“It’s a very traumatic experience when some of your most core beliefs about the world start collapsing. And especially when you think that human beings are soon going to be eclipsed.” ~Hofstadter (Gödel Escher Bach author).
Brooks, the NYT opinion columnist, has a recent article (below) about one of our famous mind theorists Douglas Hostadter and his opinions on AI advances.
We already have two main categories for projections of where AI might “take humanity”…one of which is the “Doomers” who see complete disaster at the hands of AI as our fate. The other group is the “Wow, this is one of the most powerful innovations of all time and will lead to great leaps in “progress” for civilization.
Since it’s unlikely anyone can really know what’s coming with AI, taking a “stand” on one’s prediction seems perilous at best and Hofstadter exemplifies the dilemma. He has a history of projections and theories of human consciousness in relation to machine consciousness that predates our current somewhat manic response to AI.
But as Brooks notes, Hofstadter has changed his mind a few times along the way and seems to be currently full of quite evident contradictions, saying one thing one place, and another quite different thing someplace else. As in the recent YouTube** Gödel, Escher, Bach author Doug Hofstadter on the state of AI today. **
Hofstadter also penned an AI article in The Atlantic released in early July where he says AI won’t be “all that” …among many other things.
There are other sources of his current thinking online, and they seem to bounce between AI will never replace humans, to AI will surely replace a lot of what humans do and give us all an existential crisis. Wherever Hostadter may eventually “land” in his take on the current AI surprise developments such as ChatGPT and the image versions, perhaps most valuable to us is that even the best minds about consciousness are currently in a quandary as to what to make of it all.
We can be torn between patience while “we” get a better handle on what’s going on with AI, and the need to “get up to and keep up with the speed of change”. This applies to educators as well, who potentially need to start over from the ground up on what education should be and how to do it.
Another way to say this, it’s “Future Shock” as Alvin Toffler predicted…changes happening so fast we can’t keep up and fall behind further and further.
Generally we assume innovation will pause to allow us to catch up, but what if it doesn’t ? That’s the question Toffler asked; he died well before the current AI raced ahead.
One of the current advantages of social media is that ideas can spread rapidly/ go viral, and formerly obscure individuals can become well known in a blink. PSA hopes to stay abreast of whoever may currently be matching their thinking with the pace of AI innovation.
One such individual is David Shapiro who has frequent blog and YouTube postings.
** The Hofstadter YouTube above on GEB is done by Amy Jo Kim, who wrote “Building Community on the Web“, a bible for Online Teaching and Learning courses at NMSU for many years…with a copywrite of 2000.
Amy now does research on Online Gaming Communities and Game Development. Amy also explores the implications for learning communities of gaming tech and tropes. Perhaps we might turn to Amy for current zeitgeist insights too as she seems to be “in the know” and “plugged in.”*
Why Douglas Hofstadter Is Changing His Mind on A.I. - The New York Times