AIs can pass SATs. So, what does this tell us about SATs?

So, a machine can achieve about an average score on a SAT (scholastic assessment test). This is a cool achievement. What interests me more, though, is what this tells us about SATs.

Passing a SAT is presumably meant to show that someone is capable of something other than passing a SAT. But of course it doesn’t. Just like many of the people that are forced to sit these barbaric, ill-considered things, this machine is no more capable of applying that knowledge than a toaster. We need to put an end to this kind of meaningless, inhuman, illusory and deeply harmful approach to assessment and we need to do it now. It kills motivation, kills learning, kills teaching, causes untold suffering, and it doesn’t even do what it is supposed to do in the first place.

Address of the bookmark: http://www.businessinsider.com/allen-institute-ai-solves-geometry-sat-2015-9

I am a professional learner, employed as a Full Professor and Associate Dean, Learning & Assessment, at Athabasca University, where I research lots of things broadly in the area of learning and technology, and I teach mainly in the School of Computing & Information Systems. I am a proud Canadian, though I was born in the UK. I am married, with two grown-up children, and three growing-up grandchildren. We all live in beautiful Vancouver.

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