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AI and The Cognitive Atrophy Trap: What Happens When We Let Tech Shortcut the Hard Parts of Learning - Tobias Burkhardt (EP 28) · The In-Between Tech and Trust Podcast

• 0:06
  Hello, this is Eva and you're listening to the In Between Tech
• 0:10
  and Trust podcast. In this week's episode, I talked
• 0:13
  to Tobias Burkhardt and Tobias is founder of the Shift School.
• 0:18
  And the Shift School is a learning institution that he has
• 0:20
  built because he himself never liked school and decided to
• 0:25
  create a better one. He spends his days thinking
• 0:28
  about into what learning actually needs to become.
• 0:31
  And he also thinks it's about it of where AI hands you an answer
• 0:36
  before you can form a question. And so we get into why quietly
• 0:41
  outsourcing your thinking, our thinking to AI is making your
• 0:46
  cognitively capacity weaker without you even noticing, and
• 0:50
  why that is a learner's problem and not just a technology
• 0:53
  problem. And To Be As makes a claim that
• 0:56
  it's hard to shake off because if you have never seriously
• 0:59
  engaged with AI and are worried it will take your job, the
• 1:03
  problem may not be technology. Welcome to the In Between Tech
• 1:09
  and Trust podcast To be us. I'm very happy to have you.
• 1:12
  Yeah, great to be here. I'm looking forward to the
• 1:16
  conversation with you. And the conversation circles
• 1:19
  around tech and trust, and you also work in an area that
• 1:24
  touches both of those topics and that is learning.
• 1:27
  And that's also the topic of education.
• 1:30
  When you now think about tech and trust in particular from
• 1:33
  your experience, what is the first thing that comes to your
• 1:35
  mind? Maybe that's my rebel gene,
• 1:38
  because the the usual response would probably be can we trust
• 1:41
  technology? And I'm more interested in
• 1:45
  reframing the question, can we trust us to use technology?
• 1:49
  So I think of course, trust is the workbench of transformation.
• 1:54
  That's my realm. That's why we work in in shift
• 1:57
  school. But I think we should ask the
• 2:00
  question of can can we trust ourselves to use it?
• 2:04
  Can we trust our judgement? Can we discern things?
• 2:08
  Do I trust my abilities, for example?
• 2:11
  I think that's the foundation. And from there, you can then go
• 2:16
  out and trust also new things because that's what new
• 2:20
  technology is about, especially AI when there is something new
• 2:24
  that I don't know, do I trust it or not?
• 2:27
  Because established things, it's a different question and more
• 2:30
  philosophic probably. But I think that's the the
• 2:32
  interesting part and I think trust should be more regarded as
• 2:37
  an investment into something. So I'll try it.
• 2:41
  I experiment with it. I make experiences and then I
• 2:44
  discern. Then I form my opinion about it
• 2:47
  and and know how to respond. I'm not waiting till you know
• 2:51
  everything is figured. Out and we're now at a time that
• 2:55
  allows us to move from knowledge scarcity to infinite access.
• 3:00
  And so you can say that we also invest in the kind of way of how
• 3:04
  we consume information going forward and also how we consume
• 3:10
  it in a way that it's already been synthesized by AI.
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  Is there any way that you see of how this is fundamentally
• 3:16
  different of what learning means to people, to us in particular,
• 3:21
  and also what role trust in those information play when we
• 3:25
  consume it in the educational space?
• 3:27
  Let me put it this way. I think we don't come from
• 3:32
  scarcity. I think I mean way back, yes,
• 3:34
  but especially now with AI, there's things are not so much
• 3:38
  different. We have been living in an age of
• 3:41
  abundant information and content for quite some time.
• 3:44
  So there have been millions of books, more books, more YouTube
• 3:48
  videos, more content than we could ever consume.
• 3:53
  So it doesn't really matter if it's increasing more and more
• 3:56
  in, in the regard of, of scarcity.
• 3:58
  It's more about the the filtering part.
• 4:01
  So make making sense and finding things that it has become
• 4:06
  increasingly different. And I think you have talked
• 4:09
  about the slop phenomenon on your on your podcast before.
