Robot-proofing in a World of Ubiquitous A.I.
In a future of ubiquitous A.I. where everything that can be automated will be automated, we have to ask ourselves what then should schools focus on? Schools ought to focus on all those skills, competencies, and fluencies that cannot be automated and for which AI doesn’t exist.
In part 1 and part 2, we considered how, of all the Multiple Intelligences, the ones for which AI doesn’t exist are Existential Intelligence, Intrapersonal Intelligence, and Pedagogical Intelligence. Currently, our educational system does not really focus on developing these intelligences except in the most cursory and perfunctory way.
Moving forward, we have to change the focus of high schools from obsessing with the curriculum and teaching to the syllabus. Schools should no longer be about preparing students for exams. The purpose of schools is not to simply get students into University.
In a post-AI world, the focus of education has to be different. Awecademy’s Massive Transformative Purpose is one of the few future-focused educational platforms that is thinking in the right direction. Awecademy’s MTP is to prepare the next generation of cosmic citizens to help bring about civilisation-level change. This aligns with what the purpose of schools ought to be in a post-A.I. world, which is to help students become upstanding individuals who take a cosmic perspective and focus on solving the grand challenges facing our species.
This is not airy-fairy thinking. This is not la-di-dah sentimentality. When we zoom out and look at the big picture; when we contemplate the fate of the human species and all life on this planet; and when we consider the grand scheme of things — then, there can be no other purpose of education.
What is required is a bigger vision for our youth and a higher expectation of our educational system. Peter Diamandis says, “The new definition of a billionaire is he who will positively affect the lives of a billion people.” We have to give our youth the tools and wherewithal to become this kind of billionaire.
Once we acknowledge that the purpose of education should be to develop upstanding cosmic citizens who will solve the problems of the world then we can focus on other priorities related to the purpose of education:
1. To create individuals who are scientifically literate and can think critically
2. To create individuals who are self-reliant and can survive independently as adults
3. To promote creativity, kindness, innovation, collaboration, curiosity and other 21st century skills.
If we are to help bring about civilisation-level change, prepare for the singularity, and help our species transcend, then what we need is to first focus on changing mindsets. We need to focus on developing an abundance mindset, nurturing Intelligent Optimism, and taking a cosmic perspective.
A cosmic citizen is anyone who recognizes our place in the universe, the fragility of our planet, and the unimaginable potential we have as a species. At its core, the cosmic perspective is about zooming out and seeing the big picture. It involves acknowledging our place in the cosmos and stepping back and contemplating our purpose in the grand scheme of things.
Taking a cosmic perspective stimulates a determination to successfully resolve all the problems we have here on Earth and focus on the issues that matter. Looking at ourselves from a cosmic perspective is known to inspire more compassion for our fellow human beings and all life. After all, from space, national boundaries and geographic differences disappear, and it becomes clear that at the end of the day, we are all fundamentally human.
In the words of Neil deGrasse Tyson, “I want people to see that the cosmic perspective is simultaneously honest about the universe we live in and uplifting, when we realize how far we have come and how wonderful is this world of ours.”
It is a powerful awakening of the mind and a fundamental redefinition of what it means to be human. It upgrades our consciousness, our values, and the kind of ambitions that we set forward for ourselves, both as individuals and as a species.
Transhumanism is a mode of thinking about the future of our species. It is premised on the notion that Homo sapiens in our current form don’t represent the end of evolution. Instead, transhumanism is the belief that we are in an early stage and a continually transitionary phase of becoming something much greater and far more impressive using superior technologies to upgrade our bodies, our minds, our morality, and our priorities. “What is great in Man,” said the philosopher Nietzsche, “is that he is a bridge, not an end.” Transhumanism is the belief that with the exponential growth of technologies and an increasing merger with our tools, Humans 2.0 is a real possibility.
Renowned education expert and author, Marc Prensky, points out that, “We educate our kids so they can better their, and our, world. Our children can be, and should be, improving their world — and improving themselves in the process — via a new approach that far better suits them and the needs of our future society. From the very start of their education, we should be fusing ‘thinking skills’ and ‘accomplishing skills’ into an education with a direct, hands-on connection to the world and its problems.”
Civilisation-level change involves solving our global grand challenges, creating abundance for all, ushering in large-scale economic reform, eradicating superstition, elevating art as civic responsibility, promoting scientific literacy, reason, compassion, and the values of the Enlightenment, and perhaps what’s most exciting: preparing to be a multi-planetary species.
We live in a world where exponential technologies are disrupting all aspects of human society. But many of these technologies are resource-liberating mechanisms. They have the ability to make the once-scarce now-abundant. In his book, Abundance: The Future is Better than you Think Peter Diamandis narrates the story of Aluminium. It used to be the most expensive metal on the planet. More expensive than gold, silver, and platinum. It was expensive not because it was rare (Aluminium is the second most abundant element in the earth’s crust). It was expensive because we did not have the technology to extract it from its ore. This changed in the mid-19th century when we discovered the process of electrolysis. Aluminium suddenly went from being expensive and rare to abundant and cheap. How cheap? So cheap that we crumple it up and throw it in the garbage bin in the form of aluminium foil.
