As a child I would sometimes test my reading and analytical skills by means of those quizzes that have 2-3 paragraphs or pages. They would describe happenings and events and at the end I'd have to answer 4-5 questions that would test my ability to synthesize the complex information presented and make right conclusions based on the content. I did this as a 10 year old and well into my 20s preparing for my GRE and GMAT. Reading, processing and then concluding were all part of a mental exercise - akin to solving a math problem. The best kind of challenges were where a complex reading problem was actually a math problem - I loved those !
I was thinking about this yesterday in a conversation with friends at home. We were discussing proudly how effectively we use AI to do our work for us. How it synthesizes complex back and forth on emails and how it helps us get the summaries from meetings we couldn't make etc. It truly helps us keep up and become faster in an ever demanding workplace. Then my friend says " we are all going to become stupid in a few years if we keep relying on AI to do all of this for us". He was partly right. While my generation may not be any more stupid than it already is...the younger generations might have the risk of this impact. Large scale delegation of basic functions at an early age will impact development of necessary skills needed as an adult. It's like in that movie WALL-E , the surviving humans rarely walked in the spacecraft and when suddenly thrown onto the ground they simply couldn't balance themselves. Maybe not so dramatic an effect, but it's an example nevertheless. The other risk is the ability to decipher what's true and what is just a conclusion based on information without fact verification. LLMs use sources, and let's be honest, who is fact checking sources in this Wikipedia and Google era? Soon we will have to question things we see and hear on a daily basis. I'd rather not draw a depressing view of future - I am always the optimist and I believe good truly outshines the evil...but largely this outcomes depends on the actors and enablers of a technology. The invaluable, time immaterial skills we ought to teach our future generations , and continue to teach ourselves, should be those around integrity, truth, kindness and sense of community.
For now though, for the sake of our kids and their kids, I hope the use of AI is not extensive in schools and early education settings. Those initial years of learning, the kids have to develop skills the old fashioned way. The proliferation of devices and short videos is already eating into the brain space of an average kid in a average home, adding AI to the mix will only complicate their development...and not in a good way. As an adult we all own the responsibility of making good choices with AI and setting the right example to our future generations - may you execute and enable the same!
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