Cultivating a Convivial Classroom
in the Age of AI

How the Technological Critics of the 20th Century
Can Help Us Wisely Navigate Generative AI in Education

Josh Brake

[email protected]

Assistant Professor of Engineering, Harvey Mudd College
Venture Partner, Praxis

2025-09-10

“Nobody has any idea what to teach young people that will still be relevant in 20 years.”

— Yuval Noah Harari

Popular genAI Tools

ChatGPT

ChatGPT (OpenAI)

Midjourney

Claude (Anthropic)

Gemini (Google)

Perplexity

Copilot (Microsoft)

Deepseek

Apple Intelligence

Figure 1: Popular generative AI tools.

Generative AI is a flexible interpolation function from prompts to continuations

From Brad Delong.

What does that mean?

Flexible — Doesn’t require a specific input. The system can handle any string of words you feed into it.
Interpolation — Creating combinations of things already within the data set.
Function — Has inputs (prompts) and outputs (continuations).

Generative AI is ultimately a sophisticated algorithm

Humans	Computers/Algorithms/LLMs
Write	Process
Think	Process
Reason	Process
Read	Process
Feel	Process
Empathize	Process

Credit: Inspired by and modified from a similar slide from John Warner.

The hurricane that is generative AI hitting the academy

William Warby on Unsplash

What should we do?

The value of a network is in the number of connections

Metcalfe’s Law

The number of connections grows as \(n(n-1)/2\) where \(n\) is the number of nodes.

What is a convivial classroom?

A convivial classroom is one in which the tools, structures, and relationships are oriented toward human flourishing, mutual learning, and creativity, rather than control, efficiency, or a one-way transmission of knowledge.

The things we build are motivated by the stories we believe

Consider the science fiction novels that inspire some of the founders in Silicon Valley:

Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game (Sal Khan)
Ernest Cline, Ready Player One (Mark Zuckerberg)
Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash (Elon Musk)
Isaac Asmiov, Foundation Series (Sergey Brin)
Spike Jonze, Her (Sam Altman)

We walk backwards into the future

Kia whakatōmuri te haere whakamua - Māori Proverb

“I walk backwards into the future with my eyes fixed on my past.”

A lens and a mirror

Five lessons from the technological critics of the 20th century

Ursula Franklin: How are our tools reshaping the way that we do our work?
Jacques Ellul: How have the means become the ends?
Ivan Illich: Are our machines working for us, or are we working for our machines?
Marshal McLuhan: How are the tools we use reshaping the way that we see the world around us?
C. S. Lewis: In our fervor to create ever more powerful tools, are we augmenting ourselves to death?

Ursula Franklin: How are our tools reshaping the way that we do our work?

It is the first kind of specialization, by product, that I call holistic technology, and it is important because it leaves the doer in total control of the process. The opposite is specialization by process; this I call prescriptive technology. It is based on a quite different division of labour. Here, the making or doing of something is broken down into clearly identifiable steps. Each step is carried out by a separate worker, or group of workers, who need to be familiar only with the skills of performing that one step. This is what is normally meant by “division of labour”

Ursula Franklin in The Real World of Technology

Jacques Ellul: How have the means become the ends?

The term technique, as I use it, does not mean machines, technology, or this or that procedure for attaining an end. In our technological society, technique is the totality of methods rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency (for a given stage of development) in every field of human activity.

Jacques Ellul in The Technological Society

Ivan Illich: Are our machines working for us, or are we working for our machines?

The hypothesis was that machines can replace slaves. The evidence shows that, used for this purpose, machines enslave men. Neither a dictatorial proletariat nor a leisure mass can escape the dominion of constantly expanding industrial tools.

The crisis can be solved only if we learn to invert the present deep structure of tools; if we give people tools that guarantee their right to work with high, independent efficiency, thus simultaneously eliminating the need for either slaves or masters and enhancing each person’s range of freedom. People need new tools to work with rather than tools that “work” for them. They need technology to make the most of the energy and imagination each has, rather than more well-programmed energy slaves.

Ivan Illich in Tools for Conviviality

Marshal McLuhan: How are the tools we use reshaping the way that we see the world around us?

Any invention or technology is an extension or self-amputation of our physical bodies, and such extension also demands new ratios or new equilibriums among the other organs and extensions of the body.

Marshall McLuhan in Understanding Media

C. S. Lewis: In our fervor to create ever more powerful tools, are we augmenting ourselves to death?

And all the time—such is the tragi-comedy of our situation—we continue to clamour for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. You can hardly open a periodical without coming across the statement that what our civilization needs is more ‘drive’, or dynamism, or self-sacrifice, or ‘creativity’. In a sort of ghastly simplicity, we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.

C. S. Lewis in The Abolition of Man