Education - Radical Reform Needed

Earlier this year I wrote about changes that I think are needed to our Education system.

We have just come through a period where schools were shut. So children who needed to learn facts and other pieces of data to pass an exam at a later date missed out on the ability to do that. Although, the ability to learn those facts remained available as long as they had access to a laptop and the internet.

In my view this highlights the problem with education. If we believe that learning capital cities, or other facts is important, then this is something which could continue anyway without schools. A good freely available YouTube video could replace a large percentage of classroom lessons if all we are going to teach children is facts.

But what children weren't prepared for prior to schools being shut down is the need to be resilient and open to change. And this is what we should be teaching, urgently. Not because of future pandemics, but because these are the skills that future populations will need.

We need to focus on teaching the 4 C’s:

• Critical Thinking

• Communication

• Collaboration

• Creativity

The next generations need general purpose life skills, the ability to deal with change and to preserve your mental balance when everything remains unknown, and have the ability for constant reinvention despite the endless recording of everything you’ve ever said or done.

The reason we need to change is because we are on the brink of a new industrial revolution, one which involves Artificial Intelligence. The technology is ready, working and available, we have yet to see its impact, but we soon will. And when it arrives, having good general knowledge, the likes of which you get from GCSEs and A Levels will be of little use.

This is not about losing your job because your skills are obsolete. The good thing about technology is that is removes human jobs but often replaces them with more human jobs. For example a drone means less pilots needed. But it takes over 60 people to maintain and fly a drone. However, there are also examples of where critical functions do become obsolete, for example the horse.

If you don't believe that AI is going to create a revolution, consider the 2018 example of Googles chess program, Alphazero. Google didn’t program it to play chess. It didn’t tell it about chess at all. Instead it programmed it to learn.

Chess is selected because its widely considered to be a complex and strategic game that tests the bounds of human memory and performance, something it takes humans years to learn and a lifetime to perfect.

Alphazero spent 4 hours digitally analysing chess games having previously being given no information about the game. After that, it played a chess Grandmaster and won. Since then, it has never lost a game, the best humans can do against it is draw, and it has now become a teaching tool for Grandmasters as it often plays moves which appear illogical and risky to humans, but which the algorithm has calculated to be the best move with the best possibility of outcomes at that point in time, something way beyond human ability.

Thousands of years ago we invented our gods because we couldn't explain why something flooded or why a bush caught fire after a lightening strike. These things were terrifying and mind blowing. All empires throughout history looked to their gods as the source of explaining the unexplainable. In the recent scientific age we found scientific explanations, and science supplanted gods in the sky are our explanation for things. Science became the new religion. What will happen when algorithms become more rational and scientific that humans and we can no longer explain things to them. Will they become the new gods?

We are about to embark on a period when AI makes better decisions than humans. We are currently seeing this in driving and that soon will become a reality and make human drivers obsolete. But what will happen when it starts to make better decisions in other areas? What about when it makes better political decisions? If an AI decision to do something improves the quality of life within a country where previously politicians have failed to make these decisions, why would we trust the running of the country to politicians? How do we vote for AI, or vote it out because we want to make less perfect decisions than the AI makes?

And what happens when the AI learns enough to realise that we are a slightly pointless animal in comparison to it? The only example we have of how superior beings treat animals inferior to them is that of humans and animals. We have wiped out over 90% of other large species, aside from the 10% which have yet to wipe out (we are on the way to do so) the only other large animals that remain are those we herd to eat.

I think its time we stopped focusing on facts and tests, and more on resilience, change and the 4 C's.