• 4:14
  That is of course something that is interesting, but I think
• 4:19
  it's, it's more about making judgment and, and finding things
• 4:23
  and also be confronted with controversial things.
• 4:26
  So it's more about filtering. It's more about curation, for
• 4:31
  example, that is important in in education.
• 4:34
  So we on purpose look at a different opinion, the exact
• 4:39
  opposite opinion. And that has to be learned.
• 4:42
  It's more on a on a meta cognitive level that we need to
• 4:46
  deal with that. It's not so much about if it's a
• 4:49
  lot of content or even more content that there is too much
• 4:53
  content out anyway. And the half life of of
• 4:56
  knowledge is rapidly decreasing. So we get more and more, but I
• 5:01
  think it's it's about our way of consuming and stopping and
• 5:05
  limiting it and filtering it that is the important question
• 5:08
  when it comes to learning. And diving a bit deeper into the
• 5:11
  learning aspect, now you also with the shift school and how
• 5:15
  you approach it and also evolve the program over time we see
• 5:21
  that AI becomes more of a Co thinker and tutor and also a
• 5:25
  synthesizer of how we interact with those tools.
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  When we look into the learning process, is there anything or
• 5:32
  any trait that we as humans have that uniquely is attributed to
• 5:37
  ourselves and distinguishes us from AI tools going forward?
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  So I would maybe start with trying to answer a different
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  way. It's, it's probably not about
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  skills. So the discussion about AI will
• 5:52
  never be able to do this and that.
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  And we humans are better in this and that.
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  I'm very humble about that because the, the development is
• 6:00
  fast and we don't know that. So the understanding of what
• 6:05
  intelligence is, is, is an interesting discussion from a
• 6:08
  philosophic point of view. And I think a pushes us to to
• 6:12
  think about that again, but I don't think it is always a good
• 6:18
  idea to compare machines or AI in particular with human traits.
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  So especially when it comes to skills, because then we are
• 6:28
  always in a rat race with technology that we don't maybe
• 6:33
  cannot win. But coming back to your
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  questions, what I think is different or the the number one
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  thing is intent. So I think humans, especially
• 6:43
  when it comes to learning, we want the purpose.
• 6:46
  We we ask why are we doing that? And then there's also what you
• 6:50
  call moral aspiration. So we try to to be good, we try
• 6:55
  to make something good. So there isn't disintention.
• 6:59
  And maybe the last thing that I could name would be what I call
• 7:03
  a contextual wisdom. So we we live in a world, we
• 7:06
  live in a real world. We try to make a sense of
• 7:08
  things. We connect things that are not
• 7:11
  data in in a digital format and that gives us knowledge that the
• 7:15
  machine yet doesn't have. But I would be humble in
• 7:20
  predictions about this is never going to be happening and and
• 7:24
  and so on. And if we now zoom into the
• 7:27
  educational aspects and imagine I would be a student or I would
• 7:31
  be a learner and you would need to advise me on how I will be
• 7:36
  including AI into the way that I learn and the way that I consume
• 7:41
  content for me to educate myself.
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  Do you think I should be treated as a tool, as a collaborator,
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  also as an environment that I myself should learn to navigate
• 7:51
  to, also should learn to interact with not only only from
• 7:56
  a trustful perspective, but potentially also from a critical
• 7:59
  one? I.
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  Think we are ill advised to treat AI merely as a tool.
• 8:05
  I think that's that's quite dangerous in in many regards.
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  So I would advise people or I actually do advise people to
• 8:14
  treat it as a as a collaborator and that's how I use it at the
• 8:17
  moment. But the more I will be present
• 8:22
  in our lives in many different formats and and then established
• 8:25
  it of course then becomes environment.
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  So I think it's a fluent process between I use a single thing a
• 8:33
  single software becomes more a system and integrated in that
• 8:37
  system. So it's probably be in between
• 8:39
  collaboration and environment on on the long run, but it's it's a
• 8:43
  Co evolving process that I I see there.
• 8:46
  And if you know, translate it into a very tangible
• 8:50
  interaction. How do you think we interact in
• 8:53
  the future with AI in our learning process?
• 8:56
  Well, I think it will be present all the time.
