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Human Learning Culture in and Age of AI PDF
Human Learning Culture in and Age of AI PDF
Thomas Schalow
University of Marketing and Distribution Sciences (Kobe, Japan)
ijinkan@mac.com
Abstract
Scientific journals and the popular press enjoy speculating about when artificial
intelligence (AI) will exceed human intelligence. It is not necessary to accept the thesis of
artificial intelligence surpassing human intelligence in its entirety in order to debate its
implications. We are already able to see evidence that technology is changing the means for
delivering and our definition of education. This paper considers what type of education will
be appropriate in an age of advanced artificial intelligence.
The future challenge for humanity in an age of advanced artificial intelligence will be
to imagine a curriculum and education that does more than merely transfer tacit skills from
one individual to another. It is likewise important to examine the appropriate function of
education in promoting a collective human intelligence that benefits both the individual and
humanity as a whole.
1. INTRODUCTION
It would be comforting to assume the high rate of unemployment we see in many
countries today is a temporary phenomenon and all can be made well by improving the labor
force through appropriate education. The facts, however, suggest that former US Treasury
Secretary Lawrence Summers [1] and authors such as Martin Ford [2] are correct when they
say we have entered an era characterized by extremely high levels of prolonged, structural
unemployment. Computer algorithms are now eliminating service jobs formerly done by
highly trained individuals while robotics and automation continue to displace industrial
workers. Welcome to Stanley Aronwitz’s [3] Jobless Future! In this future an educational
system designed to train workers for employment will become as incongruous and obsolete as
the jobs it was designed to train for. We need, therefore, to create an educational system and
curriculum that prepares us for life in an age of advanced artificial intelligence.
It would be difficult to overstate the effect the advent of human level artificial
intelligence (HLAI) will have on our lives. Few people are prepared to accept the idea and
implications that humanity will one day join other biological organisms as a lower form of
intelligence. We do not need to accept the idea in its entirety, however, in order to embrace
the conviction that education needs to be more than it is today. In our present age education
functions more to instill values of obedience and obligation, designed to maximize economic
growth and societal harmony, than to promote individual development. People have until now
accepted narrow “training” rather than broad “education” because it seemed to guarantee a
secure and prosperous future. Take away the reward of a job, however, and much of education
seems pointless, condescending and abusive. The present educational system has trapped us in
Max Weber’s “iron cage,” encouraging us to live efficient lives based on conformity.
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need no longer consist of training for a job or the socialization required for adapting to the
workplace.
In the absence of the constraints we faced in the past due to the need to work, we will
once again discover the only truly essential skill humans or any other species need possess is
the ability to adapt and respond to change in the environment. We must therefore teach and
learn how to change, and particularly learn how to easily shift between different frames of
reference. When we are no longer the dominant species we will no longer be able to define
what our environment will be, but we will need to survive no matter what conditions are
presented to us. Education therefore needs to proceed from the premise that what needs to be
learned does not remain static. The ability to reproduce answers that were correct or relevant
in the past does not constitute intelligence. Since much of present education consists almost
entirely of this skill there will be much to change in our understanding of education.
Another premise education needs to be based upon is the idea that the only true form of
understanding is “deep learning.” Deep learning requires that learners be able to look for
patterns and underlying principles within information and examine alternate possibilities and
ideas. The importance of this type of learning explains the paradox Neisser [11] observed
when he noted that individuals who perform well in academic settings did not necessarily
thrive in real-world settings. Students were often not prepared to deal with problems outside
an academic setting because in schools they had learned only how to solve problems that were
1) well defined 2) already formulated by others 3) complete in the information required to
solve the problem 4) defined by one correct answer and one correct method of arriving at that
answer and 5) simplified in order to make solving the problem easier. In contrast, everyday
practical problems in non-academic settings tend to be unformatted or in need of reframing,
contain incomplete information, and are characterized by multiple possible solutions, with
none of the solutions obviously optimal. Solving these types of problems is certainly
something we need to emphasize.
