Visual Thinking and AI Technologies

Once again, I am wondering whether my Blog friends will be interested in more of my work on visual thinking, dyslexia and possible links to AI -- now so much in the news -- as well as being featured in big company and government budgets.

Note: The following short draft is intended to provide some examples and context from the more extensive archive listings now in preparation. (Selected from 167 total pages of archive listings to date.) Intended for limited circulation and as a working paper for an international group based in Stockholm, Sweden, with interests in the expected effects of AI, visual thinking and the strengths of individuals with dyslexia. Revised, July and August, 2025. – TGW

A Time of Fundamental Change:

The Larger Context of Advanced Visual and AI Technologies

A Return to Visual Thinking -- Beginning to Understand the Strengths of Dyslexics in Design, Business and Science

Reconsidering Different Strengths and Ways of Learning to Prepare for the New Technological Realities of Chatbots and AI

Brief Excerpts and Samples from Current Archive Listings

Having been asked to give talks to many different groups in 19 countries, remarkably, West noted that the higher up he would go -- among Nobel Prize winning scientists, for example -- the more likely he would find those who readily understood patterns in unexpected weaknesses along with very high-level strengths -- frequently featuring strong visual thinking, with big picture and interconnected thinking as major factors.

He gradually realized that many low-level scientists, practitioners and educators mainly know what they have been taught during their training; while for very high-level scientists, it is a great advantage to think differently and to see patterns that others do not see, patterns that are often initially resisted and misunderstood by those with conventional training.

Thomas G. West has been privileged to be given an insider’s view of the sometime relationships between high-level capabilities and various unexpected weaknesses and learning difficulties. With Chatbots and the newest advances in AI in the headlines everywhere, he finds new relevance of fundamental issues that he has been dealing with in his books and talks for more than 30 years.

With his early books, articles and talks about visual thinking, visual technologies, computer graphics and simulation, dyslexic talents and other learning differences, West found that he was quickly swept up in waves of fundamental change in attitudes and approach. Indeed, some indicators came quite early -- for example:

West’s first book, In the Mind’s Eye, was published in April 1991. Recently, he was going through some old papers and found this note about some early reactions to the book:

“October 17, 1991. West attended a meeting at the National Institutes of Health Image Processing Group lecture series this afternoon at the NIH Clinical Center [a massive hospital building]. While there, Margaret (Bonnie) Douglas, who managed the lecture series, mentioned that his book was causing a sensation among her colleagues and associates -- chiefly made up of those programmers working with computer medical imaging, data visualization and related matters. She said their department librarian had never seen such a long waiting list for one book. The book cover had been displayed with new arrivals at the library and a few had heard his talk the previous May, but other than word-of-mouth, Bonnie found it hard to explain how people had learned of the book. ‘It certainly seems to have touched a nerve somewhere; perhaps you will have a cult book on your hands, she remarked.’ ”

Reconsidering Different Ways of Learning:

Recent Advances in AI, Calling for Urgent Action.

What Can Be Learned for Reforming Today’s Education from The Most Successful Visual Thinkers and Dyslexics? Could They Show the Way Forward with Distinctive Innovation, Big Picture Thinking and Major Reassessments of What to Teach and How to Teach?

What Can Humans Do Using These New Machines?

What Can Humans Do Better Than These Machines?

In the early days of these changes, some educators were asking:

“Won’t Students just use Chatbot GPT to Cheat?

“Yes, but only if we continue to assess students in the same outdated ways. . . . Soon Chatbot GPT will be as expected and ubiquitous as spell check. Spell check empowers poor spellers by preventing their difficulties from impacting their ability to effectively communicate. In the near-term the same will be true for individuals who have difficulty organizing their ideas through written expression. . . . AI could (SHOULD) Change the Ways We Measure Potential.

“ChatbotGPT4 can outperform the vast majority of people on some of our most consequential standardized exams. It scored 700/800 on the SAT Math section, in the top 10% of the bar exam, in the 85 % of the LSAT and a 4 and 5 on the AP Calculus and AP Biology Exams. It even aced the Sommelier exam. Interestingly, it did not fare as well on the AP language exams which require higher levels of creativity and interpretation.

“In a world where a computer can outperform the vast majority of humans on these exams, how can they possibly be an accurate prediction of who will be successful? In fact, they would seem to only predict who has the skills that can be better performed by computers. Dyslexic learners stand to be the beneficiaries of this shift in what is important and how we measure it.” (J. Clark, Chair of the International Dyslexia Association, email to IDA group of school heads, April 2023.)

The Cybernetic Industrial Revolution – High Level Brain Effects

As machines have long ago replaced assembly line workers and most bank tellers, we may not have been surprised to see an erosion of opportunities for those with certain clerical skills. But many of us may not have been ready to see that there may be great changes in the highest levels of managerial and professional roles as well. One of the fathers of computing and control systems, Norbert Weiner, in his book Cybernetics (he invented the word), saw it coming from the first. Writing in 1947, he explained,

“The first industrial revolution was the devaluation of the human arm by the competition of machinery. The new modern industrial revolution is similarly bound to devalue the human brain, at least in its simpler and more routine decisions. Of course, just as the skilled carpenter, the skilled mechanic, the skilled dressmaker have in some degree survived the first industrial revolution, so the skilled scientist and the skilled administrator may survive the second. However, taking the second revolution is accomplished, the average human being of mediocre attainments or less has nothing to sell that is worth anyone’s money to buy.”

After more than 75 years, this is an especially sobering view. Much has come about that was unexpected since Weiner’s somber analysis, but the basic form and direction of this trend has remained largely unchanged – recently exploding into everyday life.

It is clear that not only clerical and other low-level functions are threatened but also many functions formally thought to require high intelligence, many years of study and advanced professional degrees. Clearly, the conventional world of work and education is being turned upside down and we must begin to change conventional thinking and consider new plans of action.

However, we may be surprised to see help from unexpected quarters. Indeed, some of those who have had the most trouble in the old educational systems, may soon begin to show the way forward in the new worlds of education and work.

The skills and capabilities of the former top students are now, in many cases, being replaced by fast and cheap machines. In contrast, the world may soon grow to value highly the creative big picture thinking, pattern recognition and innovative problem-solving capabilities often observed among visual thinkers and dyslexics.

That's it for now. More to come later. -- TGW