Return-Path: Delivered-To: alvarochf@traceseis.com Received: from cs510.bluehost.com by cs510.bluehost.com with LMTP id 0CFNKoidxmlEjggAWiBQxw (envelope-from ) for ; Fri, 27 Mar 2026 09:08:56 -0600 Return-path: Envelope-to: alvarochf@traceseis.com Delivery-date: Fri, 27 Mar 2026 09:08:56 -0600 Received: from v521.v5375b7fa.use4.send.mailgun.net ([159.112.244.21]:61524) by cs510.bluehost.com with esmtps (TLS1.2) tls TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256 (Exim 4.98.2) (envelope-from ) id 1w68nw-000000033E6-02Gj for alvarochf@traceseis.com; Fri, 27 Mar 2026 09:08:56 -0600 DKIM-Signature: a=rsa-sha256; v=1; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=mg2.substack.com; q=dns/txt; s=mailo; t=1774624119; x=1774631319; h=List-Unsubscribe-Post: List-Unsubscribe: List-Post: List-Id: List-Archive: List-Owner: Reply-To: In-Reply-To: References: Sender: Sender: Date: Message-Id: To: To: From: From: Subject: Subject: Content-Type: Mime-Version; bh=rnUulSmPf61gKwGxGxGkbBB4k1CKYxOTW40GDDc2hL0=; b=odu8RDY1wDmJT/ndPN+U2DhdMR3pACfMsTUmv/4oiHP2qZn/Vgm/RFrAhmoDe+/dnB3S+9umyJwxnhH87+LxeqQu1RQRzTTJhD3D2FtOvK7qMuzgEDEERX2IC3iZhgYng3TTwllQVZTd3cxgqOevWQHCRtBlSBgqMJMxMDxe6sY= X-Mailgun-Sid: WyI3MDdlYyIsImFsdmFyb2NoZkB0cmFjZXNlaXMuY29tIiwiNGQxODU4Il0= Received: by 11e00c0fcd27bfb76bc7ef0fb15602d98a701f626293d9e9886f08a4803995f6 with HTTP id 69c69d77f2f7fa43080a8dbf; Fri, 27 Mar 2026 15:08:39 GMT X-Mailgun-Sending-Ip: 159.112.244.21 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="b4ddad7b8492212195330b8234651f7e6807ceaad12f0ca67549f51868eb" Subject: Reading List: AI and the Future of Education From: Cosmos Institute To: alvarochf@traceseis.com X-Mailgun-Tag: post X-Mailgun-Track-Clicks: false Message-Id: <20260327150656.3.478f23359c402485@mg2.substack.com> Date: Fri, 27 Mar 2026 15:06:56 +0000 Feedback-Id: post-192310307:cat-post:pub-2225794:substack Sender: Cosmos Institute References: In-Reply-To: Reply-To: Cosmos Institute List-Owner: List-Url: List-Archive: List-Id: List-Post: List-Unsubscribe: List-Unsubscribe-Post: List-Unsubscribe=One-Click X-Mailgun-Variables: {"category": "post", "email_generated_at": "1774624119193", "is_freemail": "true", "post_audience": "everyone", "post_id": "192310307", "post_type": "newsletter", "pub_community_enabled": "true", "publication_id": "2225794", "subdomain": "cosmosinstitute", "user_id": "347258985"} X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.5 X-Spam-Score: -4 X-Spam-Bar: / X-Spam-Flag: NO --b4ddad7b8492212195330b8234651f7e6807ceaad12f0ca67549f51868eb Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable View this post on the web at https://blog.cosmos-institute.org/p/what-anyon= e-building-a-new-university The university is under siege. Harvard, sitting on a $57 billion endowment, slashed 75 percent of its scie= nce and 60 percent of its humanities PhD admissions. Indiana mandated the e= limination of over 400 degree programs at its public universities. Classics= , comparative literature, and foreign languages at the state flagship are g= one. At the University of Tulsa, a philosopher built a Great Books honors c= ollege from scratch [ https://substack.com/redirect/7e8e0f7b-274e-4890-bb6c= -059f08892650?j=3DeyJ1IjoiNXFxeXF4In0.h9dEDbGj64cTNudluPwbMYWklSu8UKGoFv6eW= S-HyoA ], grew enrolment 500 percent, and attracted a quarter of each fresh= man class to a curriculum running from Homer to Arendt. The university