The emergence of artificial intelligence threatens the foundations of education: how we teach, how we evaluate and even how students learn to think. Cheating has become effortlessly. The sections of attention are dissolving. And the future labor panorama is so uncertain that we do not know what careers to prepare students. TO Recent NBC news survey Of almost 20,000 Americans show that the public is uniformly divided, and approximately half believe that we must integrate AI in education and half believing that we must prohibit it.
So, as we welcome the 2029 class to our campus, what should universities do?
Although some urge higher education to prioritize STEM fields and AI -related work skills, a surprising number of technology leaders is advising otherwise.
“I don't think you should learn to code,” he says Investor and former Facebook executive Chamath Palihapitiya. “The role of the engineer will be supervision, at best, within 18 months.”
Roman Vorel, Honeywell Information Director, He argues that “the future belongs to leaders with high EQS, those with empathy, self -awareness and the ability to make genuine human connections, because the AI will democratize the intellectual coefficient.”
Daniel Kokotajlo, co -author of “AI 2027“That projects a set of scenarios that lead to a” huge “impact of superhuman AI during the next decade, expresses it without surroundings:” Economic productivity is no longer the name of the game when it comes to raising children. What still matters is that my children are good people, and who have wisdom and virtue. “
In other words, as machines gain in speed and capacity, the most valuable human features may not be technical but moral and interpersonal. Steven Levy technology journalist He spoke even more clearly in a recent start at the University of Temple: “You have something that no computer can have. It is a superpower, and each of you has it in abundance: your humanity.”
It may seem a difficult task to cultivate attention, empathy, judgment and character, qualities that are difficult to measure and even more difficult to produce in mass. Fortunately, we have an answer, one that turns out to be surprisingly ancient: liberal education. Little liberal arts universities can register only a modest 4% Of our university students, but they are, historically and today, the Bank of Seeds of our Nation for a deep and broad humanistic education.
Liberal education is structured around a serious commitment to texts, works of art and scientific discoveries that have shaped our understanding of truth, justice, beauty and nature of the world. Students not only absorb information, but also participate in active dialogue and research, who learn to deal with fundamental questions. What is the good life? What is the relationship between mathematics and reality? Can reason and faith coexist? Why do music and art move us?
These acts (reading, looking, listening, discussing, may sound modest, but are powerful tools to develop the skills that students most need. Wrestling with a challenging text for hours and days strengthens attention as physical exercise accumulates resistance. Conversation sharpens the ability to speak and listen carefully, weigh the opposite opinions, connect thought with feeling. This type of education, by deepening our understanding of ourselves, Wisdom, and is remarkably resistant to the shortcuts offered by AI.
If you spent a week at the university I directed, St. John's College in Santa Fe, nm, you could forget that it even exists. It is difficult to pretend a two -hour conversation about “Don Quijote” after reading only a summary of AI, and it is uncomfortable to continue that conversation with their friends during a meal in the dining room. If you succumb to the temptations of AI when writing an article, you are likely to be staggering in the discussion of monitoring with the faculty.
Liberal arts universities have another indispensable tool to deepen learning and human connection: culture. Most are small and united communities where students and faculty know each other and ideas are exchanged face to face. Students do not choose these schools by default; They often opt for their distinctive character. The attraction of technology is less strong in these universities, because they create intense, sustained and not mediated experiences of communal thought. This strong culture could be seen as a kind of technology in itself: one designed not to dissipate minds and hearts, but to support and deepen them.
Paradoxically, four years eliminated to a large extent of the influence of technology is one of the best ways to prepare for life and work in an increasingly technologized world.
Carla Echevarria, Student of 1996 by St. John's and now senior manager of user experience in Google Deepmind, admits that she “would fight with Schrödinger in the senior laboratory and then hit my head against Hegel for a couple of hours and then cry in the library while listening to 'Tristan und Isolde'. That brings an intellectual braveness.
“When I started working at AI, I really didn't know anything about AI,” he adds. “I prepared for my interview reading for a couple of weeks. That courage is the best gift of education.” Many students echo this belief regardless of the fields in which they enter.
As we go to this school year and in the future formed by powerful and unpredictable machines, the best preparation may not be a new invention, but an old discipline. We do not need a thousand new new universities, but we need a thousand of our schools and universities, large and small, to embrace a backward rebirth of these deeply humanizing educational practices. We do not need to overcome AI: we need to educate people who may think clearly, act wisely and live well with others.
J. Walter Sterling is the president of St. John's College, with Campus in Annapolis, MD., and Santa Fe, Nm
