AI as ‘Journey Thief’… Continued

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In yesterday’s post, ‘Journey Thief‘ I focused on artificial intelligence stealing the learning journey of students. In a comment, Karen Flello said,

“I used to ask students how they would know if they liked a subject (topic, activity) if they had never tried it. Then we talked about how “in the real world” we use things in ways we never expected. And maybe they are right – maybe they will not use a particular skill again. But if they never had exposure, they would not have the opportunity to find out what they would use (or like, or want to know more about). And I agree that AI can rob us of the learning in service of producing something that earns a grade. We have not earned it – we have not learned it – and that is the sad part. AI should be a tool to help us. But “help” means we, in fact, are doing something in the first place. And prompting some other thing / person to do something for us does nothing for developing imagination, skill, or resilience. We just get better at asking something / someone else to do it for us. A whole new kind of dependence.”

And I replied,

“Great to hear from you Karen,
That idea of lack of developing imagination, and also dependence on AI to do the work (and ultimately the thinking) is one of the biggest fears I have with AI. I’m simultaneously excited about AI taking humanity to new insights and new heights, while also deeply concerned about how much it can steal from our own learning journeys.”

This got me thinking about recent developments in Mathematics. In the past couple weeks AI has been solving a significant number of problems and conjectures that have stumped the best mathematical minds for entire lifetimes. This is incredibly destabilizing for the field.  Imagine being one of the foremost experts on a mathematical problem, having dedicated years of schooling and even more years afterwards to solving an seemingly unsolvable problem… Then having an answer dumped out of a computer along with answers to several more difficult problems that others in your field have also committed their lives to solving. You’ve moved from expert seeking answers to expert checking the work of an AI. You’ve moved from researcher and publisher to AI grader. You’ve watched your life work solved, not by someone smarter than you but by a machine that will only get smarter still.

Math is the first of these high knowledge fields to be ‘solved’ by AI, what’s next? It seems physics is not far behind.

These insights and solutions will do a lot to improve the understanding of these fields, but for how long? Does a current PHD student in Math who saw a future in solving one of these problems now continue on with their future plans? Does a newly graduated undergrad even decide to continue on with a Math PHD? Does a high school student find excitement in delving into Math when they know that they’ll never solve a problem that AI won’t beat them to?

What happens to these fields in 20 years when all the joy of discovery is stolen by AI? Who in 20 years is going to have the desire to enter this field? I asked Google who the top mathematicians are today and it came up with a list including Terence Tao, Sir Andrew Wiles, Grigori Perelman, Marina Viazovsk, Sir Martin Hairier, and Edward Witten. Who replaces them in a generation when all the problems they seek to solve are already solved by AI?

We already live in a world where only a handful of people really understand how computer chips are made and could help to rebuild the technology if all of the knowledge was lost today. Imagine how few that number will be in 20 years when robots are building AI designed chips to further improve AI. Imagine how many fewer will get into fields like Math and Physics, much less computer programming, when the most they can do is get a tertiary understanding of the field.

Is AI going to rob us of the next Einstein or Newton? Will anyone in 50 years understand the universe as much as the brightest humans today do? …When AI is doing all the work for us?

Like Karen said, “We have not earned it – we have not learned it – and that is the sad part. AI should be a tool to help us. But “help” means we, in fact, are doing something in the first place.”

What work will be left in these fields for humans to do?

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Journey Thief

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One of the most frustrating things you can hear as a teacher is something along the line of, “Yeah, but when will I ever use this in real life?

I remember in my first year of teaching, in Math class I was teaching the Pythagorean theorem and at home we were having our countertops replaced in the kitchen. The guy doing the measurements for the job measured one side of the wall and marked it at 4 feet from the corner, then marked the other wall at 3 feet. Then he measured the hypotenuse to make sure it was 5 feet. I saw him doing this and asked why? He said that most corners are not exactly 90º and if they build the counter off-site at 90º then it won’t fit when they are installing it. 

I was so excited to share how this was being used ‘in the real world’, and I recall telling the story just to have a students say, “Yeah but I’m not going to be a carpenter, so it doesn’t matter to me.”  

The reality is that there are quite a few things that we do in school that we do not end up applying ‘in the real world’, but the process, the journey, of learning those skills is what is really valuable. You might never get into a formal debate or have to do a formal presentation to an audience after schooling, but it’s hard not to see the value of going through those experiences in school. School isn’t just about gaining specific skills, it’s also about learning how to question, how to learn, and how to find answers to things you don’t know. I wonder how AI is changing this? 

When a student is asked to write a formal essay with a thesis statement, three supporting paragraphs and a conclusion, they are not just learning about essay structure. They are learning to research, to find supporting arguments, to draw conclusions, and to share their thinking in a clear and concise way. They are also learning grammar, and even how to distinguish opinions from facts. When AI does this for them, what are they learning? What are they missing?

