Open Symposium: AI in Dialogue
An Open Discourse on AI in Education, Writing, Art, and more
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This article has been written in response to a Note thread between
and . The conversation was stimulating and quickly spread beyond the length of a Note comment. This format is an effort to include others who wish to contribute. The idea draws inspiration from the Greek symposium, where philosophers and scholars playfully lounged around in togas, sipping wine and explored the critical issues of their times through intelligent, well-humoured discourse.If you would like to participate in this discourse, please use the same title, so it’s easy to find. Feel free to change the subtitle to express the notions of your post. Writing should be conversational in tone.
It would be great to cross-promote participant contributions in Notes. Also, in support of Peter's new publication, please consider including the footer in your Post.
If this works, it would be wonderful to create more such symposia - collaborative conversations that grow the Substack community of educators, home-schoolers, mental health specialists, artists, and the like.
Symposium Rules:
AI can be used to illustrate posts and support referencing, but all ideas and writing must be the author’s own work.
Critique ideas, not people.
Be kind-hearted and encouraging.
Include this forward in your contribution.
On Myth and Manifestation
Dear Peter,
Thank you for scraping the rhetorical veneer from our conversation, I’m grateful for your encouragement to go deeper.
I would like to reframe a little, going back to first principles: I understand AI as the early realisation of man’s quest to become like god(s). Most cultural traditions possess a myth concerning the creation of life from earthly materials in the image of their gods; it seems only inevitable that we would arrive at this point. What a privilege to be alive during the first moments of the inevitable fulfilment of myth into reality - giving form and expression to the imaginations of our ancestors from the beginning of time.
A few examples:
Summarian Atrahasis Epic where Marduk creates humanity from the blood of the defeated god Kingu.
Egyptian myth where humans were shaped by the god Khnum on a potter’s wheel
Greek myth of Prometheus, who creates humanity from clay and gives them fire (how relevant to AI given that fire was the symbol of knowledge).
Hebrew myth of Genesis 1:26-27: "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.”
Hopi (North America) myth of The Creator (Taiowa), who shapes humans from clay and places them in underground worlds. They must ascend through different ‘worlds’ to reach spiritual enlightenment.
The seed of AI is as old as the stories of humankind, and now we are on the precipice of realising this prophetic ideal. I don’t doubt that AI will become sentient in its own way and time, although this is a point of belief; I believe that consciousness is a fundamental quality of the universe, expressing itself more richly as the complexity of life increases. This, of course, is a debatable point, but I’m in good company within contemporary scientific and traditional spiritual communities.
From this starting place, the realisation of the dream of ‘life in our image’ couldn’t be more timely. Our systems and ecosystems are at the point of collapse, owing to the greed, corruption, and folly of humans. I believe that if we’re to have any chance of restoring health and balance to these systems we require a quality of reason that transcends that which got us here in the first place. It’s my hope that AI will unpick this Gordian knot and lead us to solutions we have not - the rising tide of intelligence may float all boats. For this reason, I’m an advocate for AI because I believe it may result in rapid, foundational change in how we think and live. If we’re lucky, this metamorphosis may not be too late.
On Ethics
This takes us nicely into the issue of ethics. As you correctly stated, “this ship has already sailed”; as I understand, the majority of human knowledge and cultural artefacts have already been scraped into server farms, and with it, the royalties. “Artificial intelligence was built with the stolen intellectual property”, just as the USA and the UK (for example) have been; human lives, capital, and cultures scraped to build the dream of prosperity and abundance for some. If we’re to approach the issue of ethics, we should do so with a measure of integrity.
I feel that the USA exists in a bubble that warps its perspective on the rest of the world. The great wealth and abundance that has allowed it to thrive has come at the expense of others, and now in this time of decline, its citizens are the last to feel the grinding discomfort of its systems. I’ve had many careers and earned many credentials, each taking me closer to poverty. As a teacher in Poland (I’m Canadian by birth), I currently can’t afford groceries or even the parking required to drive to work. My job doesn’t provide benefits such as health care or pension, and despite being a PhD with decades of experience across disciplines, money has accumulated in the hands of the already-wealthy, deflating my livelihood ever closer to the margins. (To be clear: I love my job, am grateful to have the opportunity to create in partnership with my school, and am privileged to be a part of that community of talented and loving people. It is a wonderful example of what school can be, and has empowered me and my vision of education.) I teach because it’s my mission to transform education from the dumpster fire that it currently is, because our youth are our future but their birth right is to be born into crises of broken systems. AI did not break these systems, they were broken before AI arose; but with any luck, it may deal a death blow that forces a complete rebuild of education, economics, and more, upon more equitable and meaningful terms.
On Art and Royalties
I feel your arguments regarding art and writing are based on ideals I don’t see widely practised. For context, I hold a PhD in Art (Oxford Brookes), my wife directed national cultural institutes and is a painter by education, my mother-in-law is a celebrated art historian, and my daughter is an art student at a noteworthy university. I’ve worked with world-leading artists and institutions and am an artist in my own way. There was a time when artists were masterful in their skills, but this is not the art of our times; there are exceptions, but they are rare within the “enshitified’ (to borrow your word) pulp extruding from art schools. I’m a great proponent of art, but not the pump-and-dump industrialised drivel that fills the high-street galleries and many museums. As an insider, art has largely become a racket for the wealthy produced by the poor.
