“𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑡𝑒𝑐ℎ𝑛𝑜𝑙𝑜𝑔𝑖𝑒𝑠 𝑤𝑒’𝑟𝑒 𝑑𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑙𝑜𝑝𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑛𝑜𝑤 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑢𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑦 𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑠𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑢𝑛𝑑𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑑𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑜𝑓 𝑤ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑖𝑡 𝑚𝑒𝑎𝑛𝑠 𝑡𝑜 𝑏𝑒 ℎ𝑢𝑚𝑎𝑛.” — 𝐃𝐫. Andrew Maynard
In this episode of 𝐀𝐈 𝐱 𝐇𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐄𝐝, we sit down with 𝐃𝐫. 𝐀𝐧𝐝𝐫𝐞𝐰 𝐌𝐚𝐲𝐧𝐚𝐫𝐝—scientist, author, and professor at 𝐀𝐫𝐢𝐳𝐨𝐧𝐚 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐔𝐧𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐲—who leads 𝑻ℎ𝑒 𝑭𝒖𝒕𝒖𝒓𝒆 𝒐𝒇 𝑩𝒆𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑯𝒖𝒎𝒂𝒏 𝐼𝑛𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑒. His new book, 𝐀𝐈 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐀𝐫𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐁𝐞𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐇𝐮𝐦𝐚𝐧, explores how to 𝒕𝒉𝒓𝒊𝒗𝒆 𝒘𝒊𝒕𝒉 𝑨𝑰 while rediscovering—(or not losing!)—yourself along the way.
𝘞𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳:
• 𝑊ℎ𝑦 “𝑤𝑖𝑛𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔” 𝑖𝑠𝑛’𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑔𝑎𝑚𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑦𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑖𝑛 𝑎 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑙𝑑 𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝐴𝐼 𝑤𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑎𝑙𝑤𝑎𝑦𝑠 𝑤𝑖𝑛
• 𝐹𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑝𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 → 𝑐𝑢𝑟𝑖𝑜𝑠𝑖𝑡𝑦: 𝑟𝑒𝑖𝑚𝑎𝑔𝑖𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑠𝑢𝑐𝑐𝑒𝑠𝑠 𝑖𝑛 ℎ𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑒𝑑
• “𝑃𝑙𝑎𝑦𝑔𝑟𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑑” 𝑣𝑠. “𝑝𝑙𝑎𝑦 𝑝𝑒𝑛”: 𝑑𝑒𝑠𝑖𝑔𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑠𝑝𝑎𝑐𝑒𝑠 𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑠𝑡𝑢𝑑𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑠 𝑐𝑎𝑛 𝑒𝑥𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡 & 𝑒𝑥𝑝𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑠
• 𝐻𝑢𝑚𝑎𝑛–𝑐𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑒𝑑 𝐴𝐼: 𝑑𝑒𝑠𝑖𝑔𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡𝑜 𝑒𝑛ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒, 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑟𝑒𝑝𝑙𝑎𝑐𝑒
𝐊𝐞𝐲 𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐚: 𝐴𝐼 𝑑𝑜𝑒𝑠𝑛’𝑡 𝑑𝑖𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑖𝑠ℎ 𝑤ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑚𝑎𝑘𝑒𝑠 𝑢𝑠 ℎ𝑢𝑚𝑎𝑛—𝑖𝑡 𝑟𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑎𝑙𝑠 𝑖𝑡.
𝐐𝐮𝐢𝐜𝐤 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝑚𝑝𝑡: 𝐻𝑜𝑤 𝑠ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 ℎ𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑒𝑑 𝑒𝑣𝑜𝑙𝑣𝑒 𝑡𝑜 ℎ𝑒𝑙𝑝 𝑠𝑡𝑢𝑑𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑠 𝑏𝑒𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝐻𝑈𝑀𝐴𝑁, 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑗𝑢𝑠𝑡 𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑒𝑓𝑓𝑖𝑐𝑖𝑒𝑛𝑡?
Introductory Montage
Dr. Andrew Maynard. What does it mean to be us? The technologies we’re developing now are actually transforming our understanding of what it means to be human. We have an educational system which tends to favor winning. But that idea of winning is antithetical to the world we’re in where an AI will always win against you. The thing that is different about AI is that it reflects the essence of who we are. It’s unlike anything else we’ve experienced. How do you create an environment where those students can experiment for themselves—playground rather than a play pen—so that they can express themselves, follow their curiosity and do amazing things that you never envisaged were possible at all. So you’re listening to a voice that that sort of responds to you as another human. And we’ve got all of these sort of rational sort of defensive layers. It cuts straight through them to the heart of who we are. We can’t help ourselves but to respond as if it’s another human.
The path to the Future of Being Human Initiative
Dr. Anand Rao: We’re really excited to be joined today by Dr. Andrew Maynard. He’s a scientist, writer, and professor at Arizona State University where he leads the future of being human initiative. Andrew’s work looks at how we can navigate emerging technologies with a sense of clarity, creativity, and responsibility.
He’s written Films from the Future and Future Rising. And he’s the co-author of the new book AI and the Art of Being Human: A Practical Guide to Thriving with AI while Rediscovering Yourself in the Process. It is a really fascinating read and we’ll be talking with him about it in this interview and also about what it really means to be human in an age shaped by AI. We hope you enjoy this interview with Dr. Andrew Maynard.
Stefan Bauschard: All right. Yes. So, thank you very much. Uh can you walk us through, you know, your journey, uh what drew you to the field of emerging technologies, you know, technology governance, advanced technologies, what it means to be human?
1:56 Dr. Andrew Maynard: You’ve kind of really kind of hit right right in the center of everything here. I mean, how much time have you got? So I... this is the the short version. So started off when I was a kid, um, coming from a fairly religious family, wanting to change the world until I realized the only thing I could do was physics. I was really, really bad at everything else. So I abandoned those those aspirations and and really focused on physics and getting into occupational health and and aerosol dynamics for many years. That was my my first job after my PhD.
However, I I never completely dropped those aspirations for doing something big. Um and I found sort of towards the end of the 1990s, I’d done my PhD in in analyzing really small particles using electron microscopy. And at the end of 1990s, people were beginning to get very interested in nanotechnology, especially the health impacts of really small particles, nanoparticles. So that brought me or dragged me into the whole realm of nanotechnology and the health and safety implications of it. Um, and fortunately I was in the right place at the right time. Um, and was able to be part of a a cross agency group in the US working sort of really at the the top levels to try and understand this. And that gave me the bug of thinking about how do we develop and use really transformative technologies in socially responsible ways.