I think it is vital for educators to figure out what AI will do for students and why the use is appropriate for some tasks and not others. If they don’t, what they are essentially doing is letting AI rob students of their learning journey. It allows students to be journey and learning adjacent as opposed to be the main character in their own education. 

Without educators helping to direct AI use in school, what I see happening is that students can start to choose how much they participate as a student and how much they let AI be the student for them. I remember seeing a video of someone having a 3D printer print homework that ChatGPT did for them, in their own handwriting… And having just searched for it, it was shared in February of 2023, over three and a half years ago. So now more than ever, students are being given a choice: Do I do the work, or do I let AI do it for me? 

Another way to frame this is, ‘Should I go on a learning journey, or should I let AI do it for me?’

Is this something we want to leave up to students? Do we want participation as a student to be a choice? I think not. If it’s not going to be left to them, then ultimately it’s left up to the educators. And so if educators aren’t making the decision of who is going on the learning journey with them, they are allowing AI to be a journey thief, simply by not making the choice.

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Update: See AI as ‘Journey Thief’… Continued

Reaching, Retreating, or Revenue?

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I’ve been thinking about AI lately… not just the technology itself, but the motivations we bring to it.

Years ago, when the internet evolved into Web2.0, there was endless discussion about what it was becoming.

I remember watching the original ‘Did you know; Shift Happens‘ video created by Karl Fisch & Scott McLeod and thinking ‘Wow, the world has changed!’

I jumped in excited to explore the possibilities.

Looking back now, it seems that most of what we did and still do online falls into three broad categories: reaching, retreating, or revenue. And now that AI is becoming woven into our everyday lives, I’m wondering if the same idea applies?

Reaching is probably the reason I first fell in love with the web.

The internet allowed me to connect with educators, thinkers, and creators from around the world. It gave me an audience for my writing and a window into the ideas of others. Blogging, social media, online communities… at their best, they are about sharing, connecting, and finding people who help us think in new ways.

AI can support this kind of reaching too. I don’t see AI as something that only replaces sharing, thinking, and human creativity. I see it as a creative partner. Sometimes it pushes back. Sometimes it helps uncover connections I hadn’t noticed. Sometimes it simply helps me get unstuck… but always the potential to help me find connections and learn.

Used this way, AI becomes another tool for extending conversations and exploring ideas.

But not everyone comes online to reach.

Some come to retreat.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with retreating. We all need downtime. We need entertainment, games, stories, videos, and distractions. Sometimes we need a break from the demands of the real world.

The challenge comes when retreating becomes hiding.

The internet can make it easy to spend hours consuming without creating… doom scrolling without reflecting… escaping without returning. AI may amplify that temptation. Why wrestle with a problem if an AI can answer it? Why create something imperfect with disagreeing humans if a machine can generate something polished, and I can tweak it exactly how I want it?

The risk isn’t that AI will think for us. The risk is that we’ll retreat and only engage with AI, and engage less and less with other people and the world around us.

Then there is revenue.

Much of the web runs on it. Much of AI is being built around it. Businesses want efficiency. Creators want audiences. Entrepreneurs want opportunities. None of that is surprising.

What fascinates me is how quickly conversations about any new technology seem to drift toward monetization. A new social platform appears… people ask how to make money from it? AI emerges… people ask how to automate work, build products, or generate income?

Again, there’s nothing wrong with that. But revenue is most powerful when it follows value rather than replacing it as the end goal.

The people who have influenced me most online are not focused on revenue. They are reaching. They are sharing ideas, contributing to conversations, and creating things they care about. Revenue may follow, but it isn’t the reason they started.

So when you decide to use AI, here is a question to ponder:

Am I using this technology to reach, to retreat, or to generate revenue?

The answer will probably be all three at different times. The more important question is which one is driving the others? For me, I hope that reaching always comes first, because the best part of the internet has never been the technology… It has been the people I’ve learned from, connected to, and who have enriched my life. Perhaps one day AI can be added to that group, but for now, it’s still people.

 

A country divided

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Two different people shared this with me today.

These stats are very telling, and what they tell me is that the US is a very polarized and divided nation.

It runs deeper than party politics. It runs deeper than any of the categories that are measured in the stats shared in the video. They are, individually, mildly interesting and perhaps you could even say expected. But the collection seen together says a lot.

I wonder what it would take to make the US less politically polarized? I wonder if there is a voice for the centrist, for the center? It seems to me that people cannot take a centrist view without alienating people on both sides of the political spectrum… and I find that sad.

There only seems to be space for voices on the edges, voices that focus on attacking the opposition. Argument over discourse. Debate rather than discussion. Ad hominem attacks instead of reasoned responses.

