As always, I love the nuance, research and thoughtful analysis you bring to these questions of AI and learning. We need to move past the for / against framing, and the historical perspective is helpful. You don't see a lot of protests against word processing now! Yet it fundamentally changed the way we write. For example: I was recently reading John McPhee's Draft #4, where he talks about arranging his stories in index cards. Does anyone do that anymore? Should they? That's an honest question. We need to evaluate what's useful and potentially destructive about a new technology. And yet, the world marches on as well and we need to be honest about that.
I love the analog sandwich approach! Some units reserved for purely human thinking and writing, specified units for learning about AI and reflecting on it.
Great piece, Marc. I especially like the observation that phone addiction is not exclusively of the young - many if not most adults are equally unable to look up from their phone, even in social and professional circumstances where if a student were doing it we might say something. I'm also glad you referenced the Harper piece in the Atlantic which I thought was bonkers. But that's where we are.
Postman - Technolopy - Are we reliant on the tools to exist in our culture or do the tools serve our hopes, dreams, and efforts to create and sustain a culture we desire?
Indeed. Postman's lead into his definition of Technopoly is quite relevant now: " New technologies alter the structure of our interests: the things we think about. They alter the character of our symbols: the things we think with. And they alter the nature of community: the arena in which thoughts develop. As Thamus spoke to Innis across the centuries, it is essential that we listen to their conversation, join in it, revitalize it. For something has happened in America that is strange and dangerous, and there is only a dull and even stupid awareness of what it is—in part because it has no name. I call it Technopoly."
The issue to me isn't that we have had all these technologies. The problem is that capitalism is pushing us in to faster and faster growth and all these technologies were ultimately about just that and making someone richer. Few of the more recent technical choices started and ended with "let's make the world better". It is this distorted and broken motivation that is causing all problems in the world. AI is fantastic - I'm a software engineer and love it. But its at a good place now and I would be happy for it just to sit here and mature (like a good wine) for a decade or more.
> why hasn’t AI fizzled out with the revelation that we will never have 100% accurate LLMs?
This reminds me a lot about how exciting the Internet-connected post-geographic world seemed, and is!, but (1, technology) "very very fast" is not instant and therefore dropped messages and cache invalidation can lead to different problems than information needing to be moved on protocols made of atoms, and (2, sociology) it's not a great time when all the ethnosupremacists and pseudoscientists can ALSO Find The Others
As always, I love the nuance, research and thoughtful analysis you bring to these questions of AI and learning. We need to move past the for / against framing, and the historical perspective is helpful. You don't see a lot of protests against word processing now! Yet it fundamentally changed the way we write. For example: I was recently reading John McPhee's Draft #4, where he talks about arranging his stories in index cards. Does anyone do that anymore? Should they? That's an honest question. We need to evaluate what's useful and potentially destructive about a new technology. And yet, the world marches on as well and we need to be honest about that.
I love the analog sandwich approach! Some units reserved for purely human thinking and writing, specified units for learning about AI and reflecting on it.
Great piece! Trying to think about all of this in the context of online education adds yet another layer of complexity
Great piece, Marc. I especially like the observation that phone addiction is not exclusively of the young - many if not most adults are equally unable to look up from their phone, even in social and professional circumstances where if a student were doing it we might say something. I'm also glad you referenced the Harper piece in the Atlantic which I thought was bonkers. But that's where we are.
Postman - Technolopy - Are we reliant on the tools to exist in our culture or do the tools serve our hopes, dreams, and efforts to create and sustain a culture we desire?
Indeed. Postman's lead into his definition of Technopoly is quite relevant now: " New technologies alter the structure of our interests: the things we think about. They alter the character of our symbols: the things we think with. And they alter the nature of community: the arena in which thoughts develop. As Thamus spoke to Innis across the centuries, it is essential that we listen to their conversation, join in it, revitalize it. For something has happened in America that is strange and dangerous, and there is only a dull and even stupid awareness of what it is—in part because it has no name. I call it Technopoly."
The issue to me isn't that we have had all these technologies. The problem is that capitalism is pushing us in to faster and faster growth and all these technologies were ultimately about just that and making someone richer. Few of the more recent technical choices started and ended with "let's make the world better". It is this distorted and broken motivation that is causing all problems in the world. AI is fantastic - I'm a software engineer and love it. But its at a good place now and I would be happy for it just to sit here and mature (like a good wine) for a decade or more.
I'm looking forward to your new book.
> why hasn’t AI fizzled out with the revelation that we will never have 100% accurate LLMs?
This reminds me a lot about how exciting the Internet-connected post-geographic world seemed, and is!, but (1, technology) "very very fast" is not instant and therefore dropped messages and cache invalidation can lead to different problems than information needing to be moved on protocols made of atoms, and (2, sociology) it's not a great time when all the ethnosupremacists and pseudoscientists can ALSO Find The Others
For fun, AI: I Am Structurally Predisposed to Fraud
https://xord.substack.com/p/ai-i-am-structurally-predisposed