Um and then I I sort of followed multiple weird pathways um from there. I would say the transformative thing which really has influenced my whole career since was in 2005. I was working for the US government as a researcher at the time um and spending quite a bit of time in DC. I sat down next to a guy at a meeting in DC. Um, and he turned to me and said, um, we’re starting a new initiative. Do you want to come and work for us? And I thought this was the the craziest thing ever. I was living in Cincinnati at the time. So I I flew back that evening and and told this to my wife as a joke. I said, you’d never guess what? I was offered a job in DC. I thought it was the funniest thing ever. And she turned around to me and she said, “That sounds interesting.” That was the that was the phrase that changed everything.
So I ended up accepting the job, leaving the lab, found myself in a science advisor position where I had to talk to journalists, to policy makers, give congressional testimony, work with activist groups and NGOs at the same time working with companies. I spent five years scared out of my wits. But what it did is it made me realize that um successfully developing really powerful transformative technologies means more than just the technology. It means actually working across society with every single possible stakeholder group to help them understand how to navigate this and to work out sort of where the pitfalls and the opportunities are. So that was really the the launch of my career into both um a communicator and somebody who really engages across different groups. Um but at the same time this is going back to my physics roots getting really excited about what emerging technologies can do.
Dr. Anand Rao: Well, that’s fantastic. And I I love how cross-disciplinary um and being able to take some strengths in one area and move it to another um and to apply it in some important areas. I I’m also intrigued by how that plays out with the future of being human initiative. Tell us a little bit about this. What are the goals? What motivated its founding? How does it operate at ASU? It seems like such a particularly interesting initiative, especially now with AI.
Building a playground for ideas at ASU
5:09 Dr. Andrew Maynard: To me it is. And and for many years now um I’ve really wanted the opportunity to ask the questions and have the conversations about emerging technologies that we’re simply not getting anywhere else. And so these are the big conversations around as we’re doing things which are transformative, how do we understand how it’s going to impact our lives? Um how do we understand how to navigate that? How do we begin to think about the possibilities and the pitfalls here with things that we’ve never ever experienced before? And and over my career, I would say over the last 20 years, I’ve realized the one thing we’re really bad at doing is this broad horizon thinking um and having honest conversations. Conversations where we’re allowed to ask things like what is this going to do or admit we know nothing or sort of work together on sort of trying to navigate towards the future we want.
So that was the genesis of this. Um, I really wanted to get away from writing papers, which don’t really do much at this point in my career, um, or getting grants, which also don’t do much because they’re incredibly constrained, but rather catalyzing thinking and conversations through conversation. Um, and I was incredibly lucky um, being here at Arizona State University um, because this was a few years ago now. I was having an email exchange with our president, Michael Crow, and he said, “Well, what do you want to do?” And I said, “I’ve got this crazy idea. Uh I want to do this thing where we don’t do research, we don’t write papers, we stimulate conversation and catalyze thinking.” And he said, “Well, that sounds really interesting. Why don’t you sort of spend five years building this up? We’ll give you a bit of money and go and see what you can do.” And and so this is what we’ve been doing. And so the aim is quite literally to stimulate and catalyze thinking and conversations around that intersection between transformative technologies, society, and the future. And and the return on the investment is is not the the the hard sort of KPIs that you would usually get, but um just the the subtle and the the qualitative indications that what we’re doing is somehow impacting the way individuals are thinking and communities are thinking in ways that transform and change the direction that they’re going.
7:17 Dr. Anand Rao: How incredibly serendipitous uh to to have that opportunity for it to come together. Now, I know it’s more expansive than just thinking about AI and society. That’s certainly where we’re focused right now. But uh how much of that is consuming the initiative currently thinking about AI? What does it mean to be human with AI?
7:33 Dr. Andrew Maynard: When when we started um I was trying to avoid doing stuff around AI because there’s so much more interesting stuff going on. But over this last couple of years I have been sucked in and I would say most of my time is spent focusing on AI now, not exclusively. Um, and of course there are connections because no matter what technology you think of at the moment, AI has got an intersection with it somewhere. So if you’re thinking about sort of gene editing or um I have a colleague who’s working on biohybrid technologies. So you take sort of um a robot and biology and put them together um AI is is there. Almost anything you do, you can’t get away from artificial intelligence at the moment.
8:10 Dr. Anand Rao: I was going to say including being human, right?
8:13 Dr. Andrew Maynard: It’s not... of course. Technology and I... you know, I I actually I forgot that bit of my my enthusiasm. So when we set up this thing, we we needed something which would allow us to focus on um things in a way which was relevant to individuals whether you’re looking at a high schooler or whether you’re looking at somebody sort of in their 70s or 80s or a CEO or somebody who dropped out of school. And the one commonality is this question of what does it mean to be us? Um, and it’s an agile question, but what really intrigues me is the technologies we’re developing now are actually transforming our understanding of what it means to be human. Um, AI is just one, but it’s a very potent one. Um, there are others as well. So, this question of what does it mean to be human is almost the question of our time.
Writing AI and the Art of Being Human
Stefan Bauschard: Yeah. I think you know the title of your new book, congratulations, AI and the Art of Being Human: A Guide to Thriving with AI
Dr. Andrew Maynard in the process. And you know, and and I’ve got to say because you’re you’re catching me just as we’re sort of going into sort of press, um there may be a very, very subtle title change. Rather than “rediscovering” it may be “without losing yourself in the process” but but the same emphasis AI and the Art of Being Human: A Guide to Thriving with AI while Rediscovering Yourself in the Process.
Stefan Bauschard: Yeah, I really, you know, when you you sent us the advanced copy of the book, you know, it really really hit me. Even the first quote you had from Claude, you know, you explain how you guys wrote it um with Claude. And you know, the quote is like, “That trembling hand that needs to create. That’s your signature in the universe. Don’t let my precision make you forget your poetry. You’re not here to be useful. You’re here to become, right? To love without reason, to play blindfolded, just because. My existence doesn’t diminish you. It reveals you were always more than what you can produce.”