Human education evolved to enable humans to solve problems – human problems. AI
will certainly change the world as we know it, but AI does not yet and perhaps never will
grasp the human concept of the “problem” itself. It is the human being that assigns value to
information and the phenomena of nature. It is the human being that recognizes problems to
be solved. These are not characteristics of the AI we know today. Google, as AI rather than as
a company, does not know how to solve problems of poverty, hunger, or disease because it
does not recognize these as problems. It merely records their existence. I expect we will
continue to need to solve our own problems in the future because AI will either not
understand the nature of our human problems or not care about them.
AI also does not yet understand wisdom, and it is this concept I hope our future
education will focus on. Training an animal to do circus tricks does not make the animal more
intelligent or raise its consciousness. Humans have not become more intelligent merely
because they have learned how to perform tasks that have some economic significance.
Education can accomplish more than mere circus tricks if we focus on raising the
consciousness of the human species through wisdom. We might choose to define this wisdom,
as does Vaughan [12], as a type of spiritual or existential intelligence involving a search for
the meaning of life. It may, though, be something as prosaic as Sternberg’s [13] quest for
knowledge mediated by values designed to achieve a common good, balancing personal and
collective needs for the benefit of all.
5. CONCLUSIONS
If a species could anticipate what adaptation or skill set would be required to survive
there would be no extinction. Learning the same skill set that was valuable to the survival of a
species in a past context does not guarantee the continued success of the species. It is the
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ability to change and conceive of a radically different future that allows for the possibility of
continued success.
Since adaptation to a changing environment always occurs incrementally it serves only
to keep the individual or species in a state of equilibrium. When the rate of change becomes
too rapid or the degree of change too great for previous adaptations to compensate either
extinction or radical evolution occurs. I believe we are approaching that moment in our
pursuit of advanced artificial intelligence.
The most successful species are those that exhibit pre-adaptation. This occurs when a
species has developed an adaptation or skill set that, by chance, becomes useful in a new
environment that did not previously exist. However, since we can never know what that
environment might be, it is prudent for a species to allow for diversity rather than opting for
efficiency and conformity in training its young for the future.
Education today is primarily designed to achieve competence. Unfortunately, we can
never absolutely define competence for a task until after the fact. Competence is determined
by what others, and our environment, define it to be. With a different context or a different
group of actors there will be a different level of competence. As Edwin G. Boring [14]
concluded in 1923, intelligence can best be defined as “what the test tests”. Learning and
education disassociated from the concept of competence allows us to create an educational
system based once again on the humanities and a search for wisdom and goodness.
The mere fact that we are able to entertain the possibility of a world that is different
from our present world gives me hope for the future of humanity. Imagination is a skill other
biological life forms do not seem to possess, and one that artificial intelligence has not yet
developed. I believe it also offers us the opportunity to evolve into something more and better
than we are today, ending our need to engage in trivial pursuits regarding jobs. It gives us the
freedom to seek the occupation of living a good life.
Biography
REFERENCES
[1] Summers, Lawrence. “Lawrence H. Summers on the Economic Challenge of the Future:
Jobs,” The Wall Street Journal. July 7, 2014.
[2] Ford, Martin. The Lights in the Tunnel: Automation, Accelerating Technology and the
Economy of the Future. Acculant Publishing, 2009.
[3] Aronwitz, Stanley. The Jobless Future. Second Edition. Minneapolis, University of
Minnesota Press, 2010.
[4] Bostrom, Nick. Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies. Oxford, Oxford
University Pres, 2014.
[5] Zovko, Vtroslav. “Long Range Prospects of Education - From Now Until
Singularity,” Interdisciplinary Description of Complex Systems. Vol. 12, No. 2, pp. 161-
175, 2014.
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[14] Boring, Edwin G. “Intelligence as the Test Tests It,” New Republic. Vol. 36, No. 444,
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