The Work of AI in Education
AI chatbots offer a host of benefits, but far too many students are woefully unprepared to interact with written or spoken language
If you listen to the marketers — I must again advise you to never listen to the marketers — the advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI) chatbots promises a transformative shift in how learning is facilitated.1 Such systems, heralded by the hacks and frauds who are peddling them for their efficiency and ability to personalize learning experiences, are increasingly being tested in various educational settings, including online universities. However, a looming challenge undermines this technological leap: the deficient reading, speaking, and listening skills of a significant portion of the student population.2 This issue, highlighted by a former colleague teaching at an online university engaged in rolling out just such a chatbot, raises profound concerns about the efficacy of AI in education, particularly when confronted with students who struggle with basic literacy and communication skills.3
The Challenge: AI’s Ineffectiveness with Low Literacy Levels
My former colleague's observation sheds light on a critical limitation of AI chatbots: their dependence on coherent and reasonably structured inputs, whether typed or spoken. The AI's design, rooted in natural language processing and machine learning, presupposes a certain level of literacy and articulation from its users. This becomes a significant barrier when students, many woefully unprepared, cannot engage effectively with the AI due to their limited reading and speaking abilities.
Instructors at this online university frequently emails and queries like “were paper,” “am take,” “needs grades,” “Pleas,” and even single-letter constructions like “S” and “A.” These examples start to illustrate the profound communication gap between AI chatbots and students lacking basic language skills. The AI, designed to interpret and respond to standard linguistic constructs, struggles with these fragmented and syntactically poor inputs, leading to ineffective or completely failed interactions.
The Human Advantage in Understanding
This scenario underscores a stark contrast between AI and human instructors. Veteran educators, through years of experience, have honed the ability to decipher and make sense of poorly structured or minimalistic student communications. This human capacity to interpret, contextualize, and respond effectively to underdeveloped or nonexistent language skills is currently beyond the reach of AI. It highlights a crucial aspect where human interaction remains superior in the educational domain, especially in dealing with students who have not attained a basic level of literacy.
The reliance on AI in education, given this context, paints a somewhat pessimistic picture in the short-term. It suggests a future where students lacking fundamental literacy skills are further marginalized. These students, unable to effectively interact with AI-driven educational tools, risk falling behind their functionally literate peers who can listen to sentences and recall simple commands. This technological divide exacerbates existing educational disparities, pushing students who already face significant challenges further to the periphery of the educational system.
Possible Solutions: Bridging the Literacy Gap
The term “warm bodies” — a favorite of my aged mother, a long-time educator in the public schools — ought to resonate with anyone engaged in the “delivery at scale” of “higher education solutions.” It refers to students who are physically present but intellectually disengaged and educationally disadvantaged due to their sheeer inability to interact with AI educational tools. This disengagement not only hampers their educational progress but also raises concerns about their future employability even in the lowest-skill forms of work4 and societal integration in an increasingly AI-driven world.
Despite the grim outlook, there are pathways to mitigate these challenges and harness the potential of AI in education inclusively.
Enhancing AI’s Responsiveness to Varied Linguistic Skills
One approach involves advancing AI technology to better understand and respond to a wider range of linguistic abilities. This includes training AI systems on diverse datasets encompassing various levels of language proficiency, dialects, and colloquialisms. Improving AI's ability to interpret and engage with significantly underdeveloped language inputs — perhaps via a “neuralink” or some such still-untested and possibly dangerous5 device — could significantly enhance its effectiveness with students struggling with literacy.
Hybrid Teaching Models
Another solution lies in adopting hybrid teaching models that combine AI tools with human instructors. In this model, AI can handle standardized teaching and administrative tasks, while human educators focus on the large pool of students who require more personalized attention, especially those with lower literacy levels that render them of expressing even very simple needs and desires. This approach leverages the efficiency of AI while retaining the irreplaceable human element crucial for understanding and supporting students with significant learning needs.
