Cultivating Socio-Technical Thinkers

Why it matters and how we can do it

Josh Brake

[email protected]

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

2025-03-08

Yuval Noah Harari with Stephen Colbert on The Late Show

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

— Yuval Noah Harari

What not Who Will We Become with AI

Is school more like a factory or a garden?

We have an imagination problem

How are the builders being formed?

We’ve disconnected education from intrinsic value. We’re seeing the consequences.

We largely see the liberal arts as less important than technical training.
Our understanding and articulation of the societal impact of our work is often only surface-deep and simplistic.
We can’t strongly articulate what a better future looks like and how our work contributes to it.
Why are we building?

To what problem is technical training the solution?

The Stanford Hexagons

The structure of school fights against deep interdisciplinary engagement

The spectre of grades looms over everything
The credential becomes the end (Goodhart’s Law)
Specialization creates silos and stifles curious inquiry

How do we (re)cultivate builders?

Create spaces for dialogue
Move from instructor to mentor and coach
Introduce builders to philosphers of technology
Train students to think ecologically

Harvey Mudd: Informal dialogue with students

Praxis: Seminar on Redemptive AI

10 week virtual seminar on Zoom
Centered on conversation + discussion
Goals:
- Provide fuel for formation
- Spark imagination
- Cultivate community
- Kindle redemptive desire

Link: A Redemptive Thesis for Artificial Intelligence

A Redemptive Thesis for AI

Assumptions

We acknowledge…

The enduring image
A pattern of deceptions
Very good and also very distorted
As consequential as the Internet—or electricity—or agriculture
Asymmetrical risk—even without a singularity
The fantasy of the superhuman

Redemptive Directions

Redemptive AI will…

Inform but not replace human agency.
Develop rather than diminish human cognitive capacity and extend rather than replace education.
Respect and advance human embodiment.
Serve personal relationships rather than replace them.
Restore trust in human institutions.
Benefit the global majority rather than enrich and entrench a narrow minority.

Change seats from instructor to mentor

AI accelerates the pattern of abundant information
The question is increasingly less about what you know, but how you will apply it.
We should shift from telling to asking.

Introduce builders to philsophers of technology

Train builders to think ecologically

Technological change is not additive; it is ecological. I can explain this best by an analogy. What happens if we place a drop of red dye into a beaker of clear water? Do we have clear water plus a spot of red dye? Obviously not. We have a new coloration to every molecule of water. That is what I mean by ecological change. A new medium does not add something; it changes everything

Neil Postman in Five Things We Need to Know About Technological Change

Prototyping Systems Thinking

Helping develop engineering professionals who can evaluate and address environmental, social, and ethical factors impacting their engineering decisions.

PIs: Leah Mendelson (PI), Whitney Fowler (Co-PI), Sophia Bahena (Co-PI)