— Dante (The Divine Comedy)

What guides our actions? What drives us in one direction or another?

We strive to act morally and courageously. We want to see ourselves as people who move the world towards the light. But when we no longer have the will to fight, what is left as motivation? It is fear.

We must ask ourselves: what it is that we struggle against each day? Each of us doubtless has our own answer. In our minds, we have created two realities hanging above our present experience. One is of pain and one is of bliss. And every moment, we make a choice: run from the first or run towards the later. The picture most present in our imaginations compels our perspective and our will.

I write to describe a method of achieving agency. Instead of a ship carried by invisible winds, we may navigate the world by orienting along the heavens. The blackness of night reveals a star-lit path towards freedom. Fear is a power that, through courage, can turn dreams into reality.

We fear that which may cause us harm. As simple as this motivation may seem, our fear’s ambiguity leads often to more harm than the subject of fear itself. For who am “I” and what is “harm”? How can I recognize that which is fearsome? Both of these notions are defined broadly and unconsciously; their sense changes by the minute. Thus, fear attacks us unpredictably from many angles, leaving us paralyzed and confused. To understand the self and to understand harm will lead us to our agency.

To discover the defintion of harm and the various aspects of self, we only have to observe our own lived experience. What does it truly mean to be harmed? We may quickly rush to the idea of pain. One who causes me pain is harmful. But there are countless cases where the fruit of our pain is benefit. Would we really consider exercise self-harm? Is a teacher’s scorn harming the child or leading them away from future harm? And the discomfort that arises during difficult conversations—would we classify this resolution as harm? Truly, harm is characterized by destruction, not pain. Whatever may have the power to destroy us, we fear. As is dictated by our primal nature, what we fear is death. The destruction of self.

But here we encounter an even more illusive concept. One which sits at the center of all experience. What is the self? Sticking your hand into a fire, the self quickly becomes the crying flesh. Following a loved one’s neglect, the self becomes an aching heart and an unrelenting stream of inner dialogue. And in social rejection, the self becomes the mosaic judgement of our community. In reality, there is no single self to be harmed or destroyed because our identity spans many dimensions. We fear the destruction of our physical (body), mental (ego), and social (reputation) identities. With this, we have a more precise definition of fear. We fear what may cause destruction to our identity in whatever form that identity may take.

So the question then becomes, which identity do you protect above all else? Given the choice between physical, social, and mental harm, which would you preserve? I would argue that true agency is tied to none of these illusory identities. In fact, these identities can be seen as tools to support who you really are.

The true self is expressed through the imagination. It is the reality that you truly wish to create. When you picture your experience at its brightest point, what does it look like? Who are you in that moment? This is who you truly are, and this is the self to be protected above all else. The body, the mind, and the reputation are tools to be used to express this self, but they are at most only reflections. Tragically however, this image is often corrupted by our many fears. Traumas and doubt restrict what we believe is possible. Over time, we abandon our ideals and settle for more realistic identities.

Misdirected fear is the root of this bondage. In understanding that this true self cannot be destroyed by anyone apart from ourselves, all things lose their power over us. The only object left to fear is ignorance of this truth. You can witness this truth for yourself in your next moment of fear: who are you in that moment and what is threatening its destruction? Will acting out of that fear move you closer the freedom or only restrict you further? You will find that in all cases, there is nothing that can harm who you are at your core. Remember who you are, and don’t let yourself forget. By becoming one defined by love, love itself will become your reality.

The night sky harbors infinite potential. There are galaxies beyond comprehension that lie beyond the black. You, however, can decide which stars to use as your compass. This is capability to choose is what makes you human.

In order to answer this question (and it is a question we all must consider for ourselves), I first need to really understand what it is I am after. Success and productivity, after all, are not real. This might sound dramatic, but it is true. To see this, you only have to ask yourself: what does success look like? I can imagine one reader picturing themselves in large cliff-side home overlooking a quiet beach. The sky reflecting the deep ocean blue. Another reader sees themselves walking down the aisle, their true love at their side and flower petals raining from above. Now in a few years time, both of these people may achieve their dream of success. In the moment they may be happy. But ask them again about success in a couple months, and they will give you a new answer.

