None of this is an accident. Neoliberalism actively reinforced the silo model because isolated specialists who see only their own narrow domain are far easier to manage, market to, and exploit than people who ask questions across disciplines and understand how the system actually works. The result has been generations of workers and a current political class that knows a great deal about very little, and is now being outcompeted by a machine that doesn't need a salary, a pension, or a lunch break.
The skills that survive the AI age are not the ones Britain's institutions are teaching. They are:
- Curiosity, which is the ability to ask good questions rather than store correct answers.
- Critical thinking, which is the ability to challenge what the machine produces and ask what is missing, and
- Care, which is the recognition that human well-being is interdependent and that no silo ever captured that truth.
A politics of care embraces these ideas. It is not a soft alternative to economic policy. It is the only rational response to the world that is already arriving.
This is the audio version:
The Debate Ammunition for this video is available here.
This is the transcript:
The world is trapped in silos. We constantly ask people what they do. We expect people to define themselves by just one role. We place people into categories and boxes. Some silos are social constructions, others exist only in our own minds. And education is also built around these silos.
Children are taught separate subjects. English is separated from maths. Sciences are separated from history and geography. The arts are treated as another distinct category. And knowledge is divided into compartments, and my suggestion to you is that that is dangerous.
The result is increasing specialisation in education, work, and everywhere. And as a consequence, we create a very large number of specialists; people who know a reasonable amount about not very much, whose expertise becomes narrower over time as boundaries between subjects become stronger and connections between subjects are lost. And AI is going to expose the weaknesses in this model.
Specialists now face competition from machines.
AI can access what looks like knowledge almost instantly.
And AI can find patterns faster than many people.
AI often knows at least as much as specialists now, and the value of narrow expertise is being challenged.
So why have silos failed us then? The age of AI forces us to ask that question.
Knowledge alone is no longer enough. Different human skills are becoming more important. Education needs a new purpose. We need to rethink how and what we teach.
Curiosity should come first in every form of education. Curiosity is about the desire to ask questions, and we need to implant it in young people; we all need to have it.
Curiosity is also about the skill of framing questions in a way that delivers the answers we need. Good questions matter more than stored answers, then in this modern world, and AI makes questioning more valuable than ever. If we don't ask it the right questions, we'll never get close to the right answers, and curious people will then be essential in the future. This is the paramount skill that everyone is going to need in the AI age.
And critical thinking also matters more than ever now. AI answers must always be challenged. It's never okay to accept an answer. The most important thing in life is to have answers that can be questioned, not questions that can be answered. Asking questions of answers is the way in which knowledge is advanced. And so we need to be sure that we understand how AI, for example, reaches its conclusions to be certain that they are right.
We need to ask whether better answers still exist, even though it's already given us one. And we need to identify weaknesses in any analysis, and most especially that which AI will provide us with. We need to know how those weaknesses can be addressed, and that is why critical thinking matters.
We need to also ask whether the most important questions are missing.
This is a skill I was taught years ago. A wise person told me, whenever you are reading a document, a report, or anything else, ask what isn't there? What was left out deliberately? What was it that the person who wrote this report did not want you to know or did not want you to ask? This is vital. What is missing? is the question we should always ask.
Every argument always leaves something out. Every analysis has limitations, and critical appraisal requires more than acceptance. Critical thinking begins with the challenge: what is missing?
At the same time, we should teach people to care. This builds on the natural empathy we see in almost every child. Most children naturally care about each other. They share with each other. They play with each other. They're lifelong friends after three minutes in the same playgroup. Education should nurture that instinct. Care should be seen as a strength, and that's because our well-being depends on others and our ability to relate to them. Care is not just an emotional response, then. Care is a rational response to a reason for being, which is dependent upon the existence of others.
All human lives are interconnected. Other people's well-being affects our own. Pretending otherwise is absurd, and yet that is what neoliberalism does.
Neoliberalism reinforces the silos I began talking about at the beginning of this video. Those which force us to be isolated as individuals. Those things which are designed to separate us, to make us look different. That is all about suggesting that personal success is the only thing that matters in a neoliberal system, because that is it.
Because neoliberalism downplays social connection. It ignores our dependence on each other. It embeds silo thinking in education and work, and that's where this thinking comes from.
