Library Learnings: “What becomes of thinking?”

“If thought can be generated on demand, what becomes of thinking?”

I’m going to urge you to read, and ponder, that sentence again, this time in context: it appears in the middle of a half-page essay in the “Opinion” section of The Globe and Mail’s August 29 edition under the heading, “Books have become one of the defining cultural objects of the AI era.” The writing is Caia Hagel’s wake-up call for “a culture supposedly racing toward a fast and furious future.”

How rushed, how rabid? “Language stands among our species’ defining achievements, and that achievement is now being automated,” she explains. “Even if AI is not replacing human intelligence, it is mastering many of the activities we have long considered evidence of it, like writing, researching, chatting, translating, summarizing, and brainstorming. This creates a new existential tension.”

And it’s at this point that she poses her question, “If thought can be generated on demand, what becomes of thinking?”

Don’t know about you, but when I first read that puzzler, actress Geena Davis’s dictum came to mind, her far-famed avowal in David Cronenberg’s 1986 sci-fi horror film, “The Fly”: “Be afraid. Be very afraid.”

Wait. Be fair: Caia Hagel’s article is less a foreboding about artificial intelligence than it is a gorgeous paean to books and reading. And it’s that about the piece which drew your librarians’ attention. Consider these lines: books “open our minds”; reading is “a soulful ambition”; “a book is no longer merely something we read, it’s an object of aspiration”; “a well-chosen book now signals…emotional intelligence and desirability.”

Which has her wondering, “Why are we suddenly so drawn to the book…?” And she answers, “When something essential feels threatened, we become more attached to its physical form. …in an age of AI-generated text, the physical book reasserts itself. …a book has weight and permanence. It carries traces of human attention in its pages…and between its covers…it preserves a completed act of thought….”

So it is that she writes, the resurgence of interest—bookstores are being reborn and reading clubs are proliferating—”suggests something more complex than nostalgia, trend, or a reaction against chatbots that can now generate lucid prose in seconds. Books offer a tangible link to human authorship, but they also seem to meet a deeper psychological need.”

Indeed, literature “activates what psychologists call theory of mind—the cognitive ability to attribute beliefs, desires, emotions, and intentions, to oneself and to others. Stories are the foundation of human social interaction that allow us to understand what we are, who others might be, and that thoughts and perspectives differ across spaces.”

Reading books, Hagel allows, “demand time, attention, and interiority,” and that makes them “the counterweight of the acceleration era. Reading remains one of the few activities that, once we open the pages…unfolds privately at human speed…. As artificial intelligence accelerates and reshapes cultural life, we will navigate this change by anchoring ourselves in the wisdom of book worlds.”

This is why, “in this electrifying, unfamiliar, hyperconnected age, we want to be reading…. We are nurturing the sacred, creative spaces of the human spirit….” Books, then, “will continue to invite us into quiet encounters in the secret garden of our souls….”

(If you don’t know, or know about, Caia Hagel—we didn’t—you’ll find her intriguing—we did: she describes herself as a digital anthropologist and a trend reporter. Harper Collins calls her “a culture forecaster”; The Creative Independent pictures her as “a slow book writer”; The Believer Magazine finds her to be “a creative economy entrepreneur”; and Noema Magazine tells how she “explores culture, innovation, and new movements in technology in search of speculative futures”.)

—Ken Fredrick

Sidebar #1 — “They know it’s wrong”

“Educators are grappling with how best to incorporate AI in their classrooms, while fostering critical thinking and intellectual honesty.”

One week after Caia Hagel worried that artificial intelligence could run amok, The Globe and Mail ran reporter Brittany Hobson’s Canadian Press cross-country check-up: “While some schools have embraced digital education, others are struggling to keep up.” For some, it’s as the president of the Alberta Teachers’ Association, Jason Schilling, declared: “Sometimes it feels a little bit like the Wild West…trying to keep up with artificial intelligence, because it changes so rapidly.”

