AI and Learning

A few days ago, I had a conversation with a friend about AI. He’s a single guy who was spending some time with family, specifically his young nephew. They were talking about school. The topic of AI came up, and they talked about why he even needs to learn, what’s he learning in school. He wanted my take on it. I needed to understand where he was coming from first.

AI Can Do Everything

Artificial Intelligence is powerful, there’s no doubt about it. The past couple of years since ChatGPT have shown the true power of AI. My friend’s stance appears to be that children no longer really need to learn ‘how’ to do things like reading, writing, or ‘rithmetic. AI will do all that for them. They simply must learn how to try things with AI and can rely on it to accomplish their goals.

I knew at the time I didn’t agree, but needed space to gather my thoughts.

Creating is what defines us

At the most basic level, we exist to create. All living things possess an inherent drive to create future iterations of their genetic code. As society has advanced, people grew to want to leave some mark on the world.

Almost forty thousand years ago, people started leaving traces of their passing. A simple hand print on a cave wall is still there, showing that the person who made it existed. At the core of our being, people are driven to do something that matters, create a mark on the world. It’s probably the reason I’m sitting here, tapping away at a keyboard. Trying to leave some mark on the world.

What does this have to do with AI?

AI has stepped into a talent gap for many people. It started as an easy way to fill a need. If you can’t draw, the AI will happily create a remarkable, if somewhat off-putting image for you in moments. You could find an image that is public domain or commission art, but AI is easier.

It starts simply. I would rather not deal with getting an image. I can just describe it and the computer will generate it for me. This leads to a gap in skill. Instead of learning to create illustrations, or learning the process of procuring them and rewarding another human’s desire to create, we are offloading part of what makes us human to the machines.

Filling the Convenience Gap

That process of offloading our humanity is the crux of the issue with AI currently. It’s an incredible tool. I fear it’s going to end up replacing a part of us we don’t realize we need.

Back to my friend, who holds the belief that children don’t really need to learn how to read or write any more, thanks to AI. Offloading those tasks to a machine puts all of our dependence on the machines. My Luddite tendencies are showing when I declare that the dependence of this level on a machine is bad.

Convenience is great, but it often comes at a cost. I recently read an article about coffee that reminded me of this.

Who now has time for the Moka coffee pot ritual? Well, me, I’m a luddite when it comes to coffee. Every morning it’s wash the small copper milk pan, swill out the pot and remove the old grains. Both jobs should be done the day before, of course, but I’m rarely that organised. Load the pot back up with water and coffee, pop it on the stove, boil the milk and in ten minutes, you have a sublime cup of coffee. It’s a beautiful process.
Compare that to my Nespresso machine, which I bought in a rash moment. Switch it on, place a capsule in the hole, press down the lever to pierce the capsule and touch the cup button. Coffee comes out.
In short, we are choosing speed over, let’s be honest, taste. This reflects the constant fight of slow food over fast food. In our time-poor lives, we always need an instant solution. - Life in Spain

I’ve experienced the same thing with espresso machines. My Rancilio Silvia is currently on the counter. It takes more time and effort than the Miele super automatic machine I also have.

There is no comparing the results. Mille’s push-button coffee function provides unquestionable convenience. Silvia’s extra time and effort clearly paid off. The coffee that skill and effort produce is far superior to the coffee of convenience.

The same is true for the products of AI. Filling gaps of effort and experience comes at the cost of resulting quality.

There is a valid argument that AI will continue to improve, and soon, the output will be imperceptible to anything a human might create. I don’t know how to address this. It could happen. I hold to the ability of us as a species to discern the soul of something created by a fellow human.

Offloading Our Humanity

This brings me back to the main issue I see with offloading the work to a machine.

Growing up, I’d ask the common question in math class while holding up my TI-83

“Why do we need to learn how to do this by hand? I can just use a calculator to solve for x.” My teacher got it wrong when she said, “You won’t always have a calculator with you.” We all carry them around in our pockets. We can offload the work of computation to a device easily.

There is something to be said for building the neural pathways that allow us to understand math. This lays the foundation for understanding and solving new, previously un-encountered problems.

Novel issues are not in the domain of AI yet. It isn’t creative. If we offload our problem-solving to machines, will we be able to address these issues? Maybe, but I’m not sure.

Computation is one thing. I’d be willing to bet there are mathematicians out there who would argue solving equations is an act of creativity, and I’ll give them that, but from my experience in college, math was more computational and less creative.

Creativity is where we display our humanity. We create to express who we are and leave our mark. When handing the reins of creativity to a machine, we lose who we are.

I celebrated a birthday with family recently, and one of the messages in a card was quite clever and meaningful. Several people joked about just using ChatGPT to come up with other things like that.

Shock overcame me.

Taking something meaningful and personal. A message from one person to another and just letting a computer spew out something that _sounds good_ instead of investing your thoughts into the message seems so impersonal. I fear we are heading toward a world previewed in Wall-E. Where society becomes dullards who are incapable of anything but amusing themselves to death, and personal connection disappears.

When we offload what it means to be human to machines, we become less creative and thoughtful. You can already see the effects of offloading memory to the internet. How often has a simple fact slipped your mind because you don’t _need_ to remember it? You can simply look it up. Holding information in that squishy gray stuff between your ears is how we form who we are. Our experiences and knowledge are key to our being.

The Risk Of Too Much Control

The conspiratorial side of me hears my friend saying that children growing up can just use the computer to answer their questions and do their work, shudders. I’m reminded of this line from Dune.

“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.” ― Frank Herbert, Dune

If you empower the machines to do your thinking for you and offload the tasks you would rather not do at the moment. How do you know they are doing what’s in your best interest?

Allowing your creativity and thoughts to be dictated by a machine puts all the power in the creator of that machine. The more power it gains, the more your self-determination erodes.

I would rather not cede my free will to a machine. Especially one that is controlled by someone else. It sounds extreme but, if you were to rely on a machine to read and write for you, it would seem that the machine has taken control of your voice.

Learning, understanding, and creating are what it means to be human. If we become the people in the chair, we are losing our humanity. We would simply exist and nothing more. This isn’t a call to touch grass, although that’s not a bad idea. It’s simply a plea to remember. As this technology continues to improve. There is a reason we have been leaving our mark on the world for centuries. Take some time and create something. Even if future generations don’t study it, your humanity makes the effort worthwhile.