THERE are certain things in our fast-changing world that occasionally give me a feeling of guilt, if not sinfulness. Artificial intelligence is one of them. This apologia is an account of this uncanny sense of wrongdoing, without seeking redemption.
I recently attended an international conference on English language education in a well-known Asian city. The conference theme linked the concepts of care, innovation, and sustainability to English teaching, learning and assessment. One highlight of the academic festival was the opening keynote address by a Korean-origin and Stanford-affiliated academic giant who is currently based in China. He is a globe-trotter, giving keynotes and conducting high-tech education research in different parts of the world.
As expected, his keynote was about reshaping the future of English language education with innovation and purpose. It was a superb address which was duly applauded by the audience. Listening to him, I developed a rough sense of where education technology in general and AI in particular currently stand and how technology can revolutionise education and empower every student as a potential innovator of start-up businesses. However, as a tech-unsavvy person, I found the content somewhat overwhelming. It is this occasion that aroused the most recent techno-guilt.
I had such a guilty conscience previously when I attended workshops and/or webinars on technology in other places. I am a slow learner. I am even slower when it comes to technology, data, or science. I usually make sense of the world by words and narratives. Therefore, I often fail to catch up with the pace of talks about the what and how of new technologies, etc.
The keynoter told the audience that the average time f ame for technological innovation hitting the market was now about two weeks. I don鈥檛 think I will ever be able to stay updated. I couldn鈥檛 have done it even if the time frame had been two years. Like many of my colleagues, I am not left with much spare time to embark on AI hunting after meeting the growing temporal demands of work, family and social life. Academics experiencing 鈥榯ime-sickness鈥� or their battle with time in a neoliberal environment is an apt point made by another speaker at the conference.
Such academic events bring optimal affordances for academics and researchers to master the potential of technologies for their work. However, while I try to engage in learning, I often end up digging my own soul more than internalising the technology know-how shared. And I discover the guilt sitting right in my heart, mind or soul, whatever you call it.
The tech exposure which otherwise provides much-desired learning opportunities makes me feel that I was dumber as an academic, not keeping in touch with what was happening in the world of technology. Specifically, if any presenter asks questions such as 鈥楬ave you used this or that tool or platform?鈥� they take me back to my primary school days. I feel like I didn鈥檛 do my homework assigned by the teacher, or I deserved to be chastised for my carelessness. Certainly, those questions are ways of making learning interactive, but they come to me as reminders of what I should have done but didn鈥檛.
Occasionally, I am also challenged by a critic within myself who reminds me that I was probably wasting my time on less important things. How could I not take technology seriously when it was going to make students smarter than teachers? How could I ignore that I might soon become obsolete, as AI would probably do a better job than me for my students?
The keynote also divided education curriculum into two types: before GenAI and after GenAI. The implied message was an educator couldn鈥檛 do a BG curriculum in an AI era. This also led to an inescapable guilt: was I teaching the wrong stuff in my class because it was a BG not an AG curriculum?
My guilt also emits from ideologies of technology that are constructed, reproduced and disseminated for public consumption. These are about the unmatched benefits of technology for all 鈥� students, teachers, institutions and societies. One group of beneficiaries who are rarely mentioned are tech capitalists. Their capital hunger that drives tech innovations is something that remains hidden or unmentioned. As I try to discipline myself with these discourses, I extract this principal message: that life can鈥檛 be lived or imagined without technology. This then sprouts the guilt in my fossilised learning and teaching self. I accuse myself of thinking I can鈥檛 do what others do so easily. I am falling far behind in learning and harnessing technology for my students. They are conquering time and technology while I am wallowing in inaction and laziness. I probably only daydream, without following the demonstrated path to a bright present and a brighter future.
Discourses that normalise technology or innovation often divide people into two groups. One group are enthusiastic and entrepreneurial who learn anytime, anywhere, and keep their learning antenna open to any input or stimuli. The other is regressive and lethargic, wishing the world never changed and things remained the same forever. I will probably be thrown into the second group based on emerging standards and discourses.
I also feel constantly bombarded by new philosophies about life, freedom, and happiness. How technology will empower me, bring the whole world to the touch of my fingers and allow me to be and become whatever or whoever I wished. However, my indolent heart doesn鈥檛 want to be stirred. It doesn鈥檛 feel incentivised by such promises.
That doesn鈥檛 necessarily mean I am a tech-hater. Nor do I think I suffer from technophobia. I do believe in the power of technology and the things that technology can (and can鈥檛) do for us. However, the problem is I can鈥檛 force myself to love what I don鈥檛 love. My affection for technology stays in the neighbourhood of liking at best; it doesn鈥檛 travel farther to the stage of any other stronger positive emotion. I can鈥檛 romanticise technology or pretend love for it when I have only an instrumentalist dependence on it. I know there are millions who can go hours with smartphones in their hands. However, this small machine often bores me down. It鈥檚 an important tool in life, but I can also live without it, if need be. I know we lived without AI not long ago. We did live without mobile phones just over two decades ago. Many people lived a good life when there were no planes, trains, or automobiles. People also lived meaningful lives even without formal literacy, which to me is the mother of all innovations.
Technology arouses guilt in me because it often tells me, even without saying, that I must embrace it. If I don鈥檛, I deserve to be left behind and forgotten. Its hegemony allows it to exclude someone like me from the new world. This exclusion is not the fault of technology or of the capitalist urge behind it. It鈥檚 my own problem, as I don鈥檛 seem to move ahead. My techno-guilt may have no redemption.
I don鈥檛 assume the reader is a member of the minority tribe that feels subdued by technology. But if you indeed are, you (and I) can鈥檛 give up. We can live with the self-focused guilt so long as it doesn鈥檛 turn into an atrocity.
听
听Obaidul Hamid is an associate professor at the University of Queensland in Australia. He researches language, education, and society in the developing world. He is a co-editor of Current Issues in Language Planning.