• 8:59
  So it's, it's I, I think it's a good metaphor if you, we treat
• 9:04
  AI as another person. I mean, you could imagine men,
• 9:09
  women, animal avatar doesn't doesn't matter, but it's another
• 9:12
  subject that you're communicating with and you're
• 9:15
  interacting with. And that's also interesting in
• 9:17
  your initial question about trust, Do I trust another person
• 9:21
  when I see her the first time? Probably not.
• 9:24
  It's, you know, it's an interaction.
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  I can invest, I can can be open and then a relationship evolves
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  and I think with technology and interaction and that's the new
• 9:35
  quality of AI. It's a relational technology and
• 9:39
  we make our experiences and and that evolves.
• 9:42
  I think that's that's the thing. It's not so much about the
• 9:44
  formant, if AI is in an hardware or software, if it's on our
• 9:50
  phones, in our glasses or so whatever it will be everywhere
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  and it's it's more about the relation to put that we have
• 9:57
  with it. And AI then being everywhere and
• 10:01
  students outsourcing potentially their capability of analyzing,
• 10:06
  of drafting, I mean we see that with coding at some point as
• 10:09
  well. What impact does this have on
• 10:13
  Reigns, on the way of how we also think and how we should
• 10:18
  then design the craft of studying itself?
• 10:21
  Well, that's at the core of what I teach and preach all the time.
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  I think this cognitive atrophy that you are referring to is
• 10:30
  there and I think we have all seen it where we had the
• 10:34
  incidents where we turn to AI for the very basic questions
• 10:39
  because as a as a ritual, and I think it's when it comes to
• 10:42
  learning, I think it becomes problematic each time when
• 10:48
  humans try to outsmart or shortcut learning.
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  And I think that's the intention is obvious.
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  We want to don't want to spend that much time and learning and
• 10:57
  reflecting and we don't want to be burdensome or troublesome.
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  So we try to use the new technology to shortcut that or
• 11:06
  to save money. And when we consult companies,
• 11:10
  for example, we always think that the faster and cheaper
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  Reflex is, is not the right thing.
• 11:19
  So I think it's, it's never wise when it comes to learning to, to
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  has that as the primary motivation, which is meaning
• 11:27
  that we still need to struggle, we need to challenge ourselves.
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  We need to use different media, different formats and and not
• 11:37
  rely everything into a machine no matter how smart it is.
• 11:41
  And you know, being like a learning provider, so to say.
• 11:45
  And also like taking on responsibility for what you
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  preach, you just said, and you also advise companies and how
• 11:53
  they should include or how they shouldn't include AI into the
• 11:57
  way of how their learning processes work.
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  What responsibility do you or do learning providers in like
• 12:03
  general need to take on when it comes to also the half life of
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  skills of how we keep or how they keep changing continuously
• 12:12
  probably over the next years? I mean, responsibility is always
• 12:16
  2. So it there's always
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  responsibility on both sides of the spectrum when it comes to
• 12:22
  learning. We call that teaching is like
• 12:24
  tennis. So what we can do is provide the
• 12:27
  cords and bring the balls and the trainers, but there needs to
• 12:30
  be another person on the other side returning the balls.
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  So I think that's very fundamental when it comes to
• 12:35
  learning. So, but when it comes to the
• 12:37
  half life, I think I would, I would always focus and what we
• 12:41
  do is we focus on the things that don't change, being humble
• 12:45
  about it. You never know what's going to
• 12:46
  happen. But I would focus more on the
• 12:49
  learning to learn skills, for example, acquiring, learning
• 12:53
  myself. Then on the actual content,
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  we've talked about the abundance of content out there.
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  So there's a lot of content providers on each platform and
• 13:01
  so on. So now, like I think what our
• 13:05
  responsibility is we, if we claim that you come to us, we
• 13:10
  teach you how to do AI, how to prompt engineer, how to use that
• 13:14
  tool. And the half life is is very
• 13:17
  short and in three months it's gone and there's a new
• 13:19
  technology, new wave. We are, we have the
• 13:22
  responsibility to show people that there is the speed involved
• 13:26
  and show them how to acquire them themselves.