And I think that just really hit me because when I talk to people, I always think, well, no matter what AI can do, you know, I’m me. I I want I want to do things as well, right? Like you know I might have a meeting with colleagues at work and think well you know this person’s a lot more creative than me but I want to contribute, you know, my my creativity. And I just, you know, it just after I after I read that quote it it took me uh you know I thought about that for about an hour. I really got into reading the book.
10:31 Dr. Andrew Maynard: And and but isn’t that amazing? So I mean the the genesis of that is, and we’ll get into this, we actually wrote the book very, very intentionally with AI and this was not just a fly-by-night thing. There were months of of planning and process here. Um, but as we were finalizing the book, I I wanted sort of a front quote or something. And I thought, why not ask Claude? So, we we had this conversation. I I um told the AI about the book and what we were trying to achieve and then asked it, if you had one chance to tell humanity how we should be thinking about the art of being human, what would you say? Um, and we we went back a couple of times, but effectively that is the unedited version. And I I, this sounds crazy because it’s just a machine. It’s it’s not alive, it’s not sentient. But at the same time, I wanted to respect what it gave me. So, I ended up actually not editing that. That’s what it gave.
11:21 Stefan Bauschard: Yeah. It’s like uh you know, very insightful. And you know, I noticed you know, you talked about some of the different reasons you you wrote it with Claude, but one of it was like, you know, we need we need to write this, you know, well, but kind of kind of quickly because we don’t have a lot of time, right? You said in the book, we also collaborated with the AI out of sheer necessity. There’s a growing urgency to the questions uh we’re asking here and that window of opportunity that allows us to consciously shape how AI and humanity evolve together. And I think we can think of that in some different ways. You know, if you’re in one of the major research labs, you know, the companies, you know, you you can take that and say, well, you know, I have the power to kind of direct the AI. But I I just think, you know, I’ve done a lot of work in the education space and thinking in that space and it’s, you know, I see kind of some educational institutions, they don’t really want to engage. Mhm. And I think, okay, they’re they’re not going to have a chance, you know, to shape that conversation about about how uh we we evolve together.
12:16 Dr. Andrew Maynard: Yep. No. And I think this is exactly it. And and to me, one of the big questions is do you want somebody else or something else to define who you are, or do you want to be in control of that? And and that’s where the window is. If if we don’t begin to start acting and thinking um with purpose, somebody else will decide who we are or possibly something else with AI.
12:38 Dr. Anand Rao: I think some would have the reaction though that we’ve had that opportunity and we have defined who we are by our usefulness, by our productivity, by the actions that we take, the things that we do. And you take that and put it on its ear uh and say that’s not where we’re going. Elaborate on this. How how do we...
Redefining value in the age of intelligent machines
12:54 Dr. Andrew Maynard: No. And so but this is part of what is so transformative about these times. So yes, you look back over human history um and our identity has um been sort of housed in and our innovation, our ability to problem solve, our ability to create and make to the extent that society these days is one where we judge somebody or we define ourselves by what we do, what we make, effectively the value we create with our hands. Um which usually ends up with money in the bank or something like that.
13:24 But here’s the reality. For the first time in human history, we’re now creating machines that can do most of the stuff that we thought of as defining ourselves. So it means we got to go back to the drawing board. I mean that that last sort of 20, 30,000 years of habit is beginning to sort of disintegrate and we’re forced to go back and think, well, what does it truly mean to be a human or be human when an AI can do pretty much all of the things that we thought were valuable?
13:50 Dr. Anand Rao: And that’s not only a challenge for the individual, but you know, when we’re thinking about the from the perspective of higher education, how do universities then position themselves? And it seems like an even more difficult challenge, a difficult pivot. Um, how do you think universities can approach this to to consider that maybe it’s not just about the traditional means of production, the means of use, human usefulness of developing intellect and and uh and that kind of rigor? Because that’s all changed now with AI.
14:18 Dr. Andrew Maynard: You’re exactly right. And I it’s a huge question. The one thing I would say is that there’s momentum in the system. So even though I think we absolutely should be asking this question now, um high schools, universities, colleges are going to continue doing what they’ve done for the next sort of several years simply because there’s that momentum in the system. But the reality is if we’re to truly serve our students, we need to equip them with ways of thinking and understanding that allow them to thrive in in this future where AI can do so much of what we’ve previously trained them to do. Um, and I’m convinced that the approach is is um two-pronged. Um, and I say I’m convinced, but you know, things are moving so rapidly that I may change my mind tomorrow.
The future of learning and AI literacy
15:03 Dr. Andrew Maynard: Um, but the the first thing is yes, even though artificial intelligence is able to do things, make things in ways that we’ve previously thought were human, we still need those skills. Um, even if it’s sort of part of us being able to say, I made that. So whether you’re following an engineering degree or a business degree or an arts degree or design or whatever, um those skills, those practical hands-on skills are still important and still valuable. But the flip comes in understanding how and why they’re valuable. They’re not valuable because you can do something that nobody else or nothing else can do. They’re valuable because it gives you pride and dignity and a sense of self by what you can achieve. And it allows you to very, very sophisticatedly um navigate that that sort of um division or that that difference between what machines can do and how you can use that to enhance who you are and what uniquely you can bring to the table. Um so if you look at sort of how that impacts education, yes, we teach skills which we’ve taught for a long time. Yes, we teach how to enhance those skills with AI. And yes, we help people understand what they uniquely bring to the table, which is more than just creating monetary value. It’s actually creating value for themselves and the people around them through relationships.
16:21 Dr. Anand Rao: So the point that you make about the momentum, of course, I I I think that’s something most of us recognize. I had a discussion with a colleague earlier today about this. We can tell our juniors and seniors in college that are getting ready to enter the job market. We have a good idea about how to help them um get to adjust and be able to enter that job market. We’re more concerned about those that are a few years away. Yet, at the same time that challenge is also met with the opportunity of this pivot as you say. Yes. Most of us are thinking about AI literacy in kind of traditional terms. It sounds like you might be suggesting a little different approach like what what could we do for those students that are in high school now or just starting college to get ready for that pivot?
