Why I Won't Use Artificial Intelligence as a Teacher

A colleague said he set up a meeting with his daughter’s Advanced Placement English teacher because the teacher responds to student writing using artificial intelligence. He has a problem with that.

AI, the AP teacher said, provides immediate feedback. When my colleague told me where his daughter goes, a suburban school that beats our school in the national rankings, I joked that her English teacher might be on to something. He added that his officemate uses AI to create lessons. He said it made sense because she has a toddler at home. It saves time. I nodded yes.

But I’d rather not follow this example. This is why.

AI has never suffered. Every teacher I have appreciated has spent a lifetime working and suffering to share knowledge with students. One teacher, my violin teacher, fled the Soviet Union. He showed me the Russian way to hold and draw my bow. Another teacher was the only black man teaching at an all-white suburban elementary school in the 1970s. One day he took his soprano sax out of the velvet black interior of the case and played for my class. Fifty years later I still listen to jazz.

My students are fascinated when I tell them about students who used AI and their punishment: instant F, a note in the file, a phone call home. They love to hear stories. I laugh with them and feel indignant about them. It is a diverse group. One can write Persian. One has a grandmother in Beirut. You can hit a golf ball more than 300 yards. AI knows nothing about them.

Another colleague sent me a link to a teenager talking about a way to bypass AI detectors by going to a site that “humanizes” text. The light-hearted boy doing the tutoring had the same haircut as many of the boys I teach. AI doesn’t think about cheating on its best or worst day because it doesn’t have one. Cheating is human; for technology companies it is a gold mine.

Tech companies want AI to fit in like a cute teenager with no prefrontal cortex. What if students don’t learn? Or who cares if AI technology like Project Nimbus and the Gospel targeting system are used to kill children in war?

AI permeates our world. Try using Google Search without AI flashing across your screen. If you really want to make AI work, ask it a question like: “How many dogs live on Mars?” That takes a second. AI says, “There are no dogs on Mars” and gives an image of a golden retriever, panting and sitting like a good girl in a Martian landscape.

When the family dog develops tumors, AI will not put the dog to sleep, but may produce speeches that an adult might use to comfort a child. However, giving those speeches is your responsibility – parent and teacher – and it is painful.

Teaching is an art. And art requires the pain of life, endurance, love and loss. If teachers want to save time, they need to understand that saving time never makes perfect. If a teacher can use AI, why not the students, who can generate AI essays that AI can comment on? Why would people get in the way of a tech company’s profits?

AI could suggest to me: “This might be crazy. Try a more serious tone.” To which I would respond: Until you drive home from the vet’s office with an empty backseat, you can’t teach my students anything about writing, and you know nothing about teaching.

Adam Patric Miller taught high school for 25 years.