B14 notes: 2024-02-11 to 2024-04-14 (18 posts)#

Reading notes on Andrew Maynard’s Substack posts in batch B14. Only his own prose is treated as evidence. Quotes are exact, including his original typos and curly punctuation.

Batch context: February to April 2024. OpenAI has just shown Sora (not yet public), Google’s Gemini image generator has been paused, Neuralink has shown its first implanted patient, and a Waymo car has been burned in San Francisco. Maynard is Director of ASU’s Future of Being Human initiative, is testing an Apple Vision Pro with Sean Leahy, is teaching “Pizza and a Slice of Future”, and is writing a Jurimetrics review of Dune: Part Two. Six of the eighteen posts are an audio “In Conversation With …” series. These are recorded conversations, produced by Sean Leahy, in a format that comes before the later Modem Futura podcast. Following the user’s instruction not to spend time on the podcasts, they get one line each below.

Relevance summary:

HIGH#

2024-03-31 — we-have-a-technology-problem-and — “We have a technology problem – and it probably isn’t what you think”#

Provenance. His own prose throughout. He presents it as unfinished: “very much a work in progress” and “part of my process of trying to marshal my thoughts”. It ends with an Afterword that links back to the Harari post. The term “pilot” comes from an unnamed colleague.

Argument in his terms. - He refuses the optimist/pessimist binary. Being asked whether he is a techno-optimist or techno-pessimist is like being asked whether he is “an oxygen pessimist or optimist”. Technology is not an add-on we can take or leave. It is “integral to who I am”. He calls the analogy “clunky” but keeps it. - Technology is constitutive of being human. Treating technology as separate from who we are is “misleading — and potentially dangerous”. Humanity’s “collective identity and trajectory as a species can only be truly understood through the complex relationships between people, technology, and the future.” - He questions his own long habit (“technology apologetics”). For decades he has worked with people who see technology as apart from us, and has supported them “without overtly challenging their non tech-centric worldview”. He calls this “technology apologetics” and says: “I’m beginning to question its wisdom”. This is an explicit change of stance, from accommodating colleagues to challenging them. - Existing fields fall short. STS, history, philosophy, ethics of science and technology, responsible innovation, science policy and technology governance each study parts of the “human-technology-future puzzle”. Having worked across many of them, he is “not convinced that they have the breadth of vision and the integration of understanding” needed. This is a notable criticism of fields he himself belongs to, responsible innovation included. - Advanced technology transitions are one of humanity’s greatest challenges. The transitions are driven by AI “(and possibly AGI)”, gene editing, biotech, quantum, neuroscience, robotics, “nanoscale science and engineering”, automation and XR. Together these are “synergistically accelerating the rate of transformative change … beyond anything we’ve ever experienced as a species.” The stakes run both ways: “get it right and we open up near-unimaginable possibilities, but get it wrong and we risk catastrophic failures.” - Global problems are technology problems. Climate, sustainable development, planetary boundaries, mis/disinformation, populism, loneliness, geopolitics, social equity and democratic decision-making “few of them come across as being primarily technological-based issues”, yet none “make sense outside the context of thousands of years of an evolving relationship between humanity and technology.” He names three failure modes: treating technology as “something we do and not something we are”, compartmentalising the people–technology–future relationship, and “assuming that everything will turn out OK because it’s always done so in the past”. The third is a direct warning against complacent reading of past technology transitions. - What to do. Put technology “at the core”. Do not treat it as a solution to implement or a problem to address, but “as something that is part of the very DNA of being human”. Build knowledge that “transcends conventional disciplines” at unprecedented scale. Create “a new breed of institutions, thought leaders, scholars, graduates, and organizational leadership”, that is, pilots who can “guide us through perilous waters”. He admits he has no call to action: there are “no cut and dried blueprints for success”. - Afterword. He adds a cross-cutting teaching area to the Harari framework: “humanity’s long and complex past relationship with technology”, taught “warts-and-all”, covering how technology defines us and how we define it. He calls this a skill set for “piloting society through advanced technology transitions”.

How firmly. The diagnosis is firm and the remedy tentative. He is candid about how unfinished it is.

Concepts. Oxygen analogy (technology as constitutive, not optional). Technology apologetics. Advanced technology transitions (ATT). Pilots (institutions, communities or individuals who steer transitions). People–technology–future as a single relationship. Transdisciplinarity beyond existing fields. The complacency of “it’s always done so in the past”.