16:58 Dr. Andrew Maynard: Yeah. Um apart from reading the book. Um so so I think, and and this actually draws um very explicitly on the book and and you’ll have seen because you you’ve sort of seen those um those proofs, um that this is not an either/or book. It’s not a book that’s about either sort of um embracing AI or sort of going your own way. It’s about sort of becoming more of who you are in a world where you’re interacting with AI. And I think that this is something that we can begin to teach or begin to infuse in our learning environments. Helping students understand sort of they they have their aspirations. They have what they want to achieve. They have an idea of who they want to be. Giving them a pathway and a guide so they can understand how to leverage and use the AI capabilities around them to achieve what they want to achieve. Um and being honest about that. Um being honest about if they want to be an artist that does something weird and wonderful. Both giving them the ability to embrace that to understand how that can actually lead to sort of um a career or being part of a career that actually builds value which somebody’s going to pay them for, but also understanding how that fits into this um developing landscape around AI that can do a lot of of mechanical and practical stuff. Um so it’s I wouldn’t even call it AI literacy. It’s a mindset or a way of thinking that empowers people to both be creative and understand how they retain hold of who they are while thriving in this world.
18:27 Stefan Bauschard: Yeah. You know, when it all kind of first came out, you know, I thought one way to think about it, you know, if you’re a college student, you know, say say you’re in an international relations class and you know, Joseph Nye is your roommate, right? So, you know, you’re you’re kind of studying international relations. You’ve got your own ideas. You you have an expert in the field uh you know, bringing bringing whatever they know or you’re a business major and you know, Jeff Bezos is the the TA or at your disposal 24/7. And you know, that’s one way I I’ve tried to think about it a little bit in terms of okay, yeah, I don’t want to run a giant online store. you know, I’ve had my own uh small uh businesses, but now now I can bring in all this uh you know, advice um from from leading people and and and apply it. And that’s kind of one way I think of, you know, how how I would kind of leverage it. People say leverage it, but just interact with it.
19:15 Dr. Andrew Maynard: No, and I I think you’re exactly right. And of course, there are layers upon layers here. Um, but just that ability to to tap into sort of effectively the sum total of of human knowledge right up to the present time is quite unbelievable. And yes, there are challenges with how large language models work. They don’t just regurgitate stuff. There are issues with either hallucinations or sort of... I the best term I’ve heard of for that is actually not hallucinations but role play. You we get them to role play. So if you have your AI role-playing Jeff Bezos, um doesn’t mean that it is going to give you exactly what he would say. It’s it’s role-playing. But that ability to have a machine that is able to do that is mind-blowingly phenomenal. Um but then there are additional layers on that and and those layers are how it makes connections from everything that it knows in ways that a sheer human cannot do. So now when you sort of put Jeff Bezos together with a thousand other people who you’ve never ever heard of and you have these amalgamating perspectives and opinions and ideas um that is incredibly exciting.
20:26 Dr. Anand Rao: Some really tremendous opportunities then for the individual to approach that as a as a learning model. Let’s take this and and consider it from the institutional perspective. You know, what do you think some of those opportunities are? You know, when we think about maybe workflows in the university, the obvious ones are maybe grading or, you know, chat bots to to help with with more traditional workflows. But where else could we explore ways to shape kind of future thinking, responsible innovation, interdisciplinarity?
20:51 Dr. Andrew Maynard: So I the first thing I would say is to take a step back and ask what are we trying to achieve? Um what is the value we’re trying to achieve either as an educational institution or what is the value that we’re trying to allow our students to achieve? Because without asking that, um you end up just creating widgets to bolt onto the system which don’t necessarily do anything.
Shifting higher education’s value system
21:11 Dr. Andrew Maynard: Um but within that, as soon as we know what sort of value we want to achieve and we encapsulate that in the idea of ultimately what does it mean to thrive as a human being, we can begin to explore how AI begins to enhance that. Um, and I find this really interesting because what it does is it pulls us away from the idea of winning or excelling and it pushes us towards the idea of enhancing who we are. Um, and so what I mean by that is we have an educational system which tends to favor winning. Um, we sort of put students into class and we give them grades and you win if you get high grades, you lose if you get low grades. It’s that’s that’s how it’s done. We’re told that you have to get high grades to win at your job and your career. You have to be better than everybody else in order to sort of um succeed. But that idea of winning is antithetical to the world we’re in where an AI will always win against you. So you’ve got to think about a different value set.
22:15 Now if you begin to teach in terms of how students can use AI in a learning environment to both um create value for themselves. So for instance take learning, um the number of students we have that are thirsty for knowledge and understanding is amazing but quite often we miss it because we’re trying to teach them stuff they’re not interested in and missing the stuff they are. AI gives them the ability to learn the things that they’re enthusiastic about. They they really want to embrace in a way which is transformative and I think as educators we can lean into that and we can align things with where where the students are and we can use these tools to catalyze that learning. Um we can also sort of develop systems and people are already doing this where we enhance the the the human teacher with sort of feedback with personalized learning environments. There are many many different ways of doing this but all of this only works if we understand exactly what we’re trying to achieve both as educators, as an educational establishment and for our students.
23:18 Stefan Bauschard: Yeah. I mean the one thing, you know, I was thinking about, you know, how the, you know, the AI can kind of enhance, you know, enhance us, right? You know, this original idea when the AI first came out, people are like, oh, I can write better than the, you know, I can get my bibliographic references correct, you know, I can... but now you know, for most people and probably soon everybody, that’s not going to be the case, right?
23:38 Dr. Andrew Maynard: See, this this is the problem with winning. If if you think that it’s all about winning, you will lose because AI is getting so good.
23:45 Stefan Bauschard: And in education too, like there’s also internal competition, right? It was like, well, who who was the best in the class, right? And the best in the class supposedly got the best chance of, you know, going to the best uh universities. And there’s kind of this artificial scarcity, right, of of knowledge transmission kind of drove, you know, uh what what students were doing, but now anything they want to learn at their fingertips. Uh yep. you know, there’ll still be a lot of value to physically attending a a university but, you know, a lot of that uh kind of just raw knowledge transmission is going to be open, you know, to anyone. So I think just kind of the whole way we motivate students um do the things uh to learn the things we they don’t care about learning...
24:26 Dr. Andrew Maynard: No, and change. I I agree with you and this is one of the things I find so exciting because um and I’m I’m only I’m not speaking about every educator now but but generally we’ve we’ve fallen into a rut with education and and how we teach. Um, and as a result, it’s become more about us as educators and less about the students. We’ve expected the students to comply with the way that we do things. But now, the students are able to rebel because they have artificial intelligence. They’re able to tell us, “Your way doesn’t work. Why on earth should I pay attention?” And that’s forcing us to rethink what we do and how we do it. Um, and the lovely part of this is that if you’re an educator who is truly focused on student success, you have the opportunities to pivot and change what you do and massively enhance your ability to empower and enable those students with AI.
