AI and the Human Spirit:

Abstract: "AI and the Human Spirit" was presented at a Chinese national "Deep Learning" / Artificial Intelligence conference in Qingdao, China, in July 2024. It briefly touches on the risks and challenges of AI and then goes more deeply into the potentiality of the Human Spirit as compared to Artificial Intelligence. The main point is that AI has caused us to completely re-orient everything we have previously thought about the purpose of education. We are not going to change "Heaven's Plan" for the fundamental character, or purpose, of human beings. And we're not going to significantly change the physical structure of our brain, or its natural - and unconscious - way of developing. With the new leisure time we will gain from AI, humans need to learn how to be "more holistically human". It's a challenge that calls for an educational system based in the developmental sciences, along with deep reflection on the reality of "humanness" - the real potentiality, the powers and capacities of the human intellect, and the power and place of science in our new human environment. Addressing these issues is the educational challenge in this new era of artificial intelligence in human life. This gave an opportunity to highlight the organic nature of our reality and to present and honor the close harmony ancient Chinese philosophy - especially that derived from the I Ching (Yijing) - has with the most advanced philosophy in our time, the Organismic Philosophy of A.N. Whitehead, former Dean of Harvard University.