Journal Article

Alignment of the Starlings: Learning With Generative AI

Watson, Sean

2026

Overview

I will argue that answers to normative questions concerning the place of generative AI in learning rest on answers to ontological questions regarding (1) precisely what is happening when a human ‘interacts’ with generative AI and (2) What is distinctive about organic learning as opposed to currently existing ‘machine learning’ (3) What is the relevant context within which we must understand this pedagogic encounter? In order to think clearly about the first of these questions, we are best served by turning to process philosophy to deploy a conception of ‘individuation’ that makes some sense of the human/AI event. In relation to the second question I argue that differences between organic and currently existing machine learning pertain, most importantly, to the question of ‘creativity’. Corporate generative AI is driven by entropic repetition—the death instinct to use Freud's formulation. This is antithetical to creativity in learning and results in profound pedagogic, and political, challenges. There is nothing, in principle, preventing the development of truly creative hybrid AI individuation, however (My position is firmly posthumanist). Rather, it is the location of AI development within the context of the business models of the capitalist extinction event that makes this an unlikely development. The latter's predictive, automating algorithms are inherently antithetical to the animate novelty we value (I have chosen to employ the, strictly descriptive, ‘capitalist extinction event’ to designate out time, and recommend it to others).

• Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Inc
• Subject: Artificial intelligence / Capitalism / Chatbots / Creativity / Death instinct / Extinction / Generative artificial intelligence / Identity formation / Instinct / Machine learning / Neural networks / Politics / Posthumanism / Questions / Repetition / Semantics / Teaching