How will AI affect teaching in schools?

Andrew - Yeah. My reaction to that is that there are real risks in some areas of education, particularly if you focus on plagiarism and things like essay writing and marking and assessment. On the other hand, a lot of teachers are now getting quite interested in the possibilities of AI for improving the teaching materials that they use. There's all sorts of interesting graphical methods that represent geometry in maths, for instance, so there's a great opportunity for enhancing the materials teachers use. And there are risks, but my feeling is that it really goes to the heart of what we mean by education, the benefits of education, which in particular learning for many people. Learning is an accumulation of factual knowledge. And this can take people a long way. It can take them through exams. I even heard a story today about somebody who got three A's, without really necessarily understanding what they were doing, but just accumulating the necessary minimal knowledge based on things like past examination papers and so on to get through exams. Whereas of course, what we really want to achieve through learning is understanding. We want people to understand so that they can apply in novel, unpredictable situations, material that they've learned, not just memorising facts. So of course, the kind of AI software we're talking about now is based entirely on previously written or previously drafted or music that already exists. It doesn't have creativity, it doesn't have originality, it doesn't have emotion, it doesn't, et cetera.

Chris - What Catherine's saying though is are we effectively robbing the opportunity to have those skills from school children? It sounds to me like you are saying, well, as the machine doesn't have that, it can't replace that in people. But might it make people lazy learners as in, because they don't have to go through the process of learning to get that information into their mind so they understand it and can, and can see it from multiple viewpoints, which is what really understanding a topic is because you don't have to go through that to regurgitate a something that looks like a cogent answer, therefore it could undermine your understanding, your ability to really engage with the subject.

Andrew - I agree there is that risk, but my hope would be that it reorients us more towards people learning to understand. So for instance, when I used to teach, it wasn't just a matter of marking and getting percentages and preparing them to succeed in exam questions that can be almost predicted. But it was a matter of sitting around in group discussions and probing people's understanding of whether they could apply a material that they'd learned to a new situation. In other words, understanding rather than just memory and knowledge.