AI-assisted convenience and social relationships

He used to contact me for unravelling the intricacies of English officialese, as he was a clerk with a tenuous command of English in an office where I also worked. I gladly helped him. We had been on excellent terms for a good while. Then he was transferred somewhere, but remained in contact with me to seek help in writing clerical correspondence and decoding its gobbledygook. Abruptly, he went mute. I often contacted him to revive the relationship but he didn't answer any of my many calls. In fact, he ghosted me.

Being an English teacher was once a challenging job. In our culture, an English teacher's knowledgeability is tested with bilingual conundrums. He is asked the English translation of tiindaey, surmay daani, azaar bnd silaii, gilli danda, murgha bn'na and of that ilk. He was all at sea when students asked him to translate the knotty sentences. The likes are: Kal dau tarah k hotay hein; wo gya aesa gya k bs gya hi gya; meri bla se wo kal ko jaata aaj jae.

Now, teachers don't feel embarrassed. Either students ask such riddles no more, or teachers have a go-to companion in challenging situations. Yes, the generative AI large language models (LLMs). In the above two situations, the common thing is LLMs. However, the tragic thing is it all happens at the cost of human interactions. The clerk now resorts to LLMs installed on his mobile phone. The AI chatbots have replaced me.

Those were the days -- the days sans digital screen -- when teachers gave students quirky sentences for translation. The sentences would become hot topics at family dinners and among friends. Sometimes, teachers would get involved in healthy debates over grammatical constructions. People sought an English virtuoso for written speeches. He would earn respect and social connections in return.

But now, students do all their homework or translations with the help of AI language models. Social experience of learning is bypassed. No doubt, AI-assisted learning convenience can help shy students, but it fails to provide them with experiences and reciprocity, which are prerequisites for reducing shyness. Real interactions forge new neural pathways, which convenient digital exchanges can't.

Social disconnectedness has already been recognised as a global epidemic. Human presence and human interactions seem to be at stake with a growing lack of symbiotic interdependence. The individualistic self-sufficiency -- technology is sponsoring -- is the harbinger of desocialisation of man. Over-reliance upon GAI will erode human social presence, whose fundamental components are intimacy and immediacy -- the two core relationships GAI is incapacitated from getting along in.

Accepted that knowledge, better call it information, of both teachers and students will increase vicariously, mutual or group discussions would become extinct. Pedagogy will turn cold. Now, a teacher will be tested but in a different frame when AI generated assignments will be submitted for evaluation. He will have to think hundreds of times to point out any mistake. As a last resort, he will tick it all good. Again, human communication goes mute.

Cory Doctorow, a science fiction author and journalist, espouses the idea of enshittification -- gradual deterioration of digital platforms and devices, hence proportionally spoiling human capital. Lauren Leek, a social data scientist on machine learning, writes in her Substack post, "Enshittification means things get worse. Standardisation means things get more like." She foresees homogeneity in human thinking patterns as they feed upon standardised GAI responses. "Quirkiness is taken out," she asserts. The relational blandness spawns loneliness, social isolation and reduced social integration.

The plight might worsen with chatbots being replaced with AI agents like Muse and dots – the digital assistants that use our devices for us. We will not contact anyone but these AI agents to do more complicated things like applying for jobs or booking restaurants.

Albert Bandura's social learning theory posits that 'people acquire new behaviours, attitudes and emotional reactions by observing and imitating others within a social context.' It emphasises observational learning, which is acquiring new or changed behaviour by watching others.