If Generative AI can be a digital tutor, why pay for a human one?

Or do they?

I ended my last article with an interesting claim.

”So, approach the technology as a digital tutor, and as a way of enhancing your learning....”

This conclusion is a strange one for a tutor to express don’t you think? Have I just pointed my target audience to a robot?

Well, that wasn’t the plan, but given that it’s now a possibility, I best give some good reasons why you should still work with an actual tutor?

Here's the challenge:

”Why should I work with a human tutor, when it seems that Generative AI can do the same thing?”

Here are a few reasons that look good, but aren't fully convincing:

1. Generative AI is agreeable. They will likely compromise their own reasoning with enough pressure.

2. Generative AI models hallucinate. It is not uncommon for Gen AI models to produce incorrect answers to your prompts.

Both of these things are not very helpful traits for your tutor to have. But, and it pains me to admit, they are not traits that are exclusive to AI tutors.

Humans can certainly be agreeable and buckle under pressure, and are also completely fallible, and therefore prone to giving incorrect answers from time-to-time. As a result, it is possible that whichever tutor you choose, you might run into these traits.

Given that, I want to give a separate reason why I think you should work with a human tutor - a reason that demonstrates a more explicit point of difference between man and machine.

There is one fundamental reason why an actual tutor, a human tutor, is preferable to AI:

• Actual tutors are active in the learning process.

This means we interrupt patterns, question assumptions, and set expectations, and we do this when you aren’t ready for them.

This is not something that AI models are programmed to do, and for good reason. But with the right reason, it is an essential aspect to learning.

Real growth happens when you're actually challenged, not when you're seeking a challenge.

This is the fundamental difference.

AI functions only when prompted. Actual tutors function when necessary.

It's this that drives real development, and that's what you get when you work with an actual tutor.

AI is a useful aid to your academic work, but it won't transform it.

That's where the actual tutors come in.