prevail - verb - prove more powerful than opposing forces; be victorious (Google).
Lately, it seems to me that "artificial intelligence" is a topic of interest for many who depend much on technology. Personally, I know that a few of my former colleagues in education are quite distressed as their students are starting to purchase various programs that can literally compose essays for them. As a former English teacher, the question that initially registers in my mind is the following: What is the point of teaching writing when students can rely on their computers to do the work for them? Or just What is the point of education at all? Maybe when Trump proposed to eliminate the Department of Education, he was just responding to the latter question. Scary, I know.
This particular blog's case in point isn't terribly obvious. Since A.I. is all about human invention (meaning humans feed knowledge to these robots), it is terribly imperfect. From my own experience, I am finding that the A.I. I use (Siri) is terribly stupid. She is far from error free. Just when the students are thinking they can get away with gross indolence, they can't because their teachers can tell that they are using A.I. due to its ignorance of the basics. The supposed "brains" who are feeding information to artificial intelligence know nothing about English grammar because they are most likely too young, products of the contemporary educational system that frowns on the direct instruction of the A, B, C's of the written word. These modern-day geniuses, who only paid attention in science classes when they attended secondary school, aren't experts in language. Does it make sense for imperfection to perpetuate imperfection? (Does anything make sense today?) No, no, no!
On the flip side, I am hopeful, extremely hopeful that A.I. may just fail completely to make the billionaire techno mobsters more billions. I believe this could be an accurate prediction as I have been spending time with toddlers lately, yes, little kids, who are incredibly with it, sharper than the millennial tots whom I once spent many hours observing when my own daughter was that age. I totally think that today's inchoate generation won't have to depend on A.I. in the future after all, and they may even reject it in favor of the byproducts of past inventions, like that of the Gutenbergs'. This immature group finds books (yes, physical, hardcover books) to be fascinating and fun because their brilliant parents bestowed with common sense are making a sincere effort to keep them away from technology (iPads, etc.) by taking them to public libraries. No, I'm not kidding. I work with these little ones at a public library, so there. That has got to mean something. Albeit a small test group, I am hoping that it will soon represent a large portion of the majority.
Parents, if you are introducing your children to the rudimentary, please keep it up before we as humans disintegrate and get swept up by machines that can hardly employ brooms correctly. And demand that your kids be taught English grammar when they get to school even if the current batch of teachers must return to classrooms themselves to learn it. Your infant Einsteins deserve to have their cerebral matter stimulated from this moment on. Together in this push, we will prevail.
#word-to-words, #slice-of-life, #blog, #blogging, #editorial, #reading, #vocabulary, #ReadersMagnet, #spilled thoughts, #personal-essay, #writing community, #writing, #truth, #society, #good advice, #critique #gwynenglishnielsen
No comments:
Post a Comment