Artificial intelligence reshapes academia as Enlightenment ideals of progress face unprecedented ethical and existential questions.
The Enlightenment Legacy
The Enlightenment ingrained in us the notion that the future is progress, and progress is a value in itself. Artificial intelligence is no exception.
Work on AI is conventionally traced back to a seminar at Dartmouth College in the United States, held long ago in the year Khrushchev delivered his famous speech at the XX Congress of the CPSU and Gomułka came to power in Poland.
AI’s Evolution
Subsequently, various universities joined the research efforts, followed by companies. Today, artificial intelligence is readily accessible, though this metaphor may soon lose meaning—after AI, we will first reach through movements of other body parts, and then through nerve connections.
Uncertain Futures
Conversely, AI might reach for us, like the tentacles of a fungus in the series ‘The Last of Us,’ or more subtly—much like on Stanisław Lem’s planet Solaris, or in the joke that we don’t always know whether a person is walking a dog or if the dog is walking the person.