Is civil unrest the next step? A 3-party system? Martial law? Or can a peaceful way forward be found? I’d like to think a peaceful approach is possible, I just don’t see it when the country is so divided.

Consciousness and AI – REVISITED

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In my post, Consciousness and AI, I postulated that consciousness evolves only after organisms have idle time:

“I have a theory about consciousness being on a spectrum. That itself isn’t anything new but I think the factors that play into consciousness are: Basic needs, computational ‘processing’, and idleness. Consciousness comes from having more processing time than needed to meet basic needs, along with the inability for processing (early thinking) to be idle, and so for lack of a better word desires are created.

Think of a very simple organism when all of its needs are met. This isn’t a real thought process I’m going to share but rather a meta look at this simple organism: “I have enough heat, light, and food, what should I do with myself?”

  • Seek better food
  • Move closer to the heat or light source
  • Try different food
  • Join another organism that can help me
  • Find efficiencies
  • Find easier ways to move
  • Hunt

At first, these are not conscious decisions, they are only a choice of simple processes. But eventually, the desires grow. Think decisions that start like, “If I store more energy I can survive longer in times of famine.” And evolve to more of a desire not just for survival but for pleasure (for lack of a better word): “I like this food more than other kinds and want more of it.” …All stemming from having idle processing/thinking time.”

Well, now Google is giving AI some idle time. They are calling it dream time, but it’s essentially time for metacognition… thinking about what it has learned. See this TikTok by @parthknowsai:

Later on in my post I say,

“Our brains are answer-making machines. We ask a question and it answers, whether we want it to or not. If I say what does a purple elephant with yellow polkadots look like? You will inevitably think of what that looks like simply from reading the question. I think that is what happens at a very fundamental level of consciousness. When all needs are met the processors in the brain don’t suddenly stop and sit idle. Instead, the questions arise, “How do I get more food?”, “Where would be better for me to move to?” Eventually all needs are met, but the questions keep coming. At first based on simple desires, but more and more complex over generations and eons of time.

So why did I title this, ‘Consciousness and AI’? I think one of the missing ingredients in developing Artificial General (or Super) intelligence is that we are just giving AI’s tasks to complete and process at faster and faster times, and when the processing of these tasks are completed, the AI sits idle. An AI has no built in desire that an organic organism has to use that idle time to ask questions, to want something beyond completing the ‘basic needs’ tasks it is asked to do.

If we figure out a way to make AI curious, to have it desire to learn more, and to not let itself be idle, at that point it will be a very short path to AI being a lot smarter than us.”

And I  conclude:

“If it’s idle time and desires that bring about sentience, then figuring out how to make AI’s naturally curious will be the path to artificial general intelligence… Because they are already at a place where they have unused processing time, which is continuing to grow exponentially fast.”

If my prediction is correct, this sleep/dreaming/processing/distilling, (ultimately ‘free questioning’), time is going to accelerate the true intelligence of AI. And so we are going to see at the very least general, if not super intelligent, artificial intelligence much sooner than might be expected or predicted.

Death of the App?

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When AI allows anyone and everyone to create an APP for your phone when will people start to realize that no one wants 8 pages of apps? Do I need an app that is just an interval timer for working out, or will a website do? Do I really need a meditation app or just a playlist? What about (another) podcast, AI, appointment, parking, or fitness app?

Can I just read an article or input my data on a web page designed to work well on a phone, rather than being asked to open an app that I haven’t used in a month, and then having to log into that app before I can use it? Do I have to be asked… every… single… time… if I want to continue on a website or move to the app? Why is the download process necessary? I understand the challenge of not having data, but if I’m using a parking or appointment app, they are going to need data anyway, so the app is just an extra step, not an efficiency.

I think we are going to start to see some very clever websites evolving. At first the app will still be available, but it won’t actually be an app, it will be like a dedicated web browser opening a specific website. So, you’ll still get the icon on your phone if you want it, maybe because it’s easy to find that way, but pretty soon the only apps you’ll want on your phone are ones like banking and email, where security is important. Other than that, I predict a complete shift away from phone apps in the next 5 years… that is, if we are even interested in still carrying a phone with us in 5 years, but that’s a whole other thing to think about.

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Related: Breaking the Fourth Wall (Vibe Coding)

The thinking that happens along the way

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Yesterday I re-watched an interview I did with Dean Shareski a couple years ago (and wrote about it). In that interview I lamented that social media and blogging are not what they used to be. I felt a bit of sadness thinking about how rich the conversations were that we had ‘back in the day’… When I’d post something on my Pair-a-Dimes blog and full conversations would happen in the comments and on Twitter, and how this would sometimes even inspire another blogger to write their own post… and this is one of those posts.

