Schools of yesteryear

There is a lot of excitement and interest from the media regarding self-generating systems, for the automatic production of text, images, music and more. It is said that the A.I. – Artificial Intelligence – can replace human creativity, offering unparalleled speed and accuracy. Predictions about the future seem to suggest that computers could take the place of human beings in artistic productions. One wonders what serious consequences this transformation will have on the culture and development of our civilization, but we also need to consider the possibility of a positive impact on other sectors, such as medicine, finance and politics.

Can we have a better or worse life? Who knows. As Battisti sang, "we will only discover it by living". Thinking about this topic, the many schools I visited during my travels came back to mind. Schools from other times, one might say, where the blackboards are still made of black slate and one writes with chalk. If you make a mistake, no problem, just erase it with the cloth eraser and start over. Calligraphy in those schools is as important as grammar and mathematics, because if you write well and know how to count, you can get by anywhere, even where the cell phone doesn't work and wikipedia can't help you. It seems to me that in those schools the focus is more on developing another type of A.I. the Artisan Intelligence, the one that, until now, has generated progress in every field. Who knows if the machines will be able to do the same.

Perhaps the time has come to decide whether to side with those who will tell machines what to do or we will end up being the ones who will be told by machines what to do. What if I told you that after all this text, including the title, was not written by me but by Chat GPT?

Roberto Cristaudo

NP Marzo 2023