What does AI mean for the future of education?

What does AI mean for the future of education?

How should we be rethinking schools to meet the future? And what does this have to do with the invention of the printing press in fourteen forty or the calculator or the spread of Google? And how is this connected to the eighteenth century German writer Gerta or a digital replica of the philosopher Aristotle or the two lasting bequeaths that we should give our children. Welcome to Inner Cosmos with me David Eagleman. I'm a neuroscientist and an author at Stanford and in these episodes we dive deeply into our three pound universe to uncover some of the most surprising aspects of our lives. Today's episode is all about the future of education. After all, we're still running our school systems essentially as we have since the Industrial Revolution, but now we're in a world of AI. And the question is are we optimally educating our children for the future or are we mostly reiterating what we did mispreparing for a world that will quickly be unrecognizable. After all, the price of knowledge has dropped precipitously and is rapidly approaching zero.

How should we be rethinking schools to meet the future? And what does this have to do with the invention of the printing press in fourteen forty or the calculator or the spread of Google? And how is this connected to the eighteenth century German writer Gerta or a digital replica of the philosopher Aristotle or the two lasting bequeaths that we should give our children. Welcome to Inner Cosmos with me David Eagleman. I'm a neuroscientist and an author at Stanford and in these episodes we dive deeply into our three pound universe to uncover some of the most surprising aspects of our lives. Today's episode is all about the future of education. After all, we're still running our school systems essentially as we have since the Industrial Revolution, but now we're in a world of AI. And the question is are we optimally educating our children for the future or are we mostly reiterating what we did mispreparing for a world that will quickly be unrecognizable. After all, the price of knowledge has dropped precipitously and is rapidly approaching zero.

We are so used to having.

We are so used to having.

Lots of jobs where you're paid to have specialized knowledge, like in medicine or law, or engineers or actuaries or patent examiners or whatever. But with AI that absorbs everything that we've written and can do an increasingly precise job of knowing things better than we can.

Lots of jobs where you're paid to have specialized knowledge, like in medicine or law, or engineers or actuaries or patent examiners or whatever. But with AI that absorbs everything that we've written and can do an increasingly precise job of knowing things better than we can.

In a world where AI.

In a world where AI.

Aces the SATs and the MCATs and the LSATs without breaking a sweat, this is an open question.

Aces the SATs and the MCATs and the LSATs without breaking a sweat, this is an open question.

What the future is going to look like.

What the future is going to look like.

I think it would be madness to assume that it's going to look much like our present in a decade or two from now. This is what many of us around Silicon Valley and the world are talking about all the time. But how does this affect how we are training the next generation? So for the next two episodes, we're going to dive deeply into this and we'll see some very cool directions and surprises. In today's episode, I'm going to lay the groundwork for how we can think about brains and education and the two important things that we need to be doing for the future. And in next week's episode, I'm going to interview Salkn, the creator of the con Academy, which is an extraordinary endeavor, which educates about one hundred million people in the world every year, and specifically Salini are going to talk about what the future of education looks like from his point of view and what tools he's building to meet the moment. So for today, let's start at the center of the issue, which is the human brain. The most remarkable thing about the brain is what we call neuroplasticity, which is the brain's ability to rewrite itself, to be flexible, to absorb the experiences of the world and etch them directly into the circuits of the brain. So brains come into the world half baked, and they absorb the world around them. This is how you come to master all the details of your language and your culture and the knowledge and the mores of your generation. And human brains are more plastic than any others in the animal kingdom. They pop out uniquely unfinished, and this is why a baby giraffe can walk within forty five minutes. But if you've ever seen a baby Homo sapiens get born, you know that it takes.

