Miguel Lannes Fernandes, AI director at EXAME and coordinator of the MBA in Artificial Intelligence for Business at Faculdade EXAME, offers a profound reflection on artificial intelligence using a poetic metaphor to describe our relationship with technology: AI as a river that must be navigated with wisdom.
The River of Bits and Bytes
Inspired by Ailton Krenak and Gilberto Gil, Miguel Lannes Fernandes compares AI to a forest river – simultaneously a source of life and danger. Just as forest peoples developed wisdom to navigate waters, we need to learn to navigate this digital “info-tide” for our survival and growth.
Critical Thinking in the AI Era
With 20 years of AI experience, Miguel Lannes Fernandes shares practical cases illustrating the importance of critical thinking. He tells of a student who wanted to use AI for homework, redirecting him to use the tool creatively – like interviewing historical characters.
Efficiency versus Learning
An MIT study revealed an interesting paradox: while groups using AI solved problems faster, they remembered less of the process and learned less than groups without AI. Miguel Lannes Fernandes concludes that “AI serves efficiency, but learning requires inefficiency and mistakes.”
Personal Experiences and Lessons
Miguel Lannes Fernandes shares a revealing experience where AI invented non-existent “Newton’s laws” while helping him write an article, highlighting how technology can produce convincing but incorrect content. He also mentions a student who used AI to “confirm” Capitu’s betrayal in Dom Casmurro, losing the beauty of literary ambiguity.
AI in Service of Humanity
The reflection culminates with a lesson from Miguel Lannes Fernandes’ own son about contemplating sunsets. He configured an AI robot to summarize news, freeing time for essential human moments. The message is clear: use AI to automate tedious tasks and have more time to exercise our humanity.
The key insight is that AI, being human-created technology, can help us become more human – depending on our perspective and approach to it.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C38xlWnkezQ&ab_channel=TEDxTalks