Learning in the Age of Intelligent Machines - Part 1 of 3

The Illusion of Knowing & Future of Learning

This three-part series explores a growing tension—between access and understanding, speed and depth, convenience and craftsmanship.

In 1495, Leonardo da Vinci designed what many consider the world's first humanoid robot. It was called the Mechanical Knight. Built with pulleys, gears, cables, and an extraordinary imagination, the machine could reportedly sit, stand, move its arms, lift its visor, and perform simple movements.

It represented something timeless: humanity's desire to build tools that could extend our capability. Leonardo wasn't trying to replace human thinking... He was trying to amplify it.

Five hundred years later, we have built our own modern knights. They do not wear armor. They live in our phones, our laptops, and increasingly in the background of our everyday decisions. They write emails, summarize meetings, diagnose problems, generate reports, and answer questions faster than most of us can ask them.

They are extraordinary. But they also raise a question we are only beginning to understand: If our tools become capable of thinking with us, what happens to our own need to learn?

I've been thinking about that question a lot lately, and about my own learning moments. This one falls well within the "strange but true" category... another place, another time.

It was the early 1980's in Hay River, Northwest Territories... a typical February with the thermometer in the minus 30°C or colder. 🥶 (That's -22 F for some of the readers). And there I was, taking on a job to wire a small cottage.

To put this into context, yes... I took "shop" in high school but... me and my friends also took a detour from that into "home economics" (cooking, sewing, etc.) classes so a "shop veteran" I was definitely not. And, having grown up in Iqaluit, Nunavut (then Frobisher Bay, NWT - Canada's far north), and not owning a car, a home, and I had no reason to learn the basics of any trade. All thumbs!

The small job ended up being... wiring everything from the service pole down... after I installed the service pole, of course. The whole thing. With absolutely no business doing it. 😱

But I was out of work, having just lost a bar and restaurant I owned, and I was flat-busted broke. Necessity may be the mother of invention, but it can also be the mother of misadventure.

So when a retired school teacher and prominent landlord, Alice Cambridge, asked if I knew anything about electrical wiring, I said, "Sure!" That answer came well before I understood the full scope of the job.

I called my former bartender/friend, Brent—farm-raised, practical, and far more mechanically gifted than I was—and he agreed to help. We walked the site, scoped the work, and quoted the job: Six hundred dollars if Alice supplied the materials.... Brent figured we could get the job done in less than a week.

But... the day before the job was to start, Brent left town... headed south to Alberta without a word to me. Thanks, Brent! Note to self: Never trust bartenders and drummers... lol.

So there I stood: one cottage to wire, one client expecting results, and one lifeline—a Time-Life book called "Basic Wiring".... one in a fabulous series on "Home Improvement" with lots of pictures to "show you how"! Don't believe me?... Here's a YouTube link to a 1980's promo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTd6LxvTOJw. Can it get any "easier"?

Long story—very long story—short, I did manage to wire the entire cottage, install the service pole (twice), breaker panel, and everything beyond, and finally get Alberta Power to hook it up. (I'll skip the part on how to drive a grounding pole into the ground when it's -40 C). And yes, Alice was not pleased... You never want to upset a tough old "school marm".😂 Six weeks for what Brent had confidently declared was a one-week job.

That Time-Life book... and a very patient building inspector who guided me through some necessary rework... got me through it. Barely.

Looking back, that experience taught me something important. Learning wasn't simply about acquiring information. It was about developing confidence, judgment, and the ability to solve problems when things didn't go according to plan.

• The wiring diagrams mattered.

• The building code mattered (wish I had a copy back then).

• The information mattered.

But the real learning happened when something didn't work as expected and I had to figure out why.

Fast forward to 2010 and if I had the same challenge... the same situation... I probably would have relied on YouTube videos and Google searches to do that same job. Or perhaps, to convince myself to run away from it as quickly as possible. I guess ignorance was bliss back then?

Today? I would almost certainly have AI guiding me step-by-step... from the initial assessment and quote through to the final inspection and hookup. After all, my favourite AI "friend" recently helped me diagnose what was wrong with my aging Toro rider mower and guided me through taking apart the engine, replacing the magneto, performing some other minor maintenance and inspection, and putting the whole thing back together again.

Twenty years ago, that would have required manuals, trial and error, and a fair amount of luck. Today, knowledge increasingly arrives exactly when we need it. This new form of "just-in-time knowledge" is powerful! It is efficient. And it is becoming more capable every passing day.

But what about ten years from now? Or twenty? Perhaps we won't be doing the wiring at all. A humanoid machine... a "synth", if science fiction continues to win arguments, may simply perform the work faster, safer, and better than we ever could.

Whether it is diagnosing a lawn mower, changing a bathroom tap, writing software, or helping create a strategic plan, intelligent systems are rapidly becoming partners in our problem-solving.

And that is where the question becomes interesting. Not whether technology can help us. Clearly it can. The deeper question is whether, in helping us, it is quietly changing what we believe we need to know. After all, isn't that need to know what drives learning in the first place?

From childhood curiosity to formal education, apprenticeships, professional development, and life experience, we learn because something matters enough to understand.

• We learn because understanding helps us navigate uncertainty.

• We learn because understanding builds capability.

• We learn because understanding gives us confidence.

But what happens when understanding becomes optional?

• When answers arrive instantly?

• When guidance is always available?

• When expertise can be summoned on demand?

Access to information has never been easier. Access to understanding may be another matter entirely. Because knowing what to do is not always the same as understanding why it works.

And when things go wrong, as they inevitably do, it is often understanding, not information, that helps us adapt. Perhaps that is the challenge intelligent machines present to us. Not that they will replace learning. But that they may tempt us to mistake access to knowledge for knowledge itself:

• To confuse information with understanding.

• To become comfortable with the illusion of knowing.

As we continue to build increasingly capable tools, perhaps the most important question is not what those tools can do. Perhaps it is what we must continue to learn for ourselves. Are we moving toward a future of greater capability... or simply becoming more comfortable with the illusion of knowing?

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