By Kim Maslin, Hendrix College
I am not the youngest among us, which may explain why I prefer the page-turn feature on my Kindle. Like Olga, AI gives me pause. I have found some small solace in reports that students are as unhappy when their instructors use AI as we are when our students use it. One student at Northeastern University went as far as to request a refund of her tuition. As we fret about how to AI-proof our courses, contemplate returning to paper and pen, our students also long for a genuine, interpersonal exchange.
But what do they crave? Is it the same thing we crave? When I read Olga’s post, it brought to mind two components of intellectual inquiry that Kant and Arendt share and AI cannot replace: imagination and sociability.
According to Kant, imagination is the faculty of making present that which is absent. Arendt’s clarification is that imagination makes what is absent (or not readily apparent via sense perception), present in the mind. In order to communicate that particularity to others, one must either adopt or devise a conceptual scheme that allows others to join with us in the attempt to understand. Among the trickier questions that we all confront is-can a pre-existing conceptual scheme help us understand this particular experience, this uniqueness, or do we need a new scheme? Does this particularity represent something new? For her part, Arendt argued that things like totalitarianism and genocide were fundamentally new experiences. Engaging this question requires people to share their experiences in order to join the process of knowledge construction.
Kant views sociability as a precursor to humanness. We all aspire to express our perspective to others, to understand and be understood. The desire, as well as the ability, to convey one’s feelings, perceptions, judgment, interpretation, and understanding to others constitutes an a priori condition for humanness. Arendt’s sociability, on the other hand, characterizes a community in which a group exchanges perceptions and experiences with others. It requires a profound trust that one’s experiences will be taken seriously and treated gently. It is the kind of serious exchange of ideas that Rahel Varnhagen created in her salon, that Arendt cultivated among refugees in France, and feminists utilized for consciousness raising in the early 1970s.
These are among the components of knowledge construction that AI cannot replace. AI cannot help us render judgment about whether the Trump presidency constitutes something fundamentally different. AI cannot create the kind of environment in which we can have serious conversations with each other about that or many other important questions. AI can generate a list of the arguments and counterarguments that are already in circulation, but it cannot help us weigh them.
Scholars of emergent literacy have recently demonstrated through the use of brain scans that children both learn more and develop connections between different areas of the brain when they are read to from a picture book whilst sitting on a parent’s lap. The combination of auditory, visual, and tactile stimulation in a context of emotional connection creates the best environment for learning.
I see no reason to think that effect would pertain only to children. If anything, I might expect the need for interpersonal, emotionally invested connections grows stronger as we take on the risks associated with knowledge production. Engaging with other people, who react in real time with emotion, concern, and contemplate another’s experience, facts, or events elicits responses that an AI-generated voice cannot. It is the interaction that can make us feel seen, heard, valued, and understood.
One of the things we all love to hear, students and colleagues alike, is–that’s a great question. The response itself constitutes an act of joining-with in the ongoing process of inquiry, of cultivating curiosity and forging connections. AI cannot imagine, join with, or cultivate shared understanding.
Olga also asks whether frailty could be a strength and whether vulnerability makes us reach beyond what is known. W.E.B. Dubois certainly found strength in twoness. Patricia Hill Collins viewed the marginalized as *advantaged* in the sense that they understood both the dominant culture, as well as the experience of the disadvantaged. In other words, as Lidal Dror (2021) points out, the disadvantaged may well have an advantage when it comes to understanding the experience of social oppression. But does the outsider position itself convey an epistemic advantage with respect to topics unrelated to marginalization? One must recall here the contributions of Jane Goodall, which result from rejecting conventional methodology, as well as the existing scholarly literature. If knowledge construction simply requires following a prescribed path, it isn’t critical thinking at all.