AI - Actual intelligence

AI, Learning, and the Lazy Gene*

As an old fogy, I’m not supposed to know these things. I mean, what do I know about AI?

Well, according to a famous entrepreneur, I was born with AI—and he’s right. We all were. The real question is, how many of us actually use it the way it’s meant to be used?

I grew up in New Zealand, knowing little about the world beyond my backyard. Like any kid, I had a child’s perspective—life was about playing, going to school, and understanding that I would eventually have to work. NZ, isolated as it is, was even more cut off back then, lacking the technology that connected much of the world. Events like the Cuban Missile Crisis? Never entered my radar. We knew only what the two television channels told us.

But leaving NZ and engaging with the wider world gave me a fresh appreciation for what I had been given as a child. I now believe that the New Zealand education system wasn’t just about stuffing young minds with information—it was about teaching us how to learn.

And that, right there, is what so many people around me seem to have missed: the ability to learn and to refine the process of learning itself.

In an earlier post, I wrote about the Lazy Gene—humanity’s tendency to oversimplify everything, turning daily tasks into effortless, thoughtless processes. And education is no exception. Too many systems focus on what to learn instead of how to learn.

Take the U.S. as an example. A lackluster leadership is currently dismantling the Board of Education, but to replace it with what? A better system or just more of the same? The population has already been dumbed down enough—do they really need another round of it?

What we need is an education system that teaches people to think, learn, and think critically before they waste their hard-earned right to vote on the kinds of disasters we see unfolding today.

Oh, and back to AI—yes, its widespread adoption has a lot of people worried, mostly thanks to the usual flood of negative hype. But that’s a topic for another day.

Until then, keep learning.

Cheers.

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