I have recently had the chance to read Ethan Mollick’s book Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI and I find it to be extremely helpful and packed with enlightening insights about AI and its impact on education, creativity, and productivity.

I have been strongly advocating the embrace of AI in education and one of the things I keep saying especially to teachers skiptical about this new-old technology is that AI is here to stay and will only get more and more powerful. We cannot simply bury our heads in the sand and pretend nothing is going on.

The entire educational landscape is undergoing an unprecedented change because of this technology. Our students are already using it almost on a daily basis plus the educational potential of AI is so huge to ignore.

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From getting help with creating engaging lesson plans to generating custom feedback and streamlining repetitive administrative tasks, generative AI is becoming an indispensable actor in the learning-teaching equation.

Of course, AI, like any other technology, comes with its own set of limitations especially in what pertains to issues related to plagiarism, copyright, bias, inaccuracies, hallucinations, privacy, academic dishonesty, disinformation, among others (I have covered these limitations in depth in my book ChatGPT for Teachers).

However, just because a tool has limitations does not mean we should dismiss its potential entirely. Instead, we need to approach AI with an informed and abbalanced perspective, one that capitalizes on its strengths while remaining vigilant about its shortcomings.

Mollick’s book Co-Intelligences echoes this very idea by emphasizing the importance of a collaborative approach between humans and AI. I have amply talked about this approach in my previous posts on educational AI but never had the vocabulary to articulate it as effectively as Mollick does. His framing of AI as a “co-intelligence” provides a powerful lens through which to view its role in education and beyond. As Mollick states:

“Now humans have access to a tool that can emulate how we think and write, acting as a co-intelligence to improve (or replace) our work. But many of the companies developing AI are going further, hoping to create a sentient machine, a truly new form of co-intelligence that would coexist with us on Earth.” (Kindle Location, 160)

As I read the book, I found myself highlighting numerous insights and ideas, many of which deeply resonated with me. In this post, I want to share some of these thought-provoking insights with you.

Takeaways from Mollick’s Book Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI

Here are some of the main Takeaways from Ethan Mollick’s book Co-Intelligence:

  1. AI as a Student’s Personal Tutor: Within days of using AI, students were asking ChatGPT to explain confusing concepts “like they were ten years old,” shifting the classroom dynamic and reducing the need to raise their hands in class.
  2. Generative AI’s Unprecedented Adoption: Generative AI like ChatGPT is a General Purpose Technology that has been adopted faster than any other in history, reaching 100 million users almost instantly because it is “free to access, available to individuals, and incredibly useful.”
  3. Unmatched Productivity Gains: AI works as a co-intelligence, augmenting human abilities and driving “20 to 80 percent improvement in productivity,” far outpacing the productivity gains of past technologies like steam power.
  4. AI as a Creativity Machine: Generative AI facilitates innovation by combining ideas in unexpected ways. It’s a “connection machine” that allows students and educators to create new knowledge and insights from seemingly unrelated concepts.
  5. The Importance of Humans in the Loop: “You will need to be able to check the AI for hallucinations and lies,” ensuring outputs are accurate, ethical, and aligned with educational goals. AI is a tool that requires critical oversight to remain effective and meaningful.
  6. Addressing Bias in AI Models: AI carries the biases of its training data, which often reflects limited perspectives. “A 2023 study by Bloomberg found that Stable Diffusion… depicted higher-paying professions as whiter and more male than they actually are.” This provides an opportunity for teaching media literacy and ethics.
  7. Empowering Struggling Writers: AI can level the playing field for students who feel held back by poor writing skills. “Thanks to AI, their written materials no longer hold them back, and they get job offers off the strength of their experience.”
  8. AI’s Evolution Is Just Beginning: Mollick suggests we “assume this is the worst AI you will ever use.” Experimenting with AI today helps educators and students prepare for its future iterations and develop skills to adapt to technological advances.
  9. Multimodal AI for Learning: AI tools are evolving to integrate text, images, and more. These “multimodal LLMs combine the powers of language models and image generators,” enabling rich, cross-disciplinary projects in classrooms.
  10. AI as a Reflection of Humanity: Generative AI is “trained on our cultural history” and mirrors the best and worst of human creativity, ethics, and biases. It raises profound questions about identity, purpose, and connection, sparking valuable classroom discussions.

Final thoughts

Co-Intelligence (affiliate link) is one of the best books I have read so far on AI. It is full of interesting insights both theoretical and pracical. The book invites you to approach AI with a bird’s-eye view encouraging you to see the bigger picture of its transformative potential while recognizing its limitations. The very concept of co-intelligence sums up the core message of the book: AI is not here to replace us but to work alongside us enhancing our abilities, creativity, and productivity. So, if you are looking for a thought-provoking read on AI, Mollick’s book is definitely worth checking out.

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