The Limits of Knowledge and Human Obsolescence
Emerging Roles for Human Beings Requiring Deeper Understanding
“The deeper understanding which is essential if human life is to enter a new epoch cannot be transmitted or even shared; for it issues solely from one’s own unique experience.” - J.G. Bennett
As AI technology advances, we are all facing a sobering question: of what use will we be in this emerging world? What will we have to offer?
I’ll propose a premise based on the quote from Bennett above: As human beings, we possess the potential to develop a “deeper understanding” of the world than these machines do. Quite possibly, more than they ever will.
If this is true, we have some important work to do.
What does deeper understanding mean? What value does it enable us to create? How do we develop it?
From Knowledge to Understanding
Working in the Learning and Development field for the past 15 years, most of the approaches to developing people I’ve encountered are grounded in an epistemology of transferring knowledge.
This is why L&D, and education more broadly, is currently being turned upside down by emerging AI. These new tools are very good, and getting exponentially better by the day, at transferring knowledge. The legacy systems of learning are quickly becoming obsolete. That is the smaller challenge.
The bigger challenge is epistemic: already today, most of us can’t compete with these machines on the level of knowledge. Tomorrow, arguably, none of us will. This is causing many of us to feel overwhelmed, trying desperately to absorb more and more information, with a looming sense that it is a lost cause.
Arguably, on this level, it is a lost cause. The hope is in leveling up our thinking about what learning and development is and what it’s aiming at.
Bennett’s teacher, the philosopher G.I. Gurdjieff, distinguishes knowledge from understanding, in that understanding includes both knowledge and being.
“In Western culture, we think it is possible for a person to be extremely knowledgeable—for example, a competent scientist who makes discoveries and advances the cause of science—and, at the same time, be, and have the right to be, petty, egotistical, scheming, vain, naive and absent-minded. We take for granted the myth of the ‘absent-minded professor.’ Yet this is his being. And we think his knowledge does not depend on his being. We put great value on the level of knowledge, but we care nothing of the level of a person’s being, and we have no shame about the low level of our own being. The entire concept is foreign to us, and we cannot comprehend that a person’s knowledge depends on the level of his being. In fact, at a given level of being, our potential to acquire knowledge is fixed and limited. Within the bounds of a given level, it is impossible to alter the quality of the knowledge we can acquire. All we can learn is more and more information about the same basic thing. The only way to acquire new kinds of knowledge is to change the nature of our being.”
- G.I. Gurdjieff, In Search of Being: The Fourth Way to Consciousness
Evolving Our Capacity for Deeper Understanding
How does developing our being relate to our ability to effectively adapt to emerging AI technology?
What light does this shine on emerging roles for us as human beings?
Yes, these machines will possess all of the surface-level knowledge there is. They will be very good at organizing it and presenting it—much better than we can.
But what capacity will they have to truly care?
How does caring enable us to understand ourselves, others, and the places we inhabit on a deeper level? What value does this deeper understanding create in the process of developing people, places and products?
What role will we potentially play, with the capacity for conscious experience and caring, in catalyzing this developmental process?
Want to dig in deeper? Check out A Brief Introduction to Developmental Leadership.