by Ali O'Marra-Armstrong, Assistant Head of School, Academics

Governments are considering banning it. Students are delighted by it. Educators are mostly fearful of it. But one thing is certain: Generative AI has a place in this world, and understanding it is crucial for the future of education and work.

Recently, news reports have highlighted that both the British government and the Vatican are weighing limitations and outright on AI. Meanwhile, a recent article in The Atlantic entitled “The Most Important Job Skill of This Century: Your Work Future Could Depend on How Well You Can Talk to AI” by Charlie Warzel emphasizes how AI is reshaping the job market—not by replacing workers, but by rewarding those who understand how to use it. Warzel further asserts, “If this AI paradigm shift arrives, one vital skill of the 21st century could be effectively talking to machines. And for now, that process involves writing—or, in tech vernacular, engineering—prompts.” The message is clear: AI won’t take your jobs, but people who understand AI will.

At Rosseau Lake College, we’re embracing AI in our Grade 9 Academic Skills block as an initial exploration into something none of us fully understand. It could be the ultimate inquiry cycle. We started the new year with some fundamental questions: What exactly is AI? How can it hinder, help and possibly hurt us? Where does it gain its knowledge (spoiler alert: large language models learn from us!). Additionally, we’ve explored “deepfakes” (some hilariously), AI hallucinations, fabrications, and we’ve even wondered why Gen AI still can’t figure out how to get hands and teeth right when generating pictures.  

Recently, I began an AI Micro Credentialing course with other independent school educators through the Future Design School. We are exploring prompt engineering techniques like “skeleton of thought” and “chain of thought” to structure the questions we ask machines to be more effective, which in turn, makes the use of AI more efficient. That said, it’s important to continuously underscore that while AI can analyze and generate, it cannot replicate human creativity, ethics, or intuition. It can also be very wrong—which is why we’re spending time in class discussing academic integrity and the importance of using our own synapses first before relying on the neural networks of Generative AI.

This week, we looked at how AI is learning to develop an imagination—sometimes wildly! Just google examples of AI Hallucinations and you’ll see what I mean. Though, at the same time AI still struggles to distinguish between images of fried chicken and labradoodles or blueberry muffins and chihuahuas. Here my hope is that students are learning about the risks of over-relying on AI, and AI chatbots, many of which may draw from inaccurate sources, produce incorrect answers, or fabricate information entirely.

Rather than fearing AI, shouldn’t we teach students how to engage with it wisely? Understanding AI isn’t just a technical skill—I think it is likely an essential literacy for the future. This week, we also wondered aloud: Could AI lead us to dystopia or utopia? But at the end of the day we, as humans, still get to decide and think critically and creatively about why it matters in the first place.