MIRH: Motivate, Inspire, Relay personal experiences, Hold accountable
>> four advantages human educators have in comparison to AI
MOTIVATE: People still rely on other people to be motivated. Except if a person has strong intrinsic motivation, then they don’t need to be motivated. But many students need to be motivated and the generic “Hello, I am your friendly AI assistant and you can ask me anything” won’t cut it. When another person explains why a topic matters and why they should learn it, students listen.
INSPIRE: Similarly, people are inspired by other people. You probably remember the passion in the voice when a professor talks about a topic they love. AI can’t mimic that. That passion shows and sounds and it affects how deeply we engage and pay attention to the learning content. AI’s passion and enthusiasm is “fake” and “too perfect” to be taken seriously. In contrast, an inspiring teacher “reads the room” and varies their tone, pace, volume, and wording to get the students listen.
RELAY EXPERIENCE: Teachers who’ve “been there” can tell about practical nuances and small details (or big picture and aspects that actually play a key role) in the subject matter they are teaching. AI hasn’t been there and so it can list all the aspects, in a sterile manner, but it struggles to tell what aspects truly matter in practice and how. Again, human experience, real-life examples, and the feeling of hearing that the other person knows what they are talking about are attributes of human-to-human communication that the AI can mimic but not really reproduce.
HOLD ACCOUNTABLE: Finally, nobody’s scared when the AI says, “you haven’t done your homework”. In fact, it never says so. It has infinite patience up to a point of neglect. Whereas a real educator will hold the student accountable and has a point where the patience runs out. Interestingly, students often *appreciate* being held accountable because humans are, by design, a somewhat lazy species. A good “kick in the butt” is a good thing, not something that would turn (most) people off.
So, those are four benefits human educators (at least still!) have. Anything I missed?
#education #AI #humans