Generative AI and the End of Education

This paper reviews the prevalent rise of generative artificial intelligence and its impact on HE in the UK. In doing so, it echoes a central thought from Neil Postman's provocatively named book which reflects on the nature and purposes of education. Whilst GenAI may be approached with a constructivist disposition, much of the response in practice and policy is marked by technological determinism. A constructivist approach, however, allows us to (re)consider the nature and value of education. The paper therefore maintains the angle of the educator in asking: what are we trying to do in (higher) education? What is the purpose of Higher Education today? This is a cross-disciplinary question, much like Postman’s propositions were a cross-curricular reflection on the nature of schooling. Postman looked for a unifying narrative that can inspire ‘the ends of education’, or what education actually is and tries to accomplish, before considering its tools and approaches towards those goals. Those ends ensure that education does not become subjected to the false gods, such as economic utility and consumerism. These would spell the demise of any meaningful education, or ‘the end of education’. What appears foundational to these questions is a belief in the nature of human potential. In education, the cultivation of that potential is arguably a fundamental end, whichever way education is organised. Where the cultivation of that potential leads, however, can remain rooted in a humanist framework, it could become posthumanist, or it could be simply bewildering. With the means of generative AI, the analysis raises questions on epistemic threat versus intellectual success, and new horizons of creative possibility in human-computer interaction. The human potentiality of thinking, interpreting, criticality, and scepticism, come forward as retained elements of the humanist narrative. In the dawn of generative AI as a teaching, learning, and assessment instrument, the end of education remains human potential. Higher Education especially, remains the place to critically and ethically stimulate the human mind towards new horizons of knowing.