Anne Lutz Fernandez has been working on a series about resisting the AI hype cycle. In the third installment, she considers, among other things, claims of personalization.
Proponents of AI in education tout its ability to “personalize” learning, a familiar edtech marketing claim. They usually mean what educators call “differentiation,” structuring learning so students in a heterogenous group can be reached where they are. It’s what programs such as Duolingo have done via algorithm.
Sal Khan, founder of nonprofit firm Khan Academy, is one of these proponents. Khan is pushing his new AI-infused product by comparing it to a personal tutor:
Instead of simply providing answers to their questions, Khan says, new AI bots like Khanmigo are trained to serve as “thoughtful” mentors, prodding students with questions, giving them encouragement, and delivering feedback on their mistakes as they work to develop their own understanding.
Khanmigo improves in one way on “previous teaching machines” that were supposed to revolutionize education, writer John Warner points out, and that “is ChatGPT’s ability to generate responsive syntax to student inputs.” He notes that “believers in the power of generative AI will argue that these are sufficient to lift [it] above past attempts.”
But like older “personalized” software, Khanmigo doesn’t personalize—or do much of what the language in the block quote above suggests. Machines can certainly “prod”—for generations, teakettles have been whistling and microwaves beeping at us to act. The word “feedback,” however, is revealing. Like so much corporate jargon, it’s become common terminology in schools. With its origins in tech, it implies a machine loop rather than communication.
Other language is more off-putting, especially “thoughtful” and “mentor,” which imply the sentience and sentiment AI lacks. Frankly, it’s gross to suggest a software program can provide children what a human tutor or teacher can. A machine cannot be a mentor. A machine cannot be thoughtful.
Personalization requires a person.
And children deserve personal care. In The Last Human Job: The Work of Connecting in a Disconnected World, University of Virginia sociologist Allison Pugh reveals how the caring professions—from chaplaincy to teaching to medicine and more—are being warped and degraded by the imposition of tech, including AI.