Ikeda Daisaku on Artificial Intelligence and Human Education at the Posthuman Turn

• In Event: Roundtable Session 1
  In Refereed Roundtable Session: Issues in education: Climate change, AI ethics, funding and future directions

Proposal

Abstract: This paper presents findings from a bilingual textual analysis of Ikeda Daisaku’s (1928–2023) publications on A.I. relative to human education. Unavailable in English, Ikeda’s engagements with A.I. since the 1970s have remained unknown to the anglophone academy. Framed through the lens of curriculum studies at the posthuman turn (Ferrando, 2013; Snaza, 2015), analyses center on two interlocking questions to which Ikeda consistently returns when assessing the impact of AI and the hyperfocus on reason and rationality underpinning and engendered by it: What does it mean to be human? and What is the nature of civilization and humanity? In response, Ikeda advocates the cultivation of intuition, reestablishing human interactions in reality, developing creativity, and restoring the shigokoro, or “poetic mind/heart/spirit,” to remedy and forestall what ails civilization and hinders human happiness.

Relevance, Objectives and Perspectives
The current, “posthuman” moment is marked by dramatic transformations in three, often interlocking human interdependencies: Humans and Nature (e.g., climate change, viruses, biodiversity, planetary geology); Humans and Technology (e.g., science, institutions, digital landscapes, artificial intelligence); and Humans and Social Constructs (e.g., race, justice, Self/Other, religious/secular). These transformations reflect radical politicizations of truth and belief, agency and impotence, peace and violence, and compel us to (re)examine “the human being” and philosophies of humanism in the context of our self-locations and material and nonmaterial creations. What does it mean to be and become “fully human” in such transforming and intersecting interdependencies, and what is the impact of this on curriculum and educational research and practice? What does all this mean for human happiness?

This presentation interrogates these topics and questions through the non-Western perspectives of Japanese educator, peacebuilder, and Buddhist thought leader Ikeda Daisaku (1928–2023), whose work has received growing attention in the field of education and especially curriculum studies. As the author (2019, in press) has examined Ikeda’s perspectives relative to Nature and Social Constructs, and given the CIES theme of “Envisioning Education in a Digital Society,” this presentation focuses specifically on Ikeda’s thought relative to technology, in particular the impact of artificial intelligence and increased computerization on human life and society. Artificial intelligence (AI) is both everywhere and nowhere, utopian and dystopian, and already outpacing our ability to fully comprehend its scope and (dis)advantages as it penetrates into our lives, social institutions, cultural practices, and political and economic processes. Together with rapid developments in AI technology, questions and concerns regarding the effects of AI and enhanced computerization on humanity, peace, and education abound in the popular and academic discourse.

Ikeda engaged with the topic of AI across multiple publications since at least 1970 (e.g., Ikeda, 1970, 1988a, 1988b, 1988-2015, Vols. 13, 14, pp. 203-407, and Vol. 18, pp. 548-451). This presentation provides a critical synthesis and bilingual meta-analysis of those works and examines Ikeda’s perspectives in response to the increase of A.I. Specific attention is placed on his repeated calls to bring intuition into balance with reason, as well as his equating of intuition with what he terms the shigokoro (詩心), or “poetic mind/heart/spirit.” I examine what Ikeda means by intuition and this shigokoro and trace the roots and parallels of his perspectives on these in and with the work of Blaise Pascal (1623–1662), Henri Bergson (1859–1941), and Makiguchi Tsunesaburō (1871–1944), the latter two of whom also situate intuition within the poetic. I conclude with Ikeda’s repeated calls for a “life-sized paradigm,” which he situates within his broad framework of ningen kyōiku (人間教育), or “human education”—the unlimited process of being and becoming richly and fully human. This conceptual research builds on the extant scholarly literature in Ikeda studies and international perspectives on AI in/and education. There is to date no scholarship on Ikeda’s decades of thought on AI on its own or as it relates to education. This presentation begins to fill that gap as it also offers the anglophone, Western academy new ways—in theory, research, practice, and policy—of considering and responding to AI in/and education. In so doing, it pays careful attention to issues of language, culture, geo-political contexts and principles of translation theory (Venuti, 2008).

Modes of Inquiry
This study employs bilingual-bicultural and critical discourse analyses (Rogers, 2004) of Ikeda’s 150-volume “Complete Works” (Ikeda, 1988–2015) and other major and minor works not included in the Complete Works, identifying all of Ikeda’s engagements with AI, systematically coding, triangulating, and synthesizing these thematically.

Contribution & Significance
This study expands our understanding of AI relative to human education and curriculum studies, particularly from a non-Western perspective, and it advances the growing field of Ikeda studies in education.

References (too long for word limit)

Author

• Jason Goulah, DePaul University