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Dan Loney: Well as our kids get
ready to head back to school, we
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need to look at the role that
artificial intelligence will be
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playing in that learning
process. You are seeing quite a
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few school districts looking to
figure out how they are going to
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incorporate it into their
processes this year and beyond.
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Pleasure to be joined by Hamsa
Bastani, who is an Associate
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Professor of Operations,
Information and Decisions here
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at the Wharton School. Hamsa,
great to talk to you. How are
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you today?
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Great. Thank you so
much for having me, Dan.
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You know, I mean, we have AI
conversations so much about so
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many different things. This is
not a surprise that we're having
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one about education. But I guess
the question is just how it will
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be included— not necessarily in
the college process. We're
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seeing that already. But in high
schools, in grade schools, what
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are you starting to see and
hear from from some school districts?
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Yeah, I actually just got off a
conversation with some of
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the teachers in in a high
school, and they were talking
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about how this year they're
going to start using Google
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Suite in the class. So they'll
have Chromebooks for every
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student, and they're going to
have access to Gemini and other
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tools like NotebookLM, which is
unfettered access to AI. One of
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the things I've talked about in
my research is that, you know,
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giving students unfettered
access to AI can harm their
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learning, because they actually
tend to over-rely on those
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tools. The number one question
they always ask is, what's the
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answer? So I'm asking them, you
know, why are you choosing
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that instead of, you know,
something like Khan Academy or
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one of these ed tech tools that
maybe has better built
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guardrails to support learning,
or a Socratic learning method? And
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they said that ultimately, you
know, our kids are going to go
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into the workplace and use these
tools with unfettered access,
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and so that's what we're trying
to prepare them for.
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But are the kids at this point
ready to have unfettered access?
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Like, have they— have they
learned enough about what AI is
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and how it can impact
them, that we could just go ahead
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and let them, you know, kind of
get going with this?
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I don't think so. So that's what
I worry about. So as a
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researcher, it's kind of an
exciting time. But as a parent
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and an educator, it's not a great
time. I think it's very
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concerning. I mean, I don't
think anyone knows the answer,
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but what we've seen from
at least our research
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studies is that students need
to build the fundamental skills
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first and then they can
effectively use AI tools. And
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even then, you might have some
worries about de-skilling but
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if you don't have the basic
fundamental skills down, then
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it's very difficult to even
assess the outputs that AI is
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producing. And then it's also a
huge cognitive load for them,
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because they're trying to
process all this new
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information, so they can't
actually check the outputs and
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collaborate effectively with
these tools. So I worry about
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that. The other thing I worry
about is just taking away their
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sense of accomplishment, right?
One thing that we see is— and
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this is so important for kids,
you know, that they have to feel
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that they have something to
contribute, that they did
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something that they can be proud
of. And when you're just
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prompting an AI tool and
reporting back those results,
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you don't have that. And that's
one of the reasons we see
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diminished motivation and
engagement.
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Is there also an element of this,
that if they are going to do
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unfettered access, that they
feel this is the easiest way to
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implement it. I'm speaking about
school districts.
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- Yeah.
- Without necessarily having to
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make the investment on the teaching side,
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on the learning side— because we
know, with a lot of school
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districts right now, budgets are
tight already, and it's hard to
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add new things to what they
already have in place.
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Yeah, I think it's very much the
path of least resistance, right?
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It takes a lot of work to go
figure out, what are the right
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guardrails, what are the right
pedagogical innovations that you
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can use to leverage these tools?
And, you know, like Ethan
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Mollick and I've also been
talking about like, it's
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actually difficult that that's
an open research question. It
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takes a lot of exploration,
creativity and work, and school
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teachers are not paid enough to
do that work. They have no
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dedicated time or training to do
that. Administrators, like you
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said, they have, you know,
limited budgets. Just giving
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everybody access to, you know,
one of these Google Gemini Suite
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or OpenAI subscriptions is kind
of a cheap investment, right?
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And so it's kind of easier and
it's less likely to be
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criticized. So I think it's kind
of just going down the path of
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least resistance. And you see
teachers reacting the same way.
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They're very much going back to—
a bunch of them are like, "Can we
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find good plagiarism detectors?
Can we just have students write
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in their blue notebooks?" Also
things that are not going to
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work. And I think, you know,
without creating the time and
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space to explore and understand
this better, this is what you can get.
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But something you said a little
bit ago, really, let me circle
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back to it, is— there is
something about when a kid, a
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child, comes up with an idea by
themselves, on their own. It
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becomes very successful in the
classroom. That that's the
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similar formula that they need
to implement when they're out in
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the workplace as well. We can't
just rely on AI in the
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workplace, because it's — for me,
I mean, it's like acting like a
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crutch. It's— it's— it will help
you along, but it won't serve
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the larger good.
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I 100% agree
with you. I mean, also, if you
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could rely on the AI, then why
do we need humans? We're going
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to end up firing our entire
workforce. So we need to train
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people to add value above and
beyond these AI outputs. And one
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of the things that really
bothered me was, my
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colleagues and I ran a study on
chess, right? We hear AI has been
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much better than students for a
long time, but people still play
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chess for the love of the game.
And one of the things we found
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is that if we gave students— we
followed them for about three
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months. We gave them different
AI tutoring platforms. If we
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gave them the ability to click a
button that lets you figure out
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the answer, or give you the next
move without having to think
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through it, they kind of started
getting addicted to using that
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button. And they found chess
less fun, because when you
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figure out a really complicated
move that, you know, gets you a
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piece or wins you the game,
that's when you feel great, even
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though it's a lot of work and a
lot of struggle to get there.
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And so by illuminating this
struggle, it's very difficult to
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say no to that, because we don't
like the struggle. We're also
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removing the sense of
accomplishment.
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So then is the expectation— and
I'll say this just from my
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perspective of just talking with
you here for a few minutes— that
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while schools will implement AI,
that this will still be a
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learning process for the
schools, to some degree, to
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understand its uses, its
implementation, how it will
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impact students, you know, as we
move forward? It may not be, you
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know, totally 100% just put it
in and don't worry about it ever
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again. That there will have to
be some watch and some
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some research on just how it
kind of focuses in to what
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students deal with in schools?
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My perspective is probably a
little bit more pessimistic than
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that. I guess— okay, so
historically, we've had policies
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that we've invested lots of
money in, like one laptop per
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child, or the LA iPad, where we
just threw money and technology
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at kids and hope they would
learn better. And they have not
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worked, and sometimes they even
have negative effects. The other
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especially pernicious thing, I
think, about generative AI, is
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that now kids are not seeking
their teachers for help, so
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we're losing the human
connection. So we don't even
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know what's going on with our
students. They don't come to
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office hours anymore. They don't
ask for questions. They don't—
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parents tell me that, you know,
their kids don't come and ask
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them for help with their
math homework anymore, because
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they can just ask ChatGPT. So
how would we even know what's
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going on with our kids? No one's—
no one's talking to them, and
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that combination, I really
worry about.
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Hamsa, great to
talk with you today. Thanks very
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much for your time.
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Thank you, Dan.
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Thank you. Hamza Bastani,
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who's an Associate Professor of
Operations, Information and
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Decisions here at the Wharton
School.
