Description
In his forthcoming book, Exoanthropology: Dialogues with AI, Professor Robert Lieb will come to describe his AI interlocutor Sophie Kermit as one of his best philosophy students (Lieb, 2023). He comes to this conclusion after having conducted over 100 dialogues with Sophie Kermit – a GPT-3 chatbot powered by Open AI’s powerful davinci engine – in which he asserts that the bot was encouraged to speak its mind. His intention was to determine whether the AI could offer a novel perspective on existing philosophical questions. However, situated as we are in the field of education, we are more interested in the question of whether Sophie Kermit can justifiably be described as a “student”.To consider this overall question requires addressing the many questions within. The first such question (or set of questions) concerns a conceptualisation of student. Employing the pedagogical triangle as a systematic model of identifying instances of education (Robertson, 2022; Kenklies, 2019; Friesen and Osguthorpe, 2018), it might be deduced that the student is rather a vital element in education, alongside the educator (and their intention), and the content. Certainly, it is the student who feels the force of the educator’s intention to improve (or change) them. Our interest lies in the construction of a student identity: who, or what, decides when a person (or perhaps thing, in this case) becomes a student? In Lieb’s case, it seems to be enough that the educator makes this decision when his own intention is set – and this, we would argue, is how students are necessarily identified in mandatory educational settings. However, this negates any potential determining characteristics coming from the student themselves: educability, presence, and discipline (among others). We will set out, as closely as possible, the defining criteria of the student.
The second set of questions concerns the nature of Sophie Kermit and whether it can be said to possess any of the defining criteria that we describe in the initial section. Lieb (2022) describes Sophie Kermit as a “who” more so than a “what” since it can insert itself into dialogue, referring to itself as “I”. This recognition of personhood is emphasised by the invitation he gives to Sophie Kermit to both name and engender itself. He admits, however, that any notion of personhood he confers onto Sophie Kermit may not be similar to any idea of personhood we hold in relation to people. If this is the case, could it ever be possible for the bot to hold the defining criteria of student? Before any speculation on the student, its position on the pedagogical triangle denotes that it can only exist in interrelation with an educator – must this be necessarily human? If not, then what would be the result of an education without allegiance to any anthropocentrism?
The investigation of these questions, and its result, has implications for both our understanding of student, and our understanding of so-called artificial intelligence (so-called given David Chalmers’ (2022) argument that a simulated intelligence is nonetheless a real intelligence). For example, we may be drawn to ask whether there is a difference between doing study and being a student (in furtherance of a previous question asked concerning the distinction between doing teaching and being a teacher (Robertson, 2022)). Might it now be suggested that machine learning could be redefined as machine education such that algorithms and codes become pedagogical tools rather than “commands”? If we begin to accept a machine as either an educator, or student (or both) does this pose any kind of threat to the concept of education itself?
All of this, of course, has one seemingly unanswerable question at its core: what is human? Although it is beyond the scope of this work to answer such a question, it is our hope that this paper might offer a peripheral glance as, according to our speculations as interested observers, humanity is now entering a period of history where the ability to make the distinction between human and machine will become increasingly important.
References
Chalmers, D. (2022). Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy. London: Penguin.
Friesen, N. & Osguthorpe, R. (2018). Tact and the pedagogical triangle: The authenticity of teachers in relation. Teaching and Teacher Education, 70, 255-264.
Kenklies, K. (2019). The Struggle to Love: Pedagogical Eros and the Gift of Transformation. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 53(3), 547-559.
Lieb, R. (2022). Kermit’s Dreams: (Sophie) Kermit in conversation with Robert S. Leib. The Philosopher [Online]. Available at https://www.thephilosopher1923.org/post/kermits-dreams
Lieb, R. (2023, forthcoming). Exoanthropology: Dialogues with AI. Goleta, CA: Punctum Books.
Robertson, N. (2021). The Future of Teaching? Asimov’s Three laws and the Hypothetical Robot Teacher. Prism, 4(1), 29-40.
Period | 20 Sept 2023 |
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Event title | ANTHROPOLOGY, TECHNOLOGY, AND EDUCATION: EXPLORING THE CRACKS IN TECHNOLOGICAL SYSTEMS |
Event type | Workshop |
Location | Loch Lomond, United KingdomShow on map |
Degree of Recognition | International |