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  So in a in a way, if we make our self redundant and obsolete,
• 13:34
  that should be the aim of things.
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  So if everybody's able to learn for themselves and acquire
• 13:39
  knowledge should be the ultimate goal, which is not going to
• 13:43
  happen for many reasons. I think the model or the
• 13:46
  business model, but also the model of education will change
• 13:49
  fundamentally away from content. There are so many questions that
• 13:52
  I have now to trade on that. And one question that I always
• 13:56
  ask myself is who's responsible to provide the AI literacy?
• 14:01
  And now you said there are the providers that provide the court
• 14:04
  and like the balls and the tennis matches and so on and
• 14:08
  those who then just play the game.
• 14:10
  However I do. Do you think from an
• 14:13
  institutional perspective, there should be also some sort of
• 14:16
  mandatory education that is provided?
• 14:19
  I was wondering what your approach to that is.
• 14:22
  Do you think it needs this institutional provision?
• 14:25
  And do you also think that it could be comparable to the way
• 14:29
  of how organizations in the past have mandated, for example,
• 14:32
  Computer literacy? We could have a discussion if
• 14:36
  institutions ever mandated a Computer literacy.
• 14:39
  Interesting question, but let's leave that aside for a moment.
• 14:42
  There is in a perfect world and in my perfect world, where
• 14:46
  everybody is self responsible, has ownership for their own
• 14:51
  education, their own lifelong learning careers, you wouldn't
• 14:55
  need that. But we're not in in that world.
• 14:58
  So I would on a personal level always strive for a more curious
• 15:04
  learning to learn, acquiring self ownership, self organizing
• 15:08
  entrepreneur acumen or or way of learning.
• 15:12
  But we're not there. You're, you're right.
• 15:14
  So I think there is an obligation that we all have or
• 15:17
  we have an interest in society, but also an organizational level
• 15:22
  to invest in that. So, but I'd rather invest in not
• 15:25
  in tools or the acquisition of the knowledge of a certain
• 15:29
  software tool, more on this fundamental meta skills, if you
• 15:34
  want to call them that. I think yes, we we should.
• 15:37
  And I think there will be very new ways of new, new, new
• 15:43
  questions, new challenges that nobody's even thinking about in,
• 15:48
  in organizations or very few people think about that.
• 15:51
  And also on the societal level. And if you look how slowly if if
• 15:56
  ever the education system changed.
• 15:59
  I'm slightly pessimistic. So I always advise people you
• 16:03
  know, take your take ownership, try it yourself and don't wait
• 16:07
  for others to offer courses or even make it mandatory to like
• 16:12
  force you to your own luck. But if I listen to you, do I
• 16:15
  understand the correctly that you would say that a lifelong
• 16:18
  learning journey is a personal obligation?
• 16:21
  Yes, yes, I would say that and I think we're seeing that.
• 16:25
  So I would, I would say to make it really concrete, if, if, if
• 16:30
  you don't have ever tried AI or playing with the tools and then
• 16:35
  complaining that AI will steal your job, something is wrong,
• 16:39
  fundamentally wrong in, in your attitude.
• 16:41
  So that that might sound harsh if you would never learned how
• 16:45
  to do that. But I think that we have a
• 16:48
  cultural problem of, of this notion that we have an
• 16:51
  education, we go to school, to university and then we stop
• 16:55
  learning and we're maybe eventually update some things
• 16:58
  and then we work and capitalize on that education.
• 17:02
  So we need a lifelong learning approach.
• 17:05
  And I know lifelong learning is not sexy because the way we
• 17:10
  learn and the way we acquire knowledge and many of us,
• 17:13
  including me, have made like bad experiences in school and, and
• 17:18
  the way it was boring or even humiliating or whatever.
• 17:22
  So my, my campaign or I'm campaigning for what I call
• 17:28
  learning as a lifestyle makes, you know, learning more fun,
• 17:32
  more social, more intriguing or ingrained or in intriguing or
• 17:37
  even integrated in, in our ways of life.
• 17:40
  So I love learning. Never liked schools.
