Daily Times

The 21st century brought many mind-blowing revolutions, mostly to benefit mankind by accomplishing tasks to facilitate life and progress further. The Internet, cell phones, electric cars, and spacecraft, like James Webb Space Telescope, have significantly added new dimensions to mankind and its relationship and status in the world around. The latest addition to this line is Artificial intelligence which is bent upon revolutionizing our patterns and parameters of life, especially in education and health. One of its faces is ChatGTP which, after Google n Bing, is a major source of internet search, but far ahead of the two search engines because the former search engines just pointed out the information, ChatGTP provides handmade knowledge on one page ready to be consumed by the user. This revolution has eliminated almost the lengthy work of reading books and writing the gleaned information on a page precisely. Besides making available knowledge on one page precisely, it presents it in suitable and error-free standard English language and as such solves the language problems of a large number of individuals, especially in formerly colonized countries.

This, apparently a rosy picture, poses serious challenges to humanity, especially in the development of the human cognition system, classroom instructions, the role of teacher or instructor, reading of books and writing of papers, and the list goes on endlessly. Currently, our syllabi and study schemes are designed where the teacher provides guidance, and the learners are put to work and get their product checked and verified by the teacher or examiner. ChatGTP eliminates the whole process and instantly provides answers to the question put to it precisely and relevantly in a matter of seconds. These answers are readymade materials derived from the wealth of internet sources and can be copied and pasted anywhere or wherever needed.

Like any other revolution, we cannot evade or avoid it because it is right there staring directly into our eyes and is unwilling to budge anyway. So, we need to adopt and evolve instead of opposing, resisting, or closing our eyes to it. Whatever our prejudices and reservations have been about mobile phone technology, we have adopted it and now it has almost become an extension of the human body. Similarly, artificial intelligence tools should be grabbed and grasped by us wisely instead of allowing them to come and grab us off guard.

The world would change around us and our people may not fit into the new scheme of things.

Our teachers and students are already benefitting from it in and outside the classroom and we should encourage its use and develop ourselves in such a way as we may be able to benefit from it and save ourselves from its side effects. It saves the time and energy of the teacher and enhances his level of instruction, especially in the global context. While this should be done cautiously so that we are not deprived of the skills of the teacher, it should also be focused on our cultural and social patterns. The same is the case with the students which helps them recreate the information at home and doubles their knowledge and keeps them focused. The time saved in this regard can be utilized in learning advanced levels of research and knowledge. But there must be no excuses for denying or refusing to use it only because this is about to revolutionize our ways of learning and creating knowledge.

We need to become part of this technology because artificial intelligence technology is already surrounding us and taking us in its folds very rapidly and it will do. We are already using robots in the car industry and other major manufacturing industries. Soon, we are about to witness humanoids who would help us everywhere faultlessly. Our learning and skills to acquire information and knowledge are going to revolutionize like a storm and we must be ready before it gets too late. Our classrooms are already being digitalized wherever possible and the role of the traditional teacher is being modified every day. The need of the hour is that our education systems must initiate training courses in this regard to equip our teachers at every level to effectively employ artificial intelligence in the classroom so that our students may rightly benefit from it instead of becoming machine-dependent people. This is a global revolution, and it is unavoidable and calls for a positive attitude and response towards it. We may avoid it or not, but it is going to become a new useful tool for humanity to benefit from it at a large scale. Effective training and adopting artificial intelligence can not only save us from its disadvantages but also would open an arena of new jobs and professions for our people. Already many countries like Turkey and India have overtaken us in soft skills of information and internet technologies because of our lethargic attitudes. Now, in no way, we may lag so that our future generation may not only stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the advanced and developed nations of the world but also progress and prosper in the world, we have seen that even after our desperate attempts, the introduction of new technologies made many traditional jobs obsolete and so many of us became jobless because we were not ready to embrace the technology revolution. The same is going to happen now, the world would change around us and our people may not fit into the new scheme of things. This can be prevented by a willingness to embrace it the way we may deem it fit before it is forced upon us.

The writer is a professor of English at Government Emerson University, Multan. He can be reached at zeadogar@hotmail.com and Tweets at @Profzee