I think it would be madness to assume that it's going to look much like our present in a decade or two from now. This is what many of us around Silicon Valley and the world are talking about all the time. But how does this affect how we are training the next generation? So for the next two episodes, we're going to dive deeply into this and we'll see some very cool directions and surprises. In today's episode, I'm going to lay the groundwork for how we can think about brains and education and the two important things that we need to be doing for the future. And in next week's episode, I'm going to interview Salkn, the creator of the con Academy, which is an extraordinary endeavor, which educates about one hundred million people in the world every year, and specifically Salini are going to talk about what the future of education looks like from his point of view and what tools he's building to meet the moment. So for today, let's start at the center of the issue, which is the human brain. The most remarkable thing about the brain is what we call neuroplasticity, which is the brain's ability to rewrite itself, to be flexible, to absorb the experiences of the world and etch them directly into the circuits of the brain. So brains come into the world half baked, and they absorb the world around them. This is how you come to master all the details of your language and your culture and the knowledge and the mores of your generation. And human brains are more plastic than any others in the animal kingdom. They pop out uniquely unfinished, and this is why a baby giraffe can walk within forty five minutes. But if you've ever seen a baby Homo sapiens get born, you know that it takes.

Years to figure it out.

Years to figure it out.

So we have these massively extended infancies because we are wiring ourselves to the world as opposed to dropping in more pre programmed. Now, at first blush, it would seem that having a very long infancy would be a disadvantage, and in some ways it is, But the end result is that humans gain capacities that our neighbors in the animal kingdom just don't have. This is why a giraffe is doing the same thing giraffes were doing a million years ago. But humans launch satellites and compose symphonies, and erect skyscrapers and build quantum computers. No other species builds a fraction of what we build. And that's because although most others tend to be tougher than we are, they don't have the capacity to absorb the world around them to the degree that we do. In each generation, they just run the program of being a giraffe. But we drop into the world and in a handful of years we have learned almost every important insight and discovery of the billions of humans before us. We get that, and then we springboard into the next generation.

So we have these massively extended infancies because we are wiring ourselves to the world as opposed to dropping in more pre programmed. Now, at first blush, it would seem that having a very long infancy would be a disadvantage, and in some ways it is, But the end result is that humans gain capacities that our neighbors in the animal kingdom just don't have. This is why a giraffe is doing the same thing giraffes were doing a million years ago. But humans launch satellites and compose symphonies, and erect skyscrapers and build quantum computers. No other species builds a fraction of what we build. And that's because although most others tend to be tougher than we are, they don't have the capacity to absorb the world around them to the degree that we do. In each generation, they just run the program of being a giraffe. But we drop into the world and in a handful of years we have learned almost every important insight and discovery of the billions of humans before us. We get that, and then we springboard into the next generation.

So what does that mean for the way we.

So what does that mean for the way we.

Think about educating our children. It means our responsibility is to shape this malleable brain.

Think about educating our children. It means our responsibility is to shape this malleable brain.

Each child has a forest of tens.

Each child has a forest of tens.

Of billions of little neurons that are spending every moment changing the strength of their connections, and plugging and unplugging and seeking new locations. Whatever they learn in their childhoods, it's stored in the brain, and it's coded in a reconfiguration of the network. That's how brains absorb the world. So our job with education comes down to one main thing, which is to feed the brains of our children as rich a diet of high calorie information as we can. The problem is that schools are largely being run the same way we've done it for hundreds of years, when we needed to train children for particular jobs, careers that we could reasonably assume would be around and lucrative and solid in twenty years from now. But we're entering a new world now, a world where previously unimaginable technology, artificial intelligence that can answer any kind of question this is available the way that running water is available. Just imagine if you were Mark Twain or President Garfield, or Ada Lovelace or Florence Nightingale, the thought of running water would have seemed insane to you. But in the nineteen thirties there was suddenly a pivotal decade where most of America got running water, and suddenly, for the next generation of kids, it was just like background furniture, such that by the time you were born, you don't even devote a single neuron to the fact that you can produce a clean little river at whatever temperature you want, the second you want it. That's what artificial intelligence is going to be for this next generation. Of course, you can open an app that has read everything ever written by humans, and of course you can ask it anything at all in plain English and it will generate an absolutely beautiful answer. Of course, it can synthesize pieces of data that would take you lifetimes to read, and it does it instantly and brilliantly, and soon, of course, you can tell an AI to act as an agent and go out into the world and do tasks for you. So here's the thing I want to emphasize. This world of AI is going to require different skills than what we were raised with and it will offer extraordinarily different opportunities. So this is what we're diving into today. How does current technology change the future landscape and how can we leverage it to rewrite our school systems. So first we know that children are growing up in a different world than the one that many of us did from their first moments.

