The new generations grow up with their side by chatgpt & co., thus canceling the effort of learning or discovery. They have facilitated life, like us, but also “blurred”. A recent book addresses this now central theme, suggesting the solution
For a child artificial intelligence simply “exists”, accepts it as something that is enough. He is not alarmed by this sudden raid in his life but at the same time, of course, he has no awareness of it. “I’m not afraid of artificial intelligence. It helps me do my homework. It is kind »: this is one of the many answers that the fourth and fifth grade children gave during a laboratory organized by the Avvenire newspaper and reported in the volume the minors and challenges of the AI, edited by the Volocom Institute of Strategic Studies (Viss). A book that is not only an essay, but a real social investigation on the way in which the media and children themselves perceive artificial intelligence, a pervasive revolution that is transforming every aspect of daily life, from work to health, to education and communication. In this scenario, the children are at the same time the most exposed subjects and the least aware: they grow immersed in intelligent digital environments, but often without critical tools to understand them.
It is from this urgency that the research curated by the Study Center of Volocom was born, a computer company specialized in medium monitoring, and which highlights that crucial data: children are not afraid of the AI, but not even tools to understand their risks; For them it is a technology part of everyday life, without that aura of suspicion or fear that often characterizes the gaze of adults: the most surprising thing is the absence of doubt. Children do not ask themselves about the origin or use of the answers they receive from a chatbot, they accept the IA and that’s it.
It is not about demonizing. But not even to trivialize. Research recalls that the risks exist, and are concrete. One of the most dramatic is the use of the generative AI to create synthetic child pornographic materials: according to the internet Watch Foundation, over 20,000 images created artificially created and published in the Dark Web, classified as illegal, have been identified in one month.
But it is the data that make impression: in a year, chatgpt users have increased by 65 percent and the time of use has doubled. But there is more: according to an investigation of OrizzontesCuola.it, daily use by students has doubled, three quarters of whom use artificial intelligence to make tasks or themes.
But the danger is not only in extreme contents. There is a more subtle but pervasive risk: the atrophy of critical thinking, the habit of pre -established responses, the loss of slowness and error, fundamental in learning processes. And again: the approval of information, the addiction to systems that “speak like us” but that have no consciousness, intentionality, responsibility.
The research therefore raises a crucial pedagogical question: we know that learning needs both time and error, that is, it has its specific growth rhythm. But what happens if we entrust the chatbots the task of “responding immediately and perfectly”? The risk, the experts underline, is that of an accelerated but poor cognitive development, more superficial than deep. In short, we could risk breeding a new generation from the most limited intellectual faculties. Of course, even when the GPS appeared in our lives we stopped “cultivating” our sense of orientation, but the comparison does not hold up: the IA is to GPS as the speed of the sound is to that of light.
The volume of the Volocom Institute of Strategic Studies, the result of one year of analysis on over 200 thousand international sources in six languages, focuses on the media story of the relationship between IA and minors (with a focus in particular on Italy and the United States).
The results we list below are clear.
1. The general sentiment of the articles is neutral in 60 percent of cases: only 25 percent have an openly positive approach, while a 15 percent adopt alarmistic or critical tones.
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The philosopher Stefano Davide Bettera, strategic director of the Viss, says that “we are convinced that it is worth taking the bet and the challenge that artificial intelligence puts us but remaining faithful at the same time to the principles and values that are the foundations that prompted us to act from the first day. Together we can make the difference and the word together is the key to open the door towards the future ». The scientific director, Fulvio Palmieri, is more doubtful: «What need does the child have to shorten the times and not to make mistakes? Because learning theory clearly says it: learning means making mistakes and means having time to internalize knowledge, which means creating space in our brain for new knowledge and, at the same time, put back what we already had. If the brain does not travel these passages, with the presence of the emotions that perform the other function in learning, the brain does not assimilate anything “.
Artificial intelligence in schools, then? “If you want to try to stimulate natural intelligence in any school degree, you should first make a revolutionary gesture for our time, that is, to not follow any strategy or pre -packaged data, because otherwise it would continue to stimulate the school environment to work like an IA”, highlights Monica Colli, a pedagogist trainer.
In conclusion we come to one of the central nodes of the matter: can artificial intelligence help us train critical thinking? Guido Bosticco, professions of publishing professions at the University of Pavia, replies: «Perhaps yes, if we know how to approach it not as an oracle, but as a partner in the cognitive and evolutionary process. Hope is placed precisely in the younger generations ».
Valerio Bergamaschi, president of the Volocom Study Center, risks: “This extraordinary technological innovation can truly help improve the world, even if we are aware that at present, and net of its undoubted results in the health field, great demonstrations of this ethics of the AIA are missing. Therefore, let’s all declare ambassadors of the positive age and we work to create many! “.
Just to give an answer to these challenges, the Volocom Institute is in fact working on a pilot project that will start in the coming months. The idea is simple but ambitious: to create a national network of Ambassadors of the positive AI – educators, professionals, parents formed to guide young people in the relationship with artificial intelligence – and draw up an ethical decalogue for the use of the AI in educational contexts.
