Shaping Souls to Stay Afloat

James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal ^ | April 11, 2025 | David Randall

[karpov]

Artificial Intelligence (AI) looks to upend higher education—all education—in no end of ways. The advantage it gives to cheaters by itself is upending the practice of teaching. But AI poses its greatest threat to the liberal arts, to the studia humanitatis, by getting rid of the basic function of this education: to prepare recipients for a job serving the state.

At its best, this kind of education also prepares students to govern the state—to converse about the ends of government and to decide prudently how to achieve them as citizens of a democratic republic, as the leaders of an aristocratic regime, or as counselors of a monarchy. But the money return for a liberal-arts education has been to qualify a graduate for a government job: bureaucrat, officer, teacher, policeman, social worker, or any job at public expense.

The job market for bureaucrats in private corporations and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) registers the dispersal of sovereignty to these parastate institutions. An ambitious state servant may use his education to strive to become part of the more elite governing classes, but the ultimate reward is money to pay for a house, a spouse, and a good life for the kids.

American liberal-arts education already has declined in tandem with the decline of democratic governance: Our elites increasingly prefer functionaries and manageable subjects to sovereign citizens, and what reward is there in acquiring a liberal education in a managerial regime? But AI poses an even graver threat to our educational system. What if AI can do most or all government jobs better than human beings? Secretary, soldier, social worker: Perhaps AI, married to robotics, can perform all of those functions more successfully than we can.

[Tell It Right]

Then govt will be run by whoever controls the AI.

[lee martell]

Eventually, more people will remember that learning involves more than just providing the “correct” answers to a particular question, real learning involves knowing the reasoning behind accepted facts and presumptions. Real learning is when the student can express a concept in ways applicable to their own experience or observations.