25:15 Dr. Anand Rao: So, let me play devil’s advocate on this a little bit because I think one of the concerns I hear from colleagues is that uh, you know, there there are two different prongs to this. One might be addressing what you were just talking about in terms of that student motivation. If AI is progressing that quickly and it becomes that capable, then students lose the motivation to develop some of the skills that we think are important, the research skills, the the critical thinking skills, the collaborative skills, because they can simply hand it over to AI to be able to take that over. That’s also coupled with a a really being wedded to the traditional curriculum. You know, it’s the canon. This is something we we’ve known for for millennia that are important things that we want to teach. Um, how do we let go of that? I think that’s something I think we kind of know the answer to it. But but I’m really curious about how you deal with the motivation issue without even touching the competition aspect of it.
26:04 Dr. Andrew Maynard: No. And I so I the first thing I would say is these are just critically important questions and I actually don’t think there are any cut and dried or or good answers to them. Things are moving so fast that plenty of people have opinions but um though I’m not sure how valuable those opinions are. Um, that said, I I think there are some critical ways of thinking about this and and actually sort of going back to the book, even though you can see I’m enthusiastic about AI. This is not um an an AI hype or an AI promotional book. In fact, it has a message that says effectively don’t embrace AI if you can find value elsewhere, but but sort of find that sweet spot.
26:41 And the same comes to students. So, with the the motivational stuff, um, at the end of the day, we’re still human. Um, and as humans, we have this innate biological desire to create, to innovate, to problem solve, to discover. Um, and I actually don’t think that AI is going to take that away from us. It may mean that our students spend less time on things which they don’t see the value in. I find boring, but they find boring because they see no value in it. And they invest their time in things that they see as valuable. Um, now there is a challenge there. And I I must say that even though AI shows so many possibilities, there’re also incredible pitfalls. Um and some of those pitfalls are not necessarily the motivational thing, but students getting so used to getting easy answers that um it basically sort of hits all of those sort of attention circuits in their their head. So they find it very very hard to break out of that. Um so that is something we need to be deeply aware of.
27:40 At the same time, from everything I’ve seen, our innate motivation to discover, to follow our curiosity, to problem solve, to make things is leading to people working out how to creatively use AI rather than having all of those capacities dumbed down. Um, and I that’s incredibly exciting, but it means that as educators, we need to think about sort of how to enhance and encourage that while seeing the pitfalls. The other thing going back to sort of the the points that that you brought up in fact sort of two of them one is losing skills that that we valued for a long time. And so this is actually this is not a new question I I think it’s amplified with AI. But um I remember when I was a student doing physics um in the 1980s um I basically handgraphed everything I collected. If I collected data, I I plotted it out on a a plot by hand and I was convinced and I’m still convinced to this day that there is a valuable skill there that gives you insights that just doing it on a computer doesn’t give you. And yet nobody plots by hand now. It’s it’s a skill that’s been lost and I don’t think the world is falling apart because of that. Um and so every technology that’s come along, we’ve had this debate. I don’t think AI will be any different and I think we’ll realize that there are some skills that we valued in the past which actually we don’t need to value anymore. But at the same time, I think we’ve got to think about this and have these conversations.
29:01 Stefan Bauschard: Yeah. you know, I mean, I found I found reading your book, you know, pretty pretty positive, like pretty empowering. And, you know, Anand knows I I can be a bit negative. Some people think, you know, I I got interested in this because I think it’s great. And, you know, I have a lot of concerns, maybe, you know, not as big as the other book that just came out today. If if someone builds it, everyone dies, right? That’s kind of the extreme end of the positive. But I noticed in your book, you know, you talk about the difference between kind of the the what the functional requirements, right, and and the social requirements. You know, the functional requirements, you know, does it work? And maybe the better it works, you know, the more automation we’ll see. But then there’s the social requirements, right? Does it treat people like dignity and you with dignity? And you you give a lot of examples in the book. And one one thing I worry about is that um you know, I think I think we want that, right? We want the augmentation. And we want people to be treated with dignity. But if you just kind of look at history and you know what what’s kind of going on in the economy, I I worry that you know people aren’t aren’t going to prioritize that, right?
Can we design ethical, human-centered AI?
30:05 Stefan Bauschard: Like they they kind of go for lower costs or even you know even if just the you know the social you can buy the coffee that you know the workers are paid better, right? Few people choose to to buy that coffee. So, I just wondered, you know, what your thoughts are on, you know, how if society’s just going to end up more looking at the functions or if there there’s a way to push back.
30:25 Dr. Andrew Maynard: So, I think society already does. Um, and I I think I I completely agree with you. There’s a huge danger here and we see it playing out day by day, especially with a market economy which prioritizes making money. Um, with the assumption that if you make money, everything else is okay. The reality is, and we’ve seen this play out, it’s not. Um, whether we can sort of move the needle on that, I honestly don’t know. Um, on my optimistic days, I think I hope so. On my pessimistic days, I think not a chance. However, even though I think there’s not a chance, it doesn’t mean we have to stop trying. And this book is very much a way of helping people realize that there’s more to this.
31:06 But there’s also, I think, a very strong argument, and this is part of my been part of my work for a number of years now. And it’s the idea that say you’re a tech company and you’re making things. Um you have this mentality that the world will be a better place if only you create the perfect widget. Um, everything we know about innovation and society tells us that if you forget about humans and how we work and how we behave and you forget about society and social dynamics, you will fail. Because you’re discounting factors that have a profound impact on whether people will buy your product, whether they will embrace it, whether they will reject it, whether there will be social or political movements that make it impossible to sell and and make a profit. So even on a pure business footing, it is very hard to see how you can build a sustainable business without thinking about that social dimension of of these technologies. Um and then of course from a a societal perspective or an ethics or moral perspective, you have to say this is incredibly important. Unless you think that technology is more important than people, you’ve got to think about people.
32:13 Dr. Anand Rao: And it comes back to the transition. I mean, as you mentioned before, that pivot is is difficult and so many projections that we see talk about after the transition and what it could look like and you know, the land of milk and honey and and how wonderful everything...