When I was in middle school, my idea of success was doing well enough in school so that I could play video games as much as my parents could allow. In high school, my idea of success shifted to achieving good enough grades to get into a good university. Time keeps moving forward and each day I am productive or I am not. In some areas I am successful, and in others I am not. But even having come this far, I do not feel I have gotten closer to “successful enough”. In fact, I realize, I will never be successful enough, because that is the nature of success. That is the nature of productivity.

Even knowing this, I cling to these ideas rather desperately. I plan to get a PhD in Neuroscience and make meaningful contributions to the field. I plan on changing the way we teach the next generation so that they have a higher degree of individual and collective agency. I also plan on making a lot of money in the process so my family and I can live comfortably and without worry. But when I achieve these things, I understand there will always be something next. Reaching these goals only means I am capable of doing even more with the time I have left. The base desire to realize my full potential and create my own reality will always exist. This is what I mean when I say success and productivity are not real.

I point out this notion not to abandon these ideas, but to demonstrate both a potential and a danger. The unreality of success can serve either as a blank canvas or a bottomless void. It is imperative that we see our lives as a something to create, and not something fulfill. Every kid has a dream. With their whole life ahead of them, they paint a picture of who they are to become and the kind of life they will experience. But as they age, this dream tucks itself away. Somewhere along the line, a deathly beast presents itself — abject failure, poverty, homelessness. In fear, the dream is left behind in pursuit of safety and comfort, often achieved through money and status. This becomes the new definition of success, abstract and ever fleeting. Somehow we never realize that danger and discomfort are inescapable parts of living.

If this is what our education achieves, it may be time to rethink whether or not this is really useful. Maybe its time to redefine the purpose of education. This era is crucially defined by our capability for change. Modern technological and social innovations allow us to create and become at previously unimaginable rates. At the same time, my generation is defined by both a lack of ambition and an overwhelming dissatisfaction with the current state of the world. An ugly picture is put in front of us, but we lack the imagination to create a new one. We cannot allow the next generation to face the same fate. The value of human life is not measured in productivity or success. Human life is precious because each of us has the capability to dream. A useful education will embolden this quality in every child. It is time we figure out how to turn this aspiration into practice.

The Original Information Technology

We hear the phrase “Information Technology” (IT) a lot, but it will be helpful for us to establish a working definition for this article. Quite simply, IT is technology that allows us to transfer information more quickly, more precisely, and over longer distances than would be possible without tools. This type of capability is so important to us as people that the first IT ever created has become an integral part of being human. In fact, as I recently learned at the Society for the Neurobiology of Language, this technology is a human right. I am, of course, talking about spoken (or signed) language. Spoken language enabled us to think together. It facilitated innovation, culture, and community. More than anything, it connected us to the people and ideas we cared about. Spoken language, the first IT, is such an essential part of who we are, that we have a region of our brain, defined in our genes, dedicated to its understanding and production. Language is quite literally part of our DNA.

Since then, we have made many new ITs. But there is an important pattern to recognize. New ITs enhance one aspect of information transfer in very useful ways, but they do so at the cost of other aspects. Take the second major innovation for example— written language. Written language allows us to transfer information accurately across time and distance. In writing, however, you lose valuable emotional context. The reader cannot see your face, your body language, or hear your tone. Because of this, they are left to assume this information on their own. We see the consequences of this in the common misinterpreted text message or email. Other major innovations include the telephone, video streaming, and social media. All of which improve the efficiency of communication, but eliminate some human aspect of it.

Accessing Collective Human Intelligence

With this definition in mind, we can now think about our newest form of Information Technology: AI. AI is a special case, so we will have to be careful in how we analyze it. In all other cases of IT, information is being transferred from one human to another. This is not true for AI as the response of the technology is produced by the technology itself. It is also not true to say that information is being transferred from technology to human either. The Generative AI Models that we interact with like ChatGPT or Gemini are created using human-made data— written and recorded. It is trained using the collective intellectual contributions of millions of humans. This is the key difference between AI and other forms of IT. You are not communicating with a single person, you are communicating with the collective intelligence of millions of people across different time-periods, locations, and backgrounds whose thoughts and ideas have been published on the internet. Of course, it is important to consider that this information is being filtered through the parameters set by the creators of the AI model. Further, not everyone had the opportunity, directly or indirectly, to publish their thoughts online. But understand that information is not strictly being transferred between the machine and you. Instead, information is indirectly transferred from the enormous set of humans that contributed to the AI’s training.

