AI – curiosity and motivation

Arousing curiosity and motivation in students is the holy grail of the teaching profession. Can artificial intelligence help?

I am interested in the futurism, for that I read books, articles and listen to podcasts. I do this out of curiosity, without tests and grades, without a goal for a specific use, not even in the salon conversations on Friday night, just for fun. I became interested in topics unrelated to specific goals, such as futurism and history, at the age of 45. I often ask myself why I waited so long, wasn’t I curious before that? I was! Didn’t I have time? I did! I suspect it has something to do with the mission oriented education I received. You need a degree, a job, a family… and whatever doesn’t get you there, doesn’t appear on the radar.

Since we still pursue mainly functional education, that is, with a daily schedule, assignments, grades, graduations, the students’ behavior is in accordance: not to be late for class, finish homework, prepare for the test. In such an environment it is difficult to expect the student to ‘just’ be interested in a subject that he does not have to submit a paper or test on. Thus most students need help searching and locating the subject of their interest.

It is precisely for this reason that we founded ‘Sparks’, an association whose goal is to arouse curiosity in students and make them learn out of internal motivation. So the question is: will the artificial intelligence increase the curiosity of the students? At this stage I am very skeptical that there will be an application that will encourage the student to search, research or be interested, but if the student expresses a desire ChatGPT can help today (see example below).

The first step in learning out of curiosity is the recognition that I, the student, am interested. At this stage, as mentioned in my opinion, the existing artificial intelligence is less effective, for that you need a trigger provided by a parent, teacher, friend. In my case the interest in futurism started with a book (by Ray Kurzweil) that was recommended by a friend, and it just blew my mind and since then I have been on the subject for 30 years.

However, if we have a student who wants to find a topic that will interest him/her, but does not know how to find it, artificial intelligence can help. In the example below I used ChatGPT in English to find what I was interested in:

Question: “I’m 16 years old and I’m looking for a topic to work on in my free time.” Answer: I received several general directions such as learn a new skill such as programming, or develop a hobby such as painting.

Question: “Be more specific and creative.” Answer: included 17 subjects such as gardening, yoga or photography.

Question: “Do you have any other subjects?” Answer: 15 more topics were added such as join the club, write poetry.
I continued to ask for more topics while refining the directions that interested me, for example, “I like to build things”, or “I like outdoor activities”.

Finally I chose three topics that seemed interesting to me (start a YouTube channel, learn to climb walls, start a carpentry project).

I started with a YouTube channel and asked “How do I start a YouTube channel?” Answer: A list of steps to open a channel, some technical and some general advice.

After another conversation I decided that I was not interested in opening a YouTube channel.

I switched to carpentry, within a few minutes I received recommendations for YouTube channels that specialize in carpentry, recommended books, places to start working/studying/volunteering for free and other advice on how to get started. Mission accomplished.

As you can see, it was possible to use a real person and reach the same result (with a little help from Google), the advantage of using the machine is that there is not always such a person around and also that the student may try to please the person and not really search in the direction he/she is interested in.

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