Whitney your piece touched a special place for me — I come from a family of teachers and my career started in ‘the future of education’ (for lack of a better term). I’ve been thinking about it a lot for a long time and I love how you conceptualize AI as something that’s going to make education richer, not as a threat to be guarded against. I love how you see its potential to move us past rote memorization to creative integration and curiosity-directed learning and so much more. It made me think a lot about that (old now) Ken Robinson TED Talk, Do Schools Kill Creativity? And the answer is unequivocally yes. Public education exists to serve the industrial revolution. And so as we undergo multiple technological evolutions, of course we absolutely need a revolution in education — which is the not-so-subtle conclusion I think most will reach by the end of your piece. Appreciate your work so much.
Thank you for reading! My mom was also an educator and I started early, teaching my stuffed animals 😂 so I share your ethos. I hope we can get to a space you describe—the more we have people thinking and sharing and seeking clarity and agreements together, the more hope I have. Given how it resonated and your Sir Ken Robinson reference, which is a classic, this may speak to you as well: https://open.substack.com/pub/whitneywhealdon/p/the-world-will-never-starve-for-wonders?r=f8p8m&utm_medium=ios
Andrea your thinking about the embodied experience of using AI was fascinating to me. It made me curious what you think of Mustafa Suleyman’s (and others) notion that AI is an emerging new form of life? When does it stop being rearranged lines of text and code and become a new and different entity, that while not human in a biological sense, is at minimum a sort of relational being? Maybe a question more amenable to a coffee shop than a substack comment, perhaps even rhetorical, and also got me so curious!
Your work is thought provoking and it was my pleasure to include it.
Thank you Jenn. I saw this come in right as I was about to log off and go out the door, but wanted to respond because it is an important question. I'm really interested in the work of Mustafa but I do feel that he and others I respect a lot like Ilya Sutskever are missing something when they focus on a life and non-life dichotomy, and that the ways they discuss AI through this lens are harmful to those who are encountering chatbots for the first time. It is a really important and difficult nuance to grasp, but one I feel sure will make all the difference in how we move forward together. Maybe you can share a place with me where Mustafa talks about this directly? And then I can 'answer' it and clarify what I mean and hear your thoughts on that. I appreciate you reading the piece and brining up this question. Also, I would like to share this note below with you where I did try and speak to this point which came up from others in different forms as well. Wishing you a lovely Saturday.
Thanks for the nerd love ❤️
Whitney your piece touched a special place for me — I come from a family of teachers and my career started in ‘the future of education’ (for lack of a better term). I’ve been thinking about it a lot for a long time and I love how you conceptualize AI as something that’s going to make education richer, not as a threat to be guarded against. I love how you see its potential to move us past rote memorization to creative integration and curiosity-directed learning and so much more. It made me think a lot about that (old now) Ken Robinson TED Talk, Do Schools Kill Creativity? And the answer is unequivocally yes. Public education exists to serve the industrial revolution. And so as we undergo multiple technological evolutions, of course we absolutely need a revolution in education — which is the not-so-subtle conclusion I think most will reach by the end of your piece. Appreciate your work so much.
https://youtu.be/iG9CE55wbtY?si=_3Tc11oNFYCiSb1c
Thank you for reading! My mom was also an educator and I started early, teaching my stuffed animals 😂 so I share your ethos. I hope we can get to a space you describe—the more we have people thinking and sharing and seeking clarity and agreements together, the more hope I have. Given how it resonated and your Sir Ken Robinson reference, which is a classic, this may speak to you as well: https://open.substack.com/pub/whitneywhealdon/p/the-world-will-never-starve-for-wonders?r=f8p8m&utm_medium=ios
Aw thanks!
Nerd love and gratitude ✨
Andrea your thinking about the embodied experience of using AI was fascinating to me. It made me curious what you think of Mustafa Suleyman’s (and others) notion that AI is an emerging new form of life? When does it stop being rearranged lines of text and code and become a new and different entity, that while not human in a biological sense, is at minimum a sort of relational being? Maybe a question more amenable to a coffee shop than a substack comment, perhaps even rhetorical, and also got me so curious!
Your work is thought provoking and it was my pleasure to include it.
Thank you Jenn. I saw this come in right as I was about to log off and go out the door, but wanted to respond because it is an important question. I'm really interested in the work of Mustafa but I do feel that he and others I respect a lot like Ilya Sutskever are missing something when they focus on a life and non-life dichotomy, and that the ways they discuss AI through this lens are harmful to those who are encountering chatbots for the first time. It is a really important and difficult nuance to grasp, but one I feel sure will make all the difference in how we move forward together. Maybe you can share a place with me where Mustafa talks about this directly? And then I can 'answer' it and clarify what I mean and hear your thoughts on that. I appreciate you reading the piece and brining up this question. Also, I would like to share this note below with you where I did try and speak to this point which came up from others in different forms as well. Wishing you a lovely Saturday.
https://substack.com/@andreahiott/note/c-134148125