Focused Literacy Programs
Investing in targeted literacy programs is crucial. These programs should be designed to equip students with the rudimentary language skills necessary to engage effectively with AI-driven educational tools. This investment in basic literacy would not only enhance students' ability to benefit from AI in education but also improve their overall academic and life prospects.6
Continuous Professional Development for Educators
Educators should receive ongoing training to effectively integrate AI tools into their teaching while being equipped to support students with low literacy levels. This professional development can include strategies for using AI as a complementary tool and methods to continuously identify and assist students who struggle with basic language skills.
A Brave New World
The integration of AI into the educational sphere will, for good or ill, mark an irreversible shift in how learning experiences are crafted and delivered. This transition opens opportunities for enhancing the quality and accessibility of education across the globe. However, amidst these technological strides, there lies a fundamental and often overlooked challenge — literacy. The ability to proficiently read and process language is a cornerstone of learning, yet it remains a hurdle for a significant portion of the global village.
As we forge ahead with integrating AI into education, we must confront the stark reality that millions, possibly billions, of individuals may not possess the language processing capabilities required to navigate the complexities of the modern world. This gap in linguistic proficiency isn't just a barrier to traditional learning; it's a chasm that separates a substantial portion of humanity from the burgeoning digital landscape, where language and text dominate even as overall reading and listening comprehension on the high end remains fairly dismal amidst a population afflicted with such psychologist-delineated maladies as ADHD.
In this context, AI's role could transcend that of a mere educational tool, evolving into something akin to an overseer or guardian for those who find themselves on the fringes of our word-saturated society. For these individuals, AI could offer personalized “existence experiences,” tailor-made to their unique cognitive and linguistic abilities. Through adaptive learning technologies, AI has the potential to break down complex concepts into more digestible formats, scaffold learning in a way that respects each individual's pace, and provide alternative means of engagement and expression beyond the written and spoken word.7
However, harnessing AI's potential as a guardian for social engagement demands more than technological innovation alone. It requires a holistic approach that combines the prowess of AI with pedagogical insights, targeted literacy interventions, and a deep commitment to inclusivity. Only by acknowledging the diversity of language processing capabilities and actively seeking to bridge or, at a minimum, elide these gaps can we ensure that the advantages of AI are not just reserved for those already able to speak and read at a functional level but are extended to all people, irrespective of their linguistic starting point.
This article actually began its life as an e-mail exchange, was written up by a colleague of mine for submission to Inside Higher Ed, and then, after it was roundly rejected there, sent to me for substantial restructuring and publication here on my Substack.
According to the U.S. Department of Education, 54% of U.S. adults 16-74 years old — about 130 million people — lack proficiency in literacy, reading below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level. Is it any wonder, then, that your typical NY Times bestseller is often some thumbsucking self-help book that tops the list with maybe 100k copies moved in a given sales cycle?
If you can detect a quality akin to Swift’s “A Modest Proposal,” in this article, that’s intentional. My former colleague and I believe that these major literacy and comprehension problems — if one can even call them “problems,” given how widespread they are (more like features than bugs!) — are intractable, even if their origins in nature, nurture, culture, &c. will forever be argued about by whatever that generation’s equivalent of “extremely online posters” happens to be.
But consider this: perhaps someone who can’t comprehend most human speech (or is unwilling to pay attention to it, due to a diagnosed “condition” that diminishes one’s attention span) is far happier than the unfortunate humanzee who can. C'est la vie and all that jazz:
If we did not make somebody poor;
And Mercy no more could be
If all were as happy as we.”
The skilled trades serve as fulfilling career paths for lots of hard-working folks, but many of the above-mentioned 130 million unfortunates are going to get hung up on the “skilled” part. Theirs is a benighted road indeed!
The rewards of inserting some kind of experimental doohickey in your brain might outweigh the risks for many would-be users of the Charlie Gordon/Forest Gump school.
I know, I know…this one is mere “lip service” of the sort given by reformers with nothing to show for their efforts. But you’ve got to say it; you’ve got to mouth the words!
Feels, vibes, colors, pictures, &c., to name but a few.
Your endnotes are always second to none *chef’s kiss*