Timothée Chalamet and the 'Saturday Night Live' cast parody the state of AI in schools
NBC/Will Heath/NBC via Getty Images
- Timothée Chalamet hosted 'SNL' and joked about AI's role in education.
- AI is being integrated into classrooms around the world.
- While it could help with personalized learning, AI's use in education has risks.
Timothée Chalamet hosted NBC's 'Saturday Night Live' this weekend. In one skit, he and the cast poked fun at the use of AI in education.
In a scene set in a classroom, cast members playing students tuned into an AI podcast meant to help them learn.
Some of the answers given by the AI hosts — played by Chalamet and cast member Bowen Yang — were humorously false, referencing AI's tendency to "hallucinate" and sometimes provide users with bizarre answers to prompts.
"The school has invested in a new AI program that takes your textbooks and turns them into an educational podcast," Ego Nwodim, portraying a teacher, said in the skit. "The technology isn't perfect, but they make it sound so casual that it doesn't even feel like homework."
After Yang experienced a glitch, the pair attempted to explain photosynthesis.
"What do plants eat if it's not, like, burgers?" Chalamet asked.
"Thank you for asking me that," Bowen said. "Plants, legit, eat light."
By the end, Chalamet and Yang undergo an existential crisis during which they question where they came from.
"Do we exist?" Chalamet asked.
"What are we? Who made us?" Yang asked. "Now, I'm mad. Now, I want revenge."
AI technology is now a major part of most industries, including business, entertainment, and law, so it's not surprising that it's also becoming a tool in the teacher's toolbox.
Local media reported this month that in Arizona, students at a virtual academy will be taught by AI for two hours each day. In London, high school students prepared for exams with personalized learning using AI, which replaced their teachers.
"Students will benefit enormously from AI-powered adaptive learning, which allows every student to learn at their own pace rather than having to keep pace with a class, which often progresses too quickly for some students and too slowly for others," a coprincipal from the David Game College told BI in August.
However, educators have also had to grapple with the pitfalls of AI, like plagiarism and wrong information.