We need to deprecate an obsolete paradigm based on memorization and acquisitive success. Human short-term memory is relatively poor, by the time we're adults we forget much of what we learned in school. We should embrace AI as a tool to access knowledge instantly, freeing us to focus on important skills like learning how to learn, problem-solving, critical thinking, emotional intelligence, etc.
AI is simply reflecting the things that we don't do so well back to us. It's revealing that there is perhaps an over-reliance on a level of cognition that is equally or better handled by a machine so that humans can focus on deeper cognitive challenges.
AI is not the problem, traditional education is. AI just makes it more evident. Long before AI, schools and degrees were already drifting toward irrelevance (see: https://www.apmreports.org/episode/2014/03/05/the-problem-with-lecturing).
We need to deprecate an obsolete paradigm based on memorization and acquisitive success. Human short-term memory is relatively poor, by the time we're adults we forget much of what we learned in school. We should embrace AI as a tool to access knowledge instantly, freeing us to focus on important skills like learning how to learn, problem-solving, critical thinking, emotional intelligence, etc.
+1. I think AI reveals how arbitrary a lot of tests are
On point!,teach in schools how to use AI from as early as practical.
This!
AI is simply reflecting the things that we don't do so well back to us. It's revealing that there is perhaps an over-reliance on a level of cognition that is equally or better handled by a machine so that humans can focus on deeper cognitive challenges.
LOUDER FOR THE PEOPLE THE BACK!
I wrote something similar: “AI didn’t start this. But it will finish it unless we step in.
In Ulysses, James Joyce wrote: “Think you’re escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home.”
We must choose the “longest way round” because meaning is neither fast nor viral nor optimized.”
https://www.whitenoise.email/p/when-the-internet-was-for-people
This has got to be one of the best Substack articles I’ve read all year. Very well done. If only university administrators would read stuff like this!
Thank you very much for this Stack. It encapsulates the thoughts I've been having about AI.
🔥🔥
Having read many of your essays, I can't help but notice that Santiago often shows up in many of them. You must love The Alchemist a lot :)
Santiago changed my brain chemistry in high school
We need to learn to focus more on Principal learning, rather than Agent learning.
We need to be independent thinkers, rather than stuck in known system.
We need difficulty!! I loved this piece Sherry!
Thank you Caroline!
The fire you speak of—the temple of difficulty—is real. But what burns most isn’t friction.
It’s simulation.
Academia became hollow not just from ease, but from performing difficulty without transformation.
Smoothness isn’t just aesthetic. It’s institutional anesthesia.
If we want to become human again, we don’t need more lectures.
We need to stop mistaking rigor for ritual.
Struggle means nothing unless it cuts.
Let the system collapse. Let the student remember what it means to become.
Sorry, you are so wrong on this. I usually love your stuff and I'm calling bs.
AI is not going away, our goal is to embrace and shape. It has the potential to give us a 30 hr work week.
I lived long enough to have heard the "no calculators " nonsense.
Show your work. Use every tool.