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Why is a 60-year-old AI argument going viral? Seymour Papert had thoughts.
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Hello Reader, A nearly 60-year-old paper highly skeptical of artificial intelligence is going viral on social media. Written in 1965 by MIT philosopher Hubert Dreyfus, Alchemy and Artificial Intelligence argued that the entire AI enterprise was built on a false assumption about how human minds work — and that no computer, no matter how powerful, would ever be able to replicate what makes human intelligence genuinely human. Dreyfus paid a steep professional price for saying so. According to legend, his colleagues at MIT refused to eat lunch with him. That paper's sudden resurrection reminded us that our friend, colleague, mentor, and the father of educational computing, Dr. Seymour Papert, authored a scathing repudiation of it in 1968. Papert's response, The Artificial Intelligence of Hubert L. Dreyfus: A Budget of Fallacies, named specific logical errors in Dreyfus' argument that are just as common in today's AI debates as they were sixty years ago. We wrote about why the Dreyfus paper is going viral, what it actually argues, what Papert got right in pushing back, and what both of them together have to offer anyone trying to think carefully about AI in schools. We hope you'll read it.
Educating is a Political Act"This is why I believe that today we must have the courage to affirm a seemingly simple, but deeply radical thesis: educating is a political, non-violent act of peace." "Every day, in schools, a silent but decisive job is done: we learn to listen, to collaborate, to respect, to discuss without destroying, to live between differences. They are apparently ordinary gestures.In reality they are the democratic antibodies of a society." The president of Fondazione Reggio Children, Francisco Profumo, wrote this newspaper editorial (translated into English). It was published mere weeks before our institute, The Language of Computation – Constructing Modern Knowledge in Reggio Emilia. Ciao dall'Italia!We have arrived in Italy and are getting ready for The Language of Computation - Constructing Modern Knowledge in Reggio Emilia next week! The stage is set for a fantastic five days of learning and collaborating. We can't wait to welcome participants from all around the world. Stay tuned and we will share some of our learning adventures! Gary Stager and Sylvia Martinez |
Constructing Modern Knowledge
Join us for news, resources, and events for creative, progressive educators
Computational Making & Learning Workshops in California On the heels of his Chicago event, Gary Stager is bringing his Computational Making & Learning Workshop to Los Angeles and San Francisco in December. Computational making recognizes that the future is computational. Making things with code expands the creative canvas, supercharges mathematical thinking, and positions learners to explore the frontiers of nearly any discipline. While the maker movement gave us the ability to make things...
Hello Reader, New from CMK Press: Tinkering Time Buy on Amazon Young children are natural tinkerers. Give them interesting materials, a good question and room to experiment, and watch what happens. We're delighted to announce Tinkering Time: 30 Creative Classroom Projects for Young Engineers, Artists, and Inventors by Alice Baggett, a joyful, practical guide to bringing hands-on tinkering into preschool and PreK classrooms. Alice has taught young children for more than three decades and is...
Happy Back-to-School, Reader! Back-to-School is an exhausting, exciting time of year filled with possibility, renewed energy, and for some, perhaps even a little dread. We salute all you do each day the make the world a better place for kids. Rest assured that we have your back. While we can’t “clear your list,” we decided to share some thoughts that may “clear your mind” and perhaps, even inspire you to lean into your courage and creativity. Here are some of words of wisdom and witty tales...