These days it is common to receive articles and letters that are near perfect and require little or no editing. In the past editors had to struggle to edit long form op-ed articles for grammar and syntax and even spellings. Now the article sent are well constructed and logically sequenced under sub-titles and single sentence paragraphs which usually do not happen in articles written strictly by humans using their own creative impulses, imagination and research when it comes to facts. The question then is what happens to the human mind when it stops thinking, reflecting, analysing, searching for answers and giving a personal touch to the writing produced. Studies have shown that AI can weaken thinking if people stop analysing, questioning and forming their own opinions on a host of issues. These days college and university teachers complain that entire paragraphs are lifted from AI prepared texts and when the student is questioned on the topic he/she understands very little of what was produced. The human brain is designed to be thinking, questioning and forming opinions after testing assumptions against evidence and only then arriving at facts.
What’s important to know is that AI is not always correct. After all, it produces substance collated from the internet, not all of which is authentic. When young people especially look for easy answers using AI its is equivalent to outsourcing their thinking faculties to AI and thereby reducing their independent judgment. What will be the long term consequences if each decision has to come from AI? Will that not reduce independent judgment especially in matters involving personal choices. Besides the fact that young people are so reliant on AI makes them impatient and unable to deal with complex problems that require slow and critical thinking and weighing the pros and cons of a decision. However, everything is not bad about AI. These days journalists use AI to get shorter abstracts of lengthy court judgments which would have taken several days to deconstruct. Also AI does not stop with one answer. It pushes users to refine their questions which in a sense triggers critical thinking. AI is also capable of explaining difficult ideas including those which teachers often gloss through leaving students to struggle with the chapter or parts of it that they don’t understand. However the questions asked to AI have to be well constructed in order to get the correct answers. The person’s thinking cannot be chaotic for that would mean asking the wrong questions and getting equally complicated answers. To use AI meaningfully the person must be clear in his/her thinking and then ask AI for perspectives but only after having decided one’s own position and not being swayed by AI responses and changing one’s position accordingly. AI is best used as a discussion partner and not a substitute of the human mind.
In writing and exploring ideas on community, indigenous knowledge, culture, tradition much of the substance has to come from the person exploring these facets. AI can help only to an extent to understand the philosophies behind the traditional and customary practices after collating information from the internet. AI is good to the extent that it enhances the human capacity to think and if humans do not completely rely on machine learning to solve complex problems.
