Toffler’s call for an education system that prioritized learning, relearning, and unlearning was meant to prepare students for a world of unpredictability and precarity. (Instead of, say, creating not only a school system, but a whole society in which their dignity and safety could be more assured.)
To call for a future in which “AI” demands “unlearning” is to unmoor everyone from time and place and body – who we were, who we are, who we can become. To embrace its version of “unlearning” is to surrender all learning (all agency, all accountability) – about yourself and the world to someone else’s algorithm. The constant “unlearning” that “AI” demands is actually the foreclosure of any future where learning is possible at all.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang in Hard Fork Interview:
Huang: “Try to get a kid to do long division right now. You know, the multiplication table is starting to be forgotten. Doing square roots, my goodness. I mean, it’s just basic math is being forgotten.” Klein: “Does it matter? That’s my question for you.” Huang: “Yeah, I don’t think it does. I don’t think it does.”
Why not say it as it is: It does matter to Jensen Huang that we get dependent on him and his machines. He wants us to be as dependent as possible. If we can’t even do a small calculation (in our heads or on paper) without a monthly subscription, then that’s fulfilling his and the rest of the modern aristocrats wildest dreams.