The Creation of Myths as An Educational Strategy and Emancipatory Opportunity

Abstract

This article explores the hypothesis that in-depth transformation of education should combine the debunking of old myths and the creation of new myths. Following a brief overview of the many definitions of myth, the article looks into the myth of artificial intelligence and large language models championed by ChatGPT. It moves on to examine the opposite’ and recently developed myth of the stochastic parrot, incepted by the famous 2021 article ‘On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big?’ authored by Emily M. Bender, Timnit Gebru, Angelina McMillan-Major, and Margaret Mitchell. Analysing these myths, the article assesses the impact of demythologization and the impact of new mythologization in the context of scholarly research and education. It finds that the creation of new myths has the potential for development of critical consciousness and emancipation, confirms the hypothesis, and calls for development of ‘real-world’, impactful myths that have the power of social change.