Analogies. Oxygen, used conceptually. No literal comparisons to past technologies, but a strong call to learn from “thousands of years” of human–technology history.

On AI. AI appears as one of the transition technologies, with “possibly AGI”. No AI-specific argument.

On governance. Technology governance is named as one of the fields that is necessary but insufficient. Steering is to be done by “pilots” and new institutions rather than regulation alone.

What he criticises. Technology treated as separate from humanity. Siloed disciplines, his own included. Complacent historical optimism. His own accommodating “apologetics”.

Quotes. - “It’s a bit like asking if I’m an oxygen pessimist or optimist” - “By assuming that technology is something we do and not something we are” - “assuming that everything will turn out OK because it’s always done so in the past” - “get it right and we open up near-unimaginable possibilities, but get it wrong and we risk catastrophic failures.”

2024-03-21 — elon-musks-neuralink-plays-mind-games — “Elon Musk’s Neuralink plays “mind games” in more ways than one”#

Provenance. His own prose, plus a long block quote (four paragraphs) from his co-authored 2019 paper with Marissa Scragg, “The Ethical and Responsible Development and Application of Advanced Brain Machine Interfaces” (Journal of Medical Internet Research), and its Figure 1. The quoted text is co-authored 2019 writing. He re-endorses it in 2024 (“still stands up reasonably well”).

Argument in his terms. - The demo’s novelty is mostly hype and packaging. BCIs controlling devices are not new (the Utah Array). What differs is Musk’s “telepathy” hyperbole, “the type of hyperbole most serious medical professionals and research scientists would avoid like the plague”, and a product that feels like consumer tech: “sexy”, like LASIK rather than hospital wires. - The Silicon Valley playbook in medicine. Neuralink’s “North Star is the “fail fast fail forward while changing the world at lightning speed” mindset of Silicon Valley”, in which “it’s the reality you can convince people to buy into that matters as much as the tech itself.” He links this “fake it ’till you make it” reality-distorting approach to how we were persuaded to want “smart phones, tablets, social media, cars that drive themselves”. - He is even-handed about it. “I’m not begrudging this approach as it’s clearly worked in many cases”, partly because people repurpose innovations creatively. “The Silicon Valley mindset could succeed in accelerating this technology where slow and steady medical research has not.” But “the reality distortion field is real, and I suspect that critics will discount it at their peril”, a warning to critics as much as to boosters. - Orphan risks and the risk landscape (2019). The 2019 paper was “requested in direct response to the initial Neuralink paper”. It mapped “orphan risks” (linked to riskinnovation.org) between the present and the company’s success: “easy-to-overlook risks that Neuralink should probably be looking out for.” The quoted 2019 text shows the method: - A “metaphorical “risk landscape”” leaves out conventional risks that already have frameworks (for example cybersecurity). - Orphan risks are flagged across perception, social trends (including “public backlash against brain machine interface-based augmentation”), novel health impacts and black swans. - The densest cluster is in “Organizations and Systems”: organisational values and culture, evolving regulation, standards. - It covers threats to value in key constituencies: ethics, social injustice, privacy, trustworthiness, “bad actors” poisoning the market. - Risks “cluster and converge” to create “truly blindsiding impacts”. The conclusion is to plan for clusters rather than “just one risk at a time”. - Looking back from 2024. The landscape “still stands up reasonably well”. He credits Neuralink with avoiding early pitfalls “by going slower than they might of, focusing on medical applications first, and working with regulators”. He expects the next two years to be when “the risks associated with a tech company with go-faster stripes working on BCIs will really kick in.” - His main worry is long-term patient autonomy and care. It goes back to Films from the Future (2018): “who “owns” you if your health — your life even — depends on technology that a company has implanted and has control over.” Patients are “beholden to the company” for bug fixes, updates and possibly paid subscriptions. The specific danger comes from a company “from a sector where monetizing the customer is the name of the game”, and from what happens “if the company goes bust”, leaving “legacy tech in their heads”. This already applies to medical implants, but is “especially relevant to a go-faster tech company that’s messing with people’s heads.” - He is excited, with caveats. “I must confess that I’m excited by what Neuralink is achieving.” The road is “full of pitfalls” that could hurt “the very people the company’s trying to help.”

