By Doing and Thinking For Us, AI Will Render Us Smarter Than Ever

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is poised to drive a human knowledge explosion. The latter speaks to the genius of machines that do and think for us. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

Backtracking a bit, it’s crucial to address a recent Wall Street Journal piece about Google “pushing” AI into U.S. schools, and in the process allegedly bringing on a “cognitive stunting” among students.

According to Journal reporters Shalini Ramachandran, Georgia Wells, and Molly Reinmann, Google’s Gemini has made it possible for students to “farm out” work to it. Supposedly the work done by Gemini for K-12 students has “slowed” their thinking. No, that’s not serious. And it’s not even true.

How could we be rendered dumber by ceasing to do what machines can do for us?

The question recalls a passage from Henry Hazlitt (1894-1993) in his classic book, Economics In One Lesson. Addressing the notion of an excess of capital, Hazlitt marveled that even the ignorant could believe something so at odds with reason. Hazlitt’s point was that we’ll never reach the frontier of human achievement, and that there will always be problems to solve, diseases to cure, and needs to meet and lead. Yes, precisely. We’ll never run out of new and crucial things to do.

Too bad that the logic that we apply to human endeavor outside the classroom is routinely rejected inside the classroom. See Ramachandran, Wells, and Reinmann once again. They write of AI as a learning restraint, as the source of “cognitive slowing.” No!

Such a view implies that we’ve reached the limits of knowledge and skill development, and that having reached it, it’s necessary that students learn up to those limits. What a bankrupt notion.

To see why, simply apply the implied logic of the Ramachandran et al to work itself. What if machines of varying capabilities were removed from the workplace to spare us from skills deterioration? What’s the point of wasting precious human effort and skills on what’s mechanized?

Ok, but never explained by those who rightly prize education is why education would be seen as some kind of “other.” While in the commercial world we covet the mechanization of effort that frees us from having to know what we used to know, with education it’s assumed that we’ll be rendered dumb, or dumber, or slower if we can no longer do what machines can do for us. Again, a bankrupt notion.

No one would tell someone with access to spread sheets and calculators to use an abacus to learn how to work. By extension, why the embrace of centuries’ old learning to prepare us for the future?

There are certain absolutes in life, and one of them is that we do not do what machines can do for us. It’s a waste not just of our talents, but also a waste of our precious time. Learning is no different.

If Gemini can do quadratic equations for us, diagram sentences, and write term papers, then we’re freed to pursue and be taught all knew knowledge. Thought of another way, it’s never been adequately explained why we must learn the same subjects as students have been learning for centuries.

Google’s Gemini has an answer. It’s not necessary to learn the same subjects generation after generation. With knowledge all around us, we can pursue new knowledge that machines can’t bestow on us. As opposed to Gemini “going too far” per Ramachandran, Wells, and Reinmann, it’s going to take students far ahead in learning precisely because it will spare us from having to know what machines thankfully know for us.

Originally published on Real Clear Markets.