In this episode of the AITEC Podcast, we sit down with Kevin Crowston and Francesco Bolici—two leading scholars of information science and organizational behavior—to explore the hidden risks of generative AI in the workplace and the classroom.

Their recent paper on deskilling and upskilling with AI serves as the foundation for a conversation that ranges from ChatGPT in programming to the future of education. The key concern? AI systems may offer short-term productivity boosts—but they quietly erode the very skills people need to think, solve problems, and make decisions when things go wrong.

We unpack:

 * The tension between efficiency and learning: how AI tools give us answers but rob us of “learning by doing”
 * Why novice users might look as good as experts—but only because AI is flattening the skill curve
 * The “leveling effect” vs. the “multiplier effect”: when AI empowers novices vs. when it amplifies expert performance
 * What happens to organizations—and societies—when no one remembers how to do things manually
 * How educators can respond: should we stop students from using AI? Or teach them how to use it without becoming dependent?

From sales to software engineering, and from university classrooms to global labor markets, this episode explores how generative AI reshapes human learning, power, and value—and what we must do now to avoid a future of mass deskilling.

#24 Kevin Crowston and Francesco Bolici: The Death of Expertise?

Francis Bacon’s revolution wasn’t about solving the old puzzles of knowledge, but about changing the very rules of inquiry — turning epistemology outward, toward the world.

Topics discussed:
 * The Aristotelian worldview once made the world feel intelligible, but its central pieces began to collapse under new observations and conceptual pressures.
   
 * Around 1600, linguistic, technological, and cultural shifts gave rise to a new meaning of “experiment”: not trying something, but deliberately manipulating nature to reveal hidden causes.
   
 * Early experimentalists were seen as eccentric outliers whose strange new practices challenged tradition and authority.
   
 * Francis Bacon argued that knowledge begins with experience, requires purging our “idols,” and aims at prediction, control, and the relief of human suffering.
   
 * Bacon introduced ideas that anticipate empiricism, pragmatism, and positivism—each redefining what it means to know and what counts as meaningful inquiry.
   
 * Though powerful, Bacon’s model faces the challenge that predictive and explanatory success can still come from false theories (e.g., Ptolemy, alchemy).
   
 * The lesson closes by placing Bacon’s “knowledge is power” view beside Plato’s JTB theory, raising the question: What is knowledge, really?
   

Lesson 1.3: Knowledge Is Power

When a society tears itself apart over beliefs it cannot justify, philosophy steps in to ask what it really means to know anything at all. 

Topics explored

 * The 16th and 17th centuries were marked by intense religious fanaticism and violence (e.g., the Peasant Rebellion, Münster, the Thirty Years’ War).
 * These events pushed thinkers to demand firmer foundations for belief—not mere authority or dogma.
 * But agreement proved impossible: philosophers disagreed sharply about what counts as justification and what a belief must rest on to be considered rational.
 * Meanwhile, ancient texts and ideas—especially from Plato and the skeptics—were being rediscovered, raising old questions in a new era.
 * The lesson introduces epistemology, the study of knowledge, and frames the central issue: What makes a belief justified?
 * Plato’s Justified True Belief (JTB) theory sets the stage, but Agrippa’s Regress Argument challenges whether justification is possible at all (the setup for the next steps in the course).
 * Pyrrhonian skepticism reappears as a powerful alternative: suspend judgment to achieve ataraxia, tranquility free from dogmatic conflict.

Lesson 1.2: Thinking About Knowledge

Philosophy begins the moment you stop defending what you believe and start asking why you believe it.

Lesson 1.1: Intro to PHIL

In this episode, we speak with philosopher Sebastian Purcell about his new book The Outward Path: Lessons on Living from the Aztecs. Purcell shows that Aztec philosophy offers a strikingly different vision of the good life — one that rejects the modern obsession with happiness and invulnerability in favor of something deeper: rootedness.

We discuss what it means to live a rooted life in a world that feels increasingly unstable — from collective agency and humility to willpower, ritual, and the art of balance. Along the way, Purcell explains how Aztec ethics can help us rethink everything from self-discipline and courage to how we live with technology, social media, and each other.

Links:
Sebastian’s website [https://sebastianpurcell.com/]
Sebastian’s articles on Medium [https://medium.com/@sebastian.purcell]
Sebastian’s book [https://wwnorton.com/books/the-outward-path/overview]

For more info, visit ethicscircle.org [https://www.ethicscircle.org/].