Of billions of little neurons that are spending every moment changing the strength of their connections, and plugging and unplugging and seeking new locations. Whatever they learn in their childhoods, it's stored in the brain, and it's coded in a reconfiguration of the network. That's how brains absorb the world. So our job with education comes down to one main thing, which is to feed the brains of our children as rich a diet of high calorie information as we can. The problem is that schools are largely being run the same way we've done it for hundreds of years, when we needed to train children for particular jobs, careers that we could reasonably assume would be around and lucrative and solid in twenty years from now. But we're entering a new world now, a world where previously unimaginable technology, artificial intelligence that can answer any kind of question this is available the way that running water is available. Just imagine if you were Mark Twain or President Garfield, or Ada Lovelace or Florence Nightingale, the thought of running water would have seemed insane to you. But in the nineteen thirties there was suddenly a pivotal decade where most of America got running water, and suddenly, for the next generation of kids, it was just like background furniture, such that by the time you were born, you don't even devote a single neuron to the fact that you can produce a clean little river at whatever temperature you want, the second you want it. That's what artificial intelligence is going to be for this next generation. Of course, you can open an app that has read everything ever written by humans, and of course you can ask it anything at all in plain English and it will generate an absolutely beautiful answer. Of course, it can synthesize pieces of data that would take you lifetimes to read, and it does it instantly and brilliantly, and soon, of course, you can tell an AI to act as an agent and go out into the world and do tasks for you. So here's the thing I want to emphasize. This world of AI is going to require different skills than what we were raised with and it will offer extraordinarily different opportunities. So this is what we're diving into today. How does current technology change the future landscape and how can we leverage it to rewrite our school systems. So first we know that children are growing up in a different world than the one that many of us did from their first moments.

They're in a world of technology.

They're in a world of technology.

News of the pregnancy is posted on TikTok or Instagram, the news of the birth is spread on WhatsApp and X. Relatives anywhere on the planet immediately see their pictures. And they grow up in this world where control all delete is as basic as ABC. They have no idea why that key on the keyboard is labeled return. Some of you may remember typewriters where you had to return the carriage to the other side of the page.

News of the pregnancy is posted on TikTok or Instagram, the news of the birth is spread on WhatsApp and X. Relatives anywhere on the planet immediately see their pictures. And they grow up in this world where control all delete is as basic as ABC. They have no idea why that key on the keyboard is labeled return. Some of you may remember typewriters where you had to return the carriage to the other side of the page.

All our kids grow up in.

All our kids grow up in.

A world where photographs are instant, whereas when many of us were children, we had to get the film processed and it took three days. In the space of a generation, things change fast, and the world of very young people now consists of millions of podcasts, billions of web pages, trily of videos.

A world where photographs are instant, whereas when many of us were children, we had to get the film processed and it took three days. In the space of a generation, things change fast, and the world of very young people now consists of millions of podcasts, billions of web pages, trily of videos.

They spend tens.

They spend tens.

Of thousands of hours on mobile phones, video games, texts, emails, social media. And this is to say nothing about the continental plate shifts that AI is starting to make, which will return to in a moment. So as a result, by the time they're in high school, they have a different world than many of us grew up with. So does this change how their brains wire up and how they view themselves compared to, say, their parents.

Of thousands of hours on mobile phones, video games, texts, emails, social media. And this is to say nothing about the continental plate shifts that AI is starting to make, which will return to in a moment. So as a result, by the time they're in high school, they have a different world than many of us grew up with. So does this change how their brains wire up and how they view themselves compared to, say, their parents.

Of course it does.

Of course it does.

