Reclaiming Wisdom in the Era of AI

POSSIBLE ANSWERS:

• To make sure we can add up and do spelling.
• To train individuals to hold down jobs in the ‘real world’ of today (=yesterday).
• To enable individuals to better enhance the value and potential of others.
• To help us find the ecological purpose of Homo sapiens.
• To make way for a new artificial species that will outperform us in exams, sports, the arts and warfare.

Alright, stop clicking now. We’re going to have a discussion in which I will do most of the talking (after all, I am highly qualified and have spent my whole life in institutions). You are yawning….

QUESTION 2: What’s the Point of AI?

So what is the deep purpose of AI? DISCUSS.

Nobody knows. Many say it’s ‘just another tool’. (Hint: can anyone think of another tool that makes decisions about its own design evolution?) Humans love to be fooled by cute gadgets and pets. We are so charmed by AI that we don’t have time to think about its purpose. We are also gullible. The Turing test proves we can all too easily discern a human presence from the most dubious of signals. This is not the first time that we have allowed inanimate products to push us around.

If cars are designed to go fast so we drive them fast. Clocks are spectacularly ignorant, yet we let them tell us when we are hungry or tired. Money has no intrinsic value, yet it can produce unsatisfiable cravings for more than we could ever spend. Anyway, I’m ranting again, so let’s move on. As your homework, get your favourite bot to make up a few random ‘conclusions’ then post your essay on the Dark Web.

QUESTION 3: What does the ‘I’ (in ‘AI’) stand for?

Is AI intelligent? That depends on how you define intelligence. Often, the ambiguities generated by innovation get explained in a way that radically changes previous assumptions. Some say humans always dreamed of flying. Leonardo did a few sketches but in 1903 the Wright Brothers built the first fixed wing machine that carried a human being above the ground for a prolonged interval. But was this really ‘flying’? A few people challenged this claim on the grounds that it was merely a way to achieve a brief ‘gliding’ experience. One person even refused to acknowledge it as flying because he’d assumed that we would emulate birds with flapping wings. So what do we mean by ‘intelligence’? If we define it in the context of a standard IQ test, it’s hard to disagree with the claim that AI gadgets are intelligent. This is fortuitous for AI evangelists. IQ tests evolved from an industrial mindset that standardizes the average person’s behaviour within narrow parameters. On the other hand, we may soon attain the more enlightened position where we value the uniqueness in everyone (n.b. neurodiversity is only one aspect). This would mark an important shift in consciousness but it would force academics to reflect deeply upon their habits and assumptions. Until then we will continue to justify the absence of requisite variety within SATS and IQ tests in schools by invoking the risible metaphor of ‘rigour’…(OK, I’m ranting again).

QUESTION 4: What is Quality Assurance?

This is one of the key questions in our syllabus because it underpins your university’s legal framework and business model. You might care to invite ChatGPT to write something for you about the importance of Communication Theory within technocracy. These readymade answers will help you to prepare for your final assessment. Don’t overthink it. Here are some handy technical terms to throw into the mix:

• DATA = imagined subsets of ‘information’ that ratify the numerical certainties of calculation and accountancy.
• INFORMATION = the twilight world between what humans can know, do know, might know and could know.
• KNOWLEDGE = embodied capacities that, at best, we boil down to ‘knowing that’ and ‘knowing how’. N.B. Caution – this definition of ‘knowledge’ raises awkward questions about when, where, and in what tangible context/s the act of ‘knowing’ takes place. Here, a lack of clarity is evident in many doctoral research examinations where there is confusion about the importance of the Viva voce relative to that of the written thesis.  Currently, AI systems weave ‘answers’ to questions by reshaping patterns found in strings of text, rather than from more embodied and emergent aspects of knowing. As Wittgenstein noted, “Everyday language is a part of the human organism and no less complicated than it. It is not humanly possible to gather immediately from language what the logic of language is … the tacit conventions on which the understanding of everyday language depends are enormously complicated.” (Wittgenstein, 2009)
• We need to acknowledge this vital distinction and to reframe ‘knowledge’ accordingly. Here, we might wish to introduce the idea of wisdom as a way to shift from this humanistic perspective to one that accommodates the whole living biosphere.
• WISDOM = ?

Given the urgent need for a global culture of creative openness and curiosity some attempt to reclaim the term would be vital.

WISDOM = eco systemic? / infinitely extensive? / a superset of eco-semiotic meta-phenomena?

QUESTION 5: What the Actual F***?

In 2024, aware of the controversies surrounding AI systems, Vice-chancellors at the 24 Russell Group research-intensive universities agreed to a code of practice that asked students and staff simply to become more ‘AI literate’. They invited UK universities to exploit the opportunities of artificial intelligence whilst adding tried and tested platitudes about ‘maintaining academic rigour’ and the importance of ‘integrity in higher education’. A little later the same year, undercover researchers at a UK university submitted exam answers generated by ChatGPT-4. Their deception was kept secret until the papers had been marked. Out of 33 papers submitted, only one was detected as questionable. The rest achieved grades higher than those awarded to human students. Several key questions remain.

QUESTION 6: Why?

In its 2021 ‘Futures of Education report’, UNESCO calls for the re-purposing of education within a global strategy for change. This means waking up the whole of human society within an open-hearted ecological context. Why do universities still foreground the bureaucratic traces of learning rather than developing more situated, embodied and holistic culture of co-discovery? It is unfortunate that the art schools are being buried under the rubble of a more monastic (research) culture of thought? (c.f. Wood, 2021) A wisdom-based agenda would probably value Heart, Hand and Humour as well as retaining Head-oriented awareness? Unless academics are willing to accept these challenges to their old habits, assumptions and procedures they will remain as impotent bystanders in the arms race between widgets designed to simulate the evidence of learning and the bots designed to detect them.