In the face of the growing encroachment of Artificial Intelligence, which promises to vastly surpass human intelligence and replace it in many professional functions and tasks, including sophisticated ones, there is widespread bewilderment in the younger generation, a strong concern for individual prospects for growth and success.
This results in insecurity and, in many cases, a collapse in motivation to study. The question underlying this reaction and implicitly posed by students is: why engage in the acquisition of complex skills if these are destined to be quickly superseded as replaceable by AI?
Knowing a foreign language, being able to program in a computer code, and creating high-quality images are tasks now performed excellently by the most advanced AI models.
The setting of current vocational and university courses is in danger of quickly becoming obsolete, and the education system does not have the necessary speed of evolution to adapt to the truly momentous transformations introduced by Artificial Intelligence.
But motivation underlies everything. On the other hand, if one excludes outdated educational methods based on coercion and violence, the motivational principle remains in the field and comes to the forefront, but it is beginning to collapse, not only in students, but also in teachers, who today are beginning to perceive, if not quite the insubstantiality or futility, at any rate a kind of surrogacy of the skills and knowledge they have always been transmitting: even reading and writing, which were considered basic skills, are now increasingly being replaced by the capabilities of generative AI, which is evolving toward forms of speech interaction and information with a speed that seems irrepressible.
These AI performances are appreciable and indeed valuable in ensuring that those with special educational needs have equal opportunities with their fellow students, but they take on a negative role vis-à-vis their normed peers themselves, when they slacken their motivation or substitute for personal abilities, even inhibiting their acquisition, precisely by virtue of discouraging or loosening their motivational drive.
Capturing all the elements and factors of this technological advance and predicting its scope and effects is complex and requires in-depth analysis; but this analysis is urgently needed and must be done quickly, allowing for equally timely responses.
The reaction time for the educational system is long, and it seems clear that there is a need instead for a rapid reaction, a proactive awareness to reattribute centrality to the role of schools and human educators in the AI era. On the one hand, it is necessary to understand the phenomenon and scope of the AI revolution, and on the other hand, it is necessary to develop methodologies to take control of it.
The Homo Extensus vision aims to provide answers in this direction.
Italiano