Critical thinking and reasoning are necessary weapons in the battle against looming armies of Artificial Intelligence and ChatGPT-generated misinformation. It would be irresponsible not to arm students appropriately.

Teaching logic – both formal and informal – in high school classrooms could allow students to effectively assess and analyze the data that confronts them, so that they are not at the mercy of the constant flow of information, but rather skilled and confident navigators of the sea of knowledge.

According to California’s newly adopted AI and ChatGPT guidelines, at least part of the means to “empower our students to navigate the digital landscape with confidence” lies in “fostering critical thinking.”

ChatGPT’s developers have acknowledged that the program does indeed engage in what are called “hallucinations,” sometimes citing nonexistent sources or relaying on inaccurate or made-up historical facts. ChatGPT, while confidently presenting answers to users under the veneer of cybernetic authority, still gets it wrong sometimes.

Those looking to make use of ChatGPT’s capabilities to explore academic questions, social issues or historical queries are, therefore, opening themselves up to the possibility of being misled, even if the responses given them have all the appearance and form of legitimate answers.

ChatGPT has the potential to inundate students with rapid-fire information, some of which is either misleading or outright false. Students must be equipped with the tools to reason effectively, or else risk being led astray by technology that is, as of yet, unable to really distinguish between true or false answers.

A 2009 study by Jerusalem College of Technology  indicated that high school students, rather than being too intellectually immature for such classes, were able to reap measurable benefits from dedicated classroom instruction in logic.

The impetus for that study? The “rapid changes in information technology” and the need for students to be able to ably and discerningly make sense of them. Fourteen years later, with the advent of generative AI, that need is surely greater than ever.