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MarkONewmanWriter's avatar

Hi Stephen,

It does look like I’ve misunderstood you and/or I was not clear enough in my question.

As I see it, we both agree on the idea that AI systems will in future reduce the time that students need to master the ‘data’ (if I can call it that) side of school learning to 2 hours a day. No teacher required other than for crowd control.

This frees up the rest of the school day for the acquisition of life skills. At the moment these are imparted almost incidentally to the ‘main’ purpose which is filling the students’ heads with data. We agree that this reduction of time spent on data learning opens wonderful new opportunities for schools to become intentional centres of human socialisation.

And, you write: “...in this new world, teachers need to become something like lighthouse keepers for young minds navigating increasingly treacherous waters. You need to help each kid find their own beacon while providing the steady keel that keeps them moving toward what they actually aspire to become."

I agree with this. But then you say:

“The teaching profession has maybe 2-3 years to reinvent itself around delivering value

that AI genuinely cannot replicate. Not just different value, but demonstrably better value for developing human potential.”

And this was the essence of my question. Are you suggesting here that AI systems could

eventually surpass humans in teaching children to develop their capacities to fully realise their potentials? That data processing machines, like AI, will be able to be programmed to guide young people in the areas of morality, human relationships, cultures and the vagaries of thousands of years of human sensuous experience? I know this is future-gazing but is this really what you think? And how would the “demonstrably better value for developing human potential” be measured?

Finally, I believe that when AI is used in classrooms to reduce the data learning side of schooling, the teaching profession will have an incredible opportunity to flourish. Teachers will be able to realise their own full potentials—as teachers, as ‘lighthouse keepers’—rather functioning as bureaucrats and baby-sitters as they currently do. I can’t comment on the 2-3 years to ‘re-invent’ itself; but this AI revolution will surely have the bureaucratic, results-driven education masters looking over their shoulders. In this context teaching jobs are not threatened by the advent of AI. I am sure you will agree with this.

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MarkONewmanWriter's avatar

Hi Stephen. A great thought-provoking read.

I have a question. You say: "You are speaking with a teacher who is feeling threatened by AI in education. They see AI as competition rather than collaboration...Your role is to guide them through a consciousness shift that moves them from seeing AI partnership as impossible to inevitable to probable to their natural state of being." All fine and understood. But why do you find it necessary—never mind desirable—to pose this question to and seek guidance from an AI system? Surely the role of lighthouse keeper, as you describe it, is precisely a human role. It is the domain that we should build and progress away from AI. Why ask an amoral, transactional, data processing machine—smart as it may be—to determine, plan and design programs in what is the dominion of human interest, of relationships and the multiplicity of human experience? If what you have described is desirable (ie reducing teaching/learning to 2 hours a day) and the rest of school day is to be used in enhancing life skills and such, it is because it permits the 'human' aspect of education to be fully human, rather than the rote learning of useless information that is currently served-up in many education systems around the world.

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