Are Talent and Ability Just Illusions? - 'The Book of Adventure: Unlearning in the AI Era' - [April AI Book Challenge 15]
Today, I am discussing 'The Book of Adventure: Unlearning in the AI Era'.
The reason I picked up this book was that the word 'unlearn' caught my eye. I had seen this word frequently during my interpreting work at a client's university, but I couldn't quite grasp it, feeling like '???'. That is why I became curious about it.
The author of this book is Taizo Son. He is the younger brother of SoftBank Chairman Masayoshi Son, a serial entrepreneur who has been involved in launching IT companies since he was in university and has since helped launch various other companies, and he is also an investor supporting venture companies around the world. This book is a collection of essays in which Taizo Son records simple questions he has felt about society and education as a 'Quest Notebook'.
'Why do I have to study?'
'Why do I have to go to school?'
I imagine many people have been stumped when children ask these kinds of questions. I am one of them. Things that I had (supposedly) spent my time doing without any trouble seemed to be a big deal for my child. And at that time, I wasn't able to give a very good answer.
This book proceeds in a somewhat story-like format where the protagonist (perhaps Taizo Son?) time-trips to the world of the person who wrote a book related to a question that suddenly occurred to him. While harboring doubts about whether society requires one to study and acquire abilities to survive, he opens Hobbes's 'De Cive' and trips to Hobbes's study in England; while thinking about children's education, he opens 'Some Thoughts Concerning Education' and John Locke appears before him, and so on.
What is society?
What is education?
What is school?
Thinking about it in that way, you begin to understand what the school system, which we think of as the way it should be today, is really like. It seems that the foundation of the current school system began with isolating children, treating them as beings that need to be protected, different from adults.
Then, the discussion moves on to ability and talent.
In other words, 'ability' is merely a 'post-hoc argument' and nothing more than a comparison with other people doing similar things. If the result is good, people say, 'That person has ability,' and if it is bad, they say, 'They have no ability.' If they are superior compared to others, they are called 'highly capable, excellent people,' and if they are inferior, they are called 'people with low ability who are not quite there.'
To be evaluated as having ability, a process is required: first, you act, and then a good result follows. But it is unclear whether a good result comes because you have ability, and it is also unclear when you should act to get a good result.
People say that if you have 'ability,' you will get results, but what is that ability? The author says that modern people who believe in the existence of something without substance are 'believers in the religion of ability.' He argues that in the process of machines developing during the Industrial Revolution, the 'mechanization of humans' progressed. To become a high-value existence within a mechanized system, one must demonstrate high ability.
This part is reminiscent of Chaplin's film 'Modern Times'.
And now, machines are increasingly becoming artificial intelligence. The belief in merit is called 'meritocracy.' This point is also detailed in Professor Michael Sandel's 'The Tyranny of Merit: What's Become of the Common Good?'
Unlike machines, humans can update themselves. However, if machines become artificial intelligence, robots can also update themselves. If parallelized, it is also possible to standardize the abilities acquired in an instant. Artificial intelligence is the 'ultimate weapon of meritocracy.'
If that is the case.
The rise of artificial intelligence means the end of meritocracy. In other words, the mechanization of humans will come to an end, and humans should be liberated from 'labor.'
Therefore, the society Taizo Son envisions is a new society that transcends meritocracy. After all, it is humans who find meaning in whether something is useful or not. This is starting to sound a bit like the argument in Hiroshi Aramata's 'Things That Are Immediately Useful Become Immediately Useless,' which I read the other day. There seems to be a hint here for how to learn in the AI era. It is what Zhuangzi calls the 'usefulness of the useless.'
This book includes a list of reference books at the end. Just from this, it seems possible to see the direction of where to go next. For me, I am curious about 'Zhuangzi,' which also appeared in 'Things That Are Immediately Useful Become Immediately Useless'.
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February's cat challenge is here↓↓↓
January's work and time management challenge is here↓↓↓