Will Generation Beta Be Capable of Deep Thinking?

Thinking about: Artificial intelligence

I am a Boomer, a member of the Baby Boomer generation. Over the course of my life, I have acquired many skills, including the ability to use a slide rule, drive a car with a manual transmission, program in Fortran, and speak Spanish and French. Regrettably, these skills have atrophied. Consequently, when I am in France and try to utter a simple four-word sentence, there is a good chance that one of them will come out in Spanish: “Où est le baño?” At the same time as these skills were deteriorating, however, I acquired new skills, such as the ability to surf the web, use email, use search engines, create websites, and in the last two years, write artificial intelligence (AI) prompts.

In a recently published essay, I described my use of AI to copyedit the documents I write, and in my previous post, I explained my reluctance to use AI as a ghostwriter. Yes, it takes time and effort to write down my ideas, but by doing so I gain deeper insights into what I am writing about. It is one thing to believe a claim. It is quite another to understand the claim you are making, and the best way to gain this understanding is to articulate it.

Writing down your thoughts has other benefits. By doing so, you improve your mental stamina—your ability to spend long periods engaged in focused thought. If you are a Thinker-in-training, you might lack this stamina, and as a result might abandon an attempt to articulate your thoughts after only a minute or two.

If you lacked physical stamina, you would know what to do: embark on a program of physical training. You might, for example, make a point of routinely going out to run—or, if you are truly out of shape, of going out to walk and, over the coming months, increasing the distance you walk as well as your pace. If you instead lack mental stamina, you need to embark on a program of mental training. This will involve doing things that you find mentally challenging, and then increasing the time spent doing them.

It is one thing to want to be physically fit; it is quite another to commit to a fitness program. The same is true with respect to mental fitness. Do you want to become a Thinker? Then you must spend more time engaged in deep thought. There’s simply no other way.

---

Our culture likes to coin names for generations. Here are some widely accepted generational monikers.

• Baby Boomers: born 1946–1964

• Generation X: born 1965–1980

• Millennials (aka Generation Y): born 1981–1996

• Generation Z: born 1997–2012

• Generation Alpha: born 2013–present

There isn’t any science behind this nomenclature. Late in a generation, potential names for the next generation start popping up, often suggested by authors who want the honor—and book sales!—that come from christening a generation. Once a name sticks, sociologists (and authors seeking book sales) attempt to distill the essence of that generation. Boomers, for example, were the television generation, Millennials were the internet generation, and Gen Alpha is the social media generation.

Since the average generation lifespan is roughly 15 years, Gen Alpha is nearing its end. The next generation has not “officially” been named, but I am going to refer to it as Generation Beta. (After all, beta follows alpha in the Greek alphabet.) I am also going to be so bold as to predict that in the 2030s, Gen Beta will be thought of as “the AI generation,” because of the impact AI will have had on their lives.

I worry for Gen Beta. In particular, I fear that their thinking ability will be woefully underdeveloped. Why invest the time and mental effort required to engage in deep thought, when AI can do it for them? There will no longer be a need for them to write math proofs, computer code, or essays. Not only will they lack the skills necessary to engage in these activities, but even if they acquire them, they will lack the mental stamina necessary to employ them. I’m struggling to come up with a polite word to describe their mental capacity. “Slow” is what comes to mind.

I sincerely hope that this prediction is mistaken—and truth be told, I suspect that it will be—but if it does come true, our descendants, insofar as they are intellectually capable of doing so, will look back and marvel at how things have come full circle. We humans evolved from ignorant apes into a species capable of deep thought; as a result of our deep thinking, we were able to create AI; as the result of creating it, we were able to outsource our deep thinking to it; and as the result of this outsourcing, we lost our ability to engage in deep thinking.

It would be pretty ironic—and maybe the closing chapter of humanity as well?