From Chris Kennedy’s blog post, Building Our Noticing Muscles:

“After my recent post about What We Notice, my friend Dean Shareski left a comment that challenged me to write some more on the topic. He wondered how much of our ability to notice the little things is inherent and how much is learned. He suggested that noticing, like delight, requires us to pause long enough to appreciate what might otherwise pass us by. And he wondered if we could actually build our noticing muscles.”

Later in the post, Chris wrote a section titled, “Thinking in Blog Posts”. It starts:

“Writing this blog has had a similar effect, although in a different way.

After more than 15 years of writing Culture of Yes, I often find myself thinking in blog posts. I will see something happening in a school, hear an interesting comment in a conversation or read something that makes me curious. I wonder about it. I want to know more. Sometimes I start connecting it to other things I have seen or experienced.

This post is a good example. It began with a comment I could easily have read, appreciated and moved past. Instead, it stuck with me. Many of these ideas go nowhere. They never become posts. And that is fine. The value is often in the thinking that happens along the way.”

Thanks to Chris, I now realize that it wasn’t so much the conversations themselves I enjoyed about the old days of blogging, it was the thinking that happened along the way. And that hasn’t disappeared for me, I just find it in different places. It took a post on ‘noticing’ to help me notice what I couldn’t see. I was stuck on the ideas of lost discussion on blogs, lost engagement on social media, and didn’t notice that I still find these things. I still have my thinking changed by friends, and bloggers like Chris and Dean. I still have my thinking changed on social media, but more likely on TikTok rather than on Twitter.

For years I’ve felt like we passed the golden years of blogging and something was missing. Now I can see that while things changed, I’m still finding ways to push my thinking, and inspire my writing. I feel like I’m seeing both the past and present with new eyes, noticing the differences without placing judgement that ‘things were better back in the day’.

Chris ends his post (well worth reading) thinking about schools and how we need to slow things down sometimes so that students can notice things too. I feel this. I read the post this morning, started ‘thinking in blog posts’ and wondering how to put these ideas together, but I needed time to let it brew in my brain, for me to notice the connections I wanted to share. And so this post became about the thinking along the way, and not just about the nostalgia of the old days of blogging.

I owe Chris and Dean gratitude for helping me to reframe my thinking, and notice that while the sharing, engagement and connections have changed, there are still many wonderful ways that my thinking is challenged. I need not feel remorse for the loss of the way things were… there are a lot a great ways to excite and inspire my thinking and blogging today.

Still an excitement

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I’ve had zero regrets about choosing to retire. I was invited to visit my old schools on October 1st, and I stayed for about 3 hours. It was wonderful to connect with staff and students… and then I left.

No pangs. No doubt. No sorrow. And then I went to Ontario for 23 days. I had a very long October holiday, something I hadn’t done/couldn’t do in almost 30 years. It was wonderful.

Yesterday I spent a beautiful day on a boat with a friend. I ended up staying over at his place thanks to a flat tire. Today we had a workout when I’d normally be heading to work, then we had an in-depth conversation about education. I then came home and was looking for something I wrote on my blog. I followed a chain of posts that lead me to a post where Dean Shareski interviewed me for ‘The Canadian – Ed Leadership Show’. I listened to it while making dinner tonight.

The conversation this morning and listening to this discussion with Dean this evening made me realize just how much I’m still passionate about education. There’s more to think about, there’s more to write about and share … and now I have more time to do so.

A day on the water

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I spent the day in a boat on the waters between Vancouver and Bowen Island. At several points during the day I admired the scenery and thought of how lucky I am to live where I live. The mountains are stunning, and every way I looked I saw beauty.

People travel from all over the world to see the place where I choose to live. How lucky am I not just to live here, but to have opportunities to enjoy and share this space with family and friends.

30 by 30

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It’s Day 1 of the Capra 30 X 30. A minimum of 30 minutes of physical activity, walking/running/hiking for all 30 days of November… And I’ve already messed up my stats. I used Strava to track my walk, but I did that walk on the ferry from Vancouver to Victoria and instead of 33 minutes working out to be about 3km in distance the GPS had me clocked at 20.75km (tracking the ferry’s path).

Oops.

I’m probably going to have to delete the Strava data and resubmit the info manually on the Capra website, with a more realistic estimate of the distance I actually walked.

That said, I really enjoy this challenge. Over this next month most of my walks will be with my wife. An intentional 30 minimum minutes of time walking and chatting together. Usually after dinner. Through rain, wind, and maybe even snow, we will venture outside for our walk in what’s usually one of the bleakest months here on the North West Coast. A reminder that despite the rain, we can still get outside. Despite the challenges of the day, we can do something active together.

Day one needed to be separate so that I could visit my daughter and see my nephew do a presentation, but for most of this month my wife and I will take advantage of this challenge to share some active, outdoor time together.