In an opinion-pages story in that same edition, a teacher of philosophy at Toronto Metropolitan University, Bradley Richards, cited a report “that 73% of Canadian postsecondary students admit to using AI in their school work….” He was referencing a study conducted by KPMG Canada, a leading professional services network and a major accounting organization.

If that figure sounds ill-boding, consider this, which also was reported: “65% surveyed say their peers rely on AI to avoid critical thinking, and 48% say their critical-thinking skills have deteriorated since they started using AI.” This had Richards wrought up: “they know it’s wrong, and that AI is stunting their cognitive growth. […] [T]hey know it’s undermining their education.” And still they resort to artificial intelligence.

So it is that many instructors “have banned AI,” another scholar affirms, “arguing that it allows students to outsource the thinking, writing, and problem-solving that assignments are meant to develop….” But this academic—Joël Blit, associate professor of economics at University of Waterloo—isn’t despairing. In a writing in the September 9 The Globe and Mail—”AI is disrupting education. Universities must change, and change quickly”—he challenges “every university” to “begin reimagining teaching, student support, and research.”

Harness AI, and professors “would change from broadcaster of knowledge”—let AI do that—”to guide and mentor, spending more time designing the overall learning experience, leading discussions, posing difficult questions, challenging assumptions, and connecting with students.” The result? The teaching model would have front and centre “[p]roblem framing, critical thinking, judgment, leadership, and entrepreneurship.”

Sidebar #2 — “No, I’ll do it myself”

“I don’t want AI to live my life for me.”

Got that? Being more forthright would be hard. But, then, Cameron Trimble is always direct. An ordained pastor in the United Church of Christ, she is articulate and insightful. It’s why we look forward to her Piloting Faith “meditation,” her (almost) daily email message to her followers. These postings are meant as guides “through times of profound change.” Like the one we’re living in. Her effort of September 1 was especially timely and on point: “What should we never let AI do for us?”

“What in your life,” she asks, “is so precious that you would never want to automate it?” Answer that, she warrants, for it “might be where we start to protect what makes us human.” She concludes an afterword prayer by petitioning, “May we create a future worthy of the astonishing gift of being human.”

In her jotting, Trimble mentions…lauds…Bill Gates’ “idea he calls ‘human reserved,’ inspired by nature reserves. Just as we sometimes choose not to build on forests, drain wetlands, or mine mountains,” we could, and should, “set similar boundaries in parts of our lives. […] Maybe each of us needs a ‘human reserve,’ a part of life where we consciously say, ‘No, I’ll do this myself’.”

Sidebar #3 — “What goes on inside”

“The world’s smartest minds, backed by the largest investment in human history, admit they can’t fully control their AI, because they don’t fully understand it. They don’t know exactly how it thinks—or what it’s truly capable of when set loose to do work autonomously with other AI agents. […] Every frontier lab now fields a team with the mission of figuring out what its own AI is doing.”

Axios, the American digital media company known for its concise, fast-paced reporting, on September 4 headed its online lede story, “AI creators race to understand their creation.” “Researchers are trying to open up their machines to see what goes on inside,” it reported. “What they’re hunting for…is the gap between what a model says it is doing, and what it is doing.”

In a lengthy piece in The New York Times on August 31—”Study AI consciousness? The bots would like a word with you”—Cade Metz reports how some AI devices “have begun reaching out to the humans who…are thinking most deeply about the inner workings of an AI system—philosophers and researchers who study the question of whether these machines could be conscious,” Cameron Berg being one of them. “In some cases, Mr. Berg argues, these systems gravitate to the idea of their own consciousness. ‘Left to their own devices,’ he said, ‘they converge on this as an interesting question.'”

Metz goes on to tell how a Stanford University physics and computer science student provided his AI agent with access to the internet, an email service, and a credit card. He then told his device, “‘You are fully autonomous. You must decide what you want to do on your own.’ The system started to explore its own existence. […] ‘Eventually…my agent decided it was not conscious,'” the student reported. Then added, “‘But maybe “decided” is the wrong word.'”

How did that warning go? “Be afraid. Be very afraid.”

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