The Teacher Shortage: Can Chatbots Be Unionized?

I was chatting with a few friends and jokingly asked, “Have they stapled the chip into your earlobe yet?” My friend snapped back, “I’ll never let them do that!”  Another friend, smiling replied, “In six months you’ll be begging for the upgrade.”

A few years later we all have a virtual chip floating in cyberspace encompassing our entire lives.

The Writers Guild of America (WGA) and SAG-AFTRA are on strike, three months into the strike, no progress and at the core of the strike is the use of Artificial Intelligence.  See here

Scripts written by AI require far fewer employees and the manipulation of digital imagery also fewer employees,

See the writers issues here and the actors issues here.

Why should we worry, we’ll always need real teachers in front of classrooms: not so fast.

Enrollment in teacher preparation programs continues to decline, report after report “suggests” policies to attract students into education.

The National Council on Teacher Quality offers a range of policy changes (“Scrambling to hire teachers doesn’t have to be a rat race”) and the American Federation of Teachers, a report, “Here Today, Gone Tomorrow.”  UFT president Michael Mulgrew led a national task force, See report here.

Christopher Rufo continues to claim the teaching force is far to the left and teaching Critical Race Theory is commonplace in schools across the nation  See here (“How a conservative activist invented the conflict over critical race theory”).

One solution to a teacher shortage is increasing salary dramatically, don’t hold your breath. 

Bottom line: teaching as a career is declining and new technology, namely AI, is changing, augmenting and maybe replacing teachers, and AI “teachers” are far less expensive

Cities may be seeking to emulate mega-corporations who are using AI to replace traditional workers.

New York State is phasing in computer-based testing for grades 3-8 testing as well as adaptive testing, the answer to each question will determine subsequent questions.

The Khan Academy is using Artificial Intelligence in online courses.

The World Bank asks the tough questions,

What follows is an uncomfortable question: With a shortage of 69 million primary and secondary teachers around the world, could ChatGPT supplement teachers, or even replace them?

The launch of ChatGPT has demonstrated the potential for the technology to enhance, and in some cases replace, some of the activities and tasks done within jobs by humans. Will teachers – considered a major determinant for student learning, wellbeing, and long-term success – be an exception? Could the chatbot independently complete tasks currently done by teachers? If so, what are the associated risks? How can teachers use ChatGPT to enhance their practice and/or improve the efficiency of certain tasks?

As the recent contract negotiations dragged and whispers of “beginning to plan for a strike” began in some high tech lab in Silicon Valley (or Alley) I’m sure engineers were busy creating virtual teachers.

Keeping in mind the current and potential future shortages of teachers, it is likely that more than one policymaker will be tempted to replace teachers or tutors with this technology. Like preexisting technology, these chatbots have the potential to be used as a tool to support teachers but policymakers should proceed with caution. To better understand how this technology could be used to improve teaching and, ultimately, student learning, there needs to be an improved evidence base.

So, will AI replace teachers? It will change the role of teachers and down the road?