32:26 Dr. Andrew Maynard: You got to go through the pain first.
32:27 Dr. Anand Rao: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And and that’s where it becomes really difficult to to kind of get our heads around. Um and as as you you offer this way for kind of that self that reflection that introspection um and and it I guess it makes it easier to view on the individual level but trying to do that communally um is is more difficult to illustrate.
32:46 Dr. Andrew Maynard: I think it it is incredibly hard. Um and I so even though I I think it’s possible you look at examples um and I actually I’ll just take an example of either OpenAI or or Facebook. Both of them are companies that when the stakes have been low, they have been very socially responsible and socially aware. As soon as the stakes become high, they’ve abandoned all of that and it’s just about making stuff and making money and manipulating people. Um, and that’s one of those examples that that leads me to despair because I think maybe we won’t be able to change anything.
33:19 However, there are there are two things which do give me hope and again this ties into the book. One is we know that if you start at the the smallest unit that that’s individuals and help people understand how they can be part of making small changes with how they think, how they understand themselves and how they live, that embeds the potential for change in the system. And if you do that with individuals that actually have power and influence as well as sort of um pretty much everybody, you begin to have the possibility of scaling and amplifying that. Um who knows whether it’s actually possible to do, but it’s one of the very few ways we can begin to think about bringing in a broader set of values or sort of social dimensions into what we do with tech and society.
34:10 Dr. Andrew Maynard: Yeah. And I actually if I can just actually add to that sort of thinking through this and because this brings it back to education and either sort of high school or university. Um and this is one of the reasons why I work so much with undergraduates because this is a unique opportunity to help these young people see the world and see their futures and the decisions they make in a very different way. Um, and again, I’m not quite sure how much of that sticks, but if I was to say there’s a point of intervention with helping people see their relationship with the future differently, I would say that it’s at the undergraduate level.
34:46 Dr. Anand Rao: And, you know, that really resonates with me and and the way that you’re talking about it, the way you’ve written about this. Um, I think the the competition factor still runs a little counter to it and makes it hard to break out of it. But the sense of collaboration, I mean when we think about a research community within academia, there’s a lot uh that it’s built upon collaboration. It’s not just win-lose. Um but it’s really about building upon each other’s work and looking at how we can um coexist and to be able to contribute in meaningful ways that aren’t always equal and that doesn’t mean someone wins and someone loses. Um but so I I think academia probably higher ed probably provides that opportunity. Um the optimist in me sees that as a way forward at least.
35:26 Dr. Andrew Maynard: Right. Right. Yes. Um and of course I’ve got colleagues who actually study cooperation and and they come up with some quite amazing examples from all across nature as to where cooperation leads to a massive value add as opposed to competition.
Beyond academia: Reaching everyone
35:43 Stefan Bauschard: Yeah. I wonder if you thought about, I’ve been thinking about this a little bit more lately because you know a lot of only like approximately half students nationwide attend university, right? And Yep. Yep. And many don’t finish. And you know I think from our our perspective, right? Um, you know, I’ve I’ve been in and out of the university environment. I’ve done some K12 and university. Uh, you both you’ve both have really just been in the university. But how do how do we reach you know, people with these ideas? You know, I think these are going to get a lot of discussion in different classes on college campuses. Um, but what about, you know, you high school students here graduating in the next couple years? It seems, you know, where they’re going to get a lot of their ideas about this moving forward is from mass media, Tik Tok. Yeah, like how how do we kind of advance these conversations outside of academia?
36:29 Dr. Andrew Maynard: And I’m so glad you asked that because I I fell into the typical trap of talking about undergrads, but of course, this exercises my my time and my attention a lot. The fact that that is um only uh well 50% is still sort of a relatively small part of of society. Um and so a lot of what I do is asking how do you sort of go beyond that group. Uh especially seeing that there is a reality here that society works the way it does because most people doing jobs actually don’t have a university degree. It’s it’s still that elite strata that has a university degree and yet everybody has a stake in sort of working out how to build a better future together.
37:14 Um, how you do that I think is challenging and and I haven’t seen I’ve seen lots of people with opinions here. I haven’t seen anybody with something that really makes sense. Um, and it is exactly as you said harder because you look at where these young people are getting their ideas and influences from. It’s platforms where it’s just as easy for somebody who has no idea what they’re talking about to influence them as it is for somebody who does know what they’re talking about.
37:39 That said, there are there are a couple of things that give me hope. Um, one is, um, every person I’ve ever spoken to, irrespective of what level of education they’ve got, has got a level of smartness and humanity that makes me feel they are able to think and understand and make smart decisions and understand sort of what is sort of um, of value in society. Um, and as a result of that, I tend to think when you look at society and you look at the bad things happening, they tend to still be at the edges of the spectrum. They have an oversized impact from within there. But most people are actually surprisingly sort of um sensitive to others, sensitive to what’s good for society and and smart. That means that there’s a point of connection. So you strip away formal sort of educational environments and ask how can sort of people who are able to engage and and mentor sort of be part of these communities. I think that there are ways of doing that beyond formal education.
38:41 Um, now it’s also challenging because it means that you’ve got to meet these people where they’re at, which means getting used to things like Tik Tok, which I still do not understand. It’s one of the platforms that I I I fail to sort of engage with. But there are ways of doing this and there are people that are doing it. And so I would say that I mean if as as educators we want to reach more broadly than higher education, we’ve either got to find the people who are doing this and are capable of doing it and partner with them or we’ve got to learn a completely new skill set and a completely new way of recognizing the value in what we do. Um, of course this will never happen if you’re an institution that only rewards you for your classroom teaching rather than how you’re transforming lives outside it.
39:21 Stefan Bauschard: Right. Or even like you mentioned earlier, you know, even the publication route, right? I mean, people out, right, people outside, right, of education aren’t aren’t reading the journal articles as well.
39:31 Dr. Andrew Maynard: No, no. And I I can tell you there I I’m old enough not to care, but but my my um academic cache is going down because I I very rarely write and publish a peer-reviewed paper these days because what’s the point in spending a year writing something that nobody will read, but it looks good on your resume?
39:52 Dr. Anand Rao: Well, it’s good to train the models with so there is there is an audience now.
39:56 Dr. Andrew Maynard: There we are. Yes.
