Hello Everyone,

 

Lately I have been  contemplating more and more about what I should be teaching my students for them to be successful in life and especially the business world--what do they really NEED in regards to English to get by in life?  This contemplation seems to contiunually direct me to artificial intelligence (AI) and its rapidly increasing use in most aspects of life.

 

My personal thoughts are that, in the future,  my students will need less  and less writing and grammar skills and more and more prompting skills- (Prompting refers to how we request things from  AI programs to get out our desired results). I know a few Universities have started offering classes on prompting and am curious to hear what anyone�s thoughts are on teaching prompting as an esl topic as well.  Have any of you had any such encounters or thoughts on the subject?

 

Cheers,

Douglas 

Hi dear Douglas,

 

You are right : AI takes more and more room in our life.

 

Unfortunately some students are becoming lazy as they are using it to do their homework. They reflect no longer on what they feel facing some personal or social problems.

 

Teaching prompting is not a bad idea as far as we can make the students understand  it is only a TOOL, a modern tool.

 

I think that writng is important too. When you write you can reflect as you have more time than typing on a keyboard. You can choose your vocabulary, go further in your thoughts with more calm or logic.

 

Teaching a language, whichever it is, means explaining the way of life, the habits of the people speaking this language.

 

So teaching prompting may be necessary as far as it is now part of our modern way of thinking BUT it is very important, in my humble opinion, to keep alive the HUMAN and sensitive way of our "imperfect" way of reflecting. AI is too predictable and "stubborn" : I mean it will give the same answer to everyone asking the same question whereas a man can adapt his answer according to the way the question is asked.

 

Let�s be modern. Yes but in a sensitive and clever way !

 

Thanks for this post dear friend. Interesting topic, indeed.

 

Have a very good day all. 

I so agree with you about writing being important and the benefits therefrom Maryse. And I too fear that it is deteriorating with time and the laziness/convenience garnered from modern technology. As I look deeper into AI and LLMs (Large Languae Models) I see how our inputs really do shape the answers they give.

 

My son was telling me the other day how he is always polite to AI (he uses it to discuss philosophical ideas) so that it learns that politeness is part of being human" and if the future models base themselves from his conversations, they wil include this human factor. Who knows, perhaps the interactions we are having now are shaping future AI behavior.

 

Cheers,

Douglas 

 

Oh Douglas,

 

It sounds like fiction. Your son tries some unusual way to use AI but why not ?

 

You make me think of a film in which an Artificial Brain was the world leader. The only way to "kill" it was not to unplug it but with a human trap. A trap with an unexpected human element that it could no bear.

 

Your son is realistic and I hope more people, especially young ones, will try to recover their "good sense" as we say in French.

 

Spend a very good week end dear Douglas. 

I know it sounds odd, but I am with your son about being polite. I was at a party showing off ChatGPT to some Spanish friends, as it also has a voice function and it translates very well, for the most part. All of a sudden (it was a typical Spanish party and was getting late) my friends starting say "How do you say - Hijo de la grand ..." I had better leave it there! But I found myself putting my hand over the phone so that she would not be offended. This is the world we live in now. Polite to machines but happy to get into ridiculous arguments in traffic.

 

That said, it has been very useful for me in creating content for my engineers and military students. I have a very large collection of material and now even have 3 books for any future engineering English students. People are worried about it pinching all our jobs but so far it has just made me busier and more productive. I should post more of it on here, to be fair.  

As teachers, what remains is exactly that, teaching our students how to interact as a human being, even when it is with a machine.