AI in the Classroom? Star Trek’s Captain Kirk Used it 60 Years Ago.

The use of Generative AI in education seems alarmist, even dangerous. What are your thoughts? Imagine it’s the 1960s and you hear of a new science fiction programme going on the air.

Star Trek — in which the crew is aided by an ever present AI, much like Siri or Alexa, and Gen AI text to picture prompt. Below, Capt J.T. Kirk is at work using AI to help his research.

Finding answers to compound and complex ones could be the shift. Perhaps, not a moment to sooner. Knowledge transfers delivery over the years have run the risk of being reductive. Solutions are attached to singular causalities.

But that’s rarely if any been the case. In 1989 through the work of professor Kimberlé Crenshaw racism was stated to not just be about colour or culture but a combination of gender, class, and other individual characteristics. Its complexity is evident today in our politics.

Climate change is not just about the environment. It’s a compound problem intersecting with capitalism, policy, race and culture, labour etc.

Economics is not just about the economy, but cultural influences.

Learning post WWII has sought to field singular or dominant responses to questions. In the 1950s journalism and film criticism had a literary bent (see Cahiers du Cinema) and could be found in literary departments. By the 70s these departments separated critiquing from commentary handed over to journalism.

As one of the stalwarts of journalism H. L. Mencken said

“For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”

If you’ve run hacks or labs you’ll know from systems thinking that simple is ne’er the outcome. Simplicity maybe? But trying to find an approach into a complex or compound problem is the norm.

So watch in this scene how Cpt. Kirk arrives at a solution. He’s in charge of strategy prompting the Computer (AI). The AI returns answers. Kirk’s cognition is in finding the next response to move towards his end goal.

Knowing the answer is one thing. Knowing how to get to a cogent answer is another. This will be helpful in delineating between simple to complex problems .

Furthermore, the problem-solution needn’t be stated. The finder arrives at the end goal by a series of logical propositions and deductive questions.