Why Wonder Still Matters in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

These days, the whole world is obsessed with AI, or artificial intelligence, machine learning, and how to get more output from less thinking, outsourcing all our cerebral functions. If we can get the world to do our thinking for us, we can – what? Be free from – what?

Missing in the modern discussion of artificial intelligence is something far more important than processing speed, multi-dimensional and predictive analysis, deep learning, neural networks, context windows, and retrieval-augmented generation.

Missing is the altogether human concept of … wonder. A child is free from life’s worries, anxiousness, and anxiety – or should be. This allows his or her mind to wander, to wonder, to explore the unlimited universe of imaginary things, a wilderness of ideas.

The mentally and emotionally strong adult is equally endowed with that opportunity – given the will. If we have the will and brace for it, we can choose to release ourselves from modern stress, burdens, bills, and baloney for a mental hike, a short, unhurried, original backward look, a Narnia-like expedition – powered by wonder.

These days, who wonders? Who takes the time to think, to deliberately push into realms unknown, imagining the impossible, permitting a foray into a fenced but nonsensical, nonconforming, perhaps purposeful but at least intriguing and amusing zone? Very few.

But go back in time. Where do fresh ideas, new ways of doing things, advancement in both its material and philosophical meanings come from? They come from those who wonder. The greatest thinkers push wonder, not outsourcing our power to think.

No thought leader, inventor, or imaginer – from Socrates to Disney – ever thought conformity, a dead mind, choosing non-thinking over thinking, was anything but lazy.

Wrote Socrates, or Plato for him: “Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.” Think on that, and then think more on it. Wonder is where we go for truth, the home of wisdom.

The poets, and there are hundreds, also indulge wonder – and to lasting good effect, wrote W.B. Yeats: “The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.” And what does that require? Creative thought.

As if to remind us that whimsy and good humor, serendipity and random discoveries are in God’s plan, each day a treasure hunt, E. B. White wrote: “Always be on the lookout for the presence of wonder.” Embrace it, too.

In his essays, New Englander Ralph Waldo Emerson prodded us to think, above all, to be true and self-reliant. “Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of science.”

Going out to the moon with Buzz Aldrin and Mike Collins, Neil Armstrong spoke of first steps, but also of wonder. “Mystery creates wonder and wonder is the basis of man’s desire to understand,” a quest we should all be on.

In a different, earthbound but mentally boundless act of wonder, Stephen Hawking was a promoter of curiosity; his zone: physics. “Look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Be curious.” He implored us. Why? Wonder resides in the stars.

In a similar pitch, different zone, we have Charlie Chaplin’s advice, cinema genius that he was – urging us on. “You’ll never find a rainbow if you’re looking down.”

On the earthy side, there are voices like Rachel Carson on wonder and why it matters. “Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.” There, all by itself, is depth.

Finally, we have the mind that outpaced its own expectations, mapping the universe. Albert Einstein wrote on miracles and relativity. His words still echo: “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.” So AI is fine, as far as it goes. But we were made…to wonder.