Think of all the other resources that are scarce — energy, food, water, shelter, access to education and healthcare — with the right kind of technology these can be abundant for all. We have to equip our kids with an abundance mindset and the belief that they can solve the problems facing our species and our planet. That is where Moonshot Thinking comes in.
The original moonshot was landing humans on the Moon. The United States went from having no space programme to putting human boot prints on the surface of the moon in ten years.
Moonshot Thinking is shooting for the moon. Thinking big. They are 10x improvements not 10%. It addresses a huge problem, proposes a radical solution, and uses breakthrough technology to make it happen.
Larry Page talks about how he asks people whether they are working on something that will change the world. The answer, he says, from 99.999% or people is No. We have to work on training kids to think about how they can change the world. Teachers often underestimate the abilities of their students. It is time for educators to have much higher expectations of what their students are capable of. It is time for educators to help students meet their highest potential to be a force for positive change in the world — while they are still in school. It is not enough to teach our kids to dream big. We have to help them to do big as well. It is time to create opportunities for moonshots in the classroom.
Not every student wants to be an entrepreneur. Nevertheless, a student who wants to be entrepreneur needs support from a range of students who have varied skillsets. To solve some of the challenges facing society, we have to integrate science and tech, with art and design, and with business and entrepreneurship. In addition, we have to package and deliver it with a sense of wonder and awe.
Teachers wear many hats: they are guides, counselors, facilitators, coaches, mentors, caregivers, and community leaders. They play many roles, including that of accountant, designer, judge, tour guide, cheerleader, social butterfly, Big Brother, and yes, sometimes even cop. However, it is imperative that teachers start seeing themselves in another role; — teachers have got to start seeing themselves as entertainers.
When teachers see themselves as entertainers then the classroom is no longer a classroom. It becomes a stage. The students are no longer students; they are the audience. The lesson is no longer just a lesson; it becomes a show. And, if teachers want their audience to come back again and again, day in and day out, then they’ve got to keep the show entertaining.
The key words for the teacher-as-entertainer to keep in mind are “Awe” and “Wonder”. Children are naturally curious. They have an innate desire to learn. They want to be impressed. However, they are surrounded by so many stimuli that are competing for their attention: fancy gadgets, television commercials, computer games, social media, and so much more. The 21st century teacher has to acknowledge this and recognise that they are competing with a brash, fast-paced, exciting world outside the four walls of the classroom. If they want to keep their students engaged, excited, and enthusiastic, then they have to keep their students entertained and fill them with a sense of awe and wonder.
And we do live in an awe-inspiring world. Think of the remarkable progress our species has made. We have seen more progress in the last 100 years than in the previous thousand.
A cousin of Straight Line Thinking, Blue Sky Thinking is an imagined and speculative leap into the future, beyond current thinking or beliefs but still with a favourable desired and deterministic outcome in mind. Dr Rachel Armstrong points out that Black Sky Thinking is when an individual or organisation wants to reach beyond the Blue Sky. Beyond current frameworks and pre-determined projections, into the terrain of the unknown. But more than this, bring this unknown into the present in a way that has immediate effects and engages others, always cognisant that the ‘Future Is Messy’, not linear and deterministic.
We are reaching a tipping point. Radical changes await us. The merger between nature and technology could lead to a new Cambrian Explosion of lifeforms. If such a scenario awaits us then it cannot be acceptable that its outcomes remain unknown. It is essential that we involve young minds in these profoundly important conversations about the future of us, the future of life, and the future of the universe. We’ve got to equip them to navigate this future space in a way that is bold, propositional, experimental, moral, creative, and optimistic.
However, the last thing we need is blind, lazy, and uninformed optimism. It is more important to be optimistic based on reason and by facing facts. Intelligent optimism is all about being thrilled, excited, and optimistic about the future in an informed and rational way based on statistics, data, evidence, facts, science, and empirical evidence.
Imagine what it is like to be a child or a young adult. Imagine being bombarded every single day with news of how bad the world is; how society is going down the drain; how human beings are just awful creatures. Imagine reading the newspaper or tuning into the mainstream media and being inundated with a barrage of negative news: bomb blasts, terrorist attacks, car accidents, plane crashes, rapes, murders, rising inflation, economic recession… and on and on and on… day in day out, week after week, month after month, year after year.
What would this do the psyche of a young mind? How would it affect their sense of self and their sense of purpose in the world? How would it affect their hopes, dreams, and aspirations for themselves, their families, and the rest of the world?
However, the good news is that the doomsday merchants, naysayers, and peddlers of gloom are all wrong and always have been. By almost every single measure and in almost every single index the world is actually getting better. In fact, this is the best possible time for a human being to be alive. And according to Director of Engineering at Google, Ray Kurzweil, because of the convergence of Exponential Tech, in the next 100 years we will see the equivalent of 20,000 years’ worth of progress.