remo= ved her. Sixty-four small colleges have closed since 2020, and the demographic cliff= , a 13 percent decline in college-age students projected through 2041, hasn= =E2=80=99t even started. Meanwhile, 52 percent of recent graduates are working jobs that don=E2=80= =99t require the degree that they borrowed $30,000 to get. Palantir CEO Ale= x Karp is telling young people [ https://substack.com/redirect/15a37f59-ce7= d-407e-8ffe-c7d818c7746b?j=3DeyJ1IjoiNXFxeXF4In0.h9dEDbGj64cTNudluPwbMYWklS= u8UKGoFv6eWS-HyoA ] to skip elite colleges entirely, saying the only paths = left are skilled trades or neurodivergence. AI will accelerate this. The skills the degree was supposed to impart =E2= =80=93 researching, analyzing, drafting, coding =E2=80=93 are increasingly = things a machine can do. As the old institutions break down, a new generation of educational founder= s is running experiments. New schools are emerging, each making a different= bet on two questions that anyone building an educational institution has t= o answer: The first question is about purpose. Do you focus on specific, trainable sk= ills, or on a broader, if more intangible formation, which includes the dev= elopment of judgment, attention, and moral seriousness? The second question is about technology. Do you build AI into the core of t= he educational experience or keep it out because the difficulty is where th= e learning happens? These two axes produce a landscape. At one end, programs like Gauntlet [ https://substack.com/redirect/63f2f47f= -f501-4d9a-aa25-6a2277062627?j=3DeyJ1IjoiNXFxeXF4In0.h9dEDbGj64cTNudluPwbMY= WklSu8UKGoFv6eWS-HyoA ] train elite AI engineers in ten weeks: 80-100 hours= a week of building, a guaranteed $200K job offer at the end, costs paid en= tirely by employers.=20 At the other, institutions like St. John=E2=80=99s College [ https://substa= ck.com/redirect/e1b483ea-1505-4ee7-90a9-a0f6609b42a3?j=3DeyJ1IjoiNXFxeXF4In= 0.h9dEDbGj64cTNudluPwbMYWklSu8UKGoFv6eWS-HyoA ] run intensive liberal arts = programs built on sustained attention and close reading, with no AI in sigh= t.=20 Arizona State [ https://substack.com/redirect/7d94b31f-d050-4a03-8ca0-8d801= e0484b7?j=3DeyJ1IjoiNXFxeXF4In0.h9dEDbGj64cTNudluPwbMYWklSu8UKGoFv6eWS-HyoA= ] has embedded AI from coursework to advising and has struck partnerships = with a number of high-profile AI companies, but the core teaching model has= n=E2=80=99t changed.=20 The University of Austin [ https://substack.com/redirect/e505bde8-10db-4c33= -9ba6-a8b5e7748a69?j=3DeyJ1IjoiNXFxeXF4In0.h9dEDbGj64cTNudluPwbMYWklSu8UKGo= Fv6eWS-HyoA ] has proposed splitting the day between device-free seminars a= nd intensive AI work.=20 Meanwhile, the bulk of the higher-education system is either banning AI fro= m the classroom or pretending that it doesn=E2=80=99t exist. These questions are not new. They go back to the founding of the first Amer= ican colleges and European research universities.