Their exposure has been to fast paced, shortened, interactive information, and what that means is the ways that students learn and communicate are different. You've probably heard the term digital immigrants for those teachers who carry old world traditions and assumptions. The idea is that you couldn't live and teach in another country unless you learned the language. For many teachers, the digital world is a second language that was learned later, and any teacher who was a little behind the technology ball is now really behind now that AI is here. So what does all this mean for the brain of a digital native? Well I mentioned that we come into the world with brains half baked, and we absorb the world around us. And the way this works is that in the brain of a newborn baby, the neurons are only starting to communicate with one another, but then over the first two years of life, those neurons begin connecting extremely rapidly, so by the time you hit two years old, you have hundreds of trillions of connections and this is where you max out. You have as many connections as you're ever going to have, and after that it's all about pruning.

Their exposure has been to fast paced, shortened, interactive information, and what that means is the ways that students learn and communicate are different. You've probably heard the term digital immigrants for those teachers who carry old world traditions and assumptions. The idea is that you couldn't live and teach in another country unless you learned the language. For many teachers, the digital world is a second language that was learned later, and any teacher who was a little behind the technology ball is now really behind now that AI is here. So what does all this mean for the brain of a digital native? Well I mentioned that we come into the world with brains half baked, and we absorb the world around us. And the way this works is that in the brain of a newborn baby, the neurons are only starting to communicate with one another, but then over the first two years of life, those neurons begin connecting extremely rapidly, so by the time you hit two years old, you have hundreds of trillions of connections and this is where you max out. You have as many connections as you're ever going to have, and after that it's all about pruning.

Like an overgrown garden.

Like an overgrown garden.

Your brain is encoding what it experiences out there. That's what those connections represent. Whatever you encounter in the world strengthens some pathways, while other pathways eventually go away. And that means the process of becoming who you are isn't about what you gain in the brain, but about what you lose. Think about it like Michelangelo carving away at the marble to find the statue inside. That's what your brain is doing by keeping those connections that resonate with the world. So how your brain turns out depends upon what you are exposed to. So given all this is of course no surprise that technology affects the brain, and that the current generation carries out tasks in different ways. With different technologies. They have increased use of some pathways and decreased use of others, and that gears today's students towards a different kind of learning. Now, I want to take a one second tangent, which is that it's very difficult to do a rigorous scientific study about growing up digitally and how that affects the brain. Why is it difficult, It's because you never really have a good control group. You can't just look at a bunch of students now and run a comparison against a previous generation, because there are one hundred other differences between them, including food and politics and air quality and on and on and on. And you can't easily find another group of students who grew up in this moment without being digital, unless they're amish or deeply impoverished.

Your brain is encoding what it experiences out there. That's what those connections represent. Whatever you encounter in the world strengthens some pathways, while other pathways eventually go away. And that means the process of becoming who you are isn't about what you gain in the brain, but about what you lose. Think about it like Michelangelo carving away at the marble to find the statue inside. That's what your brain is doing by keeping those connections that resonate with the world. So how your brain turns out depends upon what you are exposed to. So given all this is of course no surprise that technology affects the brain, and that the current generation carries out tasks in different ways. With different technologies. They have increased use of some pathways and decreased use of others, and that gears today's students towards a different kind of learning. Now, I want to take a one second tangent, which is that it's very difficult to do a rigorous scientific study about growing up digitally and how that affects the brain. Why is it difficult, It's because you never really have a good control group. You can't just look at a bunch of students now and run a comparison against a previous generation, because there are one hundred other differences between them, including food and politics and air quality and on and on and on. And you can't easily find another group of students who grew up in this moment without being digital, unless they're amish or deeply impoverished.

But then there are one.

But then there are one.

Hundred other differences in how they're being raised, and you don't know what you can attribute to the digital technology versus something else. So whatever people say are the differences with this generation, it's difficult to know which of those has to do with growing up digitally and which has to do with other issues like politics or pollution, or changes in sugar intake or less secondhand smoke or legalized marijuana or whatever, none the less. We can point to a few things that people have noticed when comparing pre Internet and post Internet patterns of reading a page of text. For example, so digital natives tend to make slightly different eye movements that are essentially f shaped meaning they're more likely to quickly scan headlines and then the first few lines of paragraphs before moving farther down the page to do that. Again, readers from older generations tend to be more thorough in they're reading and don't skip.

