Artificial Intelligence – Helping Activity Participants Improve Skills

Artificial Intelligence, or AI, is the ability of a device to use the resources it can find to respond in a new manner to an inquiry or request. Hardly a new concept, AI has been an aspect of computer science since the 1940s, considered and developed by several noted mathematicians, most notably Alan Turing of “The Imitation Game” fame.

While it initially showed great promise in creating thinking machines, its failure to meet those expectations in the 1960s and 1970s brought about a lack of interest and, therefore, a lack of funding. A resurgence began in the 1990s highlighted by the defeat of a Russian chess champion by an IBM computer using algorithms and improvements in AI matched the steady improvement in the capabilities of silicon chips. This matched the availability of more sophisticated technology to the average consumer including the smartphone.

We all use AI in some way almost every day without knowing it – spell-checkers in our word processor to word suggestions in our text messages. AI has been in the foreground of late for many of the positives and negatives that accompany this technology; its amazing capabilities vs. its ‘Skynet’ concerns. The availability of AI to the general public through ChatGPT and now its competition and successor has brought AI out from behind the device screen. Now, it is no longer just a tool that a programmer uses to get Alexa or Siri to remember your favorite music, but a tool that every aspect of education can access and be affected by on a daily basis. This includes students who can use the tool to create materials that they then can present as their own without actually doing the work, which is the chief concern about this technology in the education community.

Does AI have any effect on school athletics, fine arts and co-curriculars? Students who participate in sports, clubs, performance groups, drama, forensics, etc. do not have reports to write or quizzes to complete, tasks that AI could do for them. The cons of AI are not of concern in this part of the educational landscape, but AI can provide or support some unique and interesting tools – tools that are part of the avalanche of AI possibilities coming forward on a daily basis, each seemingly more capable than its predecessor. With the improvements in Reinforcement Learning, the ability of the device to learn from its successes and failures, AI can now provide a variety of ways for athletes and musicians, thespians and debaters to improve their skills.

Co-curriculars have been using AI for several years. The increased use of the different ways that real and digital environments can be combined to provide opportunities for skill improvement and practice (see article in November 2023 High School Today) continues to expand.

It is hard to keep up with what is being made available in this field. Now or very soon, AI will be able to adjudicate your musical performance, analyze your sound production and make suggestions, technical ones, on how to improve what it perceives as areas of concern. Now or very soon, AI will provide everything from the other actors to complete scenes for participants to practice their lines, reacting to changes in their presentation of the dialogue just as a human would on the stage. AI can already provide a debate team with the opposing position and soon will be able to do so after reading (or hearing) an argument.

AI is already being used to create photography that rivals images taken of real scenes, real animals, real people. That ability can be used to inspire photographers and other artists to consider a different way to view and capture photos through their camera lens. Graphic design programs will continue to expand their use of AI to not necessarily supplement the creativity of the craftsman, but to provide more effective and efficient ways for them to be creative by reducing some manual tasks to a single click.

Will all the uses of AI in support of athletes and performing arts provide positive connections between humans and microchips? That decision relies more on the user than the programmer. Like any device, tool or item, humans will still be able to decide how to use it and if that use is beneficial or detrimental. Given the combination of our interest in making things easier to accomplish, the easy and cost-efficient availability of devices capable of using AI and the constantly expanding capabilities of this technology, the future possibilities of AI are endless, encouraging and a little concerning. The only certainty is that AI will continue to grow and expand until it becomes as ubiquitous as the devices that use it.