Today is a special day, it is almost summer, the sun is shining, the air is clear, and you have never been happier. You are a brilliant leader of the national school system and you have just launched an innovative project that will improve the effectiveness and equity of education in your country. You are responsible for introducing innovative technologies into the processes of Public Education in order to make it more inclusive and equal.
Today, together with your team, you are finally launching an algorithm that can improve high school exit student evaluations by calibrating and reducing discretion and personalism that have characterized it for years. From your predictions, this system will enable all students to have equal access to university, but also easier entry into the world of work. The technology will overcome old inequalities and make it possible to truly reward the merit of thousands of girls and boys.
Science fiction? Not really. It is what really happened in the United Kingdom in 2020. Due to the pandemic, English high schools failed to make students take A-Level exams, the equivalent of our high school graduation. The British government then devised an algorithm that could generate the grade from two key criteria: the pupil’s individual performance during the year and the exam results of students from the same school in recent years.
The result? Forty percent of the grades awarded were lower than teachers’ predictions, and 3 percent dropped as low as two levels (from B to D, for example). By considering only the selected criteria, the system completely lost the natural variability of human, creative and emotional factors that characterize the relationships and interactions typical of such an important exam.
The effect was dramatic: thousands of students lost their places in the country’s most prestigious universities but, even more seriously, the method effectively disadvantaged the best students from schools in the UK’s most working-class and deprived neighborhoods, generating a strong sense of discontent and injustice in the population. The government, gripped by public opinion, made an immediate about-face and the Secretary of State for Education publicly apologized by reintroducing teacher-provided evaluation.
In the din of information, data, facts and opinions we are all today torn between two opposing and seemingly irreconcilable tendencies. On the one hand, recognizing technology as having an almost “divine” power and understanding of reality, so much so that we uncritically rely on it, believing it capable of achieving any goal immensely better than we do. At the opposite extreme, on the other hand, to doubt it, to see its darker effects, to identify manipulative and apocalyptic designs, to interpret it as instruments of enslavement and annihilation from which we must strenuously defend ourselves.
How do we integrate these two visions? By getting us and technology to do the things we do best.
I posed this question to Chat GPT 4: “Does Generative Artificial Intelligence possess the expertise of Critical Thinking?” And here is his answer (in summary): “While Generative AIs, like me, can perform some functions that seem similar to critical thinking, they do not possess the Critical Thinking competency in its entirety. They can assist humans by providing data-driven analysis, synthesis, and inference, but critical judgment, source evaluation, and reflection remain areas where human intelligence is critical.”
Does technology recognize its limitations, and do we? Are we able to fully and consciously use the unique skills that distinguish us as human beings? Are we up to the task of integrating the power of technology with our thinking skills to make truly effective decisions? Can we provide the right goals and priorities to a technology that has no intentions of its own?
And here we come to our usual space for individual experimentation. Think about an important decision you have to make: choosing a school for your children, buying an electric or endothermic car, which party to give your vote to, finding another job, etc. Breathe and activate all your unique and (still) inimitable Critical Thinking skills by answering these questions:
- What information do I need to consider? Where do I find this information? Who can I ask? Am I considering all information or only the information that confirms my views?
- Is the information I have gathered reliable? What sources do they come from? What interests might they conceal? Do they have general or purely particular relevance (the “mycuginism”)?
- Does the argumentation that integrates the different sources that I find reliable allow me to get a good overview? Does it enable me to grasp cause-and-effect relationships?
- Can the resulting conclusions be tested? Can I do an experiment?
- Does my choice consider all the people involved? Is it consistent with my values and theirs? What impacts might it have that I am not considering today?
You now have all the elements to make an informed, informed and responsible choice. Nothing and no one (yet) will be able to make it better than you.
