Informal Remarks at Conference on “Advancing Human-AI Interaction Initiative”
The Media Lab, MIT
April 10, 2025 ©Howard Gardner
Thanks to Patti Maes for that kind introduction. For most of my life I have studied cognition, especially “high end” cognition—creativity, leadership, etc. In my prepared remarks today I want to talk about education.
I’ve brought no slides, but two sturdy props.
Act 1: Education at the End of the Anthropocene
Education is so deeply ingrained in our mentalities that it is difficult to conceive of it as being very different in the future. The presumed sequence: Preschool—elementary school—middle school—high school—college/university—maybe further diplomas if you have professional ambitions, for instance, at MIT or at the institution down the Charles River.
But we are at the end of the Anthropocene, the end of the era where human beings casually assumed that we were in control of our planet. AI may be smarter than we are on all conceivable dimensions—using my terminology, in all of our intelligences—and there may also be very different needs and desires for a post-Anthropocene era.
Act 2: Prop # 1 (my cell phone)
Growing up in Scranton PA in the early 1950s—this was also former president Joe Biden’s hometown —let’s consider the schools that we and our agemates attended.
7th grade—I was asked to memorize all 67 of the PA counties and draw the map from memory.
9th grade—I was asked to memorize the US Constitution and to recall and compare various acts and amendments.
I hated the 7th grade assignment, but I still cherish the ninth grade assignment.
The question to ponder: Why learn to draw and memorize maps when you can pull out innumerable geographical entities from your phone? For that matter, why memorize the US Constitution when you can search it instantly, perhaps rearrange it with a command or two, or ask ChatGPT, or another Large Language Model, to compare the US constitution with those that govern other societies?
I believe, in the future, far more of traditional education should be optional and in line with a person’s interests, predispositions, desires—if you will, whichever of your multiple intelligences you enjoy deploying and in what combination. Rather than taking place in separate buildings from age 5 to 20, education will extend from cradle to grave and much of it will occur online.
In formal schooling, I certainly favor learning the “three Rs”—and I might well add coding—but for most of us with adequate brains and an adequate environment, these initial masteries should not take much time—a few years at the most. And if there are learning challenges, those can and should be handled separately, .e.g. helping you to draw a map of my neighborhood…perhaps helping you to memorize the ten commandments, or the Gettysburg address, or the oath of allegiance, rather than the 4500+ words in the United States Constitution…
Instead, we will need just a little experience in the weeds or in the soil—and then should come meta understanding—which is what it’s all about. Whether it is geography (what are maps for, how are they constructed, how could one map one’s home or one’s neighborhood?); history (what is the past, how do we learn about it, how can we trace your own family, or that of someone from history, how do we record an event and then make sense of it later?); the same kinds of meta concerns and understandings can be done across the classical curricula (rhetoric, music, chemistry) as well as newer fields (electronic music, statistics, animate or inanimate neural networks, or the human genome).
Act 3: Prop #2 (Five Minds for the Future)
Around 2000, I wrote a book called Five Minds for the Future (note: it was first published in Spanish in 2004, then in English in 2005). This was before widely available AI, and indeed even before social media, the internet and world wide web were new for all except experts.
Now, looking back a quarter of a century after initial publication of Five Minds, what ought we to maintain as important goals in education, what do we change, and how?
Cognitive Learning
Three of the “Five Minds” are longstanding goals of education, (1) the disciplined mind, (2) the synthesizing mind, and (3) the creating mind.
As noted, for those who want or need it, a curriculum that bears some similarity to the 20th century, some experience in learning a discipline, synthesizing information, creating new ideas or products.
But Far More Meta—What does it mean to “do” history, geography, geometry, or calculus?
For the rest of us, meta is a taste of a discipline (studying a few historical topics), of synthesizing (making sense of the French Revolution or the rise and fall of 20th century fascism), creating (working with music, with colors, with words, to produce a work of art) or writing a program (to clean one’s home or clear one’s desk, to celebrate a birthday or mourn a death).
But what is not optional, and should never be optional, are the other two minds: (4) the respectful mind and (5) the ethical mind.
Respectful Mind
Learn from others (humans, animals, other living things, taking care of our animals, our geological, or plant entities) and also from computational devices (whether keyboard, robot, or voice activated). Take personal responsibility for how we treat others, do unto others, love our neighbors.
Ethical Mind
From The Good Project curriculum
This is the most challenging. How do we deal with difficult issues where there is no obvious right answer? We accept that condition, that limitation…. and yet we strive to address these issues as thoughtfully as possible, realizing that the most we can do is to do our best, and then learn from what worked and what didn’t... as we like to put it in our own curricular work—Define, Discuss, Debate, Deliberate, Decide, and Debrief.
The Roles of Citizen And of Worker/Professional
I don’t see those roles as going away in any foreseeable future. As members of a still dominant species, we will still—and we should have to—decide policy. And whatever aids we use for decisions in medicine, or law, or journalism, or educating at any level, in the end we as humans have to wrestle with such dilemmas—and do our best to address and solve or resolve them.
Extra credit: We have been working for well over a decade on curricula to foster respectful and ethical citizens—for further details, please see thegoodproject.org. I believe that we have made considerable progress—indeed, the curricula are being constantly updated and are now available in several languages.
But: As a cautionary note, I see our work on good work and good citizenship as depending, as presupposing a democratic society—where one can speak up, write down, voice our views, vote in fair elections, and know that our vote matters—no more or less than the votes of other citizens. We require a society where one can ponder alone and with others, try to figure out the right thing to do, make a decision, realize that one could be wrong, try to “right it,” and make intelligent and diligent use of AI, including generative AI, but where we do not turn our species, other living creatures, or the planet itself, over to inanimate entities nor to dictators, be they political, or technological, or both.
In Conclusion
We have many options—in our educational system, our curricula, our public arenas and fora, or our online communities. We should make intelligent uses of our own intelligences and those offered or enhanced by artificial intelligence—but in the last analysis, members of our communities, our nations, our species need to take responsibility for the decisions that we reach.
And at a time when the health—indeed, the very survival—of our planet is in jeopardy, we cannot afford to stay “on hold.” We must speak up, act thoughtfully, learn from our mistakes, and try to be good educators and good stewards.