Hundred other differences in how they're being raised, and you don't know what you can attribute to the digital technology versus something else. So whatever people say are the differences with this generation, it's difficult to know which of those has to do with growing up digitally and which has to do with other issues like politics or pollution, or changes in sugar intake or less secondhand smoke or legalized marijuana or whatever, none the less. We can point to a few things that people have noticed when comparing pre Internet and post Internet patterns of reading a page of text. For example, so digital natives tend to make slightly different eye movements that are essentially f shaped meaning they're more likely to quickly scan headlines and then the first few lines of paragraphs before moving farther down the page to do that. Again, readers from older generations tend to be more thorough in they're reading and don't skip.

Around as much.

Around as much.

Digital natives are also more accustomed to taking in content that has text and images and videos and interactive sliders and buttons or whatever, and presumably as a result, it's tougher for a digital native to concentrate on a long book that is only walls of text, and so digital natives seem to be more prone to distractions, as measured by them moving their eyes off the text entirely. The cool part is that these details of eye movements can be tracked, and they're all totally unconscious. In other words, it's not a signal that can be easily faked because people don't even know they're doing it. I mentioned this to illustrate the bigger point that the digital generation is exposed to different stimuli and that strengthens different pathways in their brains, and that changes how they learn.

Digital natives are also more accustomed to taking in content that has text and images and videos and interactive sliders and buttons or whatever, and presumably as a result, it's tougher for a digital native to concentrate on a long book that is only walls of text, and so digital natives seem to be more prone to distractions, as measured by them moving their eyes off the text entirely. The cool part is that these details of eye movements can be tracked, and they're all totally unconscious. In other words, it's not a signal that can be easily faked because people don't even know they're doing it. I mentioned this to illustrate the bigger point that the digital generation is exposed to different stimuli and that strengthens different pathways in their brains, and that changes how they learn.

Fastest and most efficiently.

Fastest and most efficiently.

So for many of us, when we were growing up, we got a lot of information taught to us just in case we ever needed it. So the Battle of Hastings was in ten sixty six, because you might need to know that someday, or you might need to do geometry later in life, or you might need to know the capital of Indonesia. But education has been transforming because of the Internet. It's gone from just in case information to just in time information. Now young people increasingly pull information on demand. New skills are acquired as needed. Do you need to understand how to change a bike tire, you look it up. You need to understand how this math problem works, or what chemicals to use in this situation, you look it up.

So for many of us, when we were growing up, we got a lot of information taught to us just in case we ever needed it. So the Battle of Hastings was in ten sixty six, because you might need to know that someday, or you might need to do geometry later in life, or you might need to know the capital of Indonesia. But education has been transforming because of the Internet. It's gone from just in case information to just in time information. Now young people increasingly pull information on demand. New skills are acquired as needed. Do you need to understand how to change a bike tire, you look it up. You need to understand how this math problem works, or what chemicals to use in this situation, you look it up.

Now.

Now.

The reason this new just in time learning is important is because the learning is not out of context with the question. When you want to know how something works, you have the right cocktail of neurotransmitters present, and that makes all the difference as far as the neuroplasticity goes. When you are curious, the information sticks and in fact without any of the neurotransmitter knowledge. The spirit of this observation reaches back to the ancient Greeks who loose dated seven levels of learning, with the highest level being when you're curious about something, then it really sticks. So when a child asks Alexa or Siri a question and gets the answer, their curiosity allows the information to have a better chance of getting edged in than if you simply stopped the child and said, hey, I need you to memorize this fact that has nothing to do with your life right now, and I'm going to ask you about this later.