=20 In partnership with Liberty Fund [ https://substack.com/redirect/6bb36734-b= 714-42ba-be4d-167abaadd079?j=3DeyJ1IjoiNXFxeXF4In0.h9dEDbGj64cTNudluPwbMYWk= lSu8UKGoFv6eWS-HyoA ], Cosmos held a seminar to think through them with a g= roup of founders, scholars, and institution-builders. The participants incl= uded philosophers from UT Austin and Ohio State, researchers from MIT Media= Lab, RAND, and leading AI labs, education policymakers from the Texas High= er Education Coordinating Board, and builders from Fractal Tech and Alpha S= chool. The reading list we assembled traces these tensions to their origins: from = the earliest American proposals for public education through the founding d= ocuments of the research university, the mid-century debates about liberal = learning, and the first serious writing about what computers might do to th= e relationship between learner and knowledge. Session I: The Promise and Crisis of the University We are not the first to ask what the university is for. This session combined five voices, spanning three centuries. Franklin wants= a practical institution for a practical republic. Humboldt argues that the= university exists for the development of the whole person, not the product= ion of useful professionals. Oakeshott insists that education is how a huma= n being becomes one. Bloom diagnoses what happens when that inheritance is = abandoned. And Caplan asks whether the whole enterprise is a $240,000 recei= pt that signals you can show up on time. If Caplan is even partly right, the reformers need to explain what they are= offering that a credential cannot capture. If Humboldt is right, the refor= mers need to explain why two centuries of institutions built on his model e= nded up producing exactly the credentialism he warned against. Benjamin Franklin, Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsilv= ania. (link [ https://substack.com/redirect/4edc1f95-393d-4c88-9154-fbb820a= ab95d?j=3DeyJ1IjoiNXFxeXF4In0.h9dEDbGj64cTNudluPwbMYWklSu8UKGoFv6eWS-HyoA ]= ) Wilhelm von Humboldt, =E2=80=9COn the Internal and External Organization of= the Higher Academic Institutions in Berlin=E2=80=9D. (link [ https://subst= ack.com/redirect/4e500969-9442-4aee-958e-178a0b1551f7?j=3DeyJ1IjoiNXFxeXF4I= n0.h9dEDbGj64cTNudluPwbMYWklSu8UKGoFv6eWS-HyoA ]) Michael Oakeshott, The Voice of Liberal Learning, Introduction. Allan Bloom, =E2=80=9COur Listless Universities.=E2=80=9D (link [ https://s= ubstack.com/redirect/b7627f34-0652-4ed3-aeb5-8d01838935cc?j=3DeyJ1IjoiNXFxe= XF4In0.h9dEDbGj64cTNudluPwbMYWklSu8UKGoFv6eWS-HyoA ]) Bryan Caplan, The Case Against Education, Chapter 1, =E2=80=9CThe Magic of = Education.=E2=80=9D Session II: What Formation Requires If the first session asked what the university is for, the second focused o= n what actually changes a person. Weil makes the strongest claim: attention= is all you need. Klein argues that liberal education requires putting your= own opinions genuinely at risk, and that the resistance to doing so is roo= ted in something specifically human: we build our identities on what we thi= nk we know. Gadamer argues that practical wisdom cannot be taught as a curr= iculum; it grows out of ethos, the character already formed by living in a = particular community. But what if the boundaries of the person aren=E2=80=99t where we think they= are? Clark and Chalmers ask whether cognition is even confined to the skul= l. If the mind extends into the tools and environments we think with, what = counts as =E2=80=9Cthe student=E2=80=9D? Shanahan complicates the picture f= urther: LLMs create a compelling illusion of understanding, but they are fu= ndamentally unlike us. If formation requires genuine encounter with other m= inds, what happens when the most available interlocutor is a machine? Simone Weil, Waiting for God, =E2=80=9CReflections on the Right Use of Scho= ol Studies with a View to the Love of God.