Modest Jou Gonzàlez 👌

Is AI the biggest change in education since the printing press? Yes. This weekend, I decided to learn about the life and work of Erving Goffman purely out of personal interest. Goffman was one of the most influential sociologists of the 20th century and a professor at Penn. I had a few free hours after a tough week of travel and work, and thought it might be a good distraction. I asked Claude to prepare a study plan based on my professional background, prior knowledge, and the hours I had available: an introduction to Goffman’s life and work, selections from his best and most influential writings, and an examination of his impact on social theory. The plan was outstanding. A top expert on Goffman would likely have done better. A 90th percentile real professor of sociology would not have, or at least not without serious effort. As I read The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (complete) and Asylums and Stigma (selections), I could ask Claude for clarification, connections to the wider literature, and links to material I already knew. The Q&A and the exploration of collateral ideas were so good that I ended up spending much more time than I anticipated. Last night I had to force myself to go to bed. Did Claude get everything right? Perhaps not, but neither do I in my own graduate seminars. Even in my areas of top expertise, I often do not answer students’ questions precisely or correctly. One should not compare Claude to the perfect professor but to a real one. And every answer I could verify (I checked many) was at least a solid A-. Am I an expert on Goffman now? Of course not. But I would say I am now familiar with an important thinker at the level a regular master’s course on modern sociological theory would produce in the week it dedicates to him. Doing the same work using Google alone would have taken much longer. I know because I have undertaken similar projects with other thinkers in the past. One had to spend considerably more time before reaching the core of the contribution. I can now imagine someone designing self-learning courses in many fields that are better than what you can get outside the very top universities, at close to zero marginal cost. Where does that leave a normal university? I do not know. But colleagues in departments that want to stop the spread of AI are deluding themselves. This type of technology does not come once a century. It comes once a millennium.

No pasaria així, si fessim esforç didàctic per explicar el que vol dir “autoritat”. Tot mestre hauria de saber que l’auctoritas és guanyar-se l’ascendent vers els alumnes, i es confon amb la “potestas”, quan el que es vol, és el poder de domini i sumissió dels alumnes a la una voluntat. Fem un esforç