AI + AI = AI

To be honest, I really can’t believe no-one appears to have ‘generated’ this equation yet amongst the kerfuffle around generative AI. So, let this post be me staking a claim for what I hope will be a ‘go-to’ simplification of the key issue that educators in both the compulsory and post-compulsory sectors are (or likely should be) grappling with. I know it might ruffle mathematician or science colleagues’ ordered feathers but I feel like it could be a useful starting or continuation point for dialogue about productive and future-facing responses to the popularisation of AI generators like ChatGPT (text) and Midjourney (Image).

Basically, this is what each AI means:

• First AI = Artificial Intelligence
• Second AI = Academic Integrity
• Third AI = Assessment Innovation

In other words, we have these generative tools popularly and collectively referred to as AI (Please don’t @ me on any inaccuracy of this naming phenomenon, I have nailed my colours to the ‘path of least resistance’ mast already) which when coupled with implications of and concerns about academic integrity lead us to the necessity of assessment innovation. 

I mean it really as a provocation or as a stimulus for critique so the most important question is: What do you think?

Perhaps also, we might consider other possible solutions to the ‘sum’?

• E.g. AI + AI = BI? (Ban it)

Or maybe there’s a better or alternative way of representing the debates pseudo-mathematically?

• AI³ ? 
• AI – AI = AA (academic anarchy)?

Incidentally, I asked Midjourney to generate a suitable image using only “AI + AI = AI” as the prompt and this is one of its offerings:

Make of that what you will. Finally, and just because it’s what we all seem to be doing now in this context, I also asked ChatGPT what AI+AI=AI meant and I actually quite appreciated the response:

“If you wrote “AI + AI = AI,” you may be referring to the concept of artificial intelligence (AI) self-improvement. The equation suggests that when you add an AI system to another AI system, the result is still AI. This could imply that AI has the potential to improve itself through learning from other AI systems, leading to even more advanced AI.”