The Power of Speech

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After phasing is a very deep question and let's talk about that for a bit. One argument would be, who cares? Well, for most of human history, being able to write was irrelevant. To do our talking, our writing, that ultimately means to do our thinking for us. And it seems to me that from the point of view of an educator, education is about taking young men and women as they are with the peculiar capacities and abilities that they bring.

In the early 1900s, the philosopher Henry Adams expressed concern about the rapid rate of social change ushered in by new technologies, from the railways to the telegraph and ultimately airplanes. If we transpose Adams's concerns onto the power of artificial intelligence--a power whose rate of acceleration would have exceeded his wildest dreams--you might feel a bit uneasy. Listen as philosopher Jacob Howland of UATX speaks with EconTalk's Russ Roberts about why too much leisure is at best a mixed blessing, and how technology can lead to intellectual atrophy. They also speak about the role of AI in education and its implications for that most human of traits: curiosity. Finally, they discuss Howland's biggest concern when it comes to outsourcing our tasks, and our thinking, to machines: that we'll ultimately end up surrendering our own liberty.