If schools don’t shield children from AI, we risk raising kids who may forget how to think

All these streams make for a torrent that gives us some version of Hollywood’s ‘Skynet controlling the world’—an existential threat to humankind. Arguably, the most lethal is an undercurrent beneath all these streams, that of AI’s hollowing of humanity by sucking out our capacity to think.

AI does bring benefits and can be useful in some ways, but I am not willing to cede even a nano-inch to arguments of “let’s see things in balance.” AI must be stopped and contained in a cage, like nuclear energy, and then used with even greater care. If you want a visceral conviction of this, spend some time in an educational institution; the more elite the institution, with better access to all kinds of AI stuff, the quicker will be your conversion.

Let’s consider an analogy. Rigorous research has been discovering, validating and explaining the beneficial effects of various kinds of substances. I am not referring to pharmaceutical drugs, but to things like marijuana, ayahuasca and magic mushrooms. Even with this growing body of evidence, these substances can only be used under expert supervision. You would immediately reject the free-for-all use of these.

So, are you being a Luddite when you say ‘no’ in the face of evidence that new technologies like AI expand human experience and well-being?

Not at all. You are just doing the wise and right thing. Anything that alters what constitutes our humanity must be handled with great care. And most certainly our children must be shielded till they grow to be adults, except in cases of special needs identified for individual children in clinical care.

Even as adults, any such drug will have to be handled with extreme caution despite proven benefits. Why? Because these drugs alter us—they change our humanity at a deep level.

Thoughtful consideration is a must for substances that could potentially alter us or something within us for the better, temporarily or perhaps permanently—depth of experience and perception, equanimity and empathy, or something of the sort. There are also substances—often just referred to as ‘drugs’—that alter us for the worse. Their usage is not only a strict no, but is often categorized as criminal.

These substances and drugs are tools that alter us, just like AI is a tool that is altering us at a fundamental level. It is just that substances and drugs are ingested through the digestive, respiratory or hematic systems into our neural pathways and connections, while AI is ingested through the visual, auditory or social systems into the same neural system, altering it even more profoundly.

We are already living the ‘lite’ version of this nightmare—recall how social media and associated technologies are controlling attention, causing mental health crises, dividing society and more.

AI is a tool that is altering humans, many of whom seem steeped in awe of its unprecedented power as a tool to alter the world. All tools that alter the world alter humans somewhat too. That everything seems like a nail to someone with a hammer is a pithy way of putting it.

But there is a categorical difference between the tools that have mostly physical and social effects on human beings and those that have biological and neural effects; the latter then affect the physical and social world too. It is at that deep a level that AI is corroding our humanity—or our capacity to think.

The phenomenon is obvious and stark. The more you use AI, the less you think through things yourself. You are outsourcing your thinking. And this is a natural tendency. We human beings are evolutionarily wired to choose less energy-demanding paths—the easier ones. The more you do this, the less you use your cognitive capacities. The result is the diminishing of those faculties—at a deep neural level.

I mentioned a visceral conviction about this if you see what is happening in educational institutions. Such an institution’s primary purpose is to develop the capacity to think. But what is happening there is the opposite: teachers and students are beginning to let AI do the thinking for themselves. AI is setting the syllabus and course, lesson plans, reading lists, assignments and exam papers for teachers, and students are using AI to respond to all of it. This is not education, but a charade.

The first existential threat posed by AI to humanity is through the evisceration of education. Many institutions and teachers are acutely conscious of this and have arrived at what is the only route out: No AI. Prohibiting access to AI is impossible in today’s digitally suffused world. So, they are going back to the basics: conduct all educational transactions in-person in a classroom.

Herculean efforts are needed to limit the damage from AI and harness whatever good it can do, across every sphere of human activity. In education, the only option is to banish its use. If we don’t do that, we will bring up our young on a drug—not of the ayahuasca kind, but one that’s worse than cocaine.

The author is CEO of Azim Premji Foundation.