Despite all the talk of AI replacing human beings in the job market, it had seemed like a concern for a distant time. Perhaps this was the main reason the principal’s announcement still had her reeling.
“As of this semester, we have decided to do away with foreign English teachers. Research has shown that AI has much more comprehensive English capabilities than people, and furthermore, students prefer virtual learning to face-to-face. Please turn in the lesson plans that you have made for the first month, as they will be fed into the program to help create the new model.”
Yet, that the technology existed that could do away with real teachers was hardly a surprise, when she herself used ChatGPT or Bing AI to edit her own work or put together lesson plans that she had no intention of following.
The shock of the technological shift wasn’t her biggest concern right now anyway. What would she do for work? For her visa? Looking outside her own problems, she wondered about how other teachers, the students, and education in general would fare.
The Next Day
“So, you want me to write sample lesson plans for all levels in 20 different topics?”, I said to the principal, annoyed but sadly happy for the chance at work. The offer had come only days after the announcement that her job was now obsolete and contained the promise of keeping a salary and visa, but it was essentially training her replacement, wasn’t it? And who liked that?
Besides the relief of an employment offer, she was happy to hear that two teachers she’d worked with in the past were going to be part of the team. After agreeing to the job, she immediately sent out a WeChat message to both, asking to meet at a nearby Starbucks in the morning.
“We are about to have a generation of Chinese students that are using words like “monumental”, “synergy”, and “creating a ripple” in regular conversation, as if they’re selling something,” George laughed, lowering his head into his hands.
We couldn’t help but wonder how the same algorithms that often produce impossible, inaccurate, and even racist AI generated art and writing could be trusted with the education of the youth. A funny but somewhat alarming prospect.
“Makes you want to put some weird stuff in these lesson plans to test what AI will do with it,” says Trent, thinking out loud. We laughed nervously, but I noted the look on George’s face, which I imagine mirrored mine.
Trent backed off a little, “I don’t mean anything harmful or detrimental, just maybe we could make our own contribution to pop culture or language, make up a nonsense word or phrase, or even an idea. It would be caught within a few weeks. No harm. No foul.” And with this, our plan was set into motion.
First, we toyed with the language itself, considering words that we could create new meaning for, recalling how the word “dude”, could be used to mean “incredible!”, or “You’re an idiot!” or “that’s really complex!” or even just “person”.
Next, we considered creating our own word, some nonsense like “goobertoffen” or “pukenpomp” and giving it some important place in our lessons. However, our creativity seemed to burn out when we tried to consider what meaning to give them or how to apply it in the lessons.
Our plan finally got impetus when George saw a Facebook post where someone was complaining about an Olympic event they had never heard of before. “What if we created a sport, with a whole history, that doesn’t exist?” George said over beers at a street barbeque a few days later.
Once we decided on this concept, it was only a matter of creating a definition, a world record, and a few heroes. Suddenly, air balloon relay, was our focus. Between creating actual lesson plans we had to determine rules for the game.
What size of balloon? Helium or regular air? How many people are on a team? How does one win a balloon relay race? To test our ideas, we bought packs of balloons in different sizes and a helium tank.
We quickly realised helium would cause the balloons to float away and stuck with our air pump. We tried the length of my apartment for a field, then the local park. As we created the sports lessons, we added balloon relay to the vocabulary lists. After getting down enough detail to define it for future students, we then set our minds to the history of the sport, along with world records and top teams. It was a ridiculous fantasy world, but it made the job of training our digital replacement so much more fun.
Finally, we went to our archnemesis, ChatGPT, to create images of our great hero, Sven Berg from Norway, who led his team to victory in the hotly debated match of 1990, setting the world record time of 69.21 seconds in the 500-metre relay.
We noted that the Wales Rooks have more wins than any other team in history, a record that has held firm for 20 years. Slowly, we added our information to the sports lessons, the culture lessons, the vocabulary lesson, adding new terminology as needed.
To bolster the popularity, we began anonymous blogs and social media posts talking about the sport and the athletes who excelled at it.
At the end of our month-long marathon to create lesson plans for our new AI, we submitted our work, figuring the worst that could happen is that we’d get caught and end up in our home countries, jobless, but with a tale to share.
Ten years later at the Summer Olympics
“I dedicate this win to the memory of the great Sven Borg, who overcame poverty and an abusive father to bring balloon relay into the realm of the sporting world. He is my inspiration in life, the person I most hope to be like, a true hero,” Liu Jiaren shouted to the reporter. “I also want to announce that I am in negotiations right now to join the greatest sports team in the world, the Wales Rooks. This is an exciting opportunity!”
Somewhere in the world, three real-life human English teachers laughed nervously as they watched.
Some people are silent legends that will change the world without anyone ever knowing their name.