Concepts. Orphan risks (2019, Risk Innovation Nexus). Risk landscape. Risk clusters and convergence. Threats to value across constituencies. The reality distortion field. The Silicon Valley “fail fast” playbook versus slow medical research. Dependency on implants and corporate ownership of the body (“who owns you”). “go-faster stripes”.

Analogies. Smartphones, tablets, social media and self-driving cars are literal precedents for hype-driven adoption. Existing medical implants are a literal precedent for dependency. LASIK is the company’s framing, which he reports. No chemicals, nano or GMO comparisons.

On tech leaders and companies. Musk’s hyperbole is criticised. Silicon Valley culture is analysed as a strategy that has worked and has costs. Neuralink is credited where due. Commercial incentives (monetisation, subscription, insolvency) are named as the core risk to patients.

On governance. Working with regulators is credited. Regulation and standards appear as orphan-risk categories that shape development pathways, seen from the enterprise side.

Significance for the map. This is clear evidence that “orphan risks” as a named concept, with its landscape and cluster method, was in use by 2019. In 2024 he re-endorses it as a lens on a live technology. It is one tool within his Risk Innovation work, applied here to neurotechnology, not to AI.

Quotes. - “it’s the reality you can convince people to buy into that matters as much as the tech itself.” - “the reality distortion field is real, and I suspect that critics will discount it at their peril.” - “what happens when the company providing the implants comes from a sector where monetizing the customer is the name of the game?” - “Looking back, this “risk landscape” still stands up reasonably well.”

2024-03-03 — dune-part-two-artificial-intelligence — “In Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two, AI is nowhere … and everywhere”#

Provenance. His own prose. It quotes lines from Frank Herbert’s Dune (Reverend Mother Mohaim, Paul, the Orange Catholic Bible), which are not his. It points to Chase Hutchinson (Collider, 2023) and Zachary Pirtle’s essay in Dune and Philosophy (2022). It is a companion piece to his Jurimetrics review, which was forthcoming. The Afterword is a personal film review (he was “disappointed”).

Argument in his terms. - The absence of AI is the point. Herbert’s universe has thrown out “digital computers” after the Butlerian Jihad in favour of “human computers”, people “exquisitely engineered, manipulated, and trained”. Because real-world AI has changed so much since 2021 (“Back in 2021 generative AI wasn’t even a mere twinkle”), this backstory is “all the more relevant today”. - Counterfeit human minds. He focuses on the Reverend Mother’s reformulation, “Thou shalt not make a machine to counterfeit a human mind”. What intrigues him is “the fear of counterfeit human minds”. These are not necessarily “intelligent, autonomous, conscious machines, but machines that emulate human behaviors and capabilities” until it is “hard to differentiate one from the other.” Once “misnomers around “intelligence” and “consciousness”” are put aside, “this feels like where we are currently heading with AI. Not with machines that can think for themselves, but machines that give the illusion of being able to do so — and in a very human way.” - Being human is at stake. There are “tremendous opportunities”. It is also worth pausing on “the potential consequences of blurring the lines between what defines us as humans — what brings value to ourselves and those around us through our unique “human-ness” — and what we build machines to do.” - Rejecting technology does not guarantee a good society. Dune’s human-centric society is “deeply flawed … rife with political manipulation and intrigue”. It rejects machines, yet uses human weaknesses to consolidate power. The book offers “an intriguing study in the complex tension between society and advanced technologies”. - Where AI stands. “we’re not in an age of “thinking machines” yet. But we’re getting close.” The challenges and opportunities are “unique in human history”. - Science fiction as a source. Sci-fi is “becoming an increasingly relevant (although still deeply unreliable) source of insight.”

Concepts. Counterfeit human minds (emulation and the illusion of thought rather than real intelligence or consciousness). “Human-ness”. The Butlerian Jihad as a cultural rejection of thinking machines. Sci-fi as relevant but unreliable.

Analogies. Dune is used conceptually, as a thought experiment about what a machine-free society costs and what it preserves. Herbert’s line “other men with machines” enslaving people is quoted, not argued, but it points to power concentration through AI.

On AI. The nature of current AI is emulation of human behaviour and “the illusion” of thinking. The misnomers “intelligence” and “consciousness” distract from this. The risk is that the boundary blurs, rather than machine autonomy. This is continuous with his earlier (2018) manipulation and “human club” framing, and anticipates his later concerns about AI that sounds human.