I've always disliked silos. I've always disliked being pigeonholed. I have valued the fact that I've been able to work in a multidisciplinary way throughout much of my career. Some of my work is about economics. Some is about accounting. Some is about tax. Some of it is about politics and society. Some of my work is about care and human relationships.
And the interaction between those things is what matters most of all, and that's why I think people should not be put in boxes. Labels can become constraints. Human potential crosses disciplines. Creativity often comes from connections, the bits between subjects and ideas, and not just from the straightforward observation of a particular fact in isolation. New ideas emerge between subjects and not just in them in that case. Freedom requires the room to explore.
A politics of care would then break down silos. It would recognise our interdependence. It would value curiosity, and it would value questioning. It would value critical thinking, and it would value the challenge implicit within it. It would value empathy, and it would value connection.
It would help us to get beyond silos altogether, and that is what life has to be in the post-AI era. We're in that era now. Let's not pretend AI is going away, so let's talk about what it is that we need to survive in it. And the first thing we need to do if we are to survive in this era of AI is to break down silos and to create a very different form of knowledge. One that cares, one that challenges, one that involves critical thinking and one that is curious. These are the skills we need to survive in this world now.
That's what I think. What do you think? There's a poll down below. Let us have your comments. And please do share this video if you like it, and tell us that you do just that by ticking the boxes down below. And if you want to buy us a coffee, we'd be very grateful.
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A couple of points…….
I live down the road from Laycock, home of Fox-Talbot the ‘inventor’ of Modern Photography. It was said that he was one of the last generation that were capable of having at least a grasp of the sum total of human knowlege – OK White European male etc as after that it became so vast few if any could bestride it all. In a similar vein James Lovelock of Gaia theory was able to describe himself as a ‘scientist’ because he was able to cover all the disciplines, something that could never be mastered these days.
Then there was a comment that a Cousin of mine made – a decade or so older than us and doing Physics that anyone who did history ended up as a Marxist or a Misfit – ie you either realised how badly most people had been treated throughout history OR completely lacked insight or empathy.
So how do we balance passing on the entire sum of human knowledge with a deeper human insight?
Finally we share the same interest, and both of us, no pun intended have ‘narrowed’ our interest in the subject. I have concentrated my interest in railways on to two lines, the Somerset and Dorset and the Mid Suffolk Light Railway – there are three books (I think!) covering the latter which I have and I have more than 2/3rds of what was written about the former so its possible to get my head around the ins and outs of traffic returns from Mendlesham should I so choose – seriously though have a look at Blagdon (Wrington Vale Light Railway) in particular around 1922.
So there is perhaps a natural tendency to concentrate on just one thing and try to master it
The Middy? I was brought up very near what woul;d have been its Ipswich (Westerfield) terminus and have always had a love of the line. It should, however, have been built as a Belgian style rural tramway, IMHO.
You will fnd most of Ivo Peter’s books and the S&D on my living room shelves.
“We built an education system, an economy, and an entire political culture around a single skill, the ability to store and retrieve knowledge”
No – let me correct that for you…..
“We built an education system, an economy, and an entire political culture around a single skill, the ability to bullshit”
Mr. Parry, language, please. 🙂
Your point about silos is absolutely correct from my experience. The thing is, it helps to reinforce individual partiality towards processes and designs which then introduces an element of infallibility or too much faith in what one is doing. The results can be and often are dislocation from reality that renders design and process irrelevant and ineffective.
My children attend a school that follows the international Baccalaureate, which places more emphasis on inquiry, independent research, global awareness and making links between subjects than the mainstream syllabus does.
It rewards all-round strength, rather than specialisation, which I think is important at a young age (a point made by David Epstein in his book Range).
Unfortunately the government has recently reduced funding for the IB.
Might we help ourselves by learning from the educational attitudes, structures, systems and theories of Finland?
https://www.globalsociety.earth/post/finland-s-educational-success-a-global-model-to-follow?gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=19232851914&gbraid=0AAAAAo8c0P2dN5HnUy2LJeWb80yCpu821&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIn4biiqKVlQMVNJZQBh0iIAWWEAAYASAAEgL7W_D_BwE
Yes, in a word. They have got a great deal right.
