In my previous post, I advanced the idea that creativity and creative skills will become much more valuable as AI automates away many of the technical tasks white-collar professionals currently perform. Popular author Daniel Pink makes a similar argument in his book, A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers will Rule the Future. According to Pink, technological advances are now tipping the scales in favor of creative skills rather than technical know-how, and generative AI tools are accelerating this trend.
Now if this trend continues, how should society respond? Is a singular focus on technical skill acquisition the best way forward? Is a STEM degree the only viable option? The logic of this position no longer makes sense in a world where AI does much of the technical and scientific work once done by humans. The full scope of what can be automated is just now coming into view. Of course, technical skill – techne as the Greeks called it – is not going to become obsolete overnight. However, its importance will diminish over time.
This new reality, I believe, asks us to rethink an old idea, the idea of a liberal arts education. Part of that liberal arts ideal was the whole-hearted embrace of the study of languages, culture, and history. In this view of education, the mind is likened to a Swiss army knife, and the pedagogical goal is to fit as many blades (reference frames) into it as possible. Conversely, the idea of an educated human as a single purpose tool was anathema. That simply made no sense. For what would a person like that do when the world changed, as it so often does, and rendered their technical skillset obsolete? Here breadth of experience is not viewed negatively but rather as a necessary prerequisite of creativity.
The key to creativity, as Renaissance thinkers saw it, was to insert yourself into as many different frames or cultural contexts as possible. Steve Jobs argued that “creativity is just connecting things.” But to do that, one has to have things to connect. Those things are usually found in areas or cultural contexts far removed from the constructs (social or mental) that order one’s daily life. The seven months Steve spent in India, for example, forced him to think about design from a Zen perspective. Because the cultural and language constructs of a foreign land are invariant, the newcomer is faced with a choice. Am I going to adjust to this new way of thinking, this new language, this new culture, or am I going to resist? Those who decide to adjust make an implicit decision to step out of one cultural frame, the one they currently inhabit, and step into a new one. Even if that step is partial, a tentative embrace of the new, it inevitably leads to the deeper understanding that one can frame a situation in a multitude of ways. Life in a foreign land teaches the sojourner that things really can be different. There are other options, other frames of reference. And the more frames one can access – either vicariously or through lived experience, the greater will be their creative freedom. In this sense, a true liberal arts education frees the human from slavery, from the tyranny of the single right answer, the dogmatic adherence to but one conception of truth. An education of this sort confers many advantages – the most important one being the ability to creatively respond to whatever life sends your way. Do we see anything coming our way right now? Yes, we do. It’s called artificial intelligence.
I love these observations and thank you for sharing them! I recently read A Thousand brains: A New Theory of Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins. You might enjoy that book too.
I loved your metaphor of the mind as a Swiss army knife with multiple frames of reference. You advanced this idea further in your discussion of the true meaning of a liberal arts education: "the more frames one can access – either vicariously or through lived experience, the greater will be their creative freedom. In this sense, a true liberal arts education frees the human from slavery, from the tyranny of the single right answer, the dogmatic adherence to but one conception of truth." What caught my attention here was the idea of the "tyranny" of the single right answer, or the one conception of truth. Metaphysically, truth = truth with a capital T, as both unified and absolute. Admittedly, and obviously, we can approach truth from multiple angles and perspectives; however, finding truth and stating truth is an important goal to avoid subjectivism, and the concept of "that is your truth and this is my truth". Especially in the world of artificial intelligence and virtual reality, authenticating truth is and will be of utmost importance; e.g. exposing deep fakes and engaging in TRUE fact checking. Authenticators of truth are more to be desired than gold!