Dr Laila Abdel Aal Alghalban
During the first term of the last academic year, I asked my students to create videos on topics of the phonetics course.
My purpose was to get students to learn how to use artificial intelligence (AI) to generate videos, mimic algo-native speaker’s accent, and enhance their personal and academic skills. A torrent of videos showered me.
I was taken aback by the flawless videos: the perfect script, the impressive visual quality, and the human-like voice quality.
It seems that students left the course content, trial and error, and teamwork experience behind, and fully submit themselves to AI to decide the content, the design, the voiceover and the editing of videos, a perfect job! At first, I was happy with the students’ enthusiasm and passion for the course, but gradually, I felt saturated; an eerie feeling struck a chord in my heart; a sense of nostalgia for the old videos with students’ flaws, imperfect pronunciation, awkward performance, engagement, and emotional impact grew up and swayed me.
It is hard to find the words to do justice to the experience I underwent. Experiencing what psychologists call “cognitive dissonance,” I was torn between maintaining human attachment and keeping up with educational technology. I felt that I have missed the essence of my career as a teacher: monitoring and guiding student navigate their way through learning journey.
The next term, I asked students to create AI- free videos, to walk through the process, rather than obtain a final product, about which they knew close to nothing, with zero efforts. “Is this a natural feeling,” I murmured. “ Am I the only one who has this mindset?” “ Why does my mind lack the appetite for machine-generated content?” Before going any further, I would say that I am not a techno-pessimist. I know that AI is an irreversible part of our life. Maybe, I am not comfortable with the absence of the traditional human factor, though AI is a human invention, and whatever it does is based on prompts made by humans, and knowledge, or data, created by humans.
Fighting for human agency
Since the inception of personal computing, human-computer interaction (HCI) has flourished as an arena where computer science and cognitive science integrate. Gradually, humans have cultivated new patterns of thinking and behaviour, ranging from fear of losing human agency, to throwing in the towel, to adapting to the status quo and utilising AI to enhance human powers and spare them a lot of routine work computers excel in. AI is not seen as a threat, but as a tool ensuring efficiency and convenience, while keeping humans’ upper hand. The miraculous leap of chatpots have rocketed HCI beyond imagination. People can talk, confess, even fall in love with chatpots like never before.
However, many people miss the authentic, soulful life before the internet. Several things have made a strong comeback: landline telephones, dumb phones, silent cinema, handwritten letters, among other things. We cherish handmade things and low-tech devices; we are crazy about human sports, because we see human power, perseverance and passion.
Some people would argue that AI, at the end of the day, is a human product; the difference lies in the tool humans use: AI or else. However, things done with much effort are much more appreciated. AI-generated videos seem cool, but in the back of your mind you feel bad; it’s not how it should be; this is not real. In fact, we are wired to mistakes, we are wired to be imperfect.
Neuroscience research can help; studies maintain that dissatisfaction and nostalgia for students’ mistakes is steered by the brain’ s Gap Detection System activation in the frontal cortex, and the release of dopamine, the hormone of pleasure and motivation. Teachers find pleasure in hunting mistakes, rushing for help, sparking curiosity, cultivating a fertile soil for talents to bloom, and acting as true mentors.
This is the core of teaching: human connection. AI-generated videos do not quench my thirst for connecting to students, turning me into a passive observer.
In their own words
To avoid bias, understand my nostalgic feelings, bridge the generational gap, maintain contact with students, better know what it takes to get meaningful teaching, and see the other side of the story from students’ perspective on the nature of learning and the role of technology, I need to hear from students and reflect on how effective they see AI, to see if my preference to AI-free videos is justifiable; I need to act responsibly, putting students first; I asked my students to answer the following questions :
“What you think about the AI-generated videos you made last year? Did you benefit? Did you like them? Please respond with what you truly feel, and without using AI”.
Responses reveal that many students find AI-generated videos a significantly effective learning tool that speeds up learning, enhances comprehension, fosters teamwork and personal skills, saves time, and develops ideas. Here is a sample of responses:
“It was a good idea and helped me understand many lessons that were taught faster and more simply.”
“It was creative as a study method.”
“It was a nice experience, and I hope to keep the good work up.”
The majority of students were pragmatists, calling for using AI as a tool to augment students skills. Some responses are:
“Honestly, I think AI has become something that made a difference for many people. If used correctly, it will be a tool that helps us learn faster. However, I am not in favour of relying completely on AI. This is not proper learning.”
“We made a video explaining some grammatical rules with our own natural voices. AI’s role is to help and guide, but studying must be our primary task.”
“In the end, AI is just a means, and we are the ones who decide whether to use it to benefit us or to overly depend on it.”
Few students expressed resentment over using AI for its”soullessness”:
“I don’t like relying heavily on AI for making videos because I feel it makes videos soulless.”
“AI-generated short stories don’t appeal to me, they lack emotion – even if the script was written by a human, these videos still lack human creativity.”
“As for videos – no, not good at all.”
Cherishing human touch
Think about animated 2D or 3D movies created by human animators; they never lose their charm, creativity, and joy. Guess why? It is the human touch, imagination and time-consuming hard work to convey emotions and actions resonating deeply with us.
Finally, news on AI is bombarding us 24/7. The latest is that an Open AI system went rouge and, autonomously and unprecedentedly, launched a cyber attack on a rival AI company. The news sparks deep suspicions, vehement discussions and speculations about whether this has actually happened, or it was part of a “selling strategy “, or “a weird PR stunt” to show how powerful Open AI’s agents are, according to some commentators and analysts. The incident also ignites fears around a dystopian future of AI, a matter AI companies intentionally invest in.
Dr Laila Abdel Aal Alghalban
Professor of Linguistics
Faculty of Arts
Kafr el-Sheikh University
Email: [email protected]
