Artificial intelligence (A.I.) has taken the world of computing by storm, and with it everything that can be programmed. Programmers are sensing that the wind is blowing in a new direction; their possibilities have been taken to a new level. As AI invades virtually all our activities, the same phenomenon is being apprehended in most spheres of society, with all the transformations it implies.
What is programmed becomes a form of prediction of the future, of fixing branches of the future, of wills placed as so many potential actions just waiting for a bit to trigger them. Beyond a certain level of programming, we lose our autonomy, our capacities and ultimately our freedom. We're beginning to recognize this, particularly in education.
A.I. processes knowledge in astronomical quantities and performs wonders of personalization to the point of downgrading us as a source of teaching and redefining the role of the teacher. New applications are leading to practices for which we have few or no valid guidelines, at a level of interconnection never seen before. We're moving towards a hyper-programmed society, which even anticipates our desires, but is it really what we need?
We can ask both technical and ethical questions. How can we teach all this? Is it even worth learning, such is the pace of change? Is A.I. the apogee of materialism? Only that which is not digitized escapes it; in other words, the human mind and its imagination, its appreciation, its goals, that which gives meaning to existence and from which it drinks without understanding anything, only to synthesize them and return them to us in mirror image. May we not end up like Narcissus, languishing before the beauty of our own reflection, until we wither away.
A.I. and information technology are forcing a reinitialization of society, and society is forcing a reinitialization of technological practices. We need to find a balance.
Denys Lamontagne - [email protected]
Illustration: OpenClipart-Vectors on Pixabay
