No reason to fear the future
This year's national university entrance exams are being held in a very different context. The social and political climate – between two parliamentary elections – is unique. Whereas the first elections, on May 21, showed that most voters want stability, the next round, on June 25, underlines the fact that this is not guaranteed. The candidates in today’s exams, current students and their families can look forward to a stable educational environment, even though this is not assured. The second, more significant difference, is the sudden entry of artificial intelligence into our lives. It is likely that very soon we will see radical change in academia, the professions, the economy and the social norms which make up the world in which our children are taking their first steps.
No one knows just how AI will change our lives, as predictions range between the extremes of our liberation from meaningless activities based on memory and repetition, and our extinction. Our youth already faced a difficult task, having to choose their life’s direction and profession at an age when they knew little of the world. Now the challenge is even greater, as the world itself is changing, not just their understanding of it. And yet, we still demand that our children learn things that AI can achieve faster and more easily – to learn how to learn, to memorize facts and methods, to understand and predict, to compose new knowledge with what they know, to seek new solutions to old and new problems.
Memorizing things is, of course, a waste of time. Yet the whole effort is not in vain. This is how humanity adapts – it leans on what it knows until it works out what is happening and then it changes accordingly. This is what our youth will do. And, however intelligent machines may become, they will always lack free will. They will not learn because they choose to but because they cannot do otherwise. They cannot understand the anxiety of the struggle for survival, nor the joy of a free individual in society. If the discipline of learning is combined with our innate spirit of cooperation and courage for exploration and improvisation, we have no reason to fear the future.