"AI is for the Ignorant" is the intriguing headline today over at Curmudgucation, where Peter Greene links to a new study suggesting that "people with lower AI literacy are more likely to perceive AI as magical and experience feelings of awe in the face of AI's execution of tasks that seem to require uniquely human attributes." So the less we understand about how Artificial Intelligence works, the more likely we are to treat the machine as an oracle, a magic wand, the answer to all our ills.
This conclusion should come as no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention, but it reinforces what I learned from reading Richard Powers's novel Playground, which, among other things, provides a compelling description of the way human beings are always looking for the next technology that promises to solve all our problems, embracing the machine with open arms until it devours us and devalues everything that makes us human.
I confess that Playground depressed the daylights out of me. Powers creates some compelling characters and really beautiful descriptions of undersea wonders, but in the end the novel convinced me that we've already passed a crucial tipping point--and I can't see a way back.
I can't fully articulate my fears without sounding like a cranky old Luddite yearning for the days of yore, but I find it alarming that this surge of trust in our Robot Overlords comes at a time when intellectual pursuits are treated with distrust and contempt. Who needs intellectual curiosity, critical thinking skills, depth and breadth of understanding when all answers can be provided by an electronic Oracle we carry in our pockets?
To pose the question another way: If our awe for AI leads us to outsource our thinking to the machine, haven't we already given up on what makes us human?
And once our thinking skills have atrophied sufficiently, will we even realize what we've lost?
Questions like these have been keeping me up at night and making me wonder why I even bother trying to light a spark of intellectual curiosity among my students. A century ago T.S. Eliot characterized poetry as "fragments ... shored against my ruins," but now the ruins are piled higher and deeper--and who wants to excavate the ruins when this shiny new Oracle offers instant magic?
In the midst of these messages of woe, I'm looking for some evidence that while we may have sold our souls for a mess of pottage, the universe offers a generous return policy and it may not be too late to restore our souls to full working order. But I don't see it. Can someone show me a ray of hope?
1 comment:
I can, i think, offer a ray of hope in what i do see as a spreading puddle of hopelessness. That hope was in your last post about teaching students to feel like and to be writers. Writing is thinking, organizing thoughts, creating, and gives a sense of personal accomplishment. Getting a student (or anyone else) to think of himself/herself as a person who can purposefully write is a true accomplishment and a doable goal. And it’s also a worthy strike against artificial intelligence. I remember well my own sense of pride and accomplishment when i realized i could put words and thoughts on paper in a way that affected and informed and sometimes entertained others. And i was able because of training and confidence to do it more competently than many others, and was at last able to call myself a writer. So…keep up the work you’re doing. AI may beat us, but at least we’ll be able to write intelligently about our defeat. 😱
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