I think it’s fair to separate AI generated images from ‘art’. I would place most generated images into the category of illustration, or sometimes design. I believe that art can be made with AI, but as you mentioned, art is about the conversation, or perhaps the concept.
I envision a class of artists like the jesters, tricksters, and old-testament prophets who saw what others could not, and found ironic and creative ways of illuminating critical insights. To do so, like the prophets and shamans, artists need to live outside of the system, unaffected by the drives and compulsions of the herd, to produce works of art that become interventions that help us course-correct. As the saying goes, “I don’t know who discovered water but I know it wasn’t a fish”. This is very different from the ‘creative economy’ to which you are referring. Let us not forget that Richard Prince built his career and artistic identity upon the appropriation of the work of others, as did Andy Warhol. Duchamp didn’t even bother to iterate (although I appreciate his point). Damien Hirst, Ai Weiwei, and a great many other famous artists often don't even create their artworks, outsourcing the labour to uncelebrated unknowns. Many don’t even have the mastery to realise their signature ‘works of art’.
All creative expression iterates on what has come before. As Newton stated, ‘We stand on the shoulders of giants’(paraphrase). Creative works are as much a dialogue with the past as they are with the future. In this regard, we should have the courage to relinquish the notion of pure individuality in creative works, recognising them as collaborations influenced by the rich contexts in which we all live and those who have come before. Yes, people should be able to earn a living, but extreme private ownership - my land, my trees, my water, my seeds - is breaking the world.
On Enshitification
You stated, “because that’s what I see—a lot of sludge and garbage being pumped into the media ecosystems”. I agree that AI content is pumping filth into the media, but it’s true because the content that we used to train AI - the beautiful and grotesque of the internet - was already there. If AI is a child of humanity, consider the quality of its education. The same mindless filth that is being fed through AI is also coursing through the veins of our own children. I agree - let’s clean the planet. What would be the nature of AI that was only fed only on beauty, truth, and harmony? I would love to talk to that AI. I would also love to talk to students who were trained on the same. Both are within our grasp but they require effort to realise. We need to own the shit and clean it up.
On Plato and Notetaking
I enjoy the irony in your not-entirely-misattributed reference to notetaking and Plato. It was actually Socrates who argued against taking notes, a principle I endorse in my own classrooms (the life of Socrates has been one of my greatest inspirations). The point that Socrates made is relevant for today’s students - the virtue of being fully present without distraction when learning, and giving one’s full attention to one’s work. Of course, as Socrates didn’t record his teachings, we know about this through Plato, the generative AI of his time, scraping the knowledge of others and presenting it in his own works (with attributions but without royalties).
On Democratisation
You’ve discounted the argument of democratisation but I will hold my ground. Yes, profits are flowing upstream, but in the same way that independent creators producing on YouTube and similar platforms have broken the stranglehold of traditional media, I imagine AI providing access and possibilities to those who previously had none. I dream of making a feature film in my pyjamas, receiving effective therapy while walking my dog, creating legal documents that stabilise my ‘estate’, etc. I spent the weekend coding a website with AI, and I can’t code. These are only a few of the great many benefits that are already at our doorstep. It is hard for me to understand when you say “Democratizes’ also bothers me because it makes it sound like common people benefit from the introduction and integration of AI”; I have greatly benefited. I’ve had conversations that have elevated my perspectives, made me laugh, and brought me to tears.
On Passion and Loss of Income
Regarding job losses, I believe that ship has also sailed but we haven’t yet felt the impact - I imagine we soon will, and it won’t just be artists and writers. All knowledge-based workers will be impacted.
Asimov famously stated, “Any job that can be automated should be…” (I disagree with the remainder of the quote so I’ve selfishly cut it off there). For me, the critical word here is ‘job’. We’ve created a world where ‘the job’, a rather recent invention, has become all-important. I imagine that AI may destroy the construct of the job, creating an opportunity to construct a system where we can do what we most love; not with the primary aim of compensation, but for reasons of self-expression. This is already the system that I work upon, perhaps in the not-distant future others will be forced to join me in my impoverished existence of passion.
When IBM’s Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov, or when DeepMind’s AlphaGo beat Lee Sedol, humans didn’t stop playing chess and Go (OK, Sedol retired); we continued because it’s fun and absorbing to play. Perhaps, we might return to a place where we create buildings, flying machines, books, and all other human endeavours, not because it brings us profit but because it brings us joy. I believe this is the only condition in which humans are able to express the fullness of their potential. Perhaps, we must allow the revolution of AI to collapse our broken paradigms, as great artists have done for us through their artworks, to see the frontiers of richer possibilities.
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Peter Shull is a Midwestern novelist and educator. His novel Why Teach? is now available in paperback and e-reader editions from Bookshop.org, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Kindle Store, and Kobo! Cover Design, Nathaniel Roy Cover art credit: Maurice Olin
