The Rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Some ideas presented in the interview with Dr. Yuval Harari are

• The emergence of an “unworking or useless class” whereby people have no political or economic power because artificial intelligence can do the work these people do;
• How current power imbalances will be strengthened with AI, and consequently the working class today will likely become the “unworking or useless class” of the future; and
• The failure in our current system to educate people on the impact AI will have on our society.

Dr. Yuval Harari described how Bangladeshi garment workers would likely become part of the unworking or useless class because their skill set would be deemed obsolete, and replaced by AI. As such they will have no economic or political power. With fewer jobs for humans, Bangladeshi garment workers would then be last in line to be re-trained.

These workers today are already weakened by the current system.  In recent history poor working conditions have resulted in thousands of deaths, and these people are being poorly paid. From my personal experience, I have seen a lack of responsibility taken by the corporations that financially benefit off their backs. Consequently, these people are already left behind – if this is what it means to even have a fraction of political and economic power, then what happens to the livelihood of these people when AI takes over society? What does no power look like if we continue on this capitalist trajectory? It seems to me that much of humanity will be left behind is an understatement.  The consequences seem to be much dire.

Educational research allows us to explore how we should educate in these technologically changing times and more importantly how to transform education to address these injustices on Bangladeshi garment workers (as an example), ultimately to better serve humanity.  

However, as expressed in Aoki’s article, there is a gap between teaching rooted in lived experiences (applied in this context – the lived experience of the Bangladeshi garment worker), and teaching rooted in planned curriculum, that are influenced by intentions of planners, who also homogenize people and may therefore not consider steep inequities. In line with Dr. Yuval Harari’s observation that our current education systems are not preparing us for the future of artificial intelligence, I fear that educational planners may have intentions that serve the interest of the elite, and thus the curriculum is designed to ignore the poor. How does an educator then navigate within this gap (zone of between) when curriculum-as-plan and lived experience is so conflicting?