Ah yes — artificial intelligence. The salvation of the low-IQ set and the bane of thinkers and innovation everywhere.
Allow me to express my open hostility for what most people assume is “artificial intelligence” in the wake of ChatGPT and OpenAI. No — not because I am a troglodyte. No — not because my true political beliefs hover somewhere between Wendell Berry (see here and here) and Theodore Kaszynski (see here). Certainly not because I do not understand what AI is and what it is not.
Rather, what we commonly call artificial intelligence is far more artificial than intelligent. What we commonly call AI is little more than brute force data sorting, the evolution of Big Data into Bigger Data — data so big and so algorithmic, we treat ChatGPT in much the same way that we treat our cars, televisions, smartphones, computer programs, and other convolutions we use and abuse every single day without having the faintest clue as to how they actually function (see here for another book declaiming this public illness).
Once upon a time — as in, five years ago — there was a spirited public debate about the meritocracy and what it owed to the rest of us. Namely, in a hyperindustrialized society where AI does most of the tasks, what happens to low-wage, low-skilled workers when work has become obsolete?
Here’s where things get a bit more complicated. Assume for a moment that you are one of those chuckleheads who assumes that the world is effectively governed by what you make. Sure, that might work in the widget factory, but does it work in every field? I can print millions of Van Goghs, up to and including getting every brush stroke right and every pigmentation just so. Every home could have a reproduction of a Van Gogh.
Problem is, AI cannot create another Van Gogh, and while those who view the lower-IQ set with a certain contempt may believe this to be acceptable, the simple fact is that AI — for all its borrowing and stealing — will never produce another Vincent Van Gogh.
Imitation is a sincere form of flattery, but innovation is a skill no test can reproduce.
For those who actually clicked on the link, there are some extraordinarily broad ideas regarding how the human mind actually functions. Better still, how your mind functions as an organistic whole with your body and your soul — and not just this, but whether what you think is actually what you think, or whether or not what you think is purely based on what society tells you to think.
That’s convoluted — but read it again and see if it makes sense. How we think what we think really does matter in the whole AI conversation. More than we realize.
Either way, our brains do something that brute force data sorting never does. As opposed to what ChatGPT or OpenAI does by sorting billions of web pages at an instant, our minds typically limit our available choices to three or four — and from there, we decide upon a course of action. For McDowell, our brains limit these decisions to three or four based upon our conditions and conditioning — our experiences, background, values, thoughts, ideas, influences, environment, what colors our mind is processing at the moment (warm or cool) — all of it.
If this sounds like gobbledygook? Trust me — marketers and data scientist have already played the game and figured you out.
If you have ever thought about a thing and never expressed it to a soul, yet seen ads for that thing? You have fallen victim to a combination of psychological seeding and big data. Namely, you are scrolling through Instagram and go down a rabbit trail of Caribbean islands. Maybe you wonder about taking a trip to Bermuda. Next step? In about 4-24 hours, someone has bought your search history and is now feeding you trips to Bermuda via cruise lines.
It’s Not Education, It’s Manipulation
Which brings us to the introduction of AI to the field of public education.
Now typically, I like to think of myself as 75% Wendell Berry in my outlook. Yet there is a certain point where I hate to admit that I do indeed reach for my gun — no stronger is this impulse when we strive to replace the human and the iterative with the certain and Faustian impulse toward artifice.
This happens to be the hardnosed truth about most AI.
Yes, it is the bane of every teacher and professor attempting to ask students to grapple with big ideas rather than turn in a half-baked and middling C- on essays. Yet to succumb to the idea of introducing AI into say — developing lesson plans — is the humanities equivalent of allowing Uber and Lyft to weaponize the gig economy so as to aggregate enough resources as to automate the entire industry.
Yes — that’s happening.
Don’t think it isn’t happening to education.
In fact, for the low-IQ set? It is already arriving as we reduce education to test taking, inspiration to invocation, and the profession of teaching into some sort of monotonous repetition more in line with teaching a parrot rather than the kindling of fire.
