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On the latest episode of GoodFellows, senior fellows John Cochrane, H.R. McMaster, and Niall Ferguson, moderated as always by distinguished policy fellow Bill Whalen, speak with popular author and Georgetown University professor of computer science Cal Newport about the current state of AI in American institutions.
Newport writes frequently at the intersection of technology, work, and human attention. He joins the GoodFellows to discuss a recent article he wrote for The New York Times, posing questions for Congress to ask executives of leading AI companies.
Then, in the second part of the show, the fellows embark on a wide-ranging tour of world affairs, from civil unrest in Western Europe to the ongoing Russian war against Ukraine.
Quote of the Day
We hear a lot of predictions about AI and its impact on our world these days. Cal Newport offers a useful rule of thumb for evaluating such claims: Be sure to consider the source.
My general rule is anything that is primarily being said by one of those two companies [market-leading AI firms OpenAI and Anthropic] or one of the think tanks or institutes that’s funded by the same people who funded those companies originally: Take that with a grain of salt until you can check it against what other people working on similar technology also say.
By “other people working on similar technology,” Newport means academic labs focused on AI, AI firms in Asia and Europe, and other American AI companies.
The Central Issue: Your Brain on AI
Newport discusses the challenge posed to higher education when a “magic machine that will give you an A” is introduced onto every student device. He starts with a historical analogy to the codex, the forerunner of the modern book:
We’ve had these disruptions before. Obviously the most notable would’ve been the codex. When you go from a late medieval period university system, where knowledge could come [only] from lecturers, and then you get this idea of an indexable, easily navigable piece of information technology that has the very best thoughts from the very best thinkers. Why do I need to go to this building in Bologna when I could just get one of these books? But the university adapted.
Today, Newport says, the university must adapt again, in the face of an even larger disruption to the learning process:
This is one of the most serious threats we have had [to the university] in a while. If you can automate the work of the assignments, the work of developing cognitive fitness, which is at the core of the university experience, you are completely undermining it. And I really don’t have a lot of patience for the argument of, “No, no, no, this is just a pre-professional building in which we’re trying to get you prepared to use the tools you will use in the world of business,” which I think is a preposterous stance to take for most university environments. It is a real threat that’s going to require massive adjustments, not necessarily bad in the end, but massive adjustments to how we teach. And I’m very worried about cognitive fitness more generally. The early data and anecdotal reports I’m hearing [suggest] that the speed with which outsourcing cognitive work to LLMs can cause your abilities to atrophy is mind-blowing.
Then, Newport provides an overview of the system his institution, Georgetown, has adopted to promote distraction-free learning:
Here at Georgetown, for example, we just launched a pilot program with what we’re calling “cognition cloisters.“ These are rooms that are proctored eight hours a day that professors can sign up for slots in. There’s a locker out front where you put your phone or other equipment. You can go in there to write and to read, with a proctor in there to make sure that’s what’s happening. This isn’t actually meant to be punitive. . . It’s actually giving an environment where you don’t have to worry about distractions as a student. I have no option of using AI. I have no option of looking at my phone. I’m going to do what university students have done for the last thousand years now.
Key Takeaways
What’s behind the civil unrest in France, and what does it mean for the future of Western European democracies?
Niall Ferguson argues that a number of popular narratives about what’s happening in France are misleading, obscuring the real challenge that French society faces today:
“If you spend a lot of time on X, then what’s happening is, in fact, that migrants are running amuck and it’s the sack of Rome all over again. This is the new narrative, which I think is misleading. You can see if you look closely that the crowds are actually not homogenous.
More recent riots, about which we know more in France, show, and here I’m going to do my best to generalize accurately, that there’s a radical left element that is responsible for at least some of the organized protests. Those are mostly white students, or we would call them “Antifa” [”Anti-fascist”] types in the US. Then there clearly are people from immigrant communities, but mostly second and third generation. These are not people that arrived in 2015 in Europe who are involved. And then there’s some clearly outright criminal elements that are interested in looting, rather than the kind of vandalism that led to the destruction of historic buildings recently. And so you have to see that all of these things are going on simultaneously. Why? My argument is that the young people of Europe are angry about a whole range of things, but none of them is the right thing.”
What is the “right thing” for young Europeans to be angry about?
Ferguson says unsustainable public spending programs: “The thing that they [disaffected youth in Europe] should be angry about is that welfare systems designed in the mid-to-late 20th century now, because of demographic change, are highly unfriendly to young people.”
John Cochrane agrees, and goes into greater economic detail:
“France spends 57% of GDP. That’s the on-budget spending. We add the mandates and “thou shall provide” [regulatory requirements] on top of that. 57%. That means the average tax rate’s 57%, and for anybody who pays less, somebody else pays more. This is the government that has run out of other people’s money. And one of the questions I’m going to ask Niall is: Are we next?”
Cochrane also connects the political philosophy underlying the French welfare state to current debates in the US about increasing taxation to enable greater state-directed redistribution of wealth:
“French intellectuals are now coming to California to tell us to put in massive redistribution, because that’s going to solve our political problem. We can’t have social peace, it is said, without massive redistribution to stop inequality. There’s France: Evidence one against that. And that’s really what’s driving the wealth taxes [a desire “to stop inequality”]. The rest of it is this concept that “we need to get rid of income inequality in order to maintain the future of democracy.” [This view is] proved wrong by the very France from which these people come.”
What’s going on with US policy toward Ukraine and Russia?
Bill Whalen asks H.R. McMaster, “Was Donald Trump serious HR about pulling the plug on Starlink? Who do you think gave the order and why?” To which the former National Security Advisor responds:
“I think the president gave the order. . . I could be wrong about this, but every time he gets off the phone with Vladimir Putin, he channels Vladimir Putin. And then there’s general outrage, reasonable people who he [Trump] respects get in his ear. It used to be me. It’s not me anymore. . . There’s a lot of damage done already [from Ukraine’s loss of its prior satellite connectivity], and I wish [Trump] would just get out of his own way on this, [and] recognize that Putin will never be his friend, is never going to help him achieve anything that’s of importance to President Trump.”
Recommended Reading
The GoodFellows recommend Cal Newport’s recent New York Times column, Dear Congress: Here’s What You Should Ask A.I. Leaders
Bill Whalen and H.R. McMaster also recommend Niall Ferguson’s recent column for The Free Press, Why Europe is Burning
Parting Wisdom
Cal Newport offers an assessment of discussions in the nation’s capital on regulating AI. In his view, that’s not where policymakers should be focused right now; especially since many of the calls for regulation come from people with ties to leading AI firms. Instead, Newport calls on legislators to use a different tool at their disposal, the ability to ask questions of AI leaders:
I’m much more interested right now in pulling people in front of Congress, getting answers to questions, getting transparency and understanding about what they’re doing, why they’re doing it, what they believe. We’re not ready to pass regulation right now because no one understands what’s going on. No one understands who the people proposing the regulations are. It’s a huge mess in DC right now when it comes to AI.
That wraps up this GoodFellows conversation guide. If you like this companion to the show, or have any recommendations for future conversation guides, please let us know in the comments below.