In a new opinion column, Sabine Eiche argues AI is moving quickly into daily life and education.
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In her column, Richmond writer and art historian Sabine Eiche says she thinks the era now unfolding is better described as “cataclysm,” which she defines as a flood or deluge, adding that the word comes from the Greek “kataklysmos.”
Eiche writes that AI is “trying to seep into all aspects of our lives” and is becoming “like an uncontrollable inundation,” while also “gathering speed and paying for it in security.”
She says she became aware of AI most when searching online, such as when “the AI Overview appears on the computer screen,” and she writes that many people appear to be dealing with it at multiple levels.
Eiche says she expects AI to play a major role in education, describing its reception as “mixed,” with what she calls “more negative than positive” views.
She writes that teachers have found students who use AI tools to write essays “forego using their imagination,” suppress their creativity, and “surrender their own unique voice,” adding that she says relying on AI can become a shortcut, reducing students’ ability to “work things out for themselves” and “succumbing to cheating.”
Eiche also writes that public discussion of AI includes “hacking incidents” and that the media has been publishing articles about risks, which she says are appearing “faster than we can absorb them.” She further recounts a claim from OpenAI in early September that an autonomous AI effort cracked the Navier-Stokes problem in 88 hours, and that it resolved over “100 longstanding problems across most areas of mathematics.”
Turning to how humans look for answers, Eiche writes that when people search for solutions, they explore and sometimes reach unexpected results through trial and error, which she connects to the concept of serendipity.
She attributes the idea of serendipity to a definition traced to Horace Walpole’s 1754 letter, and she also cites an observation by Pliny the Younger about “the chase” being the best part of the hunt, saying it is something “only we humans know how to enjoy.”
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