The reason this new just in time learning is important is because the learning is not out of context with the question. When you want to know how something works, you have the right cocktail of neurotransmitters present, and that makes all the difference as far as the neuroplasticity goes. When you are curious, the information sticks and in fact without any of the neurotransmitter knowledge. The spirit of this observation reaches back to the ancient Greeks who loose dated seven levels of learning, with the highest level being when you're curious about something, then it really sticks. So when a child asks Alexa or Siri a question and gets the answer, their curiosity allows the information to have a better chance of getting edged in than if you simply stopped the child and said, hey, I need you to memorize this fact that has nothing to do with your life right now, and I'm going to ask you about this later.

So when you follow some.

So when you follow some.

Rabbit hole on Wikipedia, you click on this link because you're curious, and then the next because you want to understand that word that you've heard once, and then the next because there's some fascinating distinction you've never even thought of, and so on, and eventually you end up twenty clicks away from where you started. That's an amazing way to learn because you are maximizing your curiosity at every step. So each successive generation gets the opportunity for more self direction, and not surprisingly, our comfort zones come to be different. Back in the day, most of what we learned was by text or lecture. It was for the most part sequential, and one topic was tackled at a time, and most of our learning was done independently. Now learning has a very different character. There's way more multitasking, and we learn from pictures and sound and video, which makes everything a lot more engaging. A lot of our learning is interactive with websites or games, and we're often networked with other learners. Much of our learning now is random access like Wikipedia or Google or chat GPT. We connect ideas ourselves. Learning is far more hands on than it ever used to be, so the way brains seek information has changed, and this leads me to a one second tangent about the question of ADHD. Current students are used to constantly changing input and information sources. They're switching from WhatsApp to instead a chat GPT. Does that make a student struggle to concentrate in class? Yes, almost certainly it's a factor. But is that ADHD in many or most cases? Probably not. This is a normal response of their brains to the world. The way they scan and multitask means that sitting down and being taught from a boring textbook or a droning lecturer is not sufficiently interactive or engaging for them. It's more difficult to concentrate on, so the onus becomes on the educator to meet them halfway. Now, what does that look like? Well, now, we have the table set for us to move into the world that we find ourselves in in twenty twenty five, and specifically the world of AI as we all know, modern AI is blowing everyone's mind. Every day we see large language models lms pull things off that no one programmed them to do or even really expected them to be able to do, including all the stuff we're now taking for granted, like summarizing books or making a video from a text prompt or crushing the SATs or LSATs or MCATs. And this is why we find ourselves in an era of discovery more than invention. And I want to point out that a lot of the arguments people have been making about AI not being so good at this or that these have been changing really rapidly. For example, just a year ago people were arguing that AI would make silly mistakes about certain things, and couldn't add thirty two digit numbers with each other, and sometimes would get the wrong answers in a word problem.

Rabbit hole on Wikipedia, you click on this link because you're curious, and then the next because you want to understand that word that you've heard once, and then the next because there's some fascinating distinction you've never even thought of, and so on, and eventually you end up twenty clicks away from where you started. That's an amazing way to learn because you are maximizing your curiosity at every step. So each successive generation gets the opportunity for more self direction, and not surprisingly, our comfort zones come to be different. Back in the day, most of what we learned was by text or lecture. It was for the most part sequential, and one topic was tackled at a time, and most of our learning was done independently. Now learning has a very different character. There's way more multitasking, and we learn from pictures and sound and video, which makes everything a lot more engaging. A lot of our learning is interactive with websites or games, and we're often networked with other learners. Much of our learning now is random access like Wikipedia or Google or chat GPT. We connect ideas ourselves. Learning is far more hands on than it ever used to be, so the way brains seek information has changed, and this leads me to a one second tangent about the question of ADHD. Current students are used to constantly changing input and information sources. They're switching from WhatsApp to instead a chat GPT. Does that make a student struggle to concentrate in class? Yes, almost certainly it's a factor. But is that ADHD in many or most cases? Probably not. This is a normal response of their brains to the world. The way they scan and multitask means that sitting down and being taught from a boring textbook or a droning lecturer is not sufficiently interactive or engaging for them. It's more difficult to concentrate on, so the onus becomes on the educator to meet them halfway. Now, what does that look like? Well, now, we have the table set for us to move into the world that we find ourselves in in twenty twenty five, and specifically the world of AI as we all know, modern AI is blowing everyone's mind. Every day we see large language models lms pull things off that no one programmed them to do or even really expected them to be able to do, including all the stuff we're now taking for granted, like summarizing books or making a video from a text prompt or crushing the SATs or LSATs or MCATs. And this is why we find ourselves in an era of discovery more than invention. And I want to point out that a lot of the arguments people have been making about AI not being so good at this or that these have been changing really rapidly. For example, just a year ago people were arguing that AI would make silly mistakes about certain things, and couldn't add thirty two digit numbers with each other, and sometimes would get the wrong answers in a word problem.