=E2=80=9D Jacob Klein, =E2=80=9CThe Idea of Liberal Education=E2=80=9D in The Goals o= f Higher Education, ed. W.D. Weatherford, Jr. Hans-Georg Gadamer, =E2=80=9CThe Socratic Question and Aristotle=E2=80=9D, = Continental Philosophy Review. Andy Clark and David Chalmers, =E2=80=9CThe Extended Mind=E2=80=9D, Analysi= s. (link [ https://substack.com/redirect/44a18498-8e31-4683-abfc-a9cc330070= e2?j=3DeyJ1IjoiNXFxeXF4In0.h9dEDbGj64cTNudluPwbMYWklSu8UKGoFv6eWS-HyoA ]) Murray Shanahan, =E2=80=9CTalking about Large Language Models=E2=80=9D, Com= munications of the ACM. (link [ https://substack.com/redirect/489b9c48-d146= -4804-9058-684335225e92?j=3DeyJ1IjoiNXFxeXF4In0.h9dEDbGj64cTNudluPwbMYWklSu= 8UKGoFv6eWS-HyoA ]) Session III: The Institutional Question Good ideas about education are easy. Institutions that embody them are hard= =2E This session focused on the gap. Je= fferson proposes education as grafting= : implanting something new onto the wild stock of human nature. Newman argu= es that the value of a university lies in the sheer density of its intellec= tual community, that students gain from living among those who represent th= e whole circle of knowledge even if they can never study it all. Karlsson brings this into the present. His argument is sobering: AI tutors = will be held back by culture, rather than technology. Motivated learners em= bedded in high-growth communities will use AI to accelerate, while everyone= else will use it to avoid difficulty. The real challenge will be building = strong cultural norms against taking the path of least resistance. Thomas Jefferson, =E2=80=9CDraft of the Rockfish Gap Report of the Universi= ty of Virginia.=E2=80=9D (link [ https://substack.com/redirect/5d89ea8c-9f8= 3-445e-9bde-7792c08e54f9?j=3DeyJ1IjoiNXFxeXF4In0.h9dEDbGj64cTNudluPwbMYWklS= u8UKGoFv6eWS-HyoA ]) John Henry Newman, The Idea of a University, Discourse 5, =E2=80=9CKnowledg= e its Own End.=E2=80=9D (link [ https://substack.com/redirect/9925439a-e700= -48ca-a261-a1c1bfdbe0c4?j=3DeyJ1IjoiNXFxeXF4In0.h9dEDbGj64cTNudluPwbMYWklSu= 8UKGoFv6eWS-HyoA ]) Henrik Karlsson, =E2=80=9CAI tutors will be held back by culture.=E2=80=9D = (link [ https://substack.com/redirect/e1489261-3312-4388-95ac-911a10b1278c?= j=3DeyJ1IjoiNXFxeXF4In0.h9dEDbGj64cTNudluPwbMYWklSu8UKGoFv6eWS-HyoA ]) Session IV: Education and the Machine This session turned directly to the question of what technology does to thi= nking. Licklider, writing in 1960, imagined a partnership: machines handle = the routine cognitive work, freeing humans for insight and decision. Papert= envisaged a more profound interplay. He argued that when a child learns to= program, the relationship between learner and knowledge is fundamentally t= ransformed. The child is no longer receiving explanations but building thin= gs, and the building changes how she thinks. Matuschak and Nielsen pick up the thread sixty years later and find it fray= ed. The pioneering visions of tools for thought are treated as nostalgia in= technology circles. There is little determined effort to build tools that = genuinely transform how people understand. The discussion focused on whethe= r the current wave of AI represented a chance to revive the Licklider-Paper= t vision or whether tools for thought were likely to become an even more di= stant memory. JCR Licklider, =E2=80=9CMan-Computer Symbiosis,=E2=80=9D IRE Transactions o= n Human Factors in Electronics. Seymour Papert, Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas, Ch. 1. Andy Matuschak and Michael Nielsen, =E2=80=9CHow can we develop transformat= ive tools for thought?