#23 Sebastian Purcell: Rootedness, Not Happiness — Aztec Wisdom for a Slippery World

What if our deepest fears about AI aren't really about the machines at all—but about something we've forgotten about ourselves? In this episode, we speak with philosopher Iain D. Thomson (University of New Mexico), a leading scholar of Martin Heidegger, about his new book Heidegger on Technology’s Danger and Promise in the Age of AI.Together we explore Heidegger’s famous claim that “the essence of technology is nothing technological,” and why today’s crises—from environmental collapse to algorithmic control—are really symptoms of a deeper existential and ontological predicament.Also discussed:
– Why AI may not be dangerous because it’s too smart, but because we stop thinking
– Heidegger’s concept of “world-disclosive beings” and why ChatGPT doesn’t qualify
– How the technological mindset reshapes not just our tools but our selves
– What a “free relation” to technology might look like
– The creeping danger of lowering our standards and mistaking supplements for the real thing

For more info, visit ethicscircle.org [https://www.ethicscircle.org/].

#22 Iain Thomson: Why Heidegger Thought Technology Was More Dangerous Than We Realize

In this episode, we sit down with Jayashri A. Bangali, a researcher and educator whose work explores the evolving role of artificial intelligence in education—both in India and around the world. We discuss how AI is transforming learning through personalization, interactivity, and accessibility—but also raise hard questions about bias, surveillance, dependence, and deskilling.

We dig into Jayashri’s recent research on AI integration in Indian schools and universities, including key findings from surveys of students and teachers across academic levels. We also explore global trends in AI adoption, potential regulatory safeguards, and how policymakers can ensure that AI enhances—not erodes—critical thinking and creativity.

This is a wide-ranging conversation on the future of learning, the risks of offloading too much to machines, and the kind of education worth fighting for in an AI-driven world.

For more info, visit ethicscircle.org [https://www.ethicscircle.org/].

#21 Jayashri Bangali: AI in Education

In this episode, we speak with Bernardo Bolaños and Jorge Luis Morton, authors of On Singularity and the Stoics [https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s43681-024-00548-w], about the rise of generative AI, the looming prospect of superintelligence, and how Stoic philosophy offers a framework for navigating it all. We explore Stoic principles like the dichotomy of control, cosmopolitanism, and living with wisdom as we face of deepfakes, algorithmic manipulation, and the risk of superintelligent AI.

For more info, visit ethicscircle.org [https://www.ethicscircle.org/].

#20 Bernardo Bolaños and Jorge Luis Morton: On Stoicism and Technology

In this episode, we speak with Dr. Joshua Hatherley, a bioethicist at the University of Copenhagen, about his recent article, “Are clinicians ethically obligated to disclose their use of medical machine learning systems to patients?”

Dr. Hatherley challenges what has become a widely accepted view in bioethics: that patients must always be informed when clinicians use medical AI systems in diagnosis or treatment planning. We explore his critiques of four central arguments for the “disclosure thesis”—including risk, rights, materiality, and autonomy—and discuss why, in some cases, mandatory disclosure might do more harm than good.

For more info, visit ethicscircle.org [https://www.ethicscircle.org/].

#19 Joshua Hatherley: When Your Doctor Uses AI—Should They Tell You?

Philosopher Jeff Kane [https://waldorfgarden.org/about/meet-our-board/jeffrey-kane/] joins us to discuss his new book The Emergence of Mind: Where Technology Ends and We Begin [https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-46835-3]. In an age where AI writes poems, paints portraits, and mimics conversation, Kane argues that the human mind remains fundamentally different—not because of what it does, but because of what it is. We explore the moral risks of thinking of ourselves as machines, the embodied nature of thought, the deep structure of human values, and why lived experience—not information processing—grounds what it means to be human.

#18 Jeff Kane: Why Human Minds Are Not Computer Programs

Welcome to AITEC Podcast, where we explore the ethical side of AI and emerging tech.

We call our little group the AI and Technology Ethics Circle (AITEC). Visit ethicscircle.org [https://www.ethicscircle.org/] for more info. 

AITEC Podcast

These are PHIL courses taught by R. C. M. García at El Camino College. 

Roberto Carlos

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