A colleague emailed me today about how to have productive conversations about AI with people who strongly oppose using AI tools. Below is part of my response. (Transparency: I told the recipient I would add this to a Field Notes post on my site).
I am an optimist like you, but I am also a skeptic. I think it is ideal for people to be skeptical of AI tools (and, well, just about everything). I have found that when I tell people I am skeptical of AI, even as Director of the Miami Center for AI, it encourages them. Skeptics haven’t “given up” or made up their minds as cynics would. The skeptic tests out any information or idea they receive for its validity. The skeptic is open to possibilities. They haven’t made up their mind entirely, but they also don’t believe everything they’re told. The skeptic thinks critically.
Our society needs critical thinkers and feelers—deep thinkers who are open to discussion and want to understand (and can change their minds if they encounter ideas that are more accurate or disprove their assumptions). I think that’s wonderfully optimistic and includes people from all perspectives in the conversation as we make meaning together. But we have to be open—to listen, to understand, and to change our minds, or accept that there are many perspectives on complex matters (and AI just happens to be one of them).
That was a lot. Sorry. Maybe I got off track. But I hope that encouraging faculty, students, and alumni to question what it means to be an artist and human during rapid technological innovation, and to develop interventions that the Earth and beings on it need to thrive, sparks folx to get excited about work in an AI era that’s sorely needed.