On AI risk. It is framed as erosion of “human-ness” and the difficulty of telling humans and machines apart. There is no catastrophic framing.

Quotes. - “Not with machines that can think for themselves, but machines that give the illusion of being able to do so — and in a very human way.” - “science fiction is becoming an increasingly relevant (although still deeply unreliable) source of insight.” - “we’re not in an age of “thinking machines” yet. But we’re getting close.”

2024-02-25 — ai-rollercoaster-of-a-week — “It’s Been a Rollercoaster of a Week in AI”#

Provenance. His own prose. It is a roundup of five items with his commentary. It describes the “Disrupting the Deepfake Supply Chain” open letter and its signatories, which is not his text.

Argument in his terms. - Sora. The videos are “stunning”, with “reality glitches”. It “could be another Generative AI tool that unleashes the imagination and capability of people of all ages and abilities”. It raises “the usual questions around bias, intellectual property and source material” and jobs, but “The biggie” is the ability of “nearly anyone to create misleading deep fakes.” He doubts watermarking: “how many people will be looking for that lower-right watermark”. - He signs the deepfake letter, and changes his view. The letter calls for criminalising deepfake child sexual abuse material, criminal penalties for knowingly creating or spreading harmful deepfakes, and developer liability when safeguards are “too easily circumvented”. He writes: “I tend not to sign open letters like this as they’re often deeply naive when it comes to how new technologies are governed. But in this case I did.” He explains the change. Years ago he thought “most people would use their common sense to differentiate between what was fake and what was not.” Now he is “far less sure”, especially for child sexual abuse material and uses that “destabilize relationships, communities, and whole societies.” (Compare 2023, when he did not sign the FLI pause letter. His general scepticism about open letters as governance holds, but this is an exception he explains.) - Google Gemini. He is sympathetic. The “racially diverse Nazis” episode was “more of a “gotcha” moment for many people than a dangerous flaw”, but it showed “how hard it is to constrain such complex generative models”. His governance principle: “it’s impossible to get a generative AI system 100% perfect before it launches — meaning that it’s far more important to be agile and responsive when things do go awry. And good on Google for doing just this.” - ChatGPT’s “wobbly”. It is a reminder that “useful as generative AI platforms like ChatGPT are, they are neither robust, reliable, or trustworthy”. He adds a joke about “emergent” humanlike off-days. - NVIDIA and hardware. NVIDIA passing a $2 trillion market value is “a sobering reminder of just how fast AI is accelerating”. Because hardware is slower to develop than software, hardware investment is “a persuasive indicator” of continued growth in AI’s scale and impact. He calls Sam Altman’s reported $7 trillion chip plan “audacious”.

Concepts. Deepfakes as a threat to social stability. Supply-chain liability for developers (the letter’s frame, which he endorses). Agile, responsive, post-launch correction versus pre-launch perfection. Unreliability and untrustworthiness of generative AI. Hardware investment as a signal of acceleration.

On AI companies. Google is credited for fast correction. OpenAI is noted for watermarking and for correcting ChatGPT quickly. He is generally charitable to the firms while stressing the limits of the technology.

On governance. He is sceptical of open letters as naive about governance, but signs this one. He endorses legal criminalisation and developer liability for deepfake harms, which is a relatively rare endorsement of hard law. For model failures, he values responsiveness over pre-market perfection.

Change of view. Explicit, on how seriously to take deepfakes and on whether people’s common sense is enough protection.

Quotes. - “I tend not to sign open letters like this as they’re often deeply naive when it comes to how new technologies are governed. But in this case I did.” - “At the time I was of the opinion that most people would use their common sense to differentiate between what was fake and what was not.” - “it’s far more important to be agile and responsive when things do go awry.” - “they are neither robust, reliable, or trustworthy.”

2024-04-14 — welcome-to-the-age-of-swipe-and-select-embryos — “Welcome to the age of swipe and select embryos”#

Provenance. His own prose. He paraphrases arguments from Orchid founder Noor Siddiqui (via a Wired interview) and quotes Orchid’s taglines and principles. He flags the paraphrase: “I’m paraphrasing here”.

