Dear Champiteans,
The recent IB World Conference in The Hague took place in the shadow of incredible developments in artificial intelligence. Since the advent of the first consumer tools in November 2022 (ChatGPT conversational agent), schools initially assessed the impact on ethics and academic honesty, before discovering the productivity potential of AI: mainly writing, translation, and the production of presentations or videos.
In a third phase, which is very much ongoing, we are seeing students using AI as a life companion, with whom they chat every day and ask for advice. Copilot, Perplexity, and others are real decision-making aids, and God knows that young people remain anxious about life's challenges.
While AI has so far lacked intention or purpose for us, this is set to change with active agents (agentic chatbots): intentional AI will aim to help students acquire knowledge or lift them out of adolescent melancholy.
Asking for help is legitimate, but outsourcing one's brain and will is a whole other dimension that presents risks. We are therefore called upon to focus on what makes us human, which is unique to the original relationship between students and teachers. This starts with taking a step back from ourselves, constantly asking ourselves why and what things mean, and always considering AI as just one tool in our toolbox. And by remembering that smiles, humor, unsolicited attention, and imperfection will long remain uniquely human.
