Ben Vinson III, president of Howard University, made a compelling call for artificial intelligence to be “developed with wisdom,” as he delivered MIT’s annual Karl Taylor Compton Lecture on campus Monday.
The broad-ranging talk posed a series of searching questions about our human ideals and practices, and was anchored in the view that, as Vinson said, “Technological progress must serve humanity, and not the other way around.”
In the course of his remarks, Vinson offered thoughts about our self-conception as rational beings; the effects of technological revolutions on human tasks, jobs, and society; and the values and ethics we want our lives and our social fabric to reflect.
“Philosophers like Cicero argue that the good life centers on the pursuit of virtue and wisdom,” Vinson said. “Can AI enhance our pursuit of virtue and wisdom? Does it risk automating critical aspects of human reflection? Does a world that increasingly defers to AI for decision-making and artistic creation, and even ethical deliberation, does that reflect a more advanced society? Or does it signal a quiet surrender of human agency?”
Vinson’s talk, titled “AI in an Age After Reason: A Discourse on Fundamental Human Questions,” was delivered to a large audience in MIT’s Samberg Conference Center.
He also suggested that universities can serve as an “intellectual compass” in the development of AI, bringing realism and specificity to the topic and “separating real risks from speculative fears, ensuring that AI is neither demonized nor blindly embraced but developed with wisdom, with ethical oversight, and with societal adaptation.”
The Compton lecture series was introduced in 1957, in honor of Karl Taylor Compton, who served as MIT’s ninth president, from 1930 to 1948, and as chair of the MIT Corporation from 1948 to 1954.
In introductory remarks, MIT President Sally A. Kornbluth observed that Compton “helped the Institute transform itself from an outstanding technical school for training hands-on engineers to a truly great global university. A renowned physicist, President Compton brought a new focus on fundamental scientific research, and he made science an equal partner with engineering at MIT.”
Beyond that, Kornbluth added, “through the war, he helped invent a partnership between the federal government and America’s research universities.”
Introducing Vinson, Kornbluth described him as an academic leader who projects a “wonderful sense of energy, positivity, and forward movement.”
Vinson became president of Howard University in September 2023, having previously served as provost and executive vice president of Case Western Reserve University; dean of George Washington University’s Columbian College of Arts and Sciences; and vice dean for centers, interdisciplinary studies, and graduate education at Johns Hopkins University. A historian who has studied the African diaspora in Latin America, Vinson is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a former president of the American Historical Association.
Using history as a guide, Vinson suggested that AI has potential to substantially influence society and the economy, even if it may not fully deliver all of the advances it is imagined to bring.
“It serves as a Rorschach test for society’s deepest hopes and anxieties,” Vinson said of AI. “Optimists, they see it as a productivity revolution and a leap in human evolution, while pessimists warn of mass surveillance, bias, job displacement, and even existential risk. The reality, as history suggests, will likely fall somewhere in between. AI will likely evolve through a cycle of inflated expectations, disillusionment, and eventual pragmatic inspiration.”
Still, Vinson suggested there were substantial differences between AI and some of our earlier technological leaps — the industrial revolution, the electrical revolution, and the digital revolution, among others.
“Unlike previous technologies that have extended human labor, again, AI targets cognition, creativity, decision-making, and even emotional intelligence,” Vinson said.
In all cases, Vinson said, people should be active about discussing the profound effects technological change can have upon society: “AI is not just about technological progress, it is about power, it is about justice, and the very essence of what it means to be human.”
At a few times, Vinson’s remarks looped back to the subject of education and the impact of AI. Howard, one of the nation’s leading historically Black colleges and universities, has recently achieved an R1 designation as a university with a very high level of research activity. At the same time, it has thriving programs in the humanities and social sciences that depend on individual cognition and inquiry.
But suppose, Vinson remarked, that AI eventually ends up displacing a portion of humanistic scholarship. “Does a world with fewer humanities truly represent human progress?” he asked.
All told, Vinson proposed, as AI advances, we have a responsibility to engage with the advances and potential of the field while keeping everyday human values in mind.
“Let’s guide the world through this transformative age with more wisdom, with foresight, and with an unwavering dedication to the common good,” Vinson said. “This is not just a technological moment. It is a moment that calls for a form of intellectual courage and moral imagination. Together, we can shape an AI future that honors dignity for everyone, and at the same time, advances the ideals of humanity itself.”
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