Argument in his terms. - What is at issue. Orchid’s whole-genome embryo screening, launched December 2023, covers more than 1,000 single-gene conditions plus polygenic ones. The ethics are “far from black and white” and concern “the aspirations driving the technology and the choices that it’s opening up as it is about the line between “can” and “should.”” The “moral landscape around what is possible versus what is acceptable is rapidly shifting.” - He engages the moral-imperative argument respectfully. Siddiqui argues there is a moral obligation to reduce avoidable suffering. He struggles with “how deterministic arguments like these are — it feels like they boil human flourishing down to a balance sheet”. He fears that “fixing perceived problems will somehow diminish what it means to be human.” Then he hedges: “I cannot say with any certainty that I am right here”. - He grants a lot to IVF-based screening. Within IVF, informed selection fits “doing good, doing no harm, and freedom of choice”, and random selection may be less ethical when information exists. Basic PGT for serious conditions “makes sense”. - The scale of choice is the problem. When the number of screened outcomes grows from a handful to thousands, and extends to conditions that are “less debilitating, that are socially complex, and that some people would see as part of someone’s identity” (hearing loss, autism, type II diabetes), several problems follow: - The “burden of choice” puts parents “into a state of painful knowledge where ignorance might have been better”. - The effects on the child’s “sense of self and autonomy” are unknown. - Societal perceptions of disability and neurodivergence may shift. - “who gets to decide what suffering means in this context, and to whom” becomes an open question. - “It’s the implications of complex choices driven by knowledge that, once known isn’t unknowable, that worry me”. - AI, commercial drift and races. Whole-genome data could support non-health screening. AI interpretation of the genome “could be a game changer”. He names wealthy clients, business pressure to “extract yet more value from the data”, and competitors seeking an edge. These are “technologically feasible and economically plausible”. He notes a shift in Orchid’s framing from infertility service to “any parent”, with an undercurrent that it could become “unethical not to pre-screen”. Geopolitics: “Imagine, for instance, China adopting whole genome embryo screening” for long-term power. - Equity. At $2,500 per embryo, screening favours the already advantaged and those whose beliefs align with it. If it confers advantage, it “could seriously exacerbate inequities”. - Unknowns cut both ways. He offers “a counterbalance” to the equity worry: “next to nothing” is known about adverse outcomes. These include the psychology of being pre-selected, parental pressure, and loss of diversity if “we have an evolved resilience as a species that is somehow connected with maintaining diversity”. A backlash could turn a technological advantage into lifelong discrimination. - The overall frame. “we’re engaged in a natural experiment with full genome embryo screening where we cannot put the genie back in the bottle”. He rejects dismissals (“unnatural”, “tech-bro fantasy”) as “lazy and narrow minded”. “I worry about the social and ethical risks. A lot. But I also respect what Siddiqui and Orchid are trying to do.” He calls for “hard but respectful dialogue” that allows “opinions to be modified”. He is against “demonizing them or raising them, god-like, on a pedestal”.

Concepts. Can versus should. The ethics of choice (the ethics of pre-screening driven by the ethics of choice). Painful knowledge / irreversible knowledge. Genetic determinism as a “balance sheet” view of flourishing. Natural experiment / genie out of the bottle. Diversity as species resilience. Equity. Commercial and geopolitical race dynamics. Who gets to decide.

Analogies. Designer babies in sci-fi, used as cultural framing. The “natural experiment” is shared “As with many other advanced technologies”, a structural comparison. AI appears as an amplifier of genomic interpretation.

On companies and leaders. Respect for Siddiqui’s motives alongside worry about the philosophy behind them. He anticipates how business models may drift.

On governance and who decides. He does not propose regulation. He favours dialogue and plural voices. The question of who gets to decide appears in relation to defining suffering.

On being human. This is central. He fears that determinism and “fixing” diminish what it means to be human. Human variation and diversity are valued.

Note. In the self-driving car post (2024-02-18) he calls it “lazy and dangerous” to cast the public as “guinea pigs in a social experiment”. Here he himself describes embryo screening as a society-wide “natural experiment”. The two are compatible: he objects to the narrative being used to justify violence, not to the description.

Quotes. - “it feels like they boil human flourishing down to a balance sheet” - “It’s the implications of complex choices driven by knowledge that, once known isn’t unknowable, that worry me here.” - “who gets to decide what suffering means in this context, and to whom.” - “we’re engaged in a natural experiment with full genome embryo screening where we cannot put the genie back in the bottle”

2024-02-18 — setting-fire-to-self-driving-cars-is-bad — “Setting fire to self-driving cars won’t help build a better future”#

Provenance. His own prose.