Both Plutarch and William Butler Yeats understood something that our postmodern automatons simply cannot fathom. For those who do not have a passionate love of ideas, it is far easier to produce someone who can mimic intelligence than foster intelligence. Not just intelligence (IQ) but empathy (EQ) and all of the intangibles that come with those who embrace the concept of excellence — the aristos.
One of the great truisms of the world I learned over the course of my lifetime was from a mostly-drunk good ol’ boy in a cabin amongst friends along the Shenandoah River. “Some folks,” he intoned over Coors Light, “are just meant to hang chickens,” a platitude directed to the Perdue family, no doubt.
Yet there is a certain truth to it. Not every soul was meant to attend Harvard and muse upon the works of Plutarch. Some people’s idea of happiness is a hound dog, a trailer, a six-pack and a sunset. I dare say that such individuals are far happier than your self-styled and sneering middle class who hold such individuals in utter contempt as they panic every four weeks about how they should pay their credit cards.
Personally, Bubba has it figured out.
To this sort, the idea of surrendering the immediate to something as soft and unassuming as AYE-EYE seems like a relief. The idea of allowing ChatGPT or OpenAI to develop a lesson plan for the seemingly cheap and unassuming cost of inputting a handful of prompts may seem innocuous at first — but that machine isn’t learning, it is aggregating.
Which means it is stealing.
From you.
Here Comes the Moment Where I Am More Ted Kaczinski than Wendell Berry (And You Should Pay Attention to This Because It Is Super Important and This Takes Up a Ton of Space for a Reason So Please — Hear Me Out).
Look — I know AI is really easy to use.
I don’t fault a soul for having a low-IQ or low-EQ any more than I fault them for having a high-IQ or high-EQ.
But.
There are a ton of super cynical people out there willing to make a permanent buck off of your temporary need. There’s a super sophisticated and erudite Latin word I like to use to describe these kinds of people: assholes.
They sell the idea that you are networking, but in fact they are aggregating and selling your data while building a psychological profile of you as a consumer of information, goods, and ideas.
We all know they — and “they” aren’t hard to identify — are doing this, but we willingly give this information away for free. Don’t assume for a millisecond that you have an interior life these manipulators are somehow prevented from seeing — as McDowell reminds Dreyfus, we live in a world and in the world — and our neoliberal Western style free market democratic capitalism doesn’t view you as a soul, they see you as merely a unit of production which can be read, digested, and spat out based on your appetites, habits, and stuff you click on at 2am. Aggregate enough of it, and I have who you are.
Of course, there is a counterpunch. Dreyfus alternately argues that we are still souls — or rather, that we simply do not understand how our minds work in a purely mechanistic and physicalist sense. Moreover, if you are in the profession of teaching, the individuals you are teaching are not mere physical automatons who can be taught by physical automatons. They come with a vast array of psychological and moral values which cannot be pre-determined by mere statistics. In the aggregate? Perhaps. In the instant? NEVER.
So there’s the good news. Teachers will never be replaced by AI and should probably quit feeding the dragon just in case some ding-dong decides to let the dragon babysit their kids and call that an education.
Therefore, dear reader, allow me to give you the weaponized tools against the tyranny of mediocrity — again, a C- warlord — in your own professions, and especially in the professions of education and academia.
First and foremost, tell them to go to hell.
Second, tell them to go directly to hell. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.
Third, remind yourself that whatever you surrender to the hive mind of ChatGPT or OpenAI that it finds is unique — it is gone. That’s your spark. That’s you. And you sold it for what? An easier lesson plan? Remember the old line: if you are sitting at a poker table and you cannot figure out who the mark is? The mark is you.
Fourth — AI is what low-IQ people use to get ahead.
Yeah.
I said it.
Sometimes they are teachers who need the assist in order to function. Sometimes they are the business executive who learned early that it is easier to grift than produce (and there are more than a few of those floating around). Yet if you feel that itch called conscience in the back of your brain, that means Jesus riding his dinosaur 4,000 years ago tens of thousands of years of evolution are at your back telling you something doesn’t quite add up.
After all, if the product is free? You are the product — just know what you’re getting yourself into when using artificial intelligence. The emphasis is and always will be on the artifice, but most certainly never on the intelligent.
Go forth and be awesome, my friends.