What happens when a society that can’t learn uses machines that can?

In 2008 or thereabouts, society launched an experiment: What happens when grownups give smart phones and related technologies to kids? Less than twenty years, and a rampant teenage mental health crisis, later, we have the results, and a majority of states are banning or limiting phones in classrooms. In 2020, we launched an experiment, because we had no other choice, using online technologies for teaching students of all ages, down to kindergarten and pre-k, and dramatically reducing or eliminating in-person instruction and contact entirely. Most of us now back in the classroom, in real life, have a pretty good sense of how that experiment, however necessary it was, turned out. Now, in 2025, the New York Times reports today: OpenAI, […]