Argument in his terms. Three things angered him about the torching of a Waymo car in San Francisco: 1. Lazy backlash narratives. Reading the incident as public rejection of an unwanted technology is “too convenient”. It “seductively strokes the confirmation biases of anyone who has an agenda that involves trashing new technologies”. Taking “a single datapoint” to suggest “society’s unwillingness to be guinea pigs in a social experiment is both lazy and dangerous.” He acknowledges the real context: the Cruise pedestrian incident, Waymo hitting a cyclist, activist “coning” of cars. 2. Mob mentality and “othering”. The evidence points “less toward a rational and reasoned protest … and more toward a mob mentality”. “This willingness to “other” a piece of technology, and then use this as a justification to smash it, troubles me.” It draws on collective identity formed through violence against something or someone else. “This is not a good basis on which to build a shared future.” 3. Narrative contagion. Stories that validate such acts spread, especially through media. Writers and academics “speculating about a social backlash” are “legitimizing such behavior” even if they would disavow it. He fears it spreading to “drones, food delivery robots, AI-powered info-stations”.

Consequences he fears. Companies abandoning autonomous technology, which is “hardly” a win for communities that could benefit. Development becoming “more secretive, less open, and far less accountable”. Worst of all, developers building defensive measures, “autonomous cars, drones, and delivery bots, that can give as good as they get.”

Hedging. ““done right” is open to interpretation here, and it may be that the world is indeed not ready for autonomous vehicles.” There is much still to debate: “I get that — it’s what I do for a living.” His conclusion is that incidents like this “tell us more about who we are as humans than about the technologies we’re developing.”

Concepts. Othering technology. Narrative legitimisation of anti-technology violence. Backlash that drives development underground (less accountable). Responsible and beneficial development of autonomous technology. Confirmation bias in both media and critics.

On expertise and publics. He distinguishes legitimate criticism from mob destruction, and criticises academic and media narratives that romanticise backlash. This fits his long-standing defence of responsible innovation against both boosterism and reflexive opposition, and connects with the “public backlash” orphan risk in the Neuralink post.

On governance. Law will “kick in fast”, but not fast enough to prevent harm to responsible development. Openness and accountability of development are values to protect.

Quotes. - “to take a single datapoint and insinuate that this is a reflection of society’s unwillingness to be guinea pigs in a social experiment is both lazy and dangerous.” - “This willingness to “other” a piece of technology, and then use this as a justification to smash it, troubles me.” - “Another would be development that is more secretive, less open, and far less accountable, than it currently is.” - “incidents like the one in San Francisco tell us more about who we are as humans than about the technologies we’re developing.”

2024-03-10 — harari-teaching-future — “What should we be teaching students now to prepare them for the future?”#

Provenance. His own prose. Harari’s line is quoted from a Colbert interview. The post also contains an inserted promo box (“Have you checked out the new Modem Futura podcast yet…”) linking to an October 2024 page. It was added after publication, is not part of the argument, and is ignored here.

Argument in his terms. - He disagrees with Harari, who says “nobody has any idea what to teach young people that will still be relevant in 20 years”. Harari “certainly has a point” about the pace and depth of change: technologies “allowing us to redefine our planet, our society, and even ourselves”. But that is true only if education means “facts, figures, and how to do stuff”. Education has long stressed how to learn. - Six durable areas. 1. What it means to be human. This gets harder “as emerging technologies have the ability to threaten or alter the essence of what it means to be human.” 2. What it means to flourish, including what flourishing does not look like, and learning from the past. 3. What it means to be part of something bigger: complex systems from individuals to the planet and space, “approached from the perspective of how innovation and technology perturb and drive these dynamics”. Responsible innovation is named. 4. How to maintain balance. Balance “doesn’t refer to stasis, but is more akin to maintaining a degree of dynamic stability and agility”. 5. How to create opportunities. 6. How to build positive futures. This is “most lacking” and urgent. “This is where I strongly believe we need to teach how to navigate advanced technology transitions”. The theories, models and practical skills needed “to take over 8 billion people on an increasingly stressed planet through technology transitions” (AI, quantum, advanced gene editing, radical human augmentation, the blurring of real and virtual) are still missing. - He wants students to be “lifelong participants in collectively building a better future”, with “creative agility and adaptation”. He invites readers to say what he is missing.

