Neal Stephenson’s Remarks on AI from NZ

Today, quite suddenly, billions of people have access to AI systems that provide augmentations, and inflict amputations, far more substantial than anything McLuhan could have imagined. This is the main thing I worry about currently as far as AI is concerned. I follow conversations among professional educators who all report the same phenomenon, which is that their students use ChatGPT for everything, and in consequence learn nothing. We may end up with at least one generation of people who are like the Eloi in H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine, in that they are mental weaklings utterly dependent on technologies that they don’t understand and that they could never rebuild from scratch were they to break down.

Before I give a counterpoint, I do want to note the irony that even now people do not understand how this stuff works. It’s math, all the way down. It shouldn’t work, frankly… but it does!

I think that is so beautiful. We don’t really understand much about our universe, like dark matter, gravity, all number of naturally-occurring phenomena.

But just because we don’t understand it doesn’t mean we can’t harness it to do amazing things.

As far as the students using ChatGPT… I mean, yeah, it’s painfully obvious to most teachers I chat with when their kids use the tech to get by.

I would posit, though, that this is the history of education in general. We teach students truths about the world, and they go out and show us how those truths are not entirely accurate anymore.

Sure, some kids will certainly use ChatGPT to compose an entire essay, which circumvents the entire point of writing an essay in the first place: practicing critical thinking skills. That’s bad, and an obvious poor use of the tool.

But think of the kids who are using AI to punch up their thoughts, challenge their assumptions with unconsidered angles, and communicate their ideas with improved clarity. They’re using the tool as intended.

That makes me so excited about the future. That’s what I hope teachers lean into with artificial intelligence.

(via Simon)