This interview continues Albert Efimov’s series of discussions with scholars about the current state of artificial intelligence, its applications across various fields and tasks, and the ethical and social implications of its development.
In the conversation regarding humanity’s place in the modern world, A.G. Asmolov discussed the importance of maintaining diversity within complex systems and managing complexity during their analysis. The dialogue clarified the role of the «contrarian,» the future anthropologist’s work, and how metaphor will drive scientific progress in the age of artificial intelligence.
Additional topics addressed include: the significance of tricksters in the search for new ideas and meanings; the reasons we condemn ourselves to a lack of free time and its impact on cognitive abilities; the mismatch between organizational structures created by humans and the levels of tasks and technologies emerging today; the core concepts underlying «human-centric organizations»; whether the development of artificial intelligence will lead to information asymmetry, where everyone knows everything, and the primary risks when humans begin to learn from machines; why AI developers can be seen as a «community of Pygmalions,» and the dangers of «humanizing» machines.

The article examines artificial intelligence as a different kind of intelligence, fundamentally distinct from human intelligence. The author approaches this issue from an anthropological perspective, demonstrating that human thought can follow various logics shaped by different sociocultural contexts. The focus is on unique ways of categorizing reality and understanding causality that manifest in either mythological or rational thinking.
However, the author identifies essential differences between any human intelligence and the information processing of large language models (GPT-4, Claude, Gemini). Key aspects of human thought highlighted include its engagement in human activity in the world (as presented in A. N. Leontiev’s activity approach), openness to the world, lack of limitation by a set task, intentionality, internal spontaneity, and dialogical nature. The author concludes that the main distinction between artificial intelligence and human intelligence lies beyond cognitive processes; it resides in the realm of subjectivity and self-awareness.

Counteraction to others’ learning and their “Trojan horse” teaching (deceptive teaching that benefits the organizer and disadvantages the learners) is an urgent problem in various fields. Computer technologies play an increasingly important role in the organization of this counteraction and “Trojan horse” teaching. The technologies are used at different levels: from computer-to-computer adversarial poisoning attacks on machine learning to fraud in human interactions. In the article, some aspects of this problem are analyzed.
An empirical study of people’s help and counteraction to others’ learning in a competitive video game is presented. It arouses the participants’ keen interest and provides an opportunity to study strategies of help and counteraction to others’ learning. The methodology is promising in relation to further study of the topic — e. g., studies of relationships between the strategies invented by participants and their cognitive and personal characteristics, design of new methods based on it, etc.
In general, one can assume that development of technologies will continue to make significant contributions to interweaving of two fundamental types of interactions: (a) help to learning and development; and (b) counteraction to them.

The article considers one of the applied tasks of personality psychology — finding the means of pre-adaptation of youth to adulthood, to life in an uncertain and rapidly changing world. The phenomena of behavior associated with an incomplete representation of the personality about itself, creating difficulties on the path of pre-adaptation, are described; the question of self-knowledge as a means of forming a more complete picture of oneself and one’s future is raised.
The question is raised about the psychological means of motivating young people to the process of self-knowledge, allowing both to diagnose existing psychological problems and to make them the subject of awareness. The «life line» is considered as the subject of self-knowledge: an idea of the key events of one’s past, present and future; ways to solve psychological problems of the present, the connection between past actions and planned actions in the future.
The drawing technique of depicting key events of their past, present and future on students of a psychological university is tested; the «types» of the drawings presented are highlighted, recommendations are given on the interpretation of the drawings and the procedure for discussing them with students.
The procedure of group discussion of ways to solve psychological problems of students related to the present is tested, the types of behavior of students in the process of group discussion are highlighted, the procedure of reflection of this lesson with students is described. The procedure of conducting a lesson and reflecting on its results on remembering past actions and planning actions for the future is being tested, its psychotherapeutic effect is noted.
It is stated that the result of students’ self-knowledge according to the proposed scheme was not only the students’ awareness of their psychological problems and related needs, but also the causal dependencies between the events of their lives.

The presented Concept of Development of Alternative and Augmentative Communication (AAC) System in the Russian Federation is based on the need to provide a wide range of conditions for the use of AAC by citizens, children and adults, who have speech difficulties or limitations in using speech. These conditions are determined by legislative, organizational, methodological, personnel, and material-technical levels. Achieving the goals, tasks, and implementing the outlined directions of this Concept are possible through comprehensive interdepartmental cooperation between government bodies, society, and social environment organizations. Only under these circumstances are the opportunities for the realization of the rights and legitimate interests of AAC users expanded, their quality of life is ensured as a long-term goal of all activities.
The Concept provides a definition of AAC, sequentially presents the main concepts of AAC as a significant guide in organizing the scientific and practical activities of specialists and individuals involved in addressing issues in this field, defines the values and principles of using AAC as respecting the natural human need to be heard. Individuals experiencing significant communication difficulties and difficulties in using speech should be provided with conditions for using AAC in both personal and public (social, economic, political, and spiritual) spheres of life, regardless of age, health status, place of residence, location, and living conditions.
An important condition for the development of the AAC system is the training of specialists with competencies in teaching the use of AAC. Relevant disciplines should be introduced into the educational programs of all levels of professional education, the development of which is based on scientifically substantiated theoretical and methodological foundations and best practices.
The implementation of the Concept of Development of Alternative and Augmentative Communication system will help to resolve the existing contradiction between the high significance of using AAC to ensure the realization of the rights and needs of children and adults who do not use or have limited speech, and significant deficits in various areas of providing AAC use.

