Applying Martin Gurri to Book and AI Learning

ai is not the end of the world

Will AI destroy human learning, particularly by marginalizing book learning? That’s what Jeffrey A. Tucker is worrying about in “Why Should We Learn?”

With AI, and the right query

It appears as if all human knowledge from every discipline is there for us instantly, even to the point of merely speaking and having it spit back the answer.

Tucker goes on to ask

What precisely is the value of knowing things?

It is to be able to live with more than what we gather through our senses.

Knowledge combined with the wisdom of experience permits a deeper and broader interpretation of what is otherwise mere data.

In other words, the whole point of knowledge is what you do with it, after getting the answer from a conversation, from a book, from AI, or from a podcast.

Says he:

I’m deeply grateful for what I do know, what books and teachers have granted me, and the time I’ve spent to put it all together.

And he uses Edmind Husserl “who made the argument that the path toward understanding anything must travel through personal consciousness.”

But will AI make the effort pointless?

I think that Tucker is missing the point. We humans use everything available to us in order to understand the world and help us live. Just look at little kids walking — or rather skipping — down the street with a parent. They are developing muscle and balance skills and they are talking to thr parent and developing their speech skills and knowledge. Play, of course, is the notorious way that childen learn.

And let’s back up a bit from Husserl to Kant, who wrote that we cannot know things-in-themselves but only appearances.

Appearances, of course, are what impinge into our consciousness. What comes next is the important part. We learn to process appearances into knowledge throughout our lives. But we still don’t know things-in-themselves. Knowledge, understanding, skills: that is what we fill in between appearances and things-in-themselves. And how do we do this? With everything, starting with the program in our unconscious mind from birth.

In fact I would argue that everything we learn, all our knowledge, gets programmed into our unconscious, ready to pop out into consciousness when needed.

So how do we learn? Let me count the ways especially Martin Gurri’s ways.

Imitation. Every living thing does this. Babies do it. Teenagers do it.

Speech. The point about speech is to communicate facts and knowledge. Women talk about the details of their lives; men talk about hunting and war. Then there are stories: myths, legends, fairy tales, rhythm, rhyme, epic poetry, songs.

Writing. Once trading gets complicated enough it needs writing. So also with kings and temples. And then creation myths, legends, epic poetry can be written down.

Alphabet. It makes writing and reading much easier.

Printing Press. It creates an intellectual class that writes books. The middle class buys books to gather much more knowledge by reading books. Next thing they do is democratize religion.

Mass Media. It allows rulers to propagandize and force a narrative on their subjects and persuade their people to fight world wars.

Independent Media. It allows many more people to participate as knowledge creators, and allows people to consume knowledge in media other than books and ruling-class mass media propaganda. Allows vast assembly of knowledge with search engines and AI.

Jeffrey A. Tucker is worried that AI will lower the intellectual level:

Knowledge created and sustained only by AI is like a dinner party on Zoom[.]

But I think that the lesson from all the revolutions in communication is that it lets more people in on the game. More minds are masticating knowledge, and that means that more people will be acting on the knowledge they have acquired, because acquiring knowledge with the new technology is easier.

And more knowledge transforms the world, for better or for worse.