Opinion | Real risk of ChatGPT and other AI lies in closing off young minds to world’s possibilities

Much like GPS made reading maps a less useful skill, the rise of ChatGPT and AI chatbots risks tamping down our creativity in favour of safe answers

The issue is not whether AI is good or bad but whether parents, educators and leaders are doing their job to open young people’s minds

Reading Time:3 minutes

A test driver uses a Tesla Model S car equipped with autopilot and GPS in Palo Alto, California, in October 2015. The advent of technologies such as GPS and AI chatbots has raised fears among some that their increased use will lead to essential human skills atrophying. Photo: Bloomberg

Published: 8:15am, 20 Mar 2023

My mother trained me from a young age to read road maps. Growing up in Southern California, it meant I mastered the Thomas Guide, a set of spiral-bound atlases with detailed street maps of large metropolitan cities and counties in the United States.

We would take a new unfamiliar address, check the street name against the guide’s detailed index of streets and points of interest, and make sure the city matched. Then, we figured out which highways to take, factoring in considerations for routes to avoid – determined by personal experience rather than algorithms.

Mapping out the journey was made possible by the detailed information provided by the guide, learning to differentiate large avenues from small lanes. Knowing directions like which way is north was a given. Counting and writing down numbers and names of streets before the next turn, for example, we were putting crucial data points into our minds.

By plotting the journey, we got a much greater sense of how communities are built and cities are organised. We oriented ourselves in relation to our surroundings and knew our place in the world. We told ourselves where to go and we took responsibility for our own mistakes.

I don’t think my mother knew all the benefits, except that reading maps was a life skill. I don’t lament the rise of GPS. Well, maybe once, when I found my friend Michelle screaming expletives at a GPS system.

But, as a mother, I do wonder whether what we are doing in schools and at home today is enough to build up our children’s mental capacity. GPS replaced mental processes that are invaluable in constructing and nurturing our sense of space, abstract thinking and problem-solving skills.

Select Voice

Choose your listening speed

Get through articles 2x faster

1.25x

250 WPM

Slow

Average

Fast

00:0000:00

1.25x