Sam Chaltain: Ghosts in the (Testing) Machine
Soon thereafter, Caleb meets Ava, a seductive, singular being whose inner wiring remains in easy view. “The challenge,” Nathan explains, “is to show you that she’s a robot and then see if you feel she still has consciousness.” And sure enough, over the next seven days, Caleb’s interactions with Ava form their own arc of creation, and their own path towards the birth of something new in the world.
“What will happen if I fail your test?” Ava asks ominously at one point. “Do you think I might be switched off?”
“It’s not up to me,” Caleb replies.
“Why should it be up to anyone?”
Indeed. And yet, what both of these films show is that the right sort of test — human-centered, with the goal of measuring whether a mind has come alive — is actually an essential component of the path towards enlightenment. At High Tech High, it’s to be found in the magical mix of relevance, difficulty, and support that well-crafted public performances require. And in Nathan’s research compound, it’s to be found in the highly personal exchange between two beings in search of greater meaning and metacognition.
“The mind emerges at the interface of interpersonal experience and the structure and function of the brain,” explains UCLA professor Dan Siegel in his book The Developing Mind. “Interactions with the environment, especially relationships with other people, directly shape the development of the brain’s structure and function.”
In our schools, the implications of this statement seem clear enough: we need to create more relationship-rich environments that provide young people with opportunities to engage in quality work and detailed self-reflection. As High Tech High founder Larry Rosentock puts it — sounding a lot like Nathan (or Ava) – what unites great schools is a recognition that “the thing that gives people the greatest satisfaction in life is making something that wasn’t there before.”
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