Abstract:

The paper considers the Generative AI (Artificial Intelligence) as an educational technology that brings about a revolution in education. The advent of Generative AI, heralded by advances of ChatGPT, ushers in a new era of groundbreaking technologies where humans and machines form a new level of collaborative relationship. To incorporate Generative AI in the educational process as part of long-term strategy which would enable education professionals, both in leadership and teaching positions, to assume a proactive and not a reactive position, a theoretical understanding of Generative AI and its role in education is needed.

Such understating could be based on a theoretical framework of philosophy of technology that studies human-technology relations, namely postphenomenology developed by Don Ihde with four relations introduced to analyze the role of technology in human life: Embodiment, Hermeneutics, Alterity, and Background. [1] These four relations can be used to analyze Generative AI as an educational technology in the intelligent era.

In Embodiment Relations Generative AI is opening the way for personalization of education and the learning process, attuned to each individual’s personal needs and expectations. In Hermeneutics Relations Generative AI generates new content thereby offering a new perspective for understanding and interpreting the world as well as gaining knowledge about it. In Alterity Relations Generative AI is viewed as quasi-other with which both students and staff can engage in a natural language dialogue that can be productive for educational purposes. Moreover, both the dialogue with AI and new content generated by AI in the process of this dialogue as answers to questions posed by students and staff is to become a part of the learning process. In Background Relations Generative AI will become an everyday part of educational reality, accustomed to insomuch as to become unnoticed and to operate in the background like textbooks, personal computers or the Internet connectivity today. As a result, Generative AI will be taken for granted as an intrinsic part of educational reality of tomorrow.

The paper presents the findings from interviews with teachers who have incorporated Generative AI technologies into their classrooms. We utilize postphenomenological methods to investigate how teachers perceive AI, focusing specifically on the dynamics between themselves, technological artifacts, and the world. The results demonstrate that the proposed framework, which views education as "a complex system of post-phenomenological relationships between students, technology, and the world," [2] helps to conceptualize and systematize the various roles of Generative AI in the learning process.

References:
[1] D. Ihde, Postphenomenology and Technoscience: The Peking University Lectures. Albany: SUNY Press, 2009.
[2] G. Wellner and I. Levin, “Ihde meets Papert: Combining Postphenomenology and Constructionism for a Future Agenda of Philosophy of Education in the Era of Digital Technologies,” Learning, Media and Technology, September 6, 2023.

Keywords:

Digital technologies, artificial intelligence, generative AI, education, postphenomenology.