Concepts. Advanced technology transitions as a subject to teach. Being human, flourishing, complex systems, dynamic balance, opportunity creation and positive futures as a durable curriculum. Transdisciplinarity. Learning how to learn. The later Afterword in 2024-03-31 adds humanity’s past relationship with technology as a cross-cut.

On education. The university’s role is to prepare people to navigate technology transitions, not just to deliver skills. He places himself as “an educator and someone who studies the intersection of technology, society and the future”.

Quotes. - “as emerging technologies have the ability to threaten or alter the essence of what it means to be human.” - “This is where I strongly believe we need to teach how to navigate advanced technology transitions.” - “lifelong participants in collectively building a better future”

MEDIUM#

2024-03-24 — could-openais-sora-be-big-deal-for-kids — “Could OpenAI’s Sora be a big deal for elementary school kids?”#

Provenance. His own prose. The Sora video prompts and captions are OpenAI’s. He discloses that his wife is an elementary teacher and says he “got the green light”.

Argument. - He opens with concern: “From deep fakes and disinformation to blurring the lines between fact and fiction, generative AI video is calling into question what we can trust, and what we cannot.” Yet it “holds quite incredible potential … as long as we develop and use it responsibly.” - He praises OpenAI for withholding release: “OpenAI is very sensibly being diligent in stress-testing the platform”. He hopes this leads to guardrails. - Core idea. Young children’s inner “playground of the mind” (linking to the playgrounds post) exceeds their ability to express it. Sora could close the gap between imagination and expression, and “iteratively develop their creative and cognitive skills”. He places this in a line of precedent: pencil and paper, KidPix, Minecraft as “playgrounds for the imagination”. - AI as a mind-inferring, language-driven translator. “We’re on the cusp of technologies that are able to infer what is in our minds and imaginations, and make it real in ways that resonate deeply with others — all through the use of written or spoken language.” He also suggests teachers and parents could use AI video as “a translator of what’s going on inside a child’s head”. - Caveats. “Such a possibility is, of course, not without its risks”. There is “a substantial leap from a generative AI platform intended for use by responsible adults, and something that’s used with elementary school kids.” He makes it conditional: “if we can agree on the right approach to safety, learning, and opening up creative possibilities.”

Significance. This is an optimistic, formation-positive view of language-mediated AI in children’s development. The same capacity (AI inferring and externalising what is in a child’s head through language) is the kind of thing his later work treats as a formation and cognition concern. Here the stance is exploratory and enthusiastic, with risk mentioned but not analysed.

Quotes. - “generative AI video is calling into question what we can trust, and what we cannot.” - “We’re on the cusp of technologies that are able to infer what is in our minds and imaginations” - “there’s a substantial leap from a generative AI platform intended for use by responsible adults, and something that’s used with elementary school kids.”

2024-03-17 — undergraduate-playgrounds-not-playpens — “Are we putting our undergrads in playpens when they need playgrounds?”#

Provenance. His own prose. It quotes Mitch Resnick (2004 article and Lifelong Kindergarten, 2017) and Marina Umaschi Bers (2012). He reports a personal exchange with Resnick.

Argument. - A follow-up to the Harari post, on how to teach. He is openly sceptical of “incorporating the latest greatest technology into education — usually as a solution in search of a problem” and of edutainment, citing “a dearth of hard evidence”. He admits Resnick’s critique “engaged my cognitive biases to the full”. - He adopts Bers and Resnick’s playpen versus playground metaphor. Much undergraduate teaching is a playpen: control, preset pathways, “clear cut objectives along a linear and predefined journey that is wrapped up in the “sugar-coating” of flashy tech.” Playgrounds allow exploration and collaboration, with Resnick’s “low floors”, “high ceilings” and “wide walls”. - The ideas are not new, but “continue to be sidelined by unimaginative attempts to constrict and quantify learning”. Makerspaces and innovation labs are often “playpens masquerading as playgrounds”: exclusive, over-quantified, product-focused. - We need “playgrounds for the mind” that teach “how to think in the future, not just what to build”. He supports this with his own experience as a physicist (undergraduate labs as play) and his sci-fi and “Pizza” classes.