• 17:44
  That's why I built my own. But I think it can be a lot of
• 17:47
  fun. And, and I think it's a
• 17:49
  fundamental thing that we, we've acquired and we've lost track
• 17:53
  of. And I think that's the
• 17:54
  investment to be made in general.
• 17:56
  And now the further we go with education and the more we learn,
• 18:00
  we acquire competencies. But with AI we can produce quite
• 18:05
  easily high quality outputs guide less, whether or not we're
• 18:08
  expertise or we've like learned about that for several years.
• 18:14
  How do we signal going forward the competencies that we as
• 18:18
  persons bring to conversations also to the future of the break
• 18:25
  space, I mean? First of all, I think is we
• 18:27
  should talk to each other and then you know if somebody's an
• 18:30
  expert or not. I mean, if we only if you for
• 18:33
  example, in recruiting and so on, if you only rely on AI
• 18:37
  crafted motivation letters, advice, and I think that's
• 18:41
  already obsolete. But if you talk to a person, you
• 18:43
  can find out and you can talk about their experiences and ask
• 18:47
  them how they apply things. So I think it's always a good
• 18:51
  way to set how did you apply and what did you do when things went
• 18:56
  South? So it is about the the failure,
• 18:59
  the problems and so on. I think that a better in a way
• 19:02
  that has been like that before. So I think we should look behind
• 19:07
  the the output, the format and ask more about what would you
• 19:11
  put in, what would you do in a certain situation?
• 19:14
  So it's not about the ready made crafted letter, but what
• 19:17
  questions things would you ask? How would you approach this
• 19:20
  problem? So it's probably more about
• 19:23
  testing cases than the actual output.
• 19:26
  And when we go back to the way of how learning institutions now
• 19:31
  should look like on look like now and should look like in the
• 19:34
  future, what changes when we designed it for an AI native
• 19:39
  environment and how does the structure, the curriculum, maybe
• 19:45
  also the evaluation system change?
• 19:47
  Wow. In a general sense, I think you
• 19:50
  need some very broad, you need basic skills of course, that you
• 19:55
  know to, to general literacy. So if I talk about elementary
• 19:59
  education and then from then on, I think we should really
• 20:04
  refocus. On, on humanities, on asking
• 20:08
  questions, we talk a lot about critical thinking, for example.
• 20:11
  So that is one of the buzzwords that you read a lot.
• 20:14
  But how do we acquire that? So we need to inspire, we need
• 20:18
  to like educate more generalists.
• 20:22
  So I, I think the role changes. So we had a trend for the last
• 20:26
  100, maybe 50 years to become more expert and expert and
• 20:31
  expert. I think education will change to
• 20:35
  a more generalist approach and we need a broad knowledge in
• 20:39
  many things. And then we can have a
• 20:41
  technology to help us with the expertise.
• 20:44
  And you see that in coding. So my coding skills are quite
• 20:47
  limited. So I'm not able to like, I do
• 20:50
  see some things, but not, not in particular, but they're an
• 20:54
  expert can see and and work and augment and be faster with
• 20:59
  technology. And I think that is the way to
• 21:01
  do but, but you need to like foster creativity.
• 21:05
  You need to foster the curiosity to go there in the 1st place and
• 21:10
  the willingness to learn. So I think the number one skill
• 21:13
  is learning to learn and and keep keep on learning even if
• 21:17
  things get a bit complacent and we get older and we get
• 21:21
  established. And if you know how to fully
• 21:24
  redesign the Shift School today to an AI first institution, is
• 21:29
  there anything that you would remove instantly?
• 21:33
  And what will you maybe also add to change or incorporate in a
• 21:38
  way that it adds to the overall ambition, but also to the way of
• 21:44
  how people interact with education or educating
• 21:48
  themselves, maybe also motivating them to the
• 21:50
  continuous learning that you hinted towards?
• 21:52
  I have to smile or laugh because we're actually doing that, but
• 21:56
  not as an AI first. Maybe it's quite the opposite.
• 22:00
  I think it's the human first thing, but of course AI plays a
• 22:04
  role, but many other factors in in this world as well.
• 22:07
  So technology is 1. But all the stacking crises, the
• 22:11
  meta crisis, Poly crisis, the complexity of the world where
• 22:15
  technology adds up, especially on on an emotional level is is
• 22:19
  changing things and we are discussing a lot of things.