=E2=80=9D (link [ https://substack.com/redirect/f219e= ced-3b00-4057-a785-11e7193aa767?j=3DeyJ1IjoiNXFxeXF4In0.h9dEDbGj64cTNudluPw= bMYWklSu8UKGoFv6eWS-HyoA ]) Session V: Building the New Academy The final session focused on what comes next. Flexner=E2=80=99s defense of = useless knowledge, written from the Institute for Advanced Study, is the pu= rest case for protecting inquiry from the demand for application. Bloom=E2= =80=99s portrait of Hutchins at UChicago shows what it looks like when some= one actually tries to build an institution around these convictions, and th= e political will it requires. Simondon challenges the premise that technolo= gy and culture are opposed, arguing that the hostility between them is a si= gn of ignorance. Engelbart closes the list with a constraint AI is testing: =E2=80=9CThe ent= ire effect of an individual on the world stems essentially from what he can= transmit to the world through his limited motor channels.=E2=80=9D As thos= e channels widen, the bottleneck shifts to whether you have something worth= transmitting. Alexander Flexner, =E2=80=9CThe Usefulness of Useless Knowledge,=E2=80=9D H= arper=E2=80=99s Magazine. (link [ https://substack.com/redirect/03dd197b-92= e4-4d93-b297-24cfbe8d3f91?j=3DeyJ1IjoiNXFxeXF4In0.h9dEDbGj64cTNudluPwbMYWkl= Su8UKGoFv6eWS-HyoA ]) Allan Bloom, =E2=80=9CHutchins=E2=80=99s Idea of a University,=E2=80=9D Tim= es Literary Supplement. Gilbert Simondon, On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects, =E2=80=9CI= ntroduction.=E2=80=9D Douglas C. Engelbart, =E2=80=9CAugmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Fra= mework,=E2=80=9D SRI Summary Report AFOSR-3223. Is there an institution that protects the conditions for deep formation and= teaches students to master the tools that will define their century? Cosmos Institute [ https://substack.com/redirect/4d8bc5d0-cf8b-48c7-bd96-31= b8dbbdeaf6?j=3DeyJ1IjoiNXFxeXF4In0.h9dEDbGj64cTNudluPwbMYWklSu8UKGoFv6eWS-H= yoA ] is the Academy for Philosopher-Builders, with programs, grants, event= s, and fellowships for those building AI for human flourishing Unsubscribe https://substack.com/redirect/2/eyJlIjoiaHR0cHM6Ly9ibG9nLmNvc21= vcy1pbnN0aXR1dGUub3JnL2FjdGlvbi9kaXNhYmxlX2VtYWlsP3Rva2VuPWV5SjFjMlZ5WDJsa0= lqb3pORGN5TlRnNU9EVXNJbkJ2YzNSZmFXUWlPakU1TWpNeE1ETXdOeXdpYVdGMElqb3hOemMwT= mpJME1URTVMQ0psZUhBaU9qRTRNRFl4TmpBeE1Ua3NJbWx6Y3lJNkluQjFZaTB5TWpJMU56azBJ= aXdpYzNWaUlqb2laR2x6WVdKc1pWOWxiV0ZwYkNKOS5GVm9RYmYzSXNIOWFhbmhYVGN0US1tS2t= KU0c2eVVPd2w3VkZyV0RsRG44IiwicCI6MTkyMzEwMzA3LCJzIjoyMjI1Nzk0LCJmIjp0cnVlLC= J1IjozNDcyNTg5ODUsImlhdCI6MTc3NDYyNDExOSwiZXhwIjoyMDkwMjAwMTE5LCJpc3MiOiJwd= WItMCIsInN1YiI6ImxpbmstcmVkaXJlY3QifQ.5Jdp6oIehzQUaC7FK5_PCWCxJZNdBlxVxBkoL= _XhFwQ? --b4ddad7b8492212195330b8234651f7e6807ceaad12f0ca67549f51868eb Content-Type: text/html; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Reading List: AI and the= Future of Education
What anyone building a new university needs= to read
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<= table role=3D"presentation" width=3D"100%" border=3D"0" cellspacing=3D"0" c= ellpadding=3D"0">
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Reading List: AI and the Future of Edu= cation

