The rapid development of Artificial Intelligence has raised innumerable questions about environmental impact; about creativity, and about the kind of world we want to live in.
Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, responded recently to concerns about the energy demands of Artificial Intelligence, with a rather odd argument: “People talk about how much energy it takes to train an AI model… but it also takes a lot of energy to train a human.” Then he doubled down: “It takes about 20 years of life – and all the food you consume during that time – before you become smart.”
Altman was trying to divert attention from the unfathomably large investments needed to develop AI models like ChatGPT. What he managed to do instead, however, was highlight the anti-humanist vision shared by too many of his cohort.
Humanity – and humans – are valued in this worldview only for their productivity; what they contribute to building up wealth for the billionaire class. Personal and social development, in this approach, is reduced to ‘training’ – to preparing us to complete tasks that AI is not yet efficient (or competent ) enough to undertake.
It would seem that those responsible for developing AI – and they are all intent on persuading us of how ‘responsible’ they are – have read all the sci-fi of my youth, but somehow ended up missing the warnings of dystopian futures, identifying instead with the villains.
If ever there was a time for valuing education for its development of critical thinking and political consciousness – and not merely for its role in fostering ’employability’ – it is now.
We have been here before…
Victorian thinking
In the early nineteenth century, as the Industrial Revolution was in full swing, there was a call for education in ‘useful knowledge’ – the ’employability skills’ of their day – in order to produce the skilled workers that industry demanded.
Raymond Williams (1921-1988 ), a Welsh cultural critic, noted though that there was also pushback against this utilitarian approach to education, with a recognition of the need to make sense of the interaction between the new ‘techniques’ and lived experience. Activists coined the term “really useful education” both to satirise the push for ‘useful education,’ and to promote instead an education that facilitated “knowledge of everyday circumstances.” That education would help learners understand the structure of the world around them, and make sense of their own experiences.
The legacy of the ‘really useful knowledge’ movement has most directly been found in the adult education sector, whose learners bring their own experiences back into the classroom to interrogate and build on them. At their best, too, the Arts and Humanities are vital to our democracy, and our shared cultural experience.
In one widely reproduced online missive, sci-fi author Joanna Maciejewska argued that “I want AI to do my laundry, and dishes, so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing, so that I can do my laundry and dishes.”
If the claims of AI evangelists have any truth to them, we are on the cusp of a radical reshaping of the working world. Many roles now filled by highly skilled individuals, will instead be completed by AI tools and agents. Adjusting to that new reality will require a rethinking of what roles we prepare people for in our educational systems.
It should equally echo the ‘really useful knowledge’ movements of the nineteenth century in providing space – and the intellectual tools – to ask radical questions: whose interests are being served by the changes being pushed on us? What alternatives are there? How can we organise to secure better outcomes?
Only through such an approach will we be able to challenge the Altmans of this world, for whom the human is merely a meat-sack to be put to work. Only through such an approach will we be able to strive towards a just and equitable world. One where AI takes care of the dishes, rather than the art.
Dr Andrew Ó Baoill is a lecturer at the School of English, Media and Creative Arts at University of Galway.
