There's a lot of evidence in various natural processes that inefficiency IS efficient--that the effort involved in coordinating efficiency is energetically expensive and voids a lot of positive incidental or unintended outcomes. AI is being sold almost entirely as an efficiency product that eliminates friction, in learning and otherwise--a way to reduce time investment, the cost of expert teachers, etc. Not only do we know enough now to know that capitalism will produce new forms of friction in the seemingly frictionless new technology, we also know that frictionlessness is on some level the devil in terms of the outcomes of education and life itself. Even when there's some new speed added, it's the speed of a rocketship trapped in the gravity of an event horizon, where it accelerates towards a point where nothing will ever be changeable from the perspective of the people inside and where they will be cut off from the rest of the universe in the process of falling faster and faster to that destination.
"Frictionlessness is on some level the devil in terms of the outcomes of education and life itself." Beautifully put.
Couldn't agree more with you that our quest for a life free of friction is a fools errand on many levels. Even if such a life did exist, it's not a full and flourishing one.
I think one of the issues is seeing the product of education as what the student produces rather than the student. "My student has authored 10 papers and is in charge of 5 GitHub repos" is seen as the goal. If AI enabled that goal, then one must use AI to keep up. If the product of education is the student though, then what tools they use is much less important than how well their mind can adapt, problem solve, self regulate, and learn. In that case, AI might hinder the growth of the student's mind. Knowing modern tools is important, but it is much easier to teach a good mind a new tool in my opinion. There has to be some in between however, or we would still be insisting student's use slide rules and hand drafting to learn engineering.
Agreed, although the student vs. their work is not an either/or situation. Both the growth of student and the work that they create matters and there are many situations where they can be properly aligned.
You're right that we need to make sure that these remain in alignment with each other or else we end up with suboptimal outcomes. If the work the student produces takes ultimate priority over the growth of that student in a zero-sum way, then this ultimately reduces their potential future impact.
I'm trying to work through this question for a specific case right now. There is now an AI enabled reader that will read academic papers for you. From what I can see, it is quite good and has lots of features that allow you to skip citations in the middle of paragraphs, etc. I am a doctoral student with very mild dyslexia and have always felt like I am behind when it comes to knowing the literature. I fought hard to learn to read faster and still struggle.
On the others side of this technological fence, I see green pastures of speed reading huge numbers of papers while getting work done at the lab bench. No more struggling with trying to parse the complex sentence structure that meaning seems to always be buried beneath in academia. There's a catch though. Will I keep reading? If listening is so much easier for me, will I continue to improve my reading skills? Even if they will never be at the same level as my colleagues, would it be better to have the best reading skills I can than to let them atrophy?
Thanks for sharing your specific situation. I think it's a good one that we're going to see more and more of in the next few years. We need to think on a case-by-case basis about what really matters and make sure we're not eliminating essential learning, even if it's a struggle, by outsourcing that work to a tool.
It may be in your case that the tool is helping you to compensate for areas of weakness in a way that is good and helpful. But you're right to be asking the question about whether that reliance might create other unhealthy side effects or unwanted dependencies.
There's a lot of evidence in various natural processes that inefficiency IS efficient--that the effort involved in coordinating efficiency is energetically expensive and voids a lot of positive incidental or unintended outcomes. AI is being sold almost entirely as an efficiency product that eliminates friction, in learning and otherwise--a way to reduce time investment, the cost of expert teachers, etc. Not only do we know enough now to know that capitalism will produce new forms of friction in the seemingly frictionless new technology, we also know that frictionlessness is on some level the devil in terms of the outcomes of education and life itself. Even when there's some new speed added, it's the speed of a rocketship trapped in the gravity of an event horizon, where it accelerates towards a point where nothing will ever be changeable from the perspective of the people inside and where they will be cut off from the rest of the universe in the process of falling faster and faster to that destination.
"Frictionlessness is on some level the devil in terms of the outcomes of education and life itself." Beautifully put.
Couldn't agree more with you that our quest for a life free of friction is a fools errand on many levels. Even if such a life did exist, it's not a full and flourishing one.
I think one of the issues is seeing the product of education as what the student produces rather than the student. "My student has authored 10 papers and is in charge of 5 GitHub repos" is seen as the goal. If AI enabled that goal, then one must use AI to keep up. If the product of education is the student though, then what tools they use is much less important than how well their mind can adapt, problem solve, self regulate, and learn. In that case, AI might hinder the growth of the student's mind. Knowing modern tools is important, but it is much easier to teach a good mind a new tool in my opinion. There has to be some in between however, or we would still be insisting student's use slide rules and hand drafting to learn engineering.
Agreed, although the student vs. their work is not an either/or situation. Both the growth of student and the work that they create matters and there are many situations where they can be properly aligned.
You're right that we need to make sure that these remain in alignment with each other or else we end up with suboptimal outcomes. If the work the student produces takes ultimate priority over the growth of that student in a zero-sum way, then this ultimately reduces their potential future impact.
I'm trying to work through this question for a specific case right now. There is now an AI enabled reader that will read academic papers for you. From what I can see, it is quite good and has lots of features that allow you to skip citations in the middle of paragraphs, etc. I am a doctoral student with very mild dyslexia and have always felt like I am behind when it comes to knowing the literature. I fought hard to learn to read faster and still struggle.
On the others side of this technological fence, I see green pastures of speed reading huge numbers of papers while getting work done at the lab bench. No more struggling with trying to parse the complex sentence structure that meaning seems to always be buried beneath in academia. There's a catch though. Will I keep reading? If listening is so much easier for me, will I continue to improve my reading skills? Even if they will never be at the same level as my colleagues, would it be better to have the best reading skills I can than to let them atrophy?
Thanks for sharing your specific situation. I think it's a good one that we're going to see more and more of in the next few years. We need to think on a case-by-case basis about what really matters and make sure we're not eliminating essential learning, even if it's a struggle, by outsourcing that work to a tool.
It may be in your case that the tool is helping you to compensate for areas of weakness in a way that is good and helpful. But you're right to be asking the question about whether that reliance might create other unhealthy side effects or unwanted dependencies.