and online hookup consumerism. They have earbuds to dull out outside noise and avoid meaningful human connections. 

This excessive individualism, the obsession with rights over responsibilities, the severance of the social contract, the overwhelming focus on sculpting bodies rather than perfecting morals, and rampant pretentious display, all serve corporations that milk billions out of self-centred consumers that uphold materialism over morality. On their part, consumers justify that they must “love themselves” by buying goods and objectifying others because life is short and because they deserve their share as they earned it. This individualism and the justification of meritocracy continues until people fall through the cracks. 

Age and obsolescence affect all. Technological disruption, hyper globalization, and free trade agreements have already caused enough suffering, stress, and pain. In the quest for profits, we have hit ecological constraints and exacerbated climate change. To get cheaper goods, we have ceded full time jobs and devastated entire neighbourhoods. The opioid crisis in the rust belt states of the U.S., increasing mental health issues in an uber competitive economy, and the rise of racism and populism is a direct consequence of the increasing inequality that is concomitant with globalization and technological change. 

The initial victims of technological change were those whom the IT revolution of the 1990s left behind. Now it is the white-collar workers who will meet the same fate as the blue-collar workers due to the information revolution with artificial intelligence. It reminds one of Pastor Niemoller’s prescient words “first they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out.” This means that if consumers continue with instant gratification lulled by a false sense of meritocracy, they will only find many more pushed to the margins, as a few more are added to the list of billionaires and the various sunshine lists. 

Such a dystopian future will be the fate of humanity. And it starts with our young who are allured by the charms of ChatGPT, which comes after various online forums that mint money at the expense of the character building of our youth. The solution against such a dystopian future (to borrow from Thomas Piketty) is a move towards a democratic, participatory, ecological, egalitarian, and socialist economy. 

This means robot taxes on corporations that are benefiting from labour saving technologies through R&D in artificial intelligence. This is in addition to government regulation of basic research, wealth taxes and more tiers with higher progressive and confiscatory taxes on the millionaires and billionaires. This also means mandating worker union representatives on the board of directors across corporations. Additionally, this means having universal basic income and the government as the employer of the last resort that would shame corporations into providing better paying jobs with benefits. 

While the above solutions are aimed at the system, individuals will also have to look within themselves and address their own flaws. There needs to be a drastic shift away from obsessively sculpting bodies towards perfecting our moral character, from narcissistic displays of selfies towards contributing humbly to local community initiatives, from objectifying people towards treating them as human beings, and from excessive dependence on technology towards establishing meaningful human connections.