AI taking away learning skills

Without struggle in the quest for knowledge we never grow

- by JEFFREY A. TUCKER

DOUG McMillon, chief executive of Walmart, has said AI is disrupting every single job in the corporation at all levels, impacting every sector.

Many jobs will be eliminated, some created, and almost all retooled in some way. It's happening very quickly.

There is surely cause for some celebration. But certainly, experiences of the last couple of decades should make us equally cautious about this plunge into the unknown. It's wise to ask about the costs. What might we be losing?

The great trouble with AI isn't about its functioning, efficiency, or utility. It is amazing at all those things. The danger is what it does to the human brain. Its whole ethos is to produce the answers to all things. But getting the answer is not the source of human progress.

Progress comes from learning. The only way to learn is through the discomfort required to get the answer. You first learn the method. Then you apply it. But you get it wrong. And you get it wrong again. You find your errors. You fix them and still get it wrong. You find more errors. Eventually you hit on the answer.

That's when it becomes satisfying. You feel your brain working. You have upgraded your mind. You feel a sense of achievement.

Only through this process do you learn something. It comes from the pains of failure and deploying the human brain in the process of problem-solving. A student or a worker who relies on AI to generate answers will not ever develop intuition, judgment, or even intelligence. Such a person will persist in ignorance. Holes in knowledge will go undiscovered and unfilled.

This is a massive danger we are facing.