217 - AI in Education

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ .

Teachers all over the world right now are having similar thoughts: Is AI going to take my job? How do I deal with homework that might have been done by ChatGPT? I know, because I've talked with many teachers, and these are universal concerns.

So I'm visiting the topic of AI in education - not for the first time, not for the last. There are important and urgent issues to tackle; they become most acute at the high school level, but this episode will be useful for all levels.

The reason it's so important for me to work with schools so much as an AI change management consultant is that there's no need for teachers to fear for their jobs. They are doing the most important job on the planet right now because they are literally educating the generation that is going to save the world. And generative AI has not created a learning problem: it's created learning opportunities. It's not created a teaching problem; it's created teaching opportunities. It has, however, created an assessment problem, and I'll talk about that.

Kids need their human teachers more than ever before to model for them how to deal with disruption from technology, because change will never again happen as slowly as it does today, and all of their careers will be disrupted far more than anyone's is today. No student is going to remember something ChatGPT said for the rest of their life. The teacher’s job is to focus on the qualities that the AI cannot embody—the personal interactions that occur face to face when the teacher makes that lasting impression that inspires the student.

Let's have honest, deep, and productive conversations about these issues now. A new school year is approaching and this is the time.

All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines.

Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.