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 on our human ideals and practices, and was anchored within the view that, as Vinson said, “Technological progress must serve humanity, and never the opposite way around.”
In the midst of his remarks, Vinson offered thoughts about our self-conception as rational beings; the results of technological revolutions on human tasks, jobs, and society; and the values and ethics we would like our lives and our social fabric to reflect.
“Philosophers like Cicero argue that the nice 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 points 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 give up of human agency?”
Vinson’s talk, titled “AI in an Age After Reason: A Discourse on Fundamental Human Questions,” was delivered to a big audience in MIT’s Samberg Conference Center.
He also suggested that universities can function an “mental compass” in the event of AI, bringing realism and specificity to the subject 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 impressive technical school for training hands-on engineers to a really great global university. A renowned physicist, President Compton brought a brand new concentrate 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 educational 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 chairman 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 when it might not fully deliver the entire advances it’s 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 truth, 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 have been substantial differences between AI and a few of our earlier technological leaps — the commercial revolution, the electrical revolution, and the digital revolution, amongst others.
“Unlike previous technologies which have prolonged human labor, again, AI targets cognition, creativity, decision-making, and even emotional intelligence,” Vinson said.
In all cases, Vinson said, people ought to be lively about discussing the profound effects technological change can have upon society: “AI is just not nearly technological progress, it’s about power, it’s about justice, and the very essence of what it means to be human.”
At just a few times, Vinson’s remarks looped back to the topic of education and the impact of AI. Howard, considered one of the nation’s leading historically Black colleges and universities, has recently achieved an R1 designation as a university with a really high level of research activity. At the identical time, it has thriving programs within the humanities and social sciences that rely on individual cognition and inquiry.
But suppose, Vinson remarked, that AI eventually finally 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 now a responsibility to interact with the advances and potential of the sphere while keeping on a regular basis 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 just not only a technological moment. It’s a moment that calls for a type of mental courage and moral imagination. Together, we will shape an AI future that honors dignity for everybody, and at the identical time, advances the ideals of humanity itself.”