The proposed article makes the readers focus on the evolution and prospects of social science education in Russia, taking into consideration the reform of the school subject curriculum of 2024. The importance of considering social science education is motivated not only by its perception as a tool of consolidation and state-building, but also by the aspect of the struggle for historical memory and collective identity. It seems to be valuable to pay attention not only to organizational issues, but also to the content of social science education (the curriculum and the ways to interact with the learning material), its system-forming core. The article consistently reconstructs the biography of the academic subject of social science, a retrospective allows to identify «the excesses» of pedagogical discourse: of both ideological and academic nature. Developing the topic of the concept of social science as a subject in school education, based on the cultural concept of the content of education, the authors present the results of a comparative analysis of the two most authoritative scholars of social science education in Russia: L.N. Bogolyubov, Moscow and N.I. Eliasberg, St. Petersburg. While the St. Petersburg conception is based on values that are primarily assigned in relation to academic knowledge, the Moscow one designs the opposite algorithm, where the value component is regarded more as a product than as basis. The current reform is designed, supposedly, to solve the accumulated problems in terms of duplication of material from other subject areas, concentric deployment of material, and the content redundancy of the course. The «new» social science should solve the problems of strengthening all-Russian identity and civism, awareness of the legal foundations and commitment to national ideals. The applied nature of the new course is confirmed by the updated thematic plan, which now includes key elements inherent in modernity and the everyday life of a schoolchild. The transition to topical life issues is aimed at enabling students to act as subjects, being participants in social relations, and not consumers of knowledge/goods/services. The authors conclude that the effectiveness of the reform depends primarily not on the new curricula, but on the philosophical and pedagogical approach the teaching methods rely on. Only by analyzing pedagogical practice, we will be able to assess whether the new course turned out to be truly practical. For now, two evolutionary scenarios of social science education support seem possible: the creation and improvement of the educational and methodical basis of the new course in social science education, focusing on ethical and legal issues following the St. Petersburg scholars; an update on an integrated, truly academic, prolonged course of social science education. The current publicly announced scenario constructs a new reality in some way ignoring the accumulated experience.

The importance of clear understanding of their goal by school principals is especially dramatic now when the third release of the Federal state educational standards was published. At the same time, there is a problem of working out formal criteria allowing to estimate the performance of such principals. This work aimed to identify which reference points school principals are focused on and how they approach them practically. One of the expected outcomes of this survey was to suggest the criteria of performance of school principals. Thirteen principles were interviewed in Moscow and Moscow Region for this purpose. The frequency analysis of their responses allowed them to identify the key words and phrases thus enabling to reveal the key tendencies and emphases in targeting and performance estimate. The interviewed principals did not manage to indicate the goals of their activity clearly which most likely leads to the difficulties in the efficient management. None of the respondents possessed the idea of objective and measurable key performance indicators of their work. Even quantitative values, such as the results of exams and tests, are not interpreted by principals as reliable estimates of their performance and the success of a school. The results obtained highlight the necessity to work out clear and measurable criteria to evaluate the performance of school principals. Such criteria may allow for unbiased estimates of achievements and introduce the corrections in management processes which will ultimately improve the quality of education. Some recommendations are suggested on how to teach school principals a clear goal setting taking into account the unique features of each school.

Over the past years, the Republic of Kazakhstan has been adhering to the globally recognized Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in its educational policy, as evidenced by the inclusion of these goals in the national development strategy «Kazakhstan 2050,» the National Plan 100 Steps to Achieve Five Institutional Reforms, and the State Program «Nurly Zhol (2020–2025). SDGs are also included in the development strategies of leading universities. Sustainable development, considering national priorities in the field of education, is a key direction for improving the higher education system in Kazakhstan. To better understand the development of universities in Kazakhstan within the paradigm of sustainable development, the authors reviewed the results of the international rankings UI GreenMetric and QS Sustainability World University Rankings. The article also compares universities in Kazakhstan with universities in other Central Asian countries. According to the UI GreenMetric 2023 ranking, the TOP 500 includes 4 universities from Kazakhstan, 7 universities from Uzbekistan, and 2 universities from Turkmenistan. According to the QS Sustainability University Rankings 2023, only one university from Kazakhstan is included in the TOP 500 of all universities in Central Asia. The article concludes that universities in Kazakhstan demonstrate modest positions internationally in their commitment to the SDGs, while at the same time, they take leading positions in terms of ecological development compared to universities in other Central Asian countries.