The modern education and place of AI here
Recently I was asked to share my thoughts on how AI could help in education.
Here is a publication on this topic.
Before come to this topic I want to make a step back and talk about education in general.
Evolution of the education is tightly bound to challenges mankind has been facing on his path. Without going deep to the history we could emphasize this tipping points:
1. The first industrial revolution: labor work had been replaced by machines.
2. The second industrial revolution: conveyor production and electrification.
3. The third industrial revolution: digitalization -- computers, internet and digital services.
4. The fourth industrial revolution: Industry 4.0 and Internet of things -- fully automated production lines.
Each of this stages transforming the world brought a new requirements to education as well driving its evolution:
1. Personal relationships between master and apprentice.
2. Mass school.
3. Online education and the opportunity to virtually use materials from the best lecturers from around the world.
4. Artificial Intelligence as a personal expert system (PES).
Good education meets three criteria:
- ability to learn a new subject by yourself
- perform work-related normative in the chosen major and specialization
- be able to produce a new knowledge
The personal relationship between a student and a teacher will always be the best foundation for an excellent education. However, the teacher is no longer the exclusive owner of knowledge. It's becoming increasingly difficult to offer the best material.
A teacher should have theoretical as well as a practical experience to teach his/her subject:
Are you a physicist? Please show me a nuclear plant you have designed and built.
Are you a software engineer? Please show me code of your projects you have developed.
The best teachers in my life shown a solid background in the practice as well as in the theory. It means the key trait of a teacher is to show a role model in the field he or she teach. The second trait is ability to transfer this knowledge to a person.
The strength of a university is to gather within its walls a critical mass of such people, to ensure continuous growth and improvement of their theoretical and practical skills.
Academia is good for integral education, a solid foundation of science. It is good to try many directions, good for find time to read books and develop theoretical knowledge -- your task at work has much less capacity for such kind of things.
What the modern academia lacks of is practice. For sure academia has laboratories, but it offer tasks which still are not the same what you will have at work. For sure it is a better rather than nothing, but if you will have a real job issue, it will be good to get skills and knowledge by working on it rather than spend year or more in academia.
After sharing this context we could talk about place of AI here.
I am a firm believer in a classic education where personal relationships between a teacher and a student are foundation of the education. In this way technology mostly always breaks it and in this way breaks education process, but it can be used to help rather than to make issues.
Keeping in mind three criteria of good education everything which helps here could be considered as a good, everything which makes it difficult could be considered as a bad. AI is able to help here as well as to make it difficult.
In general I think is right to learn by practice, try to solve the issue at front of you. In process of solving the issue you will gain a necessary knowledge. Theory and practice go hand by hand here.
AI may be applied in many different ways, but let me enumerate things which I used for myself:
- ask AI to prepare a short list of tasks which help me learn a field by solving this tasks
- ask AI to give me a documentation for my specific questions either as a summary or going deeper in the field
- review my work according to the best practices
It is not perfect, but it is good and useful.
A few related publications:
Getting started with ML
Broad vs Narrow specialisation
Essay regarding elites
Before come to this topic I want to make a step back and talk about education in general.
Evolution of the education is tightly bound to challenges mankind has been facing on his path. Without going deep to the history we could emphasize this tipping points:
1. The first industrial revolution: labor work had been replaced by machines.
2. The second industrial revolution: conveyor production and electrification.
3. The third industrial revolution: digitalization -- computers, internet and digital services.
4. The fourth industrial revolution: Industry 4.0 and Internet of things -- fully automated production lines.
Each of this stages transforming the world brought a new requirements to education as well driving its evolution:
1. Personal relationships between master and apprentice.
2. Mass school.
3. Online education and the opportunity to virtually use materials from the best lecturers from around the world.
4. Artificial Intelligence as a personal expert system (PES).
Good education meets three criteria:
- ability to learn a new subject by yourself
- perform work-related normative in the chosen major and specialization
- be able to produce a new knowledge
The personal relationship between a student and a teacher will always be the best foundation for an excellent education. However, the teacher is no longer the exclusive owner of knowledge. It's becoming increasingly difficult to offer the best material.
A teacher should have theoretical as well as a practical experience to teach his/her subject:
Are you a physicist? Please show me a nuclear plant you have designed and built.
Are you a software engineer? Please show me code of your projects you have developed.
The best teachers in my life shown a solid background in the practice as well as in the theory. It means the key trait of a teacher is to show a role model in the field he or she teach. The second trait is ability to transfer this knowledge to a person.
The strength of a university is to gather within its walls a critical mass of such people, to ensure continuous growth and improvement of their theoretical and practical skills.
Academia is good for integral education, a solid foundation of science. It is good to try many directions, good for find time to read books and develop theoretical knowledge -- your task at work has much less capacity for such kind of things.
What the modern academia lacks of is practice. For sure academia has laboratories, but it offer tasks which still are not the same what you will have at work. For sure it is a better rather than nothing, but if you will have a real job issue, it will be good to get skills and knowledge by working on it rather than spend year or more in academia.
After sharing this context we could talk about place of AI here.
I am a firm believer in a classic education where personal relationships between a teacher and a student are foundation of the education. In this way technology mostly always breaks it and in this way breaks education process, but it can be used to help rather than to make issues.
Keeping in mind three criteria of good education everything which helps here could be considered as a good, everything which makes it difficult could be considered as a bad. AI is able to help here as well as to make it difficult.
In general I think is right to learn by practice, try to solve the issue at front of you. In process of solving the issue you will gain a necessary knowledge. Theory and practice go hand by hand here.
AI may be applied in many different ways, but let me enumerate things which I used for myself:
- ask AI to prepare a short list of tasks which help me learn a field by solving this tasks
- ask AI to give me a documentation for my specific questions either as a summary or going deeper in the field
- review my work according to the best practices
It is not perfect, but it is good and useful.
A few related publications:
Getting started with ML
Broad vs Narrow specialisation
Essay regarding elites