I’m looking at one of the last original Gutenberg Bibles. It’s beautiful. There are only 48 left in the world and only 12 remaining on animal hide parchment. The Huntington Museum in Pasadena, California, is an appropriate place for one of the last of these books, printed in Mainz on the Rhine in the mid-15th century. Mainz was the Silicon Valley of that century – a thriving metropolis thronging with entrepreneurs, capital and hope. Johannes Gutenberg, the man who would change the world in ways he could not have imagined, was trained as a jeweller.
Like his father, Gutenberg was a goldsmith, working with intricate designs and driven by beauty, not practicality. His intention was to make his Bible a thing of beauty. He knew that the printing contraption he had invented would be more efficient than the monks who laboured with pen and quill. However, he was a designer as well as engineer. It was his attention to design, his use of lacquer rather than ink, bright colours, clean lines and overall feel of the book that made the Bible a must-have 15th-century item – something like an iPhone or a Tesla today. Above all, Gutenberg was an aesthete.
In terms of impact, his engineering triumph was among the first examples of industrialisation. The printing press could operate 24/7, unlike the monks who tired, made mistakes and needed to eat. His machine, manned with technicians doing shifts, could make more than 100 bibles in the time it took to a monk to make one. The age of industry was upon us. From a management perspective, everything changed once Gutenberg’s presses whirred.
It’s appropriate that Gutenberg’s product is in California, because his printing changed the world. Its main impact was the democratisation of knowledge. Like the internet, the printing press made things available that were never before available to the common man. Here in California, the home of the internet, social media and a whole host of technological innovations, the energy of commerce is palpable. Rhineland Germany was the same in the 15th century, brimming with investors looking for the next big thing. As Germany was a patchwork of small principalities, each prince from his tiny kingdom wanted to secure the next technological breakthrough, leading to finance being made available to inventors to imitate Gutenberg.
Without the printing press, Luther, the great influencer, couldn’t have influenced anyone. The printing press amplified his message of dissent
With the printing press, Germany became the centre of 16th century European economic activity and religious questioning. It’s hard to imagine Luther without Gutenberg. Without the printing press, Luther, the great influencer, couldn’t have influenced anyone. The printing press amplified his message of dissent. When subsequent generations learned to read, the impact of the printing press on power, philosophy, science and inquiry is unquantifiable. The ability to read – the meta skill required to change the world and Europe from the 16th century onwards – did precisely that.
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Armed with these fairly incontrovertible observations about the printing press, imagine what AI is going to do to global knowledge and how it’s going to shape the world.
The base skill required to avail of the promise of AI is education, and by this we mean competency in maths, reading and science. We had some encouraging evidence last week with the publication of the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment. Irish children did extremely well, which is encouraging for the future.
In total 5,569 students in 170 Irish schools participated in PISA. Held in October and November last year, the tests were delayed due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Overall, 15-year-olds in Ireland score among the highest for reading in the world (second, up from eighth in 2018) and above average for maths (11th, up from 21st) and science (12th, up from 22nd). This is impressive. Compared to the OECD average, students in Ireland performed at the highest levels in maths: 81 per cent of students attained at least level two proficiency, well above the 69 per cent average. However, we ranked below average when it came to top performers. So the very best in Ireland were not as good as the very best elsewhere.
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In reading, behind the top-performing education system (Singapore), Ireland performed as well as Estonia, Japan, Korea and Taiwan; and outperformed all other countries/economies. Overall, Irish children are the ninth best educated in the world and second best in Europe behind Estonia. Furthermore, Irish children appear to be well adjusted, with 81 per cent saying they made friends easily at school and 71 per cent saying they felt they belonged, although 14 per cent reported feeling lonely.
Artificial intelligence, like every technology, is disruptive. Those with the least education will adapt least well. During the printing press boom, towns in Germany that acquired a printing press grew twice as fast as those that didn’t
In contrast to the United States, where the national scores are collapsing, Ireland is performing very well. As always, the US is a country of extremes. When the children are brilliant, they are very brilliant but the average American kid is being failed by the education system system – and if you are from a non-Asian minority, the failure rate is growing. If kids are seeing their older siblings and neighbours failing, failure can become viral. This is why American figures falling off the cliff have a greater impact on the society than only the children who are underachieving today. Underperformance becomes baked in.
Now think about AI.
Artificial intelligence, like every technology, is disruptive. Those with the least education will adapt least well. During the printing press boom, towns in Germany that acquired a printing press grew twice as fast as those that didn’t. This is an amazing statistic because it means that people who could use and were familiar with Gutenberg’s wonder technology used it to do other things. Obviously basic reading skills were essential to avail of the press, and the potential of the press itself prompted more to learn to read. The technology was a self-reinforcing energy in society.
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AI will be the same. Those countries with educated people will benefit more than those without because the possibilities offered by the technology will be grasped by those with basic competences in the fundamentals of education. In this sense, AI is not a threat to education but an amplifier of the advantages that education bestows. And we have no idea what one innovation will trigger.
Gutenberg’s Bible, commissioned by the Church, would end up being the most potent weapon against Rome. Today, in a digital age, what power base is safe?