The constant thing in life is change a characteristic of time. The wheel keeps spinning and the things we have now becomes no more in the nearest feature. Mankind is blessed with intelligence which has produced innovative ideas, who would have thought we were once humans who had nothing but stones for tools, gradually our ideas evolved now here we are with more innovations that supersedes the imaginations of our ancestors.
We humans invest our time, effort and knowledge in ensuring the advancement of technology to ensure sustainable future for mankind and our environment. The comfort and simplicity provided by technology is something that makes us look forward to more technological advancements in the nearest future.
Based on the amazing benefits offered by AI, most people would think it should be integrated in every area of our society but I believe it shouldn't be so. Let me first talk about it's importance in the educational sector.
Education is a product of civilisation which involves the process of learning and impacting knowledge through an institutional structure. It has been one of the most practiced norms among the populace of the world due to its capacity in creating enlightened citizens.
The standard of education in each country depends on the rate of investment the governing body of the state has invested in academic endeavours to ensure development. As much has its benefit the citizens to have standard education, the academic sector has also been a source of revenue for the government and private organisations.
Despite the significance of education it is quite disheartening when I think of how the standard of education is deprecating. Most Nigerian schools are known across the globe for their ability to impact knowledge but it is also known that most Nigerian schools lack resources to offer students standard education.
Though this issue of lack of resources and tools is still persisting but in some areas in Nigeria as a result of the advancement brought by technology, student now have the opportunity to source for materials online outside the school premises which has even got easier due to the emergence of AI.
Not just students, there are times when I find some things difficult to do, all I have to do is ask WhatsApp assistance AI, it will simplify whatever I might have asked and if there is need for a tutorial video link, it will be included. I have used AI to learn some digital skill that would have cost me a fortune if I were to pay a tutor. But then, despite the advantages of AI, it also comes with some negative features.
During the olding days when students are asked to undergo a research project, it wasn't easy due to unavailability of resources but the data gathered and explanations were a product of students intelligence, which means there was originality in every content written by a student.
Nowadays the case is different. When I was in school, we were all aware of the usage of AI in carrying out research work, especially using it to create speculative data from assumption of what it should be. Not trying to look down on Nigeria educational system but truth be told, majority of lecturers are yet to catch up on the usage of AI in generating research project content.
They have little or no knowledge of how to run AI check on project materials submitted by students. Probably they would have found out if they took the time to go through the research project material but only a little fraction of lecturers does that, as long as the material is full with reference {either fake or original} or the steps are listed, the research project is good to go.
I remember the day of my project defence, I was trying to explain my sample size technique which determines how I arrived at the numbers of respondents I will be distributing questionnaire to, explaining the statistical results of using krejcie and morgan formula, my project defence coordinator was just looking at me like a mirror.
My project defence went well but I can't help but feel disappointed for preparing too much for it, this has made a lot of students more confident about using AI to generate research project materials especially conceptual analysis, empirical review and fake statistical data.
Which means student no longer feel the need to carry out there own research to gather real fact and data, this has further degraded the value of originality while writing content in schools, it is now a thing of copy and paste from the internet. No one is willing to put in extra work because the availability of content offered by AI as now made student solely dependent it. I'm not saying availability of such material is bad but what is the point of going through school if your final year project that is meant to depicts a student intelligence is generated by using AI.
As if that is not bad enough, these days it become a lot difficult to come across original content. AI can be used to generate almost anything in the digital space, even videos. There are so documentary videos online that looks so real but it isn't.
What about on hive blog? AI has increased the rate of mistrust between authors and community moderators. There are cases of some authors writing very good content, the moment it looks too good to be true, there is a high possibility such person might be accused of using AI. Now writers have simplify their post by adding some informal text just to avoid being wrongfully accused.
If I had the capability to stop AI, would I? Definitely no but I believe there should be some kind of limitations to what AI can do. If not, in few years, we can say bye bye to anything original on the internet.
*******
This write-up was inspired by week 20 SciFi multiverse prompt titled "AI and Digital space" in SciFi multiverse community.
Cover image - 𝖣𝖾𝗌𝗂𝗀𝗇𝖾𝖽 𝗎𝗌𝗂𝗇𝗀 𝖼𝖺𝗇𝗏𝖺
Image 1 - Source
Image 2 - image is mine
Image 3 - image is mine
Image 4 - Source
THANKS FOR VISITING MY BLOG
