Letter to the Editor in The Times: Mr Fletcher’s Response to an Essay on ‘AI’s Great Brain Robbery’
Today, The Times published Mr Fletcher’s Letter to the Editor in which he responds to an essay from the Saturday edition by historian Niall Ferguson, entitled ‘AI’s great brain robbery – and how universities can fight back’.
Sir,
I share Niall Ferguson’s concern about the catastrophic effect of AI upon cognitive development. Founding in 2007 the UK’s only screen free school, we have established precisely what he calls for: an oasis (or, as he calls it, a “cloister”) from which devices are excluded, where learning is centred around books, handwriting, discussion and real world activities and relationships. Our academic outcomes prove that it works (74 per cent of GCSEs graded 9-7), and we see very low incidence of mental health issues. My question is: where is Ferguson going to find university students “capable of coping with the discipline of the cloister” if schools are habituating them to screen-dependence? If we are to avoid the new Dark Age of which Ferguson warns, we urgently need a “screen-free schools” movement to complement the “smartphone-free childhood” one.
Jason Fletcher
Headmaster, Heritage School Cambridge
For context, please see the following summary from Mr Fletcher of Niall Ferguson’s essay:
In his article, Professor Ferguson focuses on what he refers to as Pseudo Intelligence. ‘I think a lot these days about PI,’ he writes, ‘not least because of the catastrophic effect it is having on actual intelligence’. He cites the CEO of Ford Motor, who recently predicted that AI will replace half of all white-collar workers in the US, and then argues that AI, like nuclear technology, will become weaponised to potentially devastating effect. As serious as these concerns are, Ferguson believes that the risks to humanity as a result of stunted cognitive development are far more serious: ‘I believe the economic and geopolitical consequences of AI pale alongside its educational consequences.’
He draws attention to the fact that university students are spending about half the amount of time studying than they used to, largely as a result of AI. With the help of LLMs they are cheating their way through college, producing an essay in two hours rather than twelve, as one student reported in a New York Magazine article. Another student reported in the same article that with AI, ‘you really don’t have to think that much.’ Ferguson believes that this ‘wholesale outsourcing of studying’ is enabling students to ‘shirk the acquisition of skills such as sustained reading, critical thinking and analytical writing,’ and that it is leading to ‘arrested cognitive development’.
What should universities do in response? They should, he says, ‘create a quarantined space in which traditional methods of learning can be maintained and from which all devices are excluded.’ He suggests calling this ‘the cloister’. Inside the cloister, about seven hours per day should be allocated to reading printed books, discussion of texts and problems, writing essays and problem-sets with pen and paper, and doing assessments via oral and written examinations. University admissions procedures need to be developed to ensure that only students capable of coping with the discipline of the cloister are accepted. He recognises that AI has a role to play in the academy outside the cloister, but he argues that only students trained in strict seclusion from AI will be able to make good use of it.
Professor Ferguson concludes with this warning: ‘Strict prohibitions on devices within the cloister, including wearable and implanted technology, will have to be insisted upon if the rapid advance of Pseudo Intelligence is not to plunge humanity into a new Dark Age.’
