Young people should commit to deep learning and understanding—even as artificial-intelligence tools deliver efficiency and make information more accessible, renowned mathematician and social entrepreneur Po-Shen Loh told the Milton community. Loh visited Milton to share ideas about how we can continue to “Dare to be true” in the era of ever-evolving AI. AI tools must be combined with critical thinking, curiosity, and ethics in order to have effective and positive impacts in the world, he said.
“Even today, I keep learning. I keep coming up with new experiences,” Loh told audiences in the Hobbs Commons of the new Farokhzad Mathematics Center. “You can’t figure out what interests you unless you’re always learning new things.”
Loh is a math professor at Carnegie Mellon University and served as the national coach of the USA International Mathematical Olympiad team from 2013 to 2023. He was once a member of this team, along with Milton grad Paul Valiant ’01. In 1999, Loh received a silver medal in the Olympiad while Valiant won gold.
Loh spent a day at Milton speaking with students in the morning and an audience of students, faculty, alumni, and families in the evening. He visited classes in the Mathematics and Computer Science departments and spent time with Middle School faculty and students, as well as the school’s College Counseling Office and AI working group. A recording of his evening talk can be viewed here.
The emergence of AI tools has raised the question “Why do we need to learn anymore?” Loh said. He argued: “You’ve got to think about what your motivation is. If AI can do everything, do I need to learn anything? The answer is yes. Or else you will have a very smart thing with an agenda that might not be aligned with yours.”
AI does not have real emotions behind it. AI bots “are trained to follow patterns and existing conversations,” rather than make ethical, human judgments, Loh explained. “Where did they get these conversations to train on? The internet! How nice are people on the internet? They’re not very nice.”
AI has led to many advancements in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math), but Loh explained that STEM and humanities learning must go hand in hand. ”You need both. If you don’t have humanities, you have no business doing any research that might affect real people. If you’re going to build things that are going to affect the lives of real people, you better understand people, or you shouldn’t be doing it. On the other hand, if you’re on the humanities side, I strongly recommend you figure out what the heck all this STEM stuff is, because it’ll make you able to do everything more effectively.”
With this mindset, Loh has founded programs and software that help middle and high school students build intelligence and problem-solving skills. “We need to build intelligence,” he said. “It is not just whether you can get the score on the test. If you know how to solve a problem because you saw it before, it doesn’t count. You’ve got to turn the ideas into something.”
Students should be empowered by their skills—along with their values—to think critically and make a difference, Loh said. “The world will be run by you, your generation. So the question then becomes, how do we empower people who have this fire in them, to want to do something of value for other people? We’re going to face lots of challenges. So my hope is that as many of you as possible, decide to jump on this idea of ‘Hey, let’s do something.’ But if you want to do that, you’ve got to have skills.”
Outside of academia, Loh is also a social entrepreneur, which “ means I’m not trying to make money, I’m trying to make an impact.” As a social entrepreneur, he is the CEO and founder of LIVE, NOVID, and Expii. He believes the job of the CEO is to know how to do everything that all of their employees are doing. “ As a manager, if there was ever one part of the company that I didn’t understand, I was ineffective at managing that department. Some of the most effective leaders are the ones who have touched all kinds of different things.”
Learn more about Po-Shen Loh and his work here.
