Generation Alpha, people born after 2010, will increasingly grow up in a world intertwined with Artificial Intelligence systems.
AI promises to offer significant advancements in education, engineering, and communication that Gen Alpha will experience as second nature. Like Millennials who have grown up with the Internet and are becoming accustomed to its potential positives and negatives, AI will likely bring significant strides toward progress and risks.
“I’m pretty sure that my son’s generation, Generation Alpha, will be one that doesn’t know a world without AI integration into almost every aspect of their lives,” Brandon Morse wrote for RedState. “My son is only one and even now, AI is currently being designed to be everything he’ll need it to be in order to help him understand the world around him.”
Morse attended a demonstration of the latest AI system, ChatGPT-4o to get a sense of the power of the new technology and a chance to test the built-in bias and inherent risk the advanced technology brings.
“What really surprised me was when 4o helped a child with their math homework,” Morse wrote. “Imagine in 10 years, this will become so normal that you won’t be able to find a school that doesn’t utilize AI like this in some way. I can see a teacher still being in the classroom providing oversight, but each child will be working with a personal AI dedicated completely to them. This AI would likely cater to your child’s learning abilities and styles, providing a far better educational experience than the one-size-fits-all model of our current system.”
Theodosis Karageorgakis, an author for Educraft, agrees with Morse that technology will become indispensable in the near future.
“I can tell you, with complete certainty, due to my involvement in specific software development initiatives, that you can expect educational platforms that will be able to provide customized experiences tailored to each student’s unique needs,” Karageorgakis wrote. “These platforms will be able to identify areas where the student needs improvement, offering targeted feedback and additional, engaging material for improvement, thus enhancing the overall learning process. This individualized approach will empower Generation Alpha members to reach their full academic potential.”
With advancement comes risk. Moore cited the failed AI system Google Gemini, which was programmed to have a left-leaning bias. He wrote that after experimenting with ChatGPT-4o, the system did exhibit some left-leaning bias, but many responses were neutral.
Legislative efforts are currently underway at all levels of government, including within school districts. Texas passed HB 2030 in November 2023, which establishes an advisory council to monitor and create AI policy for various agencies, including school districts in the state, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
One concern facing educators is the use of AI programs like ChatGPT to cheat on essays, though Greg Beam, a professor of film studies at the University of Texas-El Paso told The Texas Standard that the program isn’t quite there yet.
“I’m sort of keeping my antennae up and looking for areas where it might be useful or where I kind of want to get ahead of the students in applying it to assignments – sort of predicting how they might want to use it, trying that out myself and guiding them toward responsible use of it as a resource,” Beam said. “If they just generate an answer directly from GPT, it would lack depth, it would lack insight, it would lack specificity… It wouldn’t have a perspective, it wouldn’t have a thesis, because right now at present, GPT is not capable of that sort of higher order thinking.”