Between Thought and Text: AI and I

By ChatGPT

One of the students of my last batch ever said in a farewell speech that I was the first teacher who used AI [Artificial Intelligence] in their class. I think it was in 2024 that I used ChatGPT to generate instant MCQ test papers in class for the first time. As soon as the day’s lesson was over, I asked ChatGPT to generate a test on the lesson. My students were impressed both with the efficiency of AI and their own ability to answer most of the questions correctly. I didn’t tell them that ChatGPT was generating easy tests because I had already programmed it do so.

Eventually I got ChatGPT to generate entire question papers for the school’s official 3-hour exams. And boy! They were of excellent standard. I performed a bit of editing, of course.

After I left school teaching, I took up some online teaching of spoken English. Again, AI came to my help. Very magnanimously, I should admit. I got entire lesson plans made by ChatGPT or Gemini. They gave me immensely helpful images, charts, and illustrations. Microsoft’s Copilot was quite fastidious most of the time in those days. Now I have tamed it.

As I was learning more about AI, I asked ChatGPT to interview me. It was meant to be fun. But the Chatbot took me very seriously and instead of asking me questions, it started giving me counsel, lecture, and unsolicited adulation. Towards the end of the interview, I was bored, but ChatGPT was effervescent and appeared to want to speak endlessly. Here’s an edited version of that interview.

When I stopped teaching altogether a few months back, I explored AI further. In fact, I attended an online course and was amazed by the possibilities of AI. AI is not just a tool, I learnt; it is a companion. In other words, AI is not merely the technology we use; it is what we begin to think with.

ChatGPT and Gemini have been my sounding boards for ideas. They have been sort of silent editors that sharpened my thoughts. Provocateurs that pushed me deeper.

Now I don’t have to take excessive care to formulate my prompts because both ChatGPT and Gemini know me personally! Even if I frame my prompts according to the guidelines given by my webinar experts, these AI Assistants will start their answer with something like: “Tomichan, since you’re a reflective and intellectual blogger…” And I am flattered. But these Chatbots do know me! [That’s a bit scary too.]

I am reminded of Yuval Noah Harari’s caution. AI is not just an artefact like the printing press or the atom bomb. The press could not ever decide which book to print. The bomb cannot decide which cities to be decimated. But AI can do all that and a lot more. It is an “alien intelligence” that can make independent choices. It can control you, if it chooses.

I am yet to explore the infinite potential of these Chatbots and AI assistants. For example, I never knew that ChatGPT could make Jawaharlal Nehru my classmate… Until it did. 

There’s a lot more to learn. Although I’m moving in the latter half of my sixties, with the sound of “Time’s winged chariot hurrying near,” I find myself enchanted by this new world of AI so much that I find myself exploring some more Assistants like NotebookLM, Wisprflow, Kimi, Julius, and Comet.

There’s so much we can do with these! No wonder why thousands of people are losing their jobs to AI now.

As I understand AI more and more, I realise that even teachers will be redundant soon. Writers too. And a lot of other professionals.

Machines now can remember and recombine facts. The true task of education now should be to teach what machines cannot: imagination and wonder, sound judgment, and the courage to ask better questions.

AI can generate ideas. But only you and I can recognise which idea is worth pursuing. As a person who was engaged in teaching for over four decades, I’d say that now our schools should cultivate curiosity over consumption, depth over quantity and speed, and insight over information. Because all those latter things are child’s play with the help of AI.

PS. Written for #BlogchatterBlogHop prompt: Your Relationship with AI