On AI and cognition. No AI content. It is relevant to his thinking on education and on how thinking is formed: agency, play and unmeasured freedom as conditions for learning, and resistance to over-quantification and to technology-led pedagogy.

Quotes. - “usually as a solution in search of a problem.” - “we need our students to be learning in playgrounds that equip them for the future, and not playpens that restrict them.” - “playpens masquerading as playgrounds.”

2024-02-11 — one-week-on-with-the-apple-vision — “One week on with the Apple Vision Pro”#

Provenance. His own prose. Student reactions appear only in video, used with permission.

Argument. - He is exploring the Vision Pro through ASU’s Future of Being Human initiative: its effects on behaviour, travel and universities (ASU Charter). - The novelty faded fast. The real value turned out to be productivity (large virtual screens) and immersive panoramas that “convey the experience of being somewhere to others”. Pass-through mattered: fully immersive “made me feel isolated”, while seeing the room made the virtual environment “an extension on the real world, not a substitute for it.” - His educational philosophy. “putting learning and student success first, and using the lowest level of tech necessary to achieve the outcomes that I’m looking for”. He avoids “technology solutions in search of an educational problem”. He is sceptical of entertainment-driven VR learning and prefers “firehose” over “trickle”, admitting “my own idiosyncratic biases”. - Change of view. “I’m less concerned than I was a week ago that spatial computing could plunge us into a societal crisis”. He now thinks the analogy with how laptops, tablets and smartphones changed work “is a good one”. He still expects “transformational possibilities that will inevitably come with risks as well as benefits.” Spatial computing is “not simply an extension of VR or AR, but a new way of thinking about how we interact with advanced digital technologies.”

Analogies. Laptops, tablets and smartphones are used literally, as a calibrating precedent that lowers his sense of risk.

Quotes. - “using the lowest level of tech necessary to achieve the outcomes that I’m looking for” - “I’m less concerned than I was a week ago that spatial computing could plunge us into a societal crisis” - “an extension on the real world, not a substitute for it.”

LOW / NONE (one line each)#

• 2024-03-10 — chronodiversity-other-minds-and-the (low). His own prose launching an audio “In Conversation With …” series from Jonathon Keats’s ASU visit, co-hosted with the Beyond Center. The only content point is that these slow conversations are “the antithesis” of attention-economy content. Audio series, not examined further per the user’s instruction.
• 2024-03-11 — in-conversation-with-paul-davies-and-sara-walker (none). Audio conversation (Davies and Walker on consciousness and time’s arrow). Show notes are his short intro plus bios. Produced by Sean Leahy.
• 2024-03-12 — in-conversation-with-keats-and-broglio (none). Audio conversation (chronodiversity and biodiversity). Show notes are an intro plus boilerplate bios.
• 2024-03-13 — mark-klett-and-jonathon-keats-on (none). Audio conversation (rephotography, millennium cameras). Show notes are an intro plus bios.
• 2024-03-14 — jonathon-keats-and-andrew-maynard (low). Audio conversation in which he is a participant, on “The Promise and Perils of Longtermism”. The show notes contain nothing of substance (a self-deprecating intro and a third-person bio describing his focus on “advanced technology transitions”). The audio was not assessed.
• 2024-03-15 — liz-lerman-and-jonathon-keats-on (none). Audio conversation (memory, being present). His intro notes that the conversation ended on Lerman’s concerns about Palestine.
• 2024-03-27 — michael-levin-biological-form-and-function (low). Promotion for an April 17 “Future of Being Human … Unplugged” conversation. His own exposition of Levin’s bioelectric networks and “anthrobots”. His only interpretive claim is that this work “begins to challenge our very notions of agency, intelligence, and what it means to be human”, and that the philosophical implications “will be the true game changer”. Intelligence as agentic problem-solving is attributed to “some (Mike included)”, not asserted by him.
• 2024-04-07 — multigenerational-learning-tech-future (low). A “Pizza and a Slice of Future” class with Mirabella retirees and undergraduates. A long reflection by student Erin Burgard and an email line from a resident (named Bill Gates, not the Microsoft founder) are not his prose and are excluded. His takeaway is that “community, space, and expectations” make learning “an inevitable outcome rather than a forced result”. The class norms are “obsessive curiosity, radical creativity, respectful inclusivity, grounded exuberance, and catalytic serendipity”.