What anyone building a new university needs to read

Cosmos Institute
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READ IN APP3D""
 
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A Reading from Homer by Lawrence Alma-Tadema (= 1885)

The university is under = siege.

Harvard, sitting on a $57 billion endowment, s= lashed 75 percent of its science and 60 percent of its humanities PhD admis= sions. Indiana mandated the elimination of over 400 degree programs at its = public universities. Classics, comparative literature, and foreign language= s at the state flagship are gone. At the University of Tulsa, a philosopher= bu= ilt a Great Books honors college from scratch, grew enrolment 500= percent, and attracted a quarter of each freshman class to a curriculum ru= nning from Homer to Arendt. The university removed her.

Sixty-four small colleges have closed since 2020, and the demographic = cliff, a 13 percent decline in college-age students projected through 2041,= hasn’t even started.

Meanwhile, 52 percent of = recent graduates are working jobs that don’t require the degree that = they borrowed $30,000 to get. Palantir CEO Alex Karp is telling young people<= /a> to skip elite colleges entirely, saying the only paths left are s= killed trades or neurodivergence.

AI will accelerate= this. The skills the degree was supposed to impart – researching, an= alyzing, drafting, coding – are increasingly things a machine can do.=

As the old institutions break down, a new generation of ed= ucational founders is running experiments. New schools are emerging, each m= aking a different bet on two questions that anyone building an educational = institution has to answer:

These two axes produce a landscap= e.

At one end, programs like Gauntlet train el= ite AI engineers in ten weeks: 80-100 hours a week of building, a guarantee= d $200K job offer at the end, costs paid entirely by employers.

=

At the other, institutions like St. John’s College run intensive liberal arts programs built on sustained attention an= d close reading, with no AI in sight.

Arizona State has embedded AI from coursework to advising and has struck partnerships = with a number of high-profile AI companies, but the core teaching model has= n’t changed.

The University of Austin has pro= posed splitting the day between device-free seminars and intensive AI work.=

Meanwhile, the bulk of the higher-education system= is either banning AI from the classroom or pretending that it doesn’= t exist.

3D""

These questions are not new. They go back= to the founding of the first American colleges and European research unive= rsities.

In partnership with Liberty Fund, Co= smos held a seminar to think through them with a group of founders, scholar= s, and institution-builders. The participants included philosophers from UT= Austin and Ohio State, researchers from MIT Media Lab, RAND, and leading A= I labs, education policymakers from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating= Board, and builders from Fractal Tech and Alpha School.

The reading list we assembled traces these tensions to their origins: = from the earliest American proposals for public education through the found= ing documents of the research university, the mid-century debates about lib= eral learning, and the first serious writing about what computers might do = to the relationship between learner and knowledge.

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Session I: The Promise and Crisis of the University

W= e are not the first to ask what the university is for.

This= session combined five voices, spanning three centuries. Franklin wants a p= ractical institution for a practical republic. Humboldt argues that the uni= versity exists for the development of the whole person, not the production = of useful professionals. Oakeshott insists that education is how a human be= ing becomes one. Bloom diagnoses what happens when that inheritance is aban= doned. And Caplan asks whether the whole enterprise is a $240,000 receipt t= hat signals you can show up on time.

If Caplan is even part= ly right, the reformers need to explain what they are offering that a crede= ntial cannot capture. If Humboldt is right, the reformers need to explain w= hy two centuries of institutions built on his model ended up producing exac= tly the credentialism he warned against.

  • Benjamin F= ranklin, Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsil= vania. (link)

  • Wilhelm von Humboldt, “On the Internal an= d External Organization of the Higher Academic Institutions in Berlin”= ;. (link)

  • Michael Oakeshott, The Voice of Liberal Learning, Introduction.

  • Allan Bloom, “Our Listless Universities.” (= lin= k)

  • Bryan Caplan, The Case Against Education, Ch= apter 1, “The Magic of Education.”

Session II: What Formation Requires

I= f the first session asked what the university is for, the second focused on= what actually changes a person. Weil makes the strongest claim: attention = is all you need. Klein argues that liberal education requires putting your = own opinions genuinely at risk, and that the resistance to doing so is root= ed in something specifically human: we build our identities on what we thin= k we know. Gadamer argues that practical wisdom cannot be taught as a curri= culum; it grows out of ethos, the character already formed by living in a p= articular community.

But what if the boundaries of the pers= on aren’t where we think they are? Clark and Chalmers ask whether cog= nition is even confined to the skull. If the mind extends into the tools an= d environments we think with, what counts as “the student”? Sha= nahan complicates the picture further: LLMs create a compelling illusion of= understanding, but they are fundamentally unlike us. If formation requires= genuine encounter with other minds, what happens when the most available i= nterlocutor is a machine?

  • Simone Weil, W= aiting for God, “Reflections on the Right Use of School St= udies with a View to the Love of God.”