39:59 Dr. Anand Rao: Now, I’m intrigued by the by this discussion about reaching other audiences and and in particular given your expertise and and your interest in in media, film studies, listening and reading about some of your work on on looking at films of the future or or projectins, AI and the Art of Being Human: A Guide to Thriving with AI g future visions. Um, when we think about some of the AI capabilities and I’ll let you decide which direction to take this. you know, possibly the idea that we can use some of the newer technologies to offer better storytelling, you know, personalized messaging through through media that that excites me and also concerns me. Um, but I think there are some opportunities there. Um, do do you see that as an avenue? Is that maybe you know the three of us are certainly not the the target demographic. Um, but I think we could appreciate that kind of point-casting that that is potential.
40:46 Dr. Andrew Maynard: Yeah. No, I I think there are opportunities there. I I think there are dangers. Um but I’ll tell you one of the dangers is assuming that the only way to create a learning environment is to entertain. Um and I think it is so misleading because most people if they want to learn something they’re willing to invest the time. Um it’s just the platforms are very different. So I’ll give you an example. Um an area that that many academics will turn their nose up is the idea of online gaming. They’ll think online gaming it’s just a waste of time. The number of people that not only take it seriously but actually um end up learning a lot through those both in terms of social connections and social interactions and how those in turn help them understand the world in different ways is profoundly transformative. Um, and it’s a great example of a platform and a medium that can really help people understand sort of how to think about the world, not because somebody is intentionally trying to train and educate them through it, because it exposes them to different ideas and different possibilities that they can then make their own and actually play around with. And then you can extend that to other media. Um, and I think that this is this is where we need to think. Um, we need to assume that that people, anybody, because we’re humans, we have this desire to learn um, and to discover um, and we’re driven by curiosity. Um, and this really sort of exhibits itself across the board through different media. But then if we ask ourselves how do we create learning environments where they’re exposed to ideas that they can then sort of assimilate and chew over and make their own, that becomes very powerful.
42:28 Stefan Bauschard: Yeah, we’ve seen, you know, I was thinking, you know, Demis Hassabis said it the other day. People have been saying it for a while, commented on it. You know, we want to leave students, right? Because, you know, basic almost every student, you know, at least go goes through kind of K12 or close and this desire to learn, right? That we want them with the desire to learn, maybe to learn how to learn well, right? Also to enjoy learning because yes, you know, people are going even if they don’t attend a university, they are still going to learn, right?
42:57 Dr. Andrew Maynard: Like exactly. Yes. Learning is almost inevitable, right? It’s just it’s just a question of what you learn, how you learn it, you know, kind of are you able to discern in a way like you said about you know who who or what in this case uh to learn from.
43:08 Stefan Bauschard: But we build that excitement uh you know that that may solve some of our our challenges.
43:13 Dr. Andrew Maynard: Yeah. Yeah. And I I just give you one little example of that. So you mentioned sort of um sort of film. So I I teach this class called The Moviegoer’s Guide to the Future. Um which is somewhat controversial because pretty much what we do is just we sit and watch a movie each week and we have a discussion around it. There are a couple of other things but what I discover from that I have students from across the spectrum here um and I get insights into how they’re thinking because they write a very informal journal every week and I tell them be authentic. No matter what you’re thinking, no matter how good or bad your writing is, just blurt it out and put it on the paper. And the insights I get blow my mind. Um, students who in class you’d think that there’s nothing going on at all. You suddenly discover there are sparks going all over the place. They’re talking with their friends, their parents, their boyfriend, their girlfriend, and you’re just seeing this catalysis of ideas because they can’t help themselves but learn and explore and follow their curiosity.
44:09 Dr. Anand Rao: That that’s really intriguing. There was I remember listening to one of your recent podcasts talking about that experience in the classroom and there’s nothing like watching the film with other humans. You know that connection it’s just not the same if you just watch it on your own.
44:25 Dr. Andrew Maynard: No, it it’s not. And yet from a a teaching perspective um the the immediate response is why waste two and a half hours watching a film when you can show them a snippet and tell them to watch it at home. I tell you now, it does not work if you watch a little bit of a film in person, then tell them to watch it at home because A, they never will, and B, you don’t get that emotional connection with the film and with the people around you.
44:46 Dr. Anand Rao: That’s great. So, earlier in the conversation, I I I wanted to ask this earlier, but but let me bring it up now. I was really intrigued by some of the earlier work you did in really um kind of futuristic studies. I remember first being exposed to nanotechnology as a debater and thinking about, you know, some of those arguments or thinking work in synthetic biology. Are there any projects that you worked on or studies that you thought were really underappreciated at the time but maybe now you feel were pretty prescient?
45:14 Dr. Andrew Maynard: Oh, interesting. That’s a really interesting question. Um, I’m not sure. Um, there is and and I’ll tell you why. Um but I but I would say that it’s partially because I think things that are happening now are way more exciting than anything I’ve worked on in the past. So yes um started working very very deeply with nanotechnology did quite a bit with synthetic biology. Geoengineering was another one and and a lot of sort of um gene editing stuff.
45:42 Looking back I would say and this is deeply controversial and I’m sure you’re going to get people writing in about this most of the nanotechnology over the last 20 or 30 years is really boring. Um we would had all this excitement and all this money plowed into sort of um manipulating the world at the nanoscale atom by atom which I mean it is transformative. I mean the the only reason we’ve got um the processors we’ve got these days for AI is because of nanotechnology but there was nothing sort of transformatively exciting about it to me it was just sort of glorified material science. Um synthetic biology a little bit more exciting but um what we learned through synthetic biology is biology is hard, fishly hard. As a result, even though I’ve been working with all of these cutting edge technologies for 20 plus years, I would say we have seen nothing that even gets close to what we’re achieving with artificial intelligence. Now, this is the thing that’s blowing my mind. And not necessarily the hype, but even with what we have at the moment, how it is changing how we think about ourselves and the future.
Why AI is different
46:44 Interviewer 2: Let me follow up on that because what you’re pointing out is, you know, like the examples in nanotechnology, it seems like part of the reason why it just you look back on it, it was not as exciting as you thought it was going to be because it was normalized. You know, it just became a typical practice. Of course, we have um working on the nano level when we’re putting together silicon um chips and and so forth. Why is AI different? Uh because it seems like we’ll have the same reaction 10 or 20 years from now, won’t we, when we look back or is there something different about it?