The technological singularity that Ray Kurzweil talks about is a point in the future where exponentially growing technologies will usher in an age of greater than human intelligence and increasing merger between biological and artificial intelligence.
When artificial systems become trillions of times more powerful than human brains, and when they learn to communicate with each other in ways we didn’t programme them to, that’s when we’ll see the Technological Singularity — the technological equivalent of the biological Cambrian explosion.
All this will have an even more dramatic impact on the human condition, when Quantum Computing combines with A.I. and when that in turn combines with robotics. The question for us now is what do we teach our kids in schools? What should we educate them for?
The future is hard to predict, but one thing we can say with certainty is that a focus on grades and university degree is no guarantee of success in the future. Instead of focus on subjects and content, we have to focus on developing 21st century skills, future fluencies, and new competencies.
Based on the works of renowned educationists like Marc Prensky, Sir Ken Robinson, and Tony Wagner, here are the top 12 skills and abilities we ought to focus on in a 21st century school:
1. Critical thinking & problem solving
2. Collaboration across networks and leading by influence
3. Agility, adaptability, and the ability to unlearn and re-learn
4. Initiative & entrepreneurship
5. Accessing & analyzing information
6. Effective oral & written communications (and graphic visualization)
7. Curiosity and imagination
8. Systems Thinking, Design Thinking, & Computational Thinking
9. Cross-curricular thinking & multi-disciplinary problem solving
10. Project management
11. Resilience and grit
12. Ethics, Empathy and Self Knowledge (of one’s passions, strengths and weaknesses)
What we urgently need is to focus on changing the Core and focusing on “Lifeworthy Learning” — a phrase coined by founding member of Harvard’s Project Zero, David Perkins. Essentially, “Lifeworthy Learning” is learning that will probably be of use in the individual’s future. And what will be of use are all the things that robots can’t do.
In his book Robot-Proof: Higher Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, Joseph Aoun makes the case that education is not concerned solely with “topping up students’ minds with high-octane facts. Rather, it calibrates them with a creative mindset and the mental elasticity to invent, discover, or create something valuable to society — a scientific proof, a hip-hop recording, a web comic, a cure for cancer.” In this, Aoun addresses Gardner’s definition of intelligence: the ability to create products of value for society. Aoun lays out the framework for a new discipline, humanics, which builds on our innate strengths and prepares students to compete in a labour market in which smart machines work alongside human professionals. Humanics is the study of all the areas of human knowledge and endeavour that will prepare us to survive and excel in a post AI world of ubiquitous automation.
An exciting future awaits us. How we prepare ourselves and our children for this new world is crucial to the success of our species. As the Imaginary Foundation says, “Think of an exciting, ecstatic, desirable future, and pull the present forward to meet it.” The only real, meaningful, and lasting way to do that is to fix our educational system.
In his 2017 TED talk, titled Can we build A.I. without losing control over it? Neuroscientist, Sam Harris, envisions a future where we design the perfect super intelligent A.I. that would be the perfect solution to human drudgery. But it would also be the end of most intellectual work. What would human beings do?
Of course, there is a puritanical notion of Work that states one mustn’t eat if one doesn’t work; or that work means struggling in the now to experience redemption in the future. However, these are relics of a pre-super-A.I., pre-Abundance age.
It is not unlikely that we will soon be living in a world of Universal Basic Income, where 3D printing, super A.I., robots, drones, nanotech, along with other exponential technologies will ensure that most humans are freed from drudgery and mind-numbing repetitive work. Is this a good thing? In and of itself, yes. We must see certain jobs as an insult to basic human dignity. If these jobs can be automated and done by machines then we have a moral obligation to do so.
However, this would lead to a world of unprecedented leisure. In his TED talk, Sam Harris asks, “So what would apes like ourselves do in this circumstance? Well, we’d be free to play Frisbee and give each other massages. Add some LSD and some questionable wardrobe choices, and the whole world could be like Burning Man.”
The audience chuckled amiably in response to that statement. But, the fact is, there’s much to learn from Burning Man about the future of work. What happens in Black Rock City and the principles on which Burning Man is founded sound very similar to predictions of a post-A.I. human future.
Burning Man is an annual gathering that takes place at Black Rock City — a temporary community erected in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada. The event is described as an experiment in community living and art, influenced by 10 main principles, including ‘radical’ inclusion, self-reliance and self-expression, as well as community cooperation, civic responsibility, gifting, decommodification, participation, immediacy and leaving no trace. At Burning Man, the community explores various forms of artistic self-expression, created in celebration for the pleasure of all participants.
It is a decentralised world based on a gifting (not barter) economy — where money is of no consequence. It is a timeless world that never sleeps; where human beings spend their time on creating art or experiencing it; and a world where art functions as civic duty. And, most importantly of all, its members rotate constantly and exist predominantly in a virtual world — coming together to meet physically for only nine days in a year. Tens of thousands of people find meaning, spiritual connection, and artistic expression in the middle of the desert without any exchange of money. This is as futuristic as it gets, given the current trends in technology and economics.
Part 1: The Many Ways of Being Intelligent
