Why Bother?

Michael J. Canuel Ed.D.

Randy LaBonte Ph.D.

Check out our podcast based on this post.

There is a question behind almost everything we have been writing, discussing, and occasionally ranting about when it comes to artificial intelligence:

• Why are we doing this?

The answer is surprisingly simple. We believe we are living through one of the most significant periods of change in modern history, and pretending otherwise is becoming increasingly dangerous.

Artificial intelligence is not simply another new technology arriving in schools, homes, and workplaces. It is changing how we find information, create knowledge, solve problems, communicate, work, learn, and increasingly, how we make decisions. And it is doing all of this at a speed that makes our traditional approach to change look almost quaint.

For most of our lives, experience has been enormously valuable. You learned something, became reasonably good at it, and could rely upon that knowledge for years. Today, the shelf life of certainty is considerably shorter. What we confidently believed about AI twenty-four months ago may already be outdated, incomplete, or simply wrong.

That should not frighten us. But it should certainly wake us up.

Unfortunately, many educational institutions seem to believe that the AI box has now been checked. A policy has been written. A committee has met. Some guidelines have been posted on a website. Perhaps there was even a professional development afternoon explaining how to write a prompt. Mission accomplished.

Except the mission has barely begun.

AI is evolving far faster than the institutions responsible for preparing young people to live with it. ~ That gap worries us enormously.

Our response is not to run from AI, nor is it to embrace every shiny new tool that arrives accompanied by promises of revolution. We are advocating something far more demanding: becoming active participants in the change rather than passive recipients of it.

That means questioning. Experimenting. Learning. Challenging assumptions. Making mistakes. Trying again. And above all, refusing complacency.

We are two grandfathers who happen to have spent much of our professional lives in education. That matters because this is not an abstract discussion for us. When we talk about preparing young people for an AI-shaped world, we are talking about our grandchildren too. We want them to enter that world not simply knowing how to operate the technology, but knowing how to think alongside it without surrendering their thinking to it.

And that brings us to the principle at the heart of everything we are doing:

• Human Intelligence must drive Artificial Intelligence.

AI can generate answers in seconds. Human beings still need to decide whether those answers make sense. AI can produce arguments, images, essays, plans, diagnoses, recommendations, and solutions. Humans must provide judgment, curiosity, values, imagination, skepticism, context, empathy, and purpose.

Those are not obsolete skills in the age of AI.

They are becoming more important.

And we believe parents may be one of the most powerful forces for ensuring young people develop them. Schools matter enormously, but education has never belonged exclusively to schools. Parents can ask different questions. They can encourage curiosity rather than simply correct answers. They can explore AI with their children rather than merely police its use.

That is why we are doing this.

We are not trying to predict exactly what the world will look like five years from now. Anyone who claims they can probably deserves an Absurdity Rating of 10.

We are arguing for something simpler.

• Pay attention.
• Stay curious.
• Refuse complacency.
• Become part of the change.

Because in an age when Artificial Intelligence is becoming more powerful almost by the month, the most important technology we possess remains the one between our ears.

And we intend to keep it in charge.