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David Christopher Lane, Ph.D, is a Professor of Philosophy at Mt. San Antonio College and Founder of the MSAC Philosophy Group. He is the author of several books, including The Sound Current Tradition (Cambridge University Press, 2022) and the graphic novel, The Cult of the Seven Sages, translated into Tamil (Kannadhasan Pathippagam, 2024). His website is neuralsurfer.com

The Sound of Eight Waters

Kiyoshi's Adventure to Understand Master Akio's Last Koan

David Lane

For the past eight months, I have been involved in teaching a philosophy course at my college focusing on the future of Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality technologies. I am keenly aware that we are entering a new way of approaching education, one where we will have to learn to be creative conductors of information, packaging data in ways that in years past was unimaginable.

The title of a new essay I am finishing up, summarizes best this new meta point of view, naturally with certain key caveats.

I have no doubt that the way to deal with A.I. is head-on. Already I have witnessed in my various classes remarkable work by my students that was simply not possible or feasible before, allowing them to move beyond rote learning into becoming digital artists and masters of a variety of tools, from art to music to critical thinking to coding to movies to augmenting virtual landscapes.

What would take years in an analog world now takes just days, sometimes even minutes.

Yes, there is much to worry about concerning A.I., but Pandora's Box has already been opened and there is no closing it now.

Thus, we either surrender to our A.I. overloads or develop a symbiotic relationship with it and actualize its potential use for the betterment of humankind.

Just to give one example. I have many students who cannot afford audiobooks and several who are sight impaired. So, what I have done is use A.I. tools to create over 800 audiobooks on the Neuralsurfer YouTube channel for free, which is accessible to anyone, anytime, anywhere. Yes, it has cost me thousands to do such, but the results have been startling since it now allows students to learn by listening, especially in a world where our attention is so scattered.

I will be sharing some results from this new approach in the weeks and months to come. I thought this little anime story would be a good start.