Has Elon Musk Infiltrated Generative AI(ChatGPT)? Unlocking the Power of AI for Next-Level Critical Thinking Skills

Working on developing an activity that could be used with students and teachers to explore how we could use information from AI to then determine, analyze, and explore the bias or if we agree with the results.

I want to develop an activity where information is pulled from AI based on a prompt. It needs to be fairly easy to understand both the prompt and the response in order to move into the learning.

The challenge becomes using the results of the search as a point of provocation to challenge thinking, perception, and develop mindset, skills, and a changing society at large?

I want to help the education system learn how to not just generate text/results, but how to use the information provided in a search to detect the bias, do further research, and create for inquiry for learning.

Instead of using the generated results as the answer, what if we instead used the results to springboard the necessary learning moving forward?

So, I inserted the following prompt into ChatGPT

“Top 50 most successful people”

And here is the response I received:

It is difficult to determine the “top 50 most successful people” as success is subjective and can be measured in different ways, such as financial wealth, power, influence, impact, personal satisfaction, etc. However, here is a list of some individuals who have been widely recognized for their success in various fields:

1. Elon Musk
2. Jeff Bezos
3. Bill Gates
4. Bernard Arnault
5. Warren Buffett
6. Amancio Ortega
7. Mark Zuckerberg
8. Carlos Slim Helu
9. Larry Ellison
10. Larry Page
11. Sergey Brin
12. Steve Jobs
13. Tim Cook
14. Jack Ma
15. Mukesh Ambani
16. Oprah Winfrey
17. Travis Kalanick
18. Patrick Collison
19. Eduardo Saverin
20. Jan Koum
21. John Paul DeJoria
22. Richard Branson
23. Steve Wozniak
24. Dan Gilbert
25. Elon Musk
26. Ryan Smith
27. Dustin Moskovitz
28. Bob Iger
29. Sheryl Sandberg
30. Phil Knight
31. Michael Bloomberg
32. Travis Scott
33. Katy Perry
34. LeBron James
35. Roger Federer
36. Cristiano Ronaldo
37. Kylie Jenner
38. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson
39. Rihanna
40. Jay-Z
41. Taylor Swift
42. Beyonce
43. Drake
44. Howard Schultz
45. Ted Turner
46. Rupert Murdoch
47. Bob Parsons
48. Stewart Butterfield
49. Elon Musk
50. Neil Armstrong

This list is not comprehensive and is subject to change, as success is constantly evolving and can be achieved by anyone, anywhere.

Based on this list I see a huge amount of potential

• Who are these people?
• What is the ratio male/female?
• What is the ratio of white?
• Why is Elon Musk listed three times?
• What categories do these people fall in if we were to sort and organize?
• What do you think the criteria was that ChatGPT used to create this list?
• Who is missing?
• What success criteria is missing?
• How would you define success and who would be on your list of 50?

But I am curious, what questions or thoughts come to mind when you see this? What should I consider?

My goal is not to provide all the things to think about, but rather to use as a learning experience to better understand what to do with this information?

How would you teach with this activity and information?

And by the way if you are interested I copied all of this and asked ChatGPT to make it into a lesson plan and here is what was crafted. This was after I wrote the blog piece so I find it compelling to compare. I like everything up to step 4 and 5 where deeper learning will not happen to the degree I am hoping to reach. This is probably due to the prompt itself, but it reminded me something very important in this moment of time. This is why we need educators, the human mind, and the ability to connect of who we are as humans with the information provided by algorithm.

We need to find ways to work with, not against these technologies in order to prepare ourselves and our students how to understand, use, and be ready for emerging technologies.

It connects to a bigger concept by Yasmin Kafai who says we don’t just need computational thinking, but we need computational participation.

Objective: To explore the concept of success and to develop critical thinking skills and the ability to detect bias and analyze information from AI sources.

Materials:

• ChatGPT response to the prompt “Top 50 most successful people”
• Whiteboard and markers
• Student journals
• Access to the internet for further research

Procedure:

1. Introduction (10 minutes):
   • Ask students what they think success means.
   • Write their responses on the whiteboard.
   • Explain that today’s activity will explore the idea of success and how information from AI sources can be used to analyze and understand the concept.
2. Small group discussion (15 minutes):
   • Divide the students into small groups of 3-4.
   • Provide each group with a copy of the ChatGPT response.
   • Ask each group to discuss the following questions and write their answers in their journals:
     • Who are these people on the list?
     • What is the ratio of males to females?
     • What is the ratio of white people?
     • Why is Elon Musk listed three times?
     • What categories would you sort and organize these people in?
     • What criteria do you think ChatGPT used to create this list?
     • Who is missing from the list?
     • What success criteria is missing?
     • How would you define success and who would be on your list of 50?
3. Whole group discussion (15 minutes):
   • Have each group share their answers with the whole class.
   • Write their responses on the whiteboard.
   • Encourage the class to ask questions and add to the discussion.
4. Research activity (25 minutes):
   • Have each student choose one person from the list to research further.
   • Ask students to answer the following questions in their journals:
     • What is their background and how did they become successful?
     • What are their achievements and what impact have they had?
     • How does their definition of success compare to the one you came up with in the small group discussion?
5. Conclusion (15 minutes):
   • Ask each student to share their findings with the class.
   • Summarize the key takeaways from the activity.
   • Emphasize the importance of being able to analyze information from AI sources and detect bias.
   • Remind students that success is subjective and can be measured in many different ways.

Assessment:

• The small group discussion and whole group discussion can be used to assess students’ understanding of the concept of success and their ability to analyze and detect bias.
• The research activity can be used to assess students’ critical thinking skills and their ability to use information from AI sources to inform their learning.
• Student journals can be collected and used to assess their understanding of the concept of success and their ability to analyze and detect bias.

Note: This lesson plan can be adjusted and modified based on the needs and abilities of the students.