The Importance of Being Educable
eBook - ePub

The Importance of Being Educable

A New Theory of Human Uniqueness

  1. 248 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

The Importance of Being Educable

A New Theory of Human Uniqueness

About this book

Why you should worry less about AI and more about what makes us human

We are at a crossroads in history. If we hope to share our planet successfully with one another and the AI systems we are creating, we must reflect on who we are, how we got here, and where we are heading. The Importance of Being Educable puts forward a provocative new exploration of the extraordinary facility of humans to absorb and apply knowledge. The remarkable “educability” of the human brain can be understood as an information processing ability. It sets our species apart, enables the civilization we have, and gives us the power and potential to set our planet on a steady course. Yet it comes hand in hand with an insidious weakness. While we can readily absorb entire systems of thought about worlds of experience beyond our own, we struggle to judge correctly what information we should trust.

In this visionary book, Leslie Valiant argues that understanding the nature of our own educability is crucial to safeguarding our future. After breaking down how we process information to learn and apply knowledge, and drawing comparisons with other animals and AI systems, he explains why education should be humankind’s central preoccupation.

Will the unique capability that has been so foundational to our achievements and civilization continue to drive our progress, or will we fall victim to our vulnerabilities? If we want to play to our species’ great strength and protect our collective future, we must better understand and prioritize the vital importance of being educable. This book provides a road map.

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Yes, you can access The Importance of Being Educable by Leslie Valiant in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Biological Sciences & Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Semantics. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright
  4. Dedication
  5. Contents
  6. Preface
  7. 1. The Civilization Enabler
  8. 2. Where We Come From
  9. 3. Where We Have Got To
  10. 4. Some Foundation Stones
  11. 5. Computation for Describing Natural Phenomena
  12. 6. Integrative Learning
  13. 7. What Integrative Learning Does
  14. 8. The Capability of Being Educable
  15. 9. Educability as a Model of Computation
  16. 10. Promoting Educability
  17. 11. Artificial Educability
  18. 12. Education: Some Questions
  19. 13. A Species Adrift
  20. Acknowledgments
  21. Summary of Terminology
  22. Notes
  23. Index