Wednesday, February 14, 2024
The Challenge of A.I. to higher education
Traditionally, the role of college has been clear: Teach young people how to think critically and how to express themselves.
That goal is in danger of being undermined by A.I. First, because students are using A.I. instead of crafting their own work-- so they neither have to think critically or express themselves other than typing in a prompt. Second, the rest of the world will change with A.I.-- and people like me who create content won't be so important, so why bother to learn critical thinking or argumentative expression?
Well, yeah, there is an answer to that question. A world with less critical thinking and genuine debate is going to fundamentally reverse the path of civilization to this point.
And, since A.I. derives its information from what people have already created, once people stop creating it will start referring to... well, itself, and begin to create reality with reference to what machines think about machines.
It's not going to be pretty.
There will be moments, of course. I asked A.I. to produce a renaissance-style image of "Mark Osler addresses a crowd," and got the image above, which pretty much nailed it. People not listening? Check. Unkempt appearance? Check. No shirt for some reason? Also check.
