Delegate humanity

Education must reinforce critical thinking, technological ethics and creativity. Teaching how to program, interpret data and work with AI is important, but so is ensuring that students know how to think and communicate without depending on the machine

I recently read an interesting interview with Howard Gartner, an American psychologist specialized in education and creator of the theory of multiple intelligences. He is undoubtedly one of, if not the most influential experts in his field.

When reading the interview there were two things that especially caught my attention. In one of the photos that illustrated the interview, Gartner appeared in his office at Harvard University. The chaos of his desk and the entire space was noticeable, as is the case in mine. It is possible that sharing some of my ills with scientists as relevant as him does not excuse my defects, but I confess that it relieves me.

Beyond unloading my conscience, what I did find especially interesting was Gartner’s reference to the fact that the most important thing is not whether machines will be more intelligent. [que nosotros]But let’s protect what makes us human.

I completely agree, and my biggest concern about the inappropriate use of artificial intelligence comes precisely from there, that by delegating to machines what still most distinguishes us from them, we neglect what makes us more human.

Delegating is an intrinsically human act, a skill that allows us to transfer responsibilities, tasks or decisions to other individuals, and now also to machines. When we delegate tasks that require cognitive skills such as language to AI, crucial questions emerge. As Yuval Noah Harari warns in Homo Deus: “By delegating our decisions to algorithms, we also give them our authority and, consequently, part of our humanity.”

Delegating has been key to the development of complex societies, and continues to be so. The pilot of an airplane who delegates a good part of the flight tasks to an autopilot or a surgeon who does it to a surgical robot can increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the flight or operation by focusing on making decisions and performing actions that can become more important, even critical, taking advantage of their still unique human capabilities compared to those of machines. However, this delegation can also weaken human capabilities by ignoring issues that we did before. In fact, there have been aviation accidents resulting from the lack of sufficient human training due to automatic piloting. As artificial intelligence develops, the importance of what we can delegate to it increases. It is not about machines doing more and more physical work, calculation or handling large amounts of data. We could even be delegating the learning and use of language, which is very serious. We would be delegating a good part of our humanity.

When machines begin to replace us in intellectual activities – such as solving logical and mathematical problems, writing texts, understanding them and reasoning about their content – people can experience a loss of sense of usefulness and, what is still Worse, we can weaken the real ability to do it ourselves and use it to know, know how to do and create. Instead of being active agents in the acquisition of knowledge, thinking and creating, we would become passive observers of the work of machines.

Delegating excessively to artificial intelligence not only makes us dependent on technology, but can also stunt our cognitive skills or even prevent them from being acquired, something especially worrying for future generations.

If the development of language and communication is at the basis of our ability to construct ideas, persuade and understand the world, indiscriminate delegation to AI could erode our humanity.

To the extent that we cannot and cannot stop our ability to create increasingly capable and intelligent machines, the solution must be to change the way we educate. Our young people and, above all, the still girls and boys, must be trained more than anything in what makes us uniquely human and not receive a mechanized education. Mechanized, not so much by the use of technology but by stubbornly insisting on what machines already do much better than us: memorizing and reproducing what has been learned in this way.

Education must reinforce critical thinking, technological ethics and creativity. Teaching how to program, interpret data and work with AI is important, but so is ensuring that students know how to think and communicate without depending on the machine.

Isaac Asimov said that the saddest aspect of life was that science gains knowledge faster than society gains wisdom. Today that sadness can become chronic depression if technology acquires intelligence as we lose ours, to the point of even dehumanizing us.

#Delegate #humanity

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