AI Requires Entirely Different Communities
(Part 7 of 7)
A few years ago, I created the Facebook site, Education For Their Future Not Our Past. I was aware that with the coming of AI, the way we presently educate students is ineffective and does not prepare students for their future. The idea that students need a head full of facts and data is wrong. Today, right now, facts and data, in fact all information is provided by AI. What students need to survive in the future is the ability to use all this available information to make a contribution to themselves and to society.
Why? What human beings can hold in their brains is incomplete, partial knowledge and often incorrect. Curricula centered on teaching partial and often biased information must give way to AI systems that are readily available and easily accessed by Siri, Alexa, Google and others. Even our testing and measurement devices are inaccurate and must be replaced. Entire philosophies behind measurement like the SAT and ACT must now be bypassed in favor of new “tests” that have not yet been developed because limited human brains cannot grasp what skills we need to collaborate with AI.
There are a few things we do know. We know that children must master basic skills like reading writing and arithmetic. Education at the elementary school level must still teach the basics, and collaboration to solve real problems. Major changes are required at the secondary level as we end competitive systems that result in winners and losers. Preparing all of us for the future requires collaboration. It requires experiential learning and involvement with multi-age groups. It signals the end of the inculcation of canned information. How we deal with these changes will require new ways for humans to work together to partner with a super intelligence.