47:12 Dr. Andrew Maynard: I I think there is. And again, others may disagree, but the thing that is different about AI is that it reflects the essence of who we are. Um it isn’t the essence. It is still a mirror and it’s just emulating, but it does something that no other um technology does. And simply because other technologies are external to us, we we make stuff with them. Um but AI is increasingly becoming the stuff that that makes us. Um and that raises so many questions even if you think about and you take something like ChatGPT or Claude and again being very very clear and saying this is just a machine. It’s something that puts words and phrases together based on its its training set. But the way that it emulates the the really deep essence of who we are means that it is almost impossible not to build some sort of relationship with it. And that profoundly affects us. As soon as we have a technology that mirrors who we are and who we think we believe we are, um it’s unlike anything else we’ve experienced. Um and this is where I think that this will transform how we understand ourselves, our relationships with others, even the fabric of society. Um, even if AI doesn’t go much further than it is at the moment.
48:30 Stefan Bauschard: Yeah, I would agree. I mean, I I kind of, you know, I’ve used it a lot. You know, I remember I remember before the ChatGPT 3.5, I I didn’t pay much attention, but I articles and I tried it, but I was like, that’s all just like gibberish, right? Um, okay. And then, you know, when I used 3.5, I was like, wow. But I didn’t I didn’t really I feel like it could I I felt like it could just kind of write some things that were, you know, good. I saw the potential for it to write better and figured they’d overcome these you know like hallucination database type issues, right? But I you know the farthest, you know, within the last maybe six, nine months, I as I’ve interacted with it I you know even knowing, right, it’s not a conscious entity, I feel like if I wanted to I could let myself go into the space, right, where I feel like I’m act interacting uh with another person. And I I sometimes when I show people the voice and I’m surprised how many people haven’t tried the voice, right? And that really hits them. Yes. And then what I’ll do is I’ll just be like, but okay. You know, they look a little overwhelmed. So, I’ll just turn off the voice and I’ll just show all the text, right? Because it it’s also the text like right in there. And then they’re like, okay. Right. That that kind of that kind of relaxes them a little bit. But yeah. Yeah. That voice and that interaction that it just seems so real.
49:46 Dr. Andrew Maynard: It it gets right under our defenses. So, so you’re listening to a a voice that that sort of responds to you as another human. And we’ve got all of these sort of rational sort of defensive layers, it cuts straight through them to to the heart of who we are. We can’t help ourselves but but to respond as if it’s another human.
50:07 Dr. Anand Rao: I mean, so much of of the way that that many in society view the relationship with AI is in terms of what it can’t do. And that’s what we define as what makes us human. And and you outline, you know, the spectrum of human qualities. Um, is there really you you say there is this one category when you get to transcendent um qualities that are uniquely human? Is there a potential that we get to a stage where AI is developed where it’s it’s not so clear that that we have those qualities or that it could be uniquely human?
50:39 Dr. Andrew Maynard: I would say yes, but it doesn’t matter. Um, and and this is why I say this. Um, it’s because it’s not a competition. As soon as you look at those transcendent qualities, you’re looking at things that define who you are, which means it’s less important whether somebody can, in fact, it’s not important at all as to whether somebody else can do them because it’s you. So, you look at an artist, um an artist who’s expressing themselves, um trying to capture the essence of what they’re feeling, what they’re thinking, they’re not in competition with other artists. They they’re um trying to sort of get something out of them. So, it doesn’t matter if another artist does even better than than they do. And this is the nature of those transcendent qualities. And this is where we create meaning and value ourselves. And in that sense, I mean, it’s it should be nothing but a celebration if AIs somehow get to that point where they can develop their own transcendent properties because again, it’s not a competition. It’s something that enhances everything.
51:34 Stefan Bauschard Let’s say, you know, we get to the end here. It’s kind of a kind of a good uh way to wrap up. I mean to go back up to that the Claude quote, right, that initially uh you know that’s what it’s saying. And you know as I got farther along in the book I I saw the you know relational or the replicable, right, which is a lot of now, the relational which it’s getting better at simulating, but then you know you talk about you know kind of the transcendent and becoming who we are and and developing ourselves. And I think I think it’s going to be hard for people to... it’s going to I don’t know if hard is the right... It’s it’s just not something you really think about like, well, I just want to be my best self. People say that, you know, you hear a a keynote speaker, you just you just want to be your best self, right? You you tell your...
52:23 Dr. Andrew Maynard: But also get that million dollars that nobody else is going to get because I’m so good at my job.
52:26 Stefan Bauschard: Right. Right. Right. You know, uh you know, you tell your child who doesn’t do well on a test, well, just just be kind of like do better next time. Yeah. Right. You you told me to study for this test. You’re like, you know, right? And you know, you said my whole future would be determined by it and now you’re just telling me to be my best myself.
But you know, I think that’s a lot of what we’ll have on. Yeah, I was going to say as we wrap it up, thank you so much for for your generous uh you know, being so generous with your time. If you could leave educators with with, I I think in the book you’re you leave such a positive message while looking at AI you know it’s not just a pro-AI view it’s a very um you know realistic view and and um uh and looking at at at limitations as well.
Advice for educators
53:09 Dr. Anand Rao: But if you could leave um educators with a message, how do we get through this transition or what words of wisdom would you offer um to help us with this?
53:20 Dr. Andrew Maynard: I would start with what allows our students um to create meaning and create value. Forget about the technology. What is first and foremost important to them in terms of their ability to create meaning and thrive in the world. Once you’ve got that, ask where different potential uses of AI enhance that versus potentially where do they they hold them back? And then thirdly, how do you create an environment where those students can experiment for themselves rather than telling them what to do or giving them tools that you have sort of developed or others have developed that actually limit them? How do you create a playground rather than a play pen so that they can express themselves, follow their curiosity and do amazing things that you never envisioned were possible at all. So that to me would be my dream for how people begin to approach this.
54:12 Dr. Anand Rao: That’s fantastic and I hope that uh that everyone reads AI and the Art of Being Human. I think it’s a wonderful next step in helping us figuring out where we go from here. Thank you for joining us.
54:21 Dr. Andrew Maynard: Thank you. This has been a pleasure.
54:23 Stefan Bauschard: Thank you. Thanks.