Many of us feel a small chill when a machine explains, writes or solves faster than we can. If being clever was what made us feel worth something, what is left? Cleverness was never intelligence. It was a favourite toy, and we built our self-esteem around it. Intelligence is the moment we look at ourselves and say, “Enough, I want to thin down.” The toy is gone, and we are not going anywhere. What would we be if our worth did not rest on being clever?
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[From a conversation between Acharya Prashant and Prof. Prathosh, an artificial intelligence researcher at IISc, 2026. The discussion turns to what AI takes from the ego’s pride in intellect, and what education becomes.]
Prof. Prathosh: See, again, you talk about this ego and all that, and I keep telling people that intelligence is something that we very dearly attach to. And this AI has come up and dissolved that part at least of ego. You cannot say that, you know, you are great because you are intelligent anymore, right? So you have to look for something else as the human trait that is... Right? Because, see, if you look at it, people, I mean, what are the things that people ascribe to, right? That’s why Nachiketa says in Katha, it’s either mostly the intelligence or the kuleenata as they say, you know, that I’ve come in this lineage and all that. That people are egoistic about their lineage, about their material possession. Now, at least the intellectual association is sort of removed. Nobody can claim that they are great because they are intelligent. Okay.
So anyway, the other question that I asked in that video that became too popular is how do we conduct classrooms and pedagogy right now? So I know that you are also interested with the primary education and education in general. Now, there was already a lot of lacuna in the way we conduct pedagogy, right? Because, when we have been through the similar kind of systems and schools and colleges and so on. Now, question is, what are your thoughts on how would education look like in this age?
