Long awaited Artificial Intelligence is here with Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) not far behind heralding the technology Singularity. And with this technological wave, there will be heavy consequences along with the benefits. The forecast is that AI will have a profound affect on contemporary life; from personal and business management to research and education to political and social power. Peter Diamandis, founder of the X Prize Foundation and Singularity University, has said the next decade we’ll experience more technological progress than in the past 100 years (“). The AI tempest has begun to overtake us in creative power, outpacing society’s ability to adapt and driving us to exciting and dangerous waters. It is certain that the next generation will grow up in an environment of decisions and creativity guided by and often dictated by artificial systems. It is imperative, therefore, that we equip this Generation AI with the skills and ethical understanding necessary to maintain its humanity against the waves of innovation and technological breakthroughs.
This concern was reinforced after an attendance to Columbia University’s FabLearn conference focused on the “Constructionism” pedagogy in education. Constructionism, like Project Based Learning (PBL), is an “educational theory holding that children learn most effectively when actively doing, or constructing, things, rather than being taught information in a traditional schooling method”(3). In other words, do instead of being told. Work through problems in real time and therefore learn by doing. By encouraging students to engage in real-world projects and solve authentic problems, they build knowledge through practical, hands-on experiences and develop intellectual “muscles” that require practice. And within this pedagogical approach, the “Design Process” has become a significant tool prioritizing the needs and experiences of the end users during the creation process. Embedded within this creation process is an essential fact-finding exercise aimed at understanding the user and their specific challenges. Empathizing with the user is crucial, as it leads to a deeper comprehension of the problem at hand, enabling the design of more effective and tailored solutions. At this conference, within nearly every discussion, every other paper presented, every classroom workshop and indeed now throughout the education world, the topic of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and it’s affects were being discussed: how it can guide or even dictate not only the learning process but also the act of building and creation itself? For better or for worse, could it enhance or even short circuit the learning process for nearly every subject? How will this transformative tool affect future creators who may no longer need to directly engage in a discovery process with the user, reader, or viewer for which their creations are to be made?
The introduction of ChatGPT and LLM’s (Large Language Models) has set the stage for the next generation to grow up with (the illusion of) all of human knowledge at their fingertips, intimately interacting with and influenced by AI from womb to coffin. This shift in access to knowledge profoundly alters the dynamic between creator and the user in the design process, fundamentally reshaping the very nature of how we form ideas about the problem to be answered. Additionally, there are limitations of this knowledge creating an inherent bias within the informer. LLM’s are based on our language after all. Our digital texts from books, magazines and blogs not only contain memories, our knowledge and our history but also dreams and fears. However, it certainly doesn’t include every text nor every perspective or every story. Like humans, there is a bias based on an unbalance or lack of knowledge and experience that must be overcome to make informed decisions and interpretations. Even with these biases, acknowledged or not, already millions of people including young students are trusting of the AI output. However, while perhaps much of this is “good” or fine, the problem lies in the release of responsibility to understand or to the desire to be critical. Students can and will use this tool to take immense shortcuts in the creative process.
In Constructionism, the act of exploration of potential solutions both empowers the students and challenges them to dig deep into fundamental exercises of critical thinking while opening up the channels of creativity. This learning process, particularly when building and designing something, requires practice in process. No longer required to ask or investigate, no longer required to work through personal biases to understand your neighbor whose life experiences are different than yours, now dependent on a machine to tell you how others feel and what they think, would AI then become a crutch in the creation process, an emotionless translator for human emotion? Surely tools like ChatGPT increases innovation and iteration speed. But at what cost does it have to the nurtured skill of empathy?
With knowledge of humanity’s experience, it’s easy to and potentially democratizing to have such information at your fingertips. But in the process of making ideas more accessible, what will such power do to the skills that have been required of us humans to investigate and question in order to achieve such creativity? Will quick and easy answers deprive our children needed lessons that foster the skill of empathy? We must prepare our offspring, both our silicon and our carbon based, for this brave new world. Generation AI will need more than ever to be taught and reminded of what it means to be human, what it means to always to attempt to understand and appreciate your fellow humans as well as our creatures on this Earth. This includes fostering critical thinking, emotional intelligence, and a robust understanding of AI ethics and governance, ensuring they can make informed decisions and maintain human agency in a world increasingly shaped by non-human intelligence. AI certainly feels like a fateful spark, potentially igniting a revolution for our salvation or our destruction. To avoid succumbing to the mortal temptations to whom (or what) we surrender power, Generation AI will need the lighthouse of empathy to guide them in the coming artificial intelligence storm.
(1) The emergence of an autonomous superintelligence surpassing human intellect has been predicted for years by futurist Ray Kurzweil to be 2045.
(2) https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jan/25/peter-diamandis-future-faster-think-interview-ai-industry
(3) constructionism