What are your thoughts on AI and education?

Allison Postell, philosophy: “AI is a powerful tool that can be good in many areas so long as it is used in the context of a well-lived life. AI threatens to become deeply destructive when its good is determined by its abilities unmoored from this context. We must have a sound understanding of what it means to live well personally, communally, and economically for AI to be a blessing rather than a curse.”

Jordan Wales, theology: “Like a dog’s ear hears more than we do, AI is good for finding harmonies and correlations that we might miss. And it’s really good for that and ought to rouse our wonder. However, when we mustn’t forget that the dog, too, has a limited range of hearing and that sound is not the only thing going on in the real world; moreover, we’re the ones giving the dog treats (training the AI), and so it learns to reduce the aural landscape to what we reward it for highlighting. Therefore, if we depend on the AI to tell us everything that’s out there, we’ll miss the things that it can’t hear or that we haven’t categorized as worthy of note. If AI augments our ears, we’d better not let our other senses atrophy in the process or let our pre-selected output categories obscure the options we haven’t yet considered.”

Michael Clark, economics: “I can confidently say that it does not resolve F.A. Hayek’s knowledge problem (this was a bit of a talking point after an important economist at MIT named Daren Acemoglu insinuated it may). If I am somehow wrong about this, the economy could theoretically be planned by a Socialist AI overlord. I do also see some benefits in certain contexts of early education programs like the Elon Musk-inspired Synthesis program, though I do believe the abuse of technology there may be more harmful than the benefits of its proper use.”