{"id":79515,"date":"2025-08-19T08:59:13","date_gmt":"2025-08-19T08:59:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/79515\/"},"modified":"2025-08-19T08:59:13","modified_gmt":"2025-08-19T08:59:13","slug":"thinking-while-we-still-can-about-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/79515\/","title":{"rendered":"Thinking While We Still Can About AI"},"content":{"rendered":"

When it comes to Artificial Intelligence (AI) much of the anxiety and concern surrounds its impact on jobs and employment, in part, fuelled by Microsoft\u2019s list of 40 jobs \"\"possibly at risk as a result of the new digital technology.<\/p>\n

The list includes interpreters, translators, historians, customer service representatives, writers, authors and telephone operators.\u00a0 The popularity of the AI-produced influencer Mia Zelu<\/a> (right) and the fashion company Guess using a digital model are also adding to concerns.<\/p>\n

Equally as important is the growing impact of AI on schools and universities.\u00a0 While students paying others to write their essays, complete projects and plagiarism have always been problems, using AI represents a new and deeply disturbing threat.\u00a0As detailed in \u2018Will AI make you stupid<\/a>\u2019 and published in The Economist (July 16), research suggests relying on AI to write an essay, compile information and solve problems utilises less brain power.\u00a0Relying on AI reduces the ability to think critically and the ability to be creative.\u00a0 While AI can be used to carry out mundane tasks like compiling and aggregating statistics it cannot replicate the human ability to think and feel abstractly and imaginatively.<\/p>\n

What makes the work of musicians, artists, composers and authors so unique and distinctive is the knowledge, skills and expertise mastered and honed over years of practice.\u00a0 It is this lived experience that can never be replicated by sterile computer algorithms.<\/p>\n

Cognitive research about the impact of the new digital technologies also suggests an over reliance on innovations like AI reduces the ability to think logically and to be able to recall important facts, information and knowledge.<\/p>\n

While using AI to produce an essay or complete a project might seem reasonable the danger is the student has not undertaken the hard task of researching, evaluating and producing the completed task.<\/p>\n

The human brain, to be capable of higher order thinking and solving complex problems needs to be hardwired, as it were, and as such requires continual challenges and mental exercise.\u00a0 Hence the importance of memorising times tables, being able to mentally add, divide, multiply and subtract.<\/p>\n

One of the recurring science fiction themes involves a situation where AI generated algorithms either seek to control or destroy humanity.\u00a0 Examples include Space Odyssey\u2019s HAL and Terminator\u2019s Skynet.\u00a0Such films point to an essential difference between humans and computers. \u00a0The great religions teach us we have souls and the ability to live and seek meaning according to moral and ethical teachings. The virtual world of AI, on the other hand, does not have a spirit or a soul and while it is capable of solving complex problems and able to collect and decipher facts and information it is incapable of addressing questions like what constitutes life\u2019s meaning and what happens after death.<\/p>\n

Best summed up by the English poet William Blake, \u201cHe who sees the Infinite in all things sees God. He who sees the Ratio only sees himself only\u201d.\u00a0 Computers and AI are incapable of providing the spiritual insight and awareness that poetry, music, art, sculpture and dance provide.<\/p>\n

Given the limitations of AI and its harmful impact on the ability to think rationally and creatively and its inability to address moral and spiritual questions and dilemmas that characterise human nature, it is vital schools and universities take up the challenge.<\/p>\n

Instead of the curriculum focusing on 21st century generic competencies and skills, on promoting student agency and what is contemporary and utilitarian education must give students the knowledge, skills and understanding associated with what Neil Postman<\/a> described as the ongoing conversation associated with Western culture.<\/p>\n

Postman wrote that to become educated \u201cmeans to become aware of the origins and growth of knowledge and knowledge systems; to be familiar with the intellectual and creative processes by which the best that has been thought and said has been produced.\u201d\u00a0Such an enriching and sustaining form of education, in Postman\u2019s words, is \u201can excellent corrective to the anti-historical, information-saturated, technology-loving character of Technopoly\u201d.<\/p>\n

Schools and universities also need to take a leaf from past practice where the main form of assessment involved closed tests and examinations carried out under supervised conditions.\u00a0 Ensuring students have to rely on their own memory and ability to respond to unseen questions ensures authenticity.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no doubt like King Canute it is impossible to stem the tide, but at the same time it\u2019s critical that in moving to a digital world where technologies like AI are increasingly prevalent we must ask, what are we gaining to lose so much.<\/p>\n

Dr Kevin Donnelly is a conservative author and commentor.\u00a0 This essay was written without using AI<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When it comes to Artificial Intelligence (AI) much of the anxiety and concern surrounds its impact on jobs…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":79516,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-79515","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-au","12":"tag-australia","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79515\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}