This has been an amazing post, Nick and Nigel! I teach university students and have been thinking long and hard on how best to bring AI into effectively into student’s learning. AI is now an integral part of the course, but I’m very worried about students becoming over reliant and outsourcing their thinking to AI. Your piece has helped a lot. I’d love to connect and share ideas!
Really thoughtful and insightful article sir. Congratulations on the framework presented, which puts the langue models in perspective as tools for deeper thinking.
I’ve been seeing a lot of studies on EFL and AI as I search the university library database and on ResearchGate. Your work is incredible, Nigel. You are so right about wisdom and expertise, and communicative competence. The heightened awareness of how AI can limit as well as extend a person vis a vis cognitive offload/full engagement is I suspect a core teaching objective. This is so cool. The work you are doing is pushing us forward. Thanks!
Thank you for the kind words, Terry. I am glad you can appreciate the communicative competence tie in. Are you in the second or foreign language field?
Thank you for the thoughtful article, Nigel! I keep trying to find concrete ways in which we can ensure AI empowers people and your framework is very useful. We keep saying AI has to be a tool instead of a replacement, but how do we ensure that? I also loved Kahneman's book and AI as System 0 is quite interesting. I look forward to more articles like this. Thank you!
I think your question is the million dollar one, and one I have been spending a lot of time thinking about in the last 2+ years.
I also like the System 0 complement to Kahneman's Systems 1 and 2 ... It's a useful heuristic, but I feel it is a bit vague and simplistic. Still, it's a start to help us visualize this new phenomenon.
One wonders about other radical transformations in learning and transmitting knowledge like the move from a purely oral tradition to written, or from handwritten to printing press and so on. In each power was unleashed and as well humanity was also diminished in some important and not always obvious ways
For sure ... all of the "technologies" you mention are affordances that extend our ability to think. And of course, also take away something. Thre are no free lunches right?
But it seems like the gains we've made form these extended cogntioin technologies and been very productive and the pros seem to outweigh the cons.
And genAI extends our thinkinf ability too ... but it is much more intimate (and potentially much more insidious) in that it jacks directly into our thinking and language processes in real time.
But I am very optiomistic about genAI's potential to amplify our knowledge and intelligence. It just seems to me that we need to learn a whole new set of mind-body skills,m awarenss and wisdom to avoid over-dependence.
"There is indeed no such thing as a free lunch" was one of my father's favorite expressions. But the need to learn that set of skills might not keep pace with big techs desire to make us increasingly ignorant and slavish
Thanks for your great article! I appreciate your insightful synthesis of the extended mind thesis and the categories of communicative competence. Your article connected some dots for me in really useful ways.
If I'm interpreting your points correctly, strong skills in what we might call traditional literacy, i.e. strong command of vocabulary, connotation, close-reading/interpretation in context, etc. remains vital for AI-fluency, in part because the former enables the user to maximize the quality of inputs and thus the usefulness of AI's outputs and contributions. Is that a fair conclusion?
I am glad the article helped connect some dots. I am still trying to identify the relevant dots and connecitns myself ... a work in proress.
I think your conclusion is correct--and more clearly and concisely put than I could have done. Cheers. :)
I think the communciative competence framework can also potentially help identify linguistic and knowledge areas AI users and educators can focus on developing when creating assignments and strategizing human-AI workflows.
This has been an amazing post, Nick and Nigel! I teach university students and have been thinking long and hard on how best to bring AI into effectively into student’s learning. AI is now an integral part of the course, but I’m very worried about students becoming over reliant and outsourcing their thinking to AI. Your piece has helped a lot. I’d love to connect and share ideas!
All the credit goes to Nigel!!! Thanks Justin for your feedback!!!
Really thoughtful and insightful article sir. Congratulations on the framework presented, which puts the langue models in perspective as tools for deeper thinking.
Very happy to hear you found it interesting. Sometimes theory can be useful and open new vistas of thought. :)
I’ve been seeing a lot of studies on EFL and AI as I search the university library database and on ResearchGate. Your work is incredible, Nigel. You are so right about wisdom and expertise, and communicative competence. The heightened awareness of how AI can limit as well as extend a person vis a vis cognitive offload/full engagement is I suspect a core teaching objective. This is so cool. The work you are doing is pushing us forward. Thanks!
Thank you for the kind words, Terry. I am glad you can appreciate the communicative competence tie in. Are you in the second or foreign language field?
Thank you for the thoughtful article, Nigel! I keep trying to find concrete ways in which we can ensure AI empowers people and your framework is very useful. We keep saying AI has to be a tool instead of a replacement, but how do we ensure that? I also loved Kahneman's book and AI as System 0 is quite interesting. I look forward to more articles like this. Thank you!
Very happy you found the framework useful.
I think your question is the million dollar one, and one I have been spending a lot of time thinking about in the last 2+ years.
I also like the System 0 complement to Kahneman's Systems 1 and 2 ... It's a useful heuristic, but I feel it is a bit vague and simplistic. Still, it's a start to help us visualize this new phenomenon.
Well, let’s stay in touch as we keep thinking :-) As a tech entrepreneur, I’d like to help create products that enable that empowerment by design.
One wonders about other radical transformations in learning and transmitting knowledge like the move from a purely oral tradition to written, or from handwritten to printing press and so on. In each power was unleashed and as well humanity was also diminished in some important and not always obvious ways
For sure ... all of the "technologies" you mention are affordances that extend our ability to think. And of course, also take away something. Thre are no free lunches right?
But it seems like the gains we've made form these extended cogntioin technologies and been very productive and the pros seem to outweigh the cons.
And genAI extends our thinkinf ability too ... but it is much more intimate (and potentially much more insidious) in that it jacks directly into our thinking and language processes in real time.
But I am very optiomistic about genAI's potential to amplify our knowledge and intelligence. It just seems to me that we need to learn a whole new set of mind-body skills,m awarenss and wisdom to avoid over-dependence.
"There is indeed no such thing as a free lunch" was one of my father's favorite expressions. But the need to learn that set of skills might not keep pace with big techs desire to make us increasingly ignorant and slavish
Yes, their goal is laser focused ... The mind-body skills we need to learn for AI fluency are much less so and I obvious.
Hi Nigel,
Thanks for your great article! I appreciate your insightful synthesis of the extended mind thesis and the categories of communicative competence. Your article connected some dots for me in really useful ways.
If I'm interpreting your points correctly, strong skills in what we might call traditional literacy, i.e. strong command of vocabulary, connotation, close-reading/interpretation in context, etc. remains vital for AI-fluency, in part because the former enables the user to maximize the quality of inputs and thus the usefulness of AI's outputs and contributions. Is that a fair conclusion?
I am glad the article helped connect some dots. I am still trying to identify the relevant dots and connecitns myself ... a work in proress.
I think your conclusion is correct--and more clearly and concisely put than I could have done. Cheers. :)
I think the communciative competence framework can also potentially help identify linguistic and knowledge areas AI users and educators can focus on developing when creating assignments and strategizing human-AI workflows.
Thanks again for your comments summary.
Nice piece, Nigel. Looking forward to more like this!
Thanks, Rob. I appreciate it ... especially since you are one of the handful of substack writers I really pay attention to.