  • Jacob Klein, “The Idea of Li= beral Education” in The Goals of Higher Education, ed. W.D. Weatherford, Jr.

  • Hans-Georg Gadamer, “The Socratic Question = and Aristotle”, Continental Philosophy Review.<= /span>

  • Andy= Clark and David Chalmers, “The Extended Mind”, Anal= ysis. (link)

  • Murray Shanahan, “Talking about Large Lang= uage Models”, Communications of the ACM. (link= )

Session III: The Institutional Q= uestion

3D""
=

Good ideas about education are easy. Institutions that e= mbody them are hard. This session focused on the gap. Jefferson proposes ed= ucation as grafting: implanting something new onto the wild stock of human = nature. Newman argues that the value of a university lies in the sheer dens= ity of its intellectual community, that students gain from living among tho= se who represent the whole circle of knowledge even if they can never study= it all.

Karlsson brings this into the present. His argumen= t is sobering: AI tutors will be held back by culture, rather than technolo= gy. Motivated learners embedded in high-growth communities will use AI to a= ccelerate, while everyone else will use it to avoid difficulty. The real ch= allenge will be building strong cultural norms against taking the path of l= east resistance.

  • Thomas Jefferson, “Draft of = the Rockfish Gap Report of the University of Virginia.” (link= )

  • Jo= hn Henry Newman, The Idea of a University, Discourse = 5, “Knowledge its Own End.” (link)

  • Henrik Karlsson, “A= I tutors will be held back by culture.” (link)

    • =

Session IV: Education and the Machine<= /h3>
<= td style=3D"text-align: center;">
3D""
<= p style=3D"margin: 0 0 20px 0;color: rgb(54,55,55);line-height: 26px;font-s= ize: 16px;">This session turned directly to the question of what technology= does to thinking. Licklider, writing in 1960, imagined a partnership: mach= ines handle the routine cognitive work, freeing humans for insight and deci= sion. Papert envisaged a more profound interplay. He argued that when a chi= ld learns to program, the relationship between learner and knowledge is fun= damentally transformed. The child is no longer receiving explanations but b= uilding things, and the building changes how she thinks.

Ma= tuschak and Nielsen pick up the thread sixty years later and find it frayed= =2E The pioneering visions of tools for= thought are treated as nostalgia in t= echnology circles. There is little determined effort to build tools that ge= nuinely transform how people understand. The discussion focused on whether = the current wave of AI represented a chance to revive the Licklider-Papert = vision or whether tools for thought were likely to become an even more dist= ant memory.

  • JCR Licklider, “Man-Computer Symb= iosis,” IRE Transactions on Human Factors in Electronics.

  • Seymour Papert, Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powe= rful Ideas, Ch. 1.

  • Andy Matuschak and Michael Nielsen, “How ca= n we develop transformative tools for thought?” (link)

Session V: Building the New Academy

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The final session focused on what comes next. Flexner&#= 8217;s defense of useless knowledge, written from the Institute for Advance= d Study, is the purest case for protecting inquiry from the demand for appl= ication. Bloom’s portrait of Hutchins at UChicago shows what it looks= like when someone actually tries to build an institution around these conv= ictions, and the political will it requires. Simondon challenges the premis= e that technology and culture are opposed, arguing that the hostility betwe= en them is a sign of ignorance.

Engelbart closes the list w= ith a constraint AI is testing: “The entire effect of an individual o= n the world stems essentially from what he can transmit to the world throug= h his limited motor channels.” As those channels widen, the bottlenec= k shifts to whether you have something worth transmitting.

  • link)

    <= /li>

  • Allan Bloom, &#= 8220;Hutchins’s Idea of a University,” Times Literar= y Supplement.

  • Gilbert Simondon, On the Mode of Existence = of Technical Objects, “Introduction.”

  • Douglas C. Engelbart, &#= 8220;Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework,” SRI Summary= Report AFOSR-3223.

Is there an institution that = protects the conditions for deep formation and teaches students to master t= he tools that will define their century?

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Cosmos Ins= titute is the Academy for Philosopher-Builders, with programs, gr= ants, events, and fellowships for those building AI for human flourishing

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