A Useful Definition of AI

So how does this distinction inform our definition of AI is Information Technology? We need to consider this in two parts. What improvements are made to the information transfer process? And what is the cost? The first answer is straightforward. AI vastly improves access to information. We can consider two similar forms of information technology to understand more deeply. For many years, libraries served as the comparable technology to AI. Libraries are an access point to the collective intelligence of people from far away times and far away places. Prior to the library, learning required the physical presence of an expert. With the library, that knowledge could be accessed without that limitation. Not too long ago, we invented the internet, and this improved our access to collective intelligence further. Now we can access a practically infinite library from our homes, but we still have to search for the information we want. AI once again improves our access to collective intelligence by removing this barrier entirely. You can now ask for any piece of information you want, and the technology will do its best to synthesize the collective intelligence and provide the information to you. Theoretically, access to collective intelligence could not be easier except through direct telepathic connection.

It is worth emphasizing this point. You can ask for literally any piece of information. Though the response may not exactly match the truth, it is a direct reflection of what we have figured out as humans so far. You can ask a direct question like, “How far is the Moon from the Earth?” and AI will give you a direct answer. This is an example of information you could also find in the library or look up on the internet. You could also say “Write a 2-week lesson plan using Project-Based Learning for my 8th grade class on the major contributions of the first 5 American presidents.” The question AI tries to answer in this case is not so obvious, but it looks something like this ”What would a 2-week lesson plan using Project-Based Learning for an 8th grade class on the major contributions of the first 5 American presidents look like?” This information may not yet exist in a library or on the internet, but this is not a problem for AI. It exists as potential information within the collective intelligence that it derives its answers from.

The Human Cost of AI

There is much more to say on this topic, as this method of information transfer has its own limitations to be aware of. However, I will not go into detail in this article. More relevant to this discussion is the answer to the second question: What is the cost? The answer to this question comes naturally from our answer to the last. Specifically, AI is a connection to collective intelligence. I cannot emphasize enough that this is not equivalent to collective imagination, and this is the major limitation of AI. Humans have the innate ability to imagine. We can generate new concepts. We can define new abstract spaces like geometric planes. We can create worlds inside our minds that have no relation or connection to the world outside. At the deepest level, our society is built on our collective imagination. Everything we invented as humans first existed as ideas within our imaginations, before being translated into a physical representation. The first fork was not made of stone, wood, or bone. It was made of mind. AI does not have a “mind” to do this. It may be able to synthesize thousand

This is the cost of communicating with AI. Because you are not communicating with a human, the information synthesized by AI lacks any imagination. It will always give you the most statistically “accurate” answer that it can to whatever question you ask. Through creative prompt engineering, you or the people who design the models can make the model simulate imagination (just as a writer could describe their emotions quite well), but is not imagination in its true form. With this insight, we now have a useful definition of AI. AI is a form of information transfer between you and collective human intelligence. This information technology greatly increases access to almost all information, including information that has not yet been synthesized. When you ask a question to AI, you are receiving a response that is a reflection of this creative intelligence. Importantly, this information comes at the cost of imagination, meaning you, as the human, must add this element yourself.

When you use AI, use it with its intended purpose. It is not designed to give you the right answer or a final product. Though it may end up producing these, you cannot count on it to do so. You can, however, expect it to give you a very strong starting point, from which you can improve by adding your human spark— imagination. If you want to create 15 questions for your students to test their understanding of a reading, you can ask AI to do so. It will do it much more quickly than you or anyone else could, and its answer will be statistically accurate. However, if you want the question to feel real and truly engage your students, you may need to make a few changes. With this understanding, try to push AI to its limits. Use it across as many contexts as you can and find out which work best for you. This is the only way to discover how to use it to best support your work. Just as everyone has their own unique handwriting, everyone will use AI in their own ways. And more than anything, don’t forget to imagine.