Frankenstein, Emile, ChatGPT: Educating AI between Natural Learning and Artificial Monsters

The emergence of ChatGPT, and other generative AI (GenAI) tools, has elicited dystopian and utopian proclamations concerning their potential impact on education. This paper suggests that responses to GenAI are based on often-implicit perceptions of naturalness and artificiality. To examine the depiction and function of these concepts, Gideon Dishon analyzes two pivotal texts in thinking about the natural and artificial — Emile and Frankenstein. These are complemented by a third text — a “conversation” between Microsoft's Bing chatbot and New York Times columnist Kevin Roose. Analyses of the natural–artificial relations across the three texts are explored along three key educational aspects: (i) the child's innate nature; (ii) how learning takes place; and (iii) the educators' role. These analyses offer three key implications for thinking about the natural–artificial in education in general, and with respect to AI specifically: (1) illuminating the centrality and ambiguity of notions of naturalness in educational discourse, often conflating its descriptive and normative use; (2) outlining how the natural and artificial are dialectically constructed across the three texts, with an emphasis on the relational view of artificiality in Frankenstein; (3) suggesting that what is novel about GenAI is not its artificial intelligence (AI), but rather its “artificial emotions” (AE) — the emotions attributed to it by humans, and the ensuing relations humans develop with such machines.