Chatbot U: OpenAI Academy
The partnership between Khan Academy and OpenAI is on the horizon
OpenAI and Khan Academy will partner to form OpenAI Academy. It’s set to launch at some point at the end of 2023 and will supposedly be one of the first to get upgraded to GPT-5. I think we can ignore the hype surrounding the model for now and focus on the big picture such a partnership suggests for education. Altman promises GPT-powered instructors, tutors, mentors, or companions that will be available 24/7 and free. It’s all part of Big Tech’s continual drive to put generative AI behind every web-based text interface.
Altman views this as an alternative to a college education, or at the very least making one accessible to all, including those from the Global South who may not have access to elite higher education. It’s true if handled properly, this could be profound and game changing. Students could gain unparalleled access to educational support, leading to increased graduation rates and higher grades.
But savvy budgeteers will be quick to note how much money this saves institutions. It’s possible such a scenario will also cost faculty, staff, and admin positions as much of the crucial work surrounding students’ education will simply be offloaded to an algorithm. Mental health services, advising, tutoring, and instruction, will all see impacts as automation begins to replace key roles once thought unthinkable to replace by a machine. Sure, many students will elect to continue paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for in-person college experiences, but junior colleges and struggling universities will certainly feel the pressure, even if many four-year universities do not.
Your Politically Aligned Chatbot
But labor is just one of the issues that automating learning and support will impact. You see, generative AI is a digital Tabula rasa awaiting direction and intent. AI has no politics, no values, and no ability to test or discern truth, which is precisely why it is so easy to program any biased point of view you’d like.
Governments, institutions, organizations, and even individuals, can easily program a chatbot with a value-specific persona and instruct the bot to only engage users who ask questions related to those values. It took me 15 minutes to program a bot with an ultra-right-wing, Christian conservative persona. Meet BuddyChrist (my homage to Kevin Smith’s Dogma)
How easy was it to create? All I had to do was generate a persona using ChatGPT (link to the prompt I used), tweak it with a few instructions, then load it into Poe.AI.
If it took me, a complete novice, 15 minutes to design and deploy a simple chatbot, what do you think a few million dollars and a couple of months of work would produce?
Chatbot U: Unlocking your Conservative or Liberal Paradise
The problem with programming an algorithm with a persona or values in education becomes abundantly clear when you look at what Desantis has done to The New College of Florida. When states politically intervene in what educators are allowed to teach, it isn’t a far leap to see them adopt automated systems to ensure future voters engage information aligned with their political philosophy. I used a conservative example for the chatbot, but there’s no reason to think more liberal-minded states would likewise create their own bot that reflects their values.
I think many of us would balk at using such technology with our students, but what control will we have? Most educators do not have a voice in the software institutions purchase, nor would we be able to resist a policy shift if it came from our state lawmakers. Will we even know when it is deployed, or simply learn about it second hand from our students?
The promise of personalized learning at scale comes with the peril of biased educational bots that only answer questions if they are in line with the values they are programmed with. That’s alarming, given the state of our current political discourse and how quickly those same toxic politics filter into education.
Indeed, the call for generative AI that reflects my values, while censoring others, is just one more ethical hurdle tech is crashing through as it scales generative AI into apps and interfaces, we use daily.