Comment by mrob
2 years ago
>If information can be looked up at any moment, why does it need to exist in our brains?
Because creativity involves making connections between seemingly unrelated knowledge. For a good example, consider Richard F. Lyon's 1980 optical mouse design:
http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/xerox/parc/techReport...
One important innovation here is lateral inhibition between neighboring sensor elements, which gives fast and cheap contrast enhancement and automatic gain control. This was inspired by the behavior of cells in biological eyes. Lyon needed both biology and electronic engineering knowledge simultaneously to make the connection. Looking things up wouldn't have helped because it would have only provided one field of knowledge at a time.
> Because creativity involves making connections between seemingly unrelated knowledge.
Sure. But don't you think that AI can make those connections for us, or even be creative on its own? Why should we value pure human creativity over human+machine creativity, or pure machine creativity?
This technology poses these fundamental questions, and we're far from being able to answer them as a society. How it impacts education seems like a core concern, and might be a good starting point.