'Open Intelligence' by Saikat Majumdar: Read of the Week

As machine intelligence rapidly transforms how we learn, work, and imagine the future, noted author and academic Saikat Majumdar presents a compelling new book, Open Intelligence: Education between Art and Artificial. This incisive and accessible work asks essential questions about the evolving relationship between education, human potential, and technological change.

In Open Intelligence, Majumdar interrogates the long-standing tensions between passion, college, and career, and explores how ideas of talent, merit, and personal growth are being redefined in an AI-driven world. Charting AI’s rapid move from particular domains of Artificial Competent Intelligence (ACI) toward the possibility of a larger Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), the book considers the skills, values, and ethical frameworks that will be essential for individuals and institutions alike as machine intelligence approaches the latter. Blending storytelling with cutting-edge research, Open Intelligence offers a panoramic yet deeply grounded critique of the Indian higher education system. It highlights how AI is not only creating new opportunities but also reshaping patterns of privilege, exclusion, and social inequity. Saikat Majumdar is a novelist, columnist, scholar, and educator. He is Head of the Department of English at Ashoka University.