HOW ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE WILL WOUND US - Elisabeth Vera Rathenböck

ELISABETH VERA RATHENBÖCK Journalist

One child hands the wooden stick to the other, they run around the beech tree in the city park, sprint back, the wooden stick goes to the next child. Glowing faces, happy eyes. Now as we sit on benches, I explain the next task. The children, almost teenagers, collect points along the educational nature hike: “Wilderness in the City”. I ask them: “What kind of tree is that?” It is only the length of a hand. Yet this miniature already displays a typical leaf. The students lean over it, look at the upright shoot, looking at me. Who’s this pipsqueak? The names of trees are spontaneously called out, the correct answer amongst them rare. I say: “Look around, look at all that’s here!” But then the teacher comes up to me and says indignantly: “If I had known beforehand that we would be identifying trees, we would have downloaded an app! Now, they won’t figure it out and some kids are already bored.” The mother tree is only five meters away. Granted, it’s big and mighty. Unmistakable: A chestnut tree. Not even a third of the students guessed correctly. They don’t have the strategy available, which Konrad Lorenz described as the causal action for exploring the world. Namely, to look all around in order to see what there is, and from this to draw conclusions. Many children don’t learn this anymore. Rather, they learn to look into the smartphone, where an app gives an explanation of the world (...)

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https://issuu.com/fsse/docs/tagungsbuch_2020_en