"We are going back to exams with pen and paper"

Tim Brys needs little convincing when it comes to stricter limits on technology. No social media for children? A smartphone ban at school? For him, they are no-brainers. He himself gets by with a dumb phone: no apps, no 5G. Rather unusual for an AI scientist. Much to his regret, today’s ‘brick phones’ are not what they used to be. “In the past, Nokias were robust and durable, but I’ve worn out three in a year. I’m trying another brand now.” Enough reminiscing about faded Finnish glory. On to the book And Then There Was AI: How Do We Remain Human Among Machines? Tim wrote it together with philosopher François Levrau of UAntwerpen. In ten chapters they sketch a society-wide picture of the shock AI is creating. Here, we focus on the chapter about learning and education.

Students outsource dull and repetitive tasks to AI. That frees up time for genuinely creative thinking.
Tim Brys: “That sounds good, but I don’t believe it. In education you can label almost everything as routine: attending lectures, taking notes, reading texts, translating and summarising them, writing papers, analysing data… If AI takes care of all that, what will be left of higher education?”

Still, it does speed things up with AI.
“That’s true, but then the foundations are missing. Studying is hard and involves a lot of repetitive work. It’s about cramming, drilling and grappling with new knowledge. That creates friction. But it’s precisely that ‘boring’ thinking that forms your foundation and frames of reference. From there you can build further and learn to make deeper connections. It’s a paradox: creativity and innovation – supposedly the skills that will flourish thanks to AI – actually require a great deal of prior repetitive work. If you let AI do everything, how do you still learn to think for yourself?”

So what’s the answer?
“You first have to become an expert. That way you can judge whether AI isn’t feeding you nonsense and you can use the technology as it should be used: in a supporting role.”

Working less hard and still passing: that temptation is difficult to resist.
“We are evolutionarily programmed to use as little physical and mental effort as possible. In prehistoric times, anyone who wasted energy did not survive. That logic of conserving energy is still embedded in our brains. It automatically chooses the path of least resistance. Today, that path is AI.”

But passively going through the motions is not a new phenomenon, is it?
“No, but AI is worsening the trend. Thanks to ChatGPT and similar tools, the shortcuts have become even shorter. It is becoming increasingly easy to be a passive student and still graduate.”

What now?
“Many people are thinking about new methods of learning and assessment. With more classroom-based work and more short essays in which students show they have absorbed the material. For the master’s thesis, more attention could be given to interim evaluations and the presentation at the end. At that point, they can prove that they truly understand what they have produced.”

And the exams themselves? Should everyone go back to pen and paper?
“Why not? I studied computer science. We had to sit our programming exams on paper. It wasn’t a problem if you forgot a bracket here or there, but you did prove that you understood it.”

Are humans not flexible?
“We cannot adapt endlessly to a competitive, frantic and technology-driven society. Scientists at Harvard Business School studied what happened in a tech company when employees were given a subscription to AI. Productivity immediately increased. Tasks they would otherwise outsource, they now took on themselves. They automatically began working more hours. Trying out a few prompts during their lunch break, that sort of thing.”

Let me guess: the novelty quickly wore off?
“That’s right. They felt they had to keep even more balls in the air at once. The pace became unsustainable. The researchers called AI in the workplace a burnout machine. We are not built for that. It is not efficient either: every email and every notification disrupts your work and pulls you out of your flow. In Deep Work, Cal Newport therefore argues for long periods of focused concentration without distraction. If you can maintain that for a few hours a day, you get far more done than when you work eight hours in a superficial and fragmented way.”

You suggest we can draw inspiration from the monastic tradition. What can we learn from monks?
“Monasteries are organised around strict rules. They prescribe not only how monks live together, but also how their daily schedule unfolds. It is characterised by an ‘intentional’ rhythm of life, with room for both work and rest, contemplation and creation.”

How would you apply that to modern life?
“Find a rhythm in which periods of focused work alternate with time for activities such as deep reading, writing, cooking or making music. Perhaps you could occasionally try a period of ‘smartphone fasting’. And consciously choose local communities and collaboration with others. For example, together with a group of like-minded people in Brussels, we are looking for a building for our urban monastery.”

As a bastion against AI?
“Not exactly. It would be a small community where people can connect, slow down and care for one another, and where we seek contact with God. AI is welcome, provided it serves the good life. The real question should be whether the use of AI makes us more loving, wiser, more patient, more just and more courageous.”

Finally: which book or film best connects with your research? And how close are fiction and reality?
“In our book we mention The Matrix. Some tech billionaires believe we will solve every problem with AI technology, even death. In that scenario, we would plug ourselves into an eternal simulation, in the style of The Matrix, while machines keep our bodies young. Willing slaves of a superior AI god, you might say. Do you swallow the blue pill and remain in the comfortable illusion, or choose the red pill and reality? Of course, it’s not that binary, but it symbolises the strength of will required not to lose yourself completely to the lure of technology.I also found Brave New World a fascinating book. In that story, citizens of a world state take something called soma. This government-supplied drug makes people calm, happy and compliant. Scientists, artists, emotionally complex individuals and critical free thinkers are seen as a threat to that stability and are exiled to islands. There they are free to live together without disturbing society. In this book, Aldous Huxley was commenting on totalitarian regimes. The link with AI is that it, too, could threaten our freedom. AI companies are richer than anything or anyone in history, and the concentration of power is enormous. The more influence they gain, the greater the pressure on democracy and freedom could become.”