Can Artificial Intelligence solve the critical thinking gap?

More than 2,000 years ago, Socrates introduced a method of teaching that formed a key foundation for education, innovation, and reasoning in the Western world - until about 40 years ago, when indoctrination-style lectures often supplanted it.

With a reported 70% of high school students graduating below grade level in reading and math, the additional lack of critical thinking skills compounds the challenges they face in finding meaningful employment and building the kind of lives their parents enjoyed.

The question is whether Artificial Intelligence can address the problem of teaching critical thinking. Since we now have two generations of teachers who have never learned these skills, very few teachers remain—except possibly in the best of our schools—who can pass this marvelous invention along to future generations.

AI offers promising possibilities. Students can assign the AI system to the role of a teacher or professor with whom a student can carry on guided discussions on selected topics or essays. Simple tests have shown extraordinary capabilities, so it should be possible to develop curricula that teach both students and their teachers the lost art of Socratic questioning and critical thinking.

The responsibility now falls to institutes focused on ethical AI use to help guide educational initiatives that use 21st-century tools to preserve a 2,400-year-old tradition.