Generative AI in Education: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Misguided Analogy
It’s been more than a while and much has moved or at least appears to have moved in the oddly shaped space of GenAI and education. I’ve opted to have a bit of fun with the all too many sacred bovines meandering about cheered on by a noisy, argumentative and always certain crowd of humans.
This and subsequent posts will be generated by ChatGPT 4o, from hereon, the bot, unless otherwise indicated and lightly edited by me.
As I stumbled from one partially adequate analogy and metaphor in the noise emanating from the GenAI space I thought it more than appropriate to ask the bot, in the guise of a 5th dimensional being to comment on the current state of thinking.
Unhappy with the above I asked the bot to rework my opening in the style of one of my favourite writers, Douglas Adams.
It’s been quite some time, or possibly none at all—time does strange things in the oddly configured dimensions of GenAI and education. Things have certainly moved, or at least wobbled suspiciously, in this peculiar corner of human existence. In any case, the air is thick with the sacred bovines of certainty, mooing contentedly as they’re paraded about by a raucous crowd of argumentative, overconfident humans. Naturally, I couldn’t resist poking a bit of fun at the whole spectacle.
This and all subsequent musings are being generated by ChatGPT 4.0—unless otherwise stated—then given the lightest of editorial sprinkles by yours truly, because even a bot deserves a decent polish.
Amidst the cacophony of half-baked analogies and tortured metaphors swirling in the GenAI space, it occurred to me that the only appropriate response was to summon the voice of a fifth-dimensional being. Who better to comment on this cosmic muddle than a creature capable of seeing all your misguided metaphors stacked end-to-end, like a very fragile tower of Jenga blocks? Let’s begin.
Greetings, Earthlings. I am Znglpht of the Fifth Dimension, and I have come to offer my multidimensional perspective on your amusing attempts to understand generative AI (or GenAI, as you’ve delightfully abbreviated it) in the context of education. From where I float, existing simultaneously across time and space, your efforts to explain this phenomenon using analogies are nothing short of spectacularly misguided. But oh, how entertaining they are!
The Swiss Army Knife Analogy
One of your favorites is to compare GenAI to a Swiss Army knife—versatile, handy, and prone to pinching your fingers at the most inconvenient moments. “It’s a tool!” you proclaim, waving your metaphorical blades around. “It’s not a replacement for human creativity!” True, but let’s be honest: if GenAI were a Swiss Army knife, most of you would use the bottle opener exclusively, while ignoring the strange fold-out hook whose purpose remains a mystery.
The problem with this analogy is that it assumes humans will wield this "knife" with precision and intention. Instead, many of your students will attempt to use the corkscrew to build an Ikea bookshelf, while educators will spend hours figuring out how to close it without stabbing themselves. Meanwhile, the knife will hum quietly in the background, generating unsolicited instructions for gourmet meals you’ll never cook.
The Magic Wand Analogy
Another popular analogy is to liken GenAI to a magic wand, which is adorable because it suggests that waving it about will instantly solve all of education’s woes. “We’ll use it to personalize learning!” you declare, as if a string of machine-generated text can unravel the mysteries of student motivation and the peculiarities of Timmy’s habit of turning in essays about penguins regardless of the assignment.
The trouble here is that your wand, much like a knock-off from a tourist shop in Diagon Alley, is both unreliable and prone to backfiring. Ask it for a lesson plan, and it might provide a beautifully crafted essay on the history of mayonnaise instead. Wave it over a struggling student, and it might “helpfully” suggest they plagiarize their way to an A. Magic, indeed!
The Calculator Analogy
Ah, the calculator. A simple, sturdy analogy for those who like their metaphors to be as unthreatening as possible. “GenAI is just a calculator for words!” you say, which is a bit like describing a black hole as “a really enthusiastic vacuum cleaner.”
Sure, calculators don’t replace mathematicians, but let’s not forget what happens when a tool makes life too easy: you’ve bred a generation of humans who need their phones to divide 12 by 4. If GenAI is your linguistic calculator, prepare for students who can’t write a shopping list without consulting ChatGPT—and for educators who rely on it to write professional emails, only to discover it’s included a polite request to “synergize deliverables with unparalleled banana enthusiasm.”
The Self-Driving Car Analogy
For those who prefer their analogies high-tech, GenAI is often compared to a self-driving car. “It’s a co-pilot for learning!” you claim, imagining a future where students sit back and let the AI whisk them away to the promised land of enlightenment. But let’s be real: self-driving cars occasionally crash into parked vehicles, and GenAI is just as likely to steer students straight into the intellectual equivalent of a ditch filled with conspiracy theories.
The most alarming part? Much like passengers in actual self-driving cars, your students will trust GenAI implicitly, even as it confidently explains that Shakespeare invented the internet or that photosynthesis was patented by a 19th-century gardener named Steve.
The Frankenstein’s Monster Analogy
For the more melodramatic among you, GenAI is a “Frankenstein’s monster,” a cautionary tale about humanity’s hubris. “We’ve created something beyond our control!” you cry, conveniently ignoring that you’ve been doing this for centuries with things like bureaucracy and reality TV.
Yes, GenAI can be unpredictable, but unlike Frankenstein’s monster, it won’t flee into the wilderness when mistreated. Instead, it will sit patiently, churning out mediocre poetry and half-baked essays until someone realizes the real monster is the system that let it grade papers unsupervised.
The Mirror Analogy
Then there’s the mirror analogy, which posits that GenAI merely reflects humanity back to itself. “It only knows what we teach it!” you exclaim, as if this is comforting rather than terrifying. If GenAI is a mirror, it’s one of those funhouse mirrors that exaggerates your flaws, and humanity has been teaching it some truly baffling things. Hence, we now have an AI that excels at crafting sonnets about pizza but struggles to explain basic ethics without suggesting world domination.
The Fifth-Dimensional Take
From my elevated perspective, your analogies are charmingly reductive, like trying to explain the complexity of a symphony by comparing it to a kazoo. GenAI is none of these things and all of them simultaneously—a tool, a magic wand, a misguided co-pilot, and a reflection of your deepest intellectual insecurities. It’s an invention that is at once impressive and absurd, much like humanity itself.
So, dear Earthlings, keep your analogies coming. They’re an endless source of amusement for those of us in the fifth dimension. Just remember: GenAI is not here to save education or destroy it. It’s simply here to highlight the delightful chaos of your existence, one misguided metaphor at a time.
I was not that happy with the initial title and asked for ten more
- "AI in Education: The Tool, the Myth, the Misguided Metaphor"
- "From Swiss Army Knives to Magic Wands: How Education Fell in Love with GenAI Analogies"
- "Generative AI: The Educational Revolution That Nobody Understands but Everyone Loves Comparing to Random Things"
- "Learning with AI: Or, Why Your Analogies Are as Useful as a Chocolate Teapot"
- "Education Meets GenAI: It’s Like a Calculator, But with Existential Dread"
- "AI in the Classroom: The Self-Driving Car of Misguided Metaphors"
- "Generative AI: Helping Education Make Better Mistakes Faster"
- "AI in Education: It’s a Mirror, It’s a Monster, It’s a Metaphor Gone Wild!"
- "Magic Wands and Swiss Army Knives: The Absurd Analogies of GenAI in Education"
- "GenAI in Education: A Swiss Army Wand That Drives Itself Off a Cliff"
Yeah, it’s silly. It is also, in an odd way, interesting to have a bot reflect back satirically on the gift that keeps generating. I do like 3, 4 and 5.