Couldn’t agree more, I use the term pigeon-holing. If you have ever had the misfortune to have dealings with the DWP that system is particularly riddled with it, everyone must fit to an average / normality / desired outcome, including the staff. The DWP being a pigeon hole in itself.
I answered the question posed with a vote for “Curiosity and asking better questions” as for me curiosity leads to inspiration and creativity, but also acts as one of the foundations to critical thinking. Is that wrong?
Allied to critical thinking and questioning is the ability to work co-operatively – effective team working. This isn’t just a UK problem.
A friend who was teaching at an elite Chinese University said that his students were completely bamboozled when he set them tasks to complete together as the extreme competitiveness to get in and 1 child policy had made this an alien concept.
In my own experience working in India I strongly demonstrated with a fellow team member who was keener on doing another team member down than collaborating. In this instance misogyny compounded the problem. These ultra competive societies breed dysfunction.
Critical thinking requires some level of memory and learning to be effective as that creates the cognitive dissonance when presented with a falsehood.
You can analyse a subject you don’t know, to find out those contradictions, but even there it is helpful to have a base idea about what should trigger skepticism.
To me that’s one of the dangers of AI and the ability to look up any information – we simply don’t memorise as much as we used to, and that leaves many susceptible to liars and fraud.
From ancient times there has been the commentary that writing didn’t create an elixir of learning, it created an elixir of reminding. For millennia it’s been recognised that internalised memory has an effect separate to external access to knowledge, but increasingly we’ve forgotten this.
This means that on testing we should look at ability to use tools like AI, but we should still look at confirming internalised learning. In most scenarios we still need to have a sense of what’s missing at a glance. AI can help build those analyses to learn those insights, but we still need to learn to do the Critical Thinking party efficiently.
Thank you
Let’s start with an agreement; people are different. Some are naturally drawn to words, to music, to graphic arts, to caring/protecting, to maths, to science, and this is apparent early on. One advantage of teaching separate subjects at secondary-school level is that such people are enabled to pick up on, and follow, their natural bent. These people are often the creatives, and I don’t believe that creativity in the deep sense will be matched by AI. (Possibility of diversion here, as to what is creativity, but I’ll resist) Everyone has some degree of creativity; witness the fact that totally new sentences are produced by everyone, some of the time. But I think it should always be encouraged. Possibly also eccentricity should be encouraged in parallel, so that fewer people feel constrained by peer pressure?
Its all of the top 3 – you should have offered an “all of the above” option so I haven’t voted
We are limited in the number of options we can offer.
I hope this isn’t too simplistic a position to take, but I’m not convinced that breaking away from training specialists is the best move when dealing with AI.
A Jack-of-All-Trades, Master-of-None is unlikely to have the expertise to scrutinise AI closely on all issues – or even any single issue. Specialists are closer to asking the right questions in their subject area, addressing AI’s weaknesses in that area and foretelling consequences of any recommended actions than somebody with just a working knowledge of that subject.
I’d hope that all experts will be trained to question and challenge AI’s conclusions and data in their own particular area—and have the political clout to make their findings matter . I certainly don’t want experts to disappear.
My problem with specialists is they rarely know much beyond them.
AI is a tool, is all. Like a wood plane, badly used it can make a right mess. I mainly use AI as an aid & in some cases hypothesis tester.
As for silos – agree. I have a Nat Grid document discussing fault levels (not enough fault levels in some cases – apparently). It is clear that the writer did not understand the protection systems that Net Grid uses on its 400kV lines and why this reduces the relevance of “not enough”. My Bx-based “group” in most cases kicks off a line of enquiry by asking: “what are we looking at here – exactly” – one of them finds people who lack curiosity “frightening”.
Much to agree with
Actually it’s not a case of one or the other. Every organisation, including government needs generalists and specialists.Generalists are needed to see across a mix of complexities and set strategic direction. Specialists provide specific advice. The whole thing won’t work without collaboration and the exchange of experiences and perspectives, trust and .mutual respect. Your other post about truth applies
The University sector is actively moving in the opposite direction. If anyone feels like signing this petition to save Philosopy at Dundee, it would be appreciated.
https://www.change.org/p/save-the-philosophy-programme-at-dundee-university
Signed.
Thanks.