“I’m worried, I’ll explain the risks”

In December 2022, philosophy professor Darren Hick wrote on Facebook: “I caught my first student copying from an artificial intelligence.” This is only the beginning of the epidemic, and in fact the comments of colleagues who report quickly accumulate under the post avalanches of artificial tasks created by machines thanks to a simple input. Two years pass, the artificial intelligence models improve and so do the students’ strategies to copy without being discovered. Artificial intelligence produces theses, essays, themes, with a click, “the risk is turn off students’ brains“, he explains to Fanpage.it Vincenzo Schettiniphysics professor who created the dissemination project La Fisica che Ci Piace.

However, artificial intelligence has not remained in the background as a clandestine strategy for copying homework, it has in fact officially entered the classrooms with the experimentation project led by the Minister of Education Giuseppe Valditara.

According to Schettini, however, we must be very careful when leaving such an instrument in the hands of 14-year-old boys and girls. “I’m very worried, I think it’s dangerous. The risk is that students do their essays with artificial intelligence, and professors correct their homework with artificial intelligence. And so the circle closes“.

The first time you heard about artificial intelligence, what did you think? Both as a physicist and as a teacher.

The first time, eh, I have to go back in memory, I remember I was at Cern and a team of exceptional physicists showed me how they would use artificial intelligence to better understand a huge flow of data. There as a physicist I thought: wow, now that’s a smart way to use AI. This is the physical Vincenzo, but as a teacher I am very worried.

What scares you?

This is an extremely powerful tool, put in the hands of a genius is one thing, if it is given to a fourteen year old it is very different…

Weirdest things students have done with AI?

But many, also because they know how to use it very well, are a digitalized generation. For example, I was very struck by this thing that a mother told me, that is, that her son asked to write an essay on the second chapter of Manzoni’s The Betrothed, including in the essay the mistakes that a fourteen-year-old would make. You understand?

Yes.

And it’s clear that they use it because it’s a shortcut and they live in a state of hyperstimulation, video games, Netflix, Prime, they’re much more distracted.

Well, haven’t ChatGPT and AI in general fit well into a school model that doesn’t push so much towards a critical spirit but towards homework?

That’s exactly the point. We are facing the perfect stormin the negative of course. The student is given a mechanical task, and will use AI, a shortcut, to solve it. For this reason it is necessary to give children different objectives and tasks that stimulate them.

For example?

When I explain the dynamometer, the force measuring instrument, I ask as homework to build one, you can’t get ChatGPT to do it. Some when they return to class tell me, I asked my dad how to find a spring, it’s beautiful… so you gave the possibility for the student to use his mind.

What do you think are the main risks?

They are mainly related to the fact that students stop thinking.

Are you already seeing this with your students?

I see in my students a capacity for reasoning, dialogue and problem solving that has collapsed. The collective quotient has collapsed. By using tools like ChatGPT they stop thinking, because at 14 they don’t have the maturity to understand that a study method is needed.

But are there any advantages?

Of course, I have very young students, but if I were a university teacher I would use artificial intelligence a lot.

As?

With twenty-year-olds, who are women and men, it would be natural for me to say, what do I know, we have this task, we need to create a start up, and we could use AI to achieve these objectives. But they are adults, they have a greater capacity for abstraction, they would be stimulated and I would have a blast. But I have two-year students…

Many have dismissed AI as a tool, but is it really comparable to, for example, a calculator?

Not at all. The calculator is a different thing, you have to know how to use it to get results, using ChatGPT in most cases is simple, ask a question, even with a voice now, and it gives you an answer. Not only that, calculators don’t generate ideasperform calculations…

Minister Valditara has launched the Artificial Intelligence experimentation project in some schools. As a teacher, does this scare you?

As a teacher, yes, I would like a school that instead of worrying about investing in digital innovation, invests in paid teacher trainingpaid training, even abroad, because this is how they will bring new know-how into the classroom, and above all a school that asks teachers what really needs to be done to improve the situation.

What would be the answer?

They would realize that we need everything except artificial intelligence. If applied to improve organization, class councils, it’s fine. If applied to teaching, no. The school, the one that trained great minds, used a study method, worked on concentration, on the critical spirit, a machine will never do this, so I believe that looking at artificial intelligence as a beacon of change is wrong.

If the student Vincenzo could have used artificial intelligence, what would he have done?

I am lucky to have been born in 1977. Clearly a I would have used it for 14 years without realizing it what I would have deprived myself ofbecause sirens sing, shortcuts are tempting, and at 14 you use a tool that saves you time. If I had been 20 years old I would have fallen in love with itI would have used it to generate ideas, projects, prepare better for exams. And this is why I say: the problem is not artificial intelligence itself, but who makes it available.