Two weeks ago, a “Think Big” column called for very early introduction of calculators in elementary school. Take this further. Encourage use of AI.

This month has seen distress over scenarios of uncontrolled run-away AI: the doom of humankind, if not of all life on the planet. Leading CEOs called for development slowdowns and, atypically, government and international controls of their geometrically evolving achievements.

Mankind has never been good at prudence and planning, before development and deployment of transformative technology. We’ve been lucky (so far) with nuclear weapons; not so with gain-of-function in viruses.

However we navigate the straits between emancipation and doom, the genie is out of the bottle. AI is a large (perhaps the largest ever since the wheel and fire) component of the toolbox of human endeavor.

Two-thirds of doctors, almost all programmers, and almost every university student, use AI for access to information and constructive help in producing output. So do writers, theoretical mathematicians, and biologists.

Long ago, the teacher yielded to print as the font of knowledge. Recently, both yield to the internet. AI scans hundreds of references and websites in the blink of an eye. It is the research tool mankind has sought since the apple of Eden and the tower of Babel.

Scholars poring over dusty tomes in monastic libraries are long gone. Some professionals need to access original sources, but for kids, footnotes, references, and the general trappings of scholarship are irrelevant.

Students should have assigned use of AI search and research. Teachers are guides, organizers, and especially, motivators.

Schools prepare students for the future. We needn’t muck about in outmoded, time wasting, practices that impede access to growth, knowledge, and accompanying wisdom. The methodology of the past has almost destroyed learning; schools must embrace the tools of today and tomorrow. And do it now.

Short of AI, there are useful tech advances that have been banned – the baby with the bathwater situation. These are the use of cameras and recorders.

Some technologically advanced classrooms use individual whiteboards, digital smartboards, or similar devices. There may be down-loadable outlines and notes available either before or after the classroom lesson. But some, maybe most, are traditional, with lectures, recitations, and discussions. In both STEM and the social sciences there are prepared slides, and whiteboards with the green chalkboards and even the cave-painting descendants, the blackboards still in use.

No matter how techy and organized, there are still spur-of-the-moment questions whose posing and answering are important to the material at hand. An astute question, expansively addressed, or a weak student’s surprisingly general confusion being addressed, are still key in the group environment.

Taking of notes is anti-productive. The note-taker lags, often far behind, the verbal discourse or lecture. Math or other subjects unfolded on full-class front-boards is important for presenting/following material as well as summarizing. Notes are generally illegible and certainly missing the flavor of the discourse.

Student activated, personal photos of boards, as well as recordings of verbal information exchange, are worthwhile.

Available now is the AI merger of recording, transcribing, and intelligent reorganization of spoken information. Personal AI note-taking devices, now in miniature wearable hardware, such as pins and cards, do the audio acquisition. Linked aps go beyond sequential transcripts to organizing the material into a self-standing, easily perused structure, with, in some, the ability to query the information assembled across many separate sessions.

We will, sooner or later, abandon the one-size-fits-all classroom model, in favor of individual education. Until then the personalization devices that make content more understandable, reviewable, and, in general, useful, should be encouraged, not banned.

Information and knowledge have grown to be too close to boundless to be contained, much less sorted and accessed, in individual human brains. Just as the teacher’s brain is no longer the font, so the student’s brain can no longer be viewed as the repository. In today’s world it is not what is in one’s head that matters, but what can be accessed that provides intelligence.

Bob Prener

Grahamsville