UCL School of Management Assistant Professor Anil Doshi recently hosted a TEDx Talk at Westminster School in London describing the ways in which students can adopt and incorporate artificial intelligence into their work without killing creativity. Posted only two weeks ago, the video has already gained more than 16,000 views on YouTube.
Opening his TEDx Talk, Anil describes the rise of generative AI and the transformative potential of tools such as ChatGPT. For Anil, there is an accessibility to this technology that allows complex information to be understood by students, whilst simultaneously offering innumerable possibilities of idea generation.
Describing a recent research study, Anil asked 300 people to write a short story and gave some writers access to AI-generated ideas that would inspire the development of this story. Anil ultimately found that stories based on AI-generated ideas were perceived as more creative by anonymous reviewers than those without.
Fearing the impact of this technology on creativity and originality, Anil encourages students to view artificial intelligence tools as an assistant to learning – and one that doesn’t quite always get it right. For Anil, this technology should be used in a way that complements each individual student’s efforts in learning.
Focusing on AI as a learning assistant, Anil encourages students not to ask platforms direct questions that will generate direct answers. Instead, students should ask these tools for examples that would encourage their understanding and comprehension of a subject. Using the example of an exam on photosynthesis, Anil believes that students should ask for examples or information delivery that would encourage them to actually process and learn this information.
