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The unregulated neoliberal world order, characterised by profit-over-people capitalistic tendencies, led to the development of generative artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot called ChatGPT by OpenAI on 30 November 2022. Since then, there has been a proliferation of many chatbots in different names, capacities, and forms. A fierce competition now exists in the development, trial testing, procurement, and utilisation of chatbots in various endeavours of humanity. 

A big issue, which is yet to be well addressed, lies in the fact that another technology-induced clash of civilisation and erosion of values would become inevitable should we continue in this quest to develop more sophisticated chatbots without regulating the ones that are already operational worldwide. This article explores the benefit of generative AI in education and health, its limitations, and the need to regulate it in the two critical sectors fostering  sustainability in human civilisation.
 
The AI Race

The existence of chatbots has sparked a race to develop additional chatbots that serve various aspects of human endeavours. We now have several chatbots, including Claude, Gemini, Copilot, and Perplexity. ChatGPT has about 800 million users on a weekly basis. This enviable user base, coupled with its subscription-based options, has also generated $10 billion in the form of annual recurring revenues. 

About 7% of prompts used in interacting with ChatGPT in the global arena fall under the purview of education and academia. It should be noted that, in the global AI race, the United States, China, and Europe are the top countries. They represent the triad, while other countries from other continents are under-represented or lacking all the needed resources, skills, and competencies to compete favourably against the US and China, the two dominant countries in the race.

AI Boon

In the area of education and healthcare, AI has been able to assist students with personalised learning. The prompting skills of such learners, coupled with their critical thinking capacities, will go a long way to shield them against hallucinations – as the incorrect or misleading results that AI models generate are known. 

In healthcare, many scientists have been able to leverage AI in predicting some ailments that conventional medical practitioners have failed to prognosticate. In July 2025, surgeons at San Camillo-Forlanini Hospital in Rome performed a robotic-AR-assisted adrenal surgery, using the Surgeree XR platform paired with Apple Vision Pro. The technology overlaid detailed 3D imagery onto the patient’s anatomy during the robotic procedure, giving the surgical team unprecedented precision and control while minimising blood loss and stabilising outcomes. 

Before then, in June 2024, a milestone in remote medicine was achieved: a surgeon in Rome successfully performed a radical prostatectomy on a patient in Beijing, leveraging robotic arms controlled via 5G and fibre-optic networks. The operation, conducted across 8,000 km, recorded a latency low enough to feel like an on-site procedure, pointing to a future where distance no longer limits lifesaving surgical expertise. 

These breakthroughs aren’t just technological theatre. They signal a shift toward precision, equity, and accessibility in medicine where expertise travels digitally, and patients benefit without borders.

The generative AI race has also generated employment and revenue opportunities for the countries and companies leading in development. For example, OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, and Anthropic have collectively created tens of thousands of jobs in AI research, cloud computing, and safety testing. Nations such as the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia have invested heavily in AI healthcare startups and medical research centres, seeking to diversify their economies and reduce dependency on oil. In Africa, Kenya has become a hub for data-labelling jobs, where workers help train AI systems, though often under exploitative conditions.

Limitations and Unhelpful Dependency

However, chatbots lack some of the qualities of a teacher, such as loyalty, emotional intelligence, confidentiality, empathy, and expertise. Teachers constitute some of the basic components needed in providing and sustaining quality education. But most chatbots have limited knowledge in terms of history, aesthetics, and value judgement. They lack the pedagogical skills needed to initiate a topic, generate verifiable information, and disseminate such quality information to all learners at the same time. 

Also, learners in recent times have lost confidence in personally writing term papers, tests, and examinations. For example, in the United Kingdom, about 7,000 students used one form of generative chatbot or the other to perform their school-related tasks. Such an inimical act has prompted some schools to revert back to handwritten test and examination format, a replica of asking someone to use a typewriter in the digital era we are in. These trends have also been reported at higher education levels, which play the gatekeeper role in knowledge generation, validation, and dissemination. 

Recent reports from Retraction Watch have revealed a rising rate of journal article retractions, which has occurred due to the use of chatbots mostly in the sciences and other health-related fields of study. As such, the end product of a scientific enquiry may no longer be trusted in terms of accuracy and ethical considerations in the conduct of research.

Chatbots have created a technologically induced dependency that is capable of eroding human autonomy. Alarmingly, some teachers have also exhibited some addiction to the use of AI in generating lecture notes with little or no critical thinking scrutiny. Thus, in a world where teachers and learners cannot think independently or embark on rigorous research, how then can we preserve the legacies of unlocking the future doors of civilisation wearing the low-confidence cap that has made a caricature of the values of hard work that are usually associated with education?

Most philosophers, like Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates, did not rely on any artificial intelligence in order to discover most of the ideas and schools of thought that shaped the world. And it should be noted that the use of artificial intelligence will likely perpetuate the AI literacy gap between the global North and South. This will further exacerbate the existing literacy gap that has been in existence for decades now.

Imperative of Regulation

These developments show that while AI creates economic opportunities, they are unevenly distributed across the globe. They indicate that without deliberate efforts the same race could destabilise the very sectors it seeks to transform. Happily, UNESCO’s Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence (2021), the European Union’s AI Act (2024), and Nigeria’s Draft National AI Strategy (2023) provide early models of regulation, though uneven in scope and enforcement. 

The path forward requires recognising AI not as an unstoppable doom nor as a guaranteed boom but as a double-edged tool. Its integration into classrooms and clinics should be coupled with regulation, ethical safeguards, and AI literacy efforts, particularly in under-represented regions. Only then can humanity harness AI to sustain, rather than erode, civilisation’s foundations.

Emordi Promise Jude is Lecturer in the Arts and Humanities Department, Delta State Polytechnic, Ogwashi-Uku, Nigeria. Ater Solomon Vendaga is Research and Programs Associate, Sabilaw Foundation, Abuja.