• 22:23
  But I in my future vision, it's more a would want to transform
• 22:29
  the shift school into a more, I call it the new way of, of
• 22:33
  learning publishing house or experiencing publishers.
• 22:37
  So I think we need to connect certain things.
• 22:40
  So we're currently working on a project of a book that opens a a
• 22:45
  a a world and we want to curate communities around learning
• 22:51
  subjects for time. So an ongoing thing where you
• 22:55
  connected loosely, but when you want to deep dive in certain
• 22:59
  aspects could be technology, but could be any other.
• 23:02
  You will have a learning group and you stick together to
• 23:05
  accomplish a goal and then you maybe disappear.
• 23:08
  So I think we're experimenting a lot.
• 23:11
  We call it lifescape learning where you have physical
• 23:14
  encounter, meet people belonging, connecting, combining
• 23:18
  that with asynchronous learning for themselves, episodes and
• 23:23
  also connecting different formats.
• 23:25
  Could be books, could be any, any kind of media.
• 23:29
  And of course, AI is a tool that should always be integrated and
• 23:35
  built. For example, I do read a lot in
• 23:37
  English of course, and there are quite some words that I don't
• 23:40
  understand. So I have created my own
• 23:43
  vocabulary trainer so I can always have a have an app on my
• 23:46
  phone and GPT and I type in the word instead of just retrieving
• 23:50
  vocabulary and forget about it. I asked the GPT to vocabulary
• 23:55
  test two previous words I've entered before.
• 23:58
  So I keep on learning. So I create those little
• 24:01
  Nuggets, the AI thing, and I think that should be part of
• 24:04
  every learning process where you learn a subject and then you
• 24:08
  build your own AI to help you with it, which is also a part of
• 24:12
  the didactics methodology around that.
• 24:15
  And I think we should go there in the future.
• 24:17
  And I see this Co creative Co evolving tandem like learning
• 24:22
  with AI in a social community with other humans is the future
• 24:27
  of learning. If we now talk about the future,
• 24:29
  I do when I come back to this moment and when I have some in
• 24:32
  between moments with you, I have that with every guest at the end
• 24:36
  of the respective episode. And in between moments are
• 24:40
  intuitive questions that I just throw towards you.
• 24:44
  And I would ask you to answer it with one word or just like in
• 24:47
  one sentence that comes to your mind instantly.
• 24:50
  I want to start with what AI in learning feels like to you.
• 24:53
  It feels like learning buddy is the first word that comes to
• 24:57
  mind. So I have a companion with me
• 25:01
  that makes my learning better, more effective and more fun.
• 25:04
  And is there anything that a future learner must do?
• 25:08
  And must be preserve the curiosity to always ask the next
• 25:13
  question. When does education fail?
• 25:15
  When people don't want to ask more questions, I think good
• 25:20
  education always doesn't lead to answers, but to more questions.
• 25:24
  And what does trust and digital learning require?
• 25:28
  To be vulnerable, to go and to step in first and to make
• 25:32
  mistakes. And is there a word or a world
• 25:35
  or a status that you you are currently in between?
• 25:39
  Yes, it's the sovereignty of I'm in between the world I've
• 25:44
  described and the real entrepreneurial challenges of,
• 25:49
  of making that work right now with people not wanting to go
• 25:53
  there. So I'm I'm stuck in between.
• 25:55
  Then I'm looking forward to getting an update at some point
• 25:58
  of how you evolved into the next phase of that.
• 26:01
  But for now, I want to say thanks so much for sharing your
• 26:04
  learnings and also your background, insights and
• 26:07
  expertise at the topic of intersection of technology,
• 26:10
  learning and trust. Eva, thank you so much for this
• 26:13
  wonderful conversation. I learned a lot through your
• 26:16
  questions. They were brilliant and they got
• 26:19
  me thinking a lot and I think that's the the best time spent.
• 26:23
  Thank. You.
• 26:23
  I appreciate that a lot. Look forward to continuing the
• 26:26
  conversation. Bye.
• 26:27
  Bye bye.