• After observing that student action and thought is the only possible source of learning, Simon concluded, “The teacher can advance learning only by influencing the student to learn.” Faced with generative AI in our classrooms, the obvious response for us is to influence students to adopt the helpful uses of AI while persuading them to avoid the harmful ones. Our problem is that we don’t know how to do that.
• Since the arrival of generative AI, I have spent much of the last two years talking with professors and students to try to understand what is going on in their classrooms. In those conversations, faculty have been variously vexed, curious, angry, or excited about AI, but as last year was winding down, for the first time one of the frequently expressed emotions was sadness. This came from faculty who were, by their account, adopting the strategies my colleagues and I have recommended: emphasizing the connection between effort and learning, responding to AI-generated work by offering a second chance rather than simply grading down, and so on. Those faculty were telling us our recommended strategies were not working as well as we’d hoped, and they were saying it with real distress.
• Our problem is that we have two problems. One is figuring out how to encourage our students to adopt creative and helpful uses of AI. The other is figuring out how to discourage them from adopting lazy and harmful uses. Those are both important, but the second one is harder.

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• Over the last 25 years in Udaipur, we have seen the Shikshantar movement organically evolve into a powerful incubator and weaver for radical educational experiments in Udaipur and around the world.

• And the fraying of the social contract is getting worse. Americans express less and less trust in many institutions. Substantial majorities of people say that government, business leaders and the media are purposefully misleading them. In striking contrast to older generations, majorities of younger people say they do not believe that “the American dream” is achievable anymore. The health insurance industry likes to cite polls that show overall satisfaction, but those numbers go down when people get sick and learn what their insurer is and is not willing to do for them.

  Things are much better now than in the 19th century. But there is a similarity to the trajectory and the mood, to the expression of deep powerlessness and alienation.

  Now, however, the country is awash in powerful guns. And some of the new technologies that will be deployed to help preserve order can cut both ways. Thompson’s killer apparently knew exactly where to find his target and at exactly what time. No evidence has emerged that he had access to digital tracking data, but that information is out there on the market. How long before easily built artificial-intelligence-powered drones equipped with facial recognition cameras, rather than hooded men with backpacks, seek targets in cities and towns?

• However, all living beings eventually reach stasis. Nothing grows forever. Why? Because to do so would have a terrible impact on a local ecosystem which is finite. CO2 in the atmosphere may be the symptom, and burning fossil fuels the reason, but growing a global human economy with a vast energy surplus by transforming every material in sight on a finite planet is the cause of the crisis.
• Wealth results from using energy to transform natural abundance into personal resources. Every unit of currency represents a material transformation and an expenditure of energy. This is why even if we did facilitate an incredible, global rollout of renewable energy whilst somehow protecting the remaining endangered ecosystems, it would not guarantee a stable planet. Humans use available energy to transform materials to produce wealth. Until we take wealth generation out of the equation, and re-engineer our economies to facilitate human and planet wellbeing, our energy supply will be used for material transformation.
• Yet, rather than discuss minimising our economic footprint, mainstream economics talk about decoupling our economies from the very things that create our economies.

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