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- ISSN: 1753-5190
- E-ISSN: 1753-5204
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AI vs. ecological wisdom
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By
John Wood1
- Source: Journal of Writing in Creative Practice, Volume 17, Issue 2, Apr 2024, p. 127 - 136
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- 11 Jan 2025
- 11 Apr 2025
- 18 Mar 2026
Abstract
In seeking to extend humanity’s long-term future, several reports from UNESCO have called for the re-purposing of education in order to catalyse cultural change across the world. Ideally, this would entail re-imagining education’s deep ecological purpose. But this means acknowledging that universities emerged from two separate traditions that see the purpose of learning very differently. In the atelier culture of artisanship, tacit and embodied practices of learning are the norm. By contrast, the dominant tradition is more scholastic and bookish and therefore focuses more on language-based knowledge that is able to be written. One way to achieve the change that UNESCO seeks is to encourage more creative and opportunity-finding approaches. This would mean encouraging thinking processes that are more imaginative and future-oriented, and less embedded in extant knowledge. Of course, this would make it harder to retain the traditional emphasis on fairness and transparency over curiosity and learning. Recently the task also became even more challenging when mainstream institutions decided to normalise the use of AI systems as an adjunct to traditional learning. In seeking ways to reconcile all of the above issues, this article calls for a radical revisioning of the term ‘wisdom’. A suitably revised definition (known as ‘Wisdom’) would need to be much broader, holistic, pluralistic, ecosystemic and, therefore, less anthropocentric.
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