Please Don't Turn Me Off! Turing, Animism, Intentional Stances, and the Future of Education

It is not a question of whether artificial intelligence is really conscious or truly intelligent.

Rather, it centers on whether we have crossed a major threshold where large numbers of people around the world believe that A.I. applications are conscious and intelligent and may even have developed their own agendas, hidden or otherwise.

The danger is in human perception, not in A.I. per se, and this in itself can lead to all sorts of unforeseen problems, not the least of which is prematurely shutting down machine learning and/or progressive funding of A.I. because of irrational fears of a doomsday scenario. On the other end of the spectrum, we run the risk of over-humanizing A.I. and treating it much more special than it actually is, imputing it with rights, ethics, and freedoms that ultimately do a disservice to the greater good of humanity.

In this essay, we focus on the theory of other minds, intentional stances, the neural basis of consciousness, and the future of education and how best to incorporate the latest iterations of synthetic intelligence, such as ChatGPT, Midjourney, ElevenLabs, and more into the curriculum.

The argument is simple: the A.I. cyborg has already entered the classroom and we need to co-adapt to what it has to offer.