But in a shockingly.

But in a shockingly.

Brief amount of time, these shortcomings have all been mastered. So it's yet to be seen what challenges will remain and for how long we are in for fit a ride and it's going to move faster and faster. So what does this mean for our school systems? Our students are now in a world where the entirety of humankind's knowledge has been digested and any piece of information or any sophisticated analysis is available to you instantly. What does that mean for the next generation? How will the future change and what should we be doing about it now? So, first of all, let's put this in historical context, because in times like these, it's always useful to remember that there have always been times like these. So in fourteen forty, when the printing press was invented in Europe, there were many thinkers who asserted that this was going to ruin the next generation. Why because now the answers were just sitting there.

Brief amount of time, these shortcomings have all been mastered. So it's yet to be seen what challenges will remain and for how long we are in for fit a ride and it's going to move faster and faster. So what does this mean for our school systems? Our students are now in a world where the entirety of humankind's knowledge has been digested and any piece of information or any sophisticated analysis is available to you instantly. What does that mean for the next generation? How will the future change and what should we be doing about it now? So, first of all, let's put this in historical context, because in times like these, it's always useful to remember that there have always been times like these. So in fourteen forty, when the printing press was invented in Europe, there were many thinkers who asserted that this was going to ruin the next generation. Why because now the answers were just sitting there.

They were right there. You don't have to remember much of anything.

They were right there. You don't have to remember much of anything.

You just needed to remember where to get the information, and you could pull it right off the shelf.

You just needed to remember where to get the information, and you could pull it right off the shelf.

A lot of it.

A lot of it.

Educators in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries lamented what was going on here. They were certain this was going to make everyone intellectually lazy. What they overlooked was the way that knowledge would continue to explode and the way that society could springboard off the top of this new technology of books. Memorizing things was not, in fact the important part of education. Instead, it was about storing pointers to where the information could be obtained. Twenty five years ago, I was having a similar conversation with educators as we transitioned into a world of the Internet, and a teacher would ask a question and the kids would just go home and look up the answer. I don't know if you remember those days, but everyone's concern was that it was cheating.

Educators in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries lamented what was going on here. They were certain this was going to make everyone intellectually lazy. What they overlooked was the way that knowledge would continue to explode and the way that society could springboard off the top of this new technology of books. Memorizing things was not, in fact the important part of education. Instead, it was about storing pointers to where the information could be obtained. Twenty five years ago, I was having a similar conversation with educators as we transitioned into a world of the Internet, and a teacher would ask a question and the kids would just go home and look up the answer. I don't know if you remember those days, but everyone's concern was that it was cheating.

So what happened.

So what happened.

It's not that students got dumber, It's that educators got smarter. We changed our approach to posing the questions to obviate copy and paste homework. We just stopped asking simple memorizable facts, and we started doing other things like getting students to present out loud to the class, or grading each other's work what new things did they learn, or getting students to grade the quality of information from different websites, and generally anything that made the questions an active exploration instead of a simple fill in the blank. Well, now we are faced with a new challenge from AI, and the question is is this the same kind of challenge we've always had, or is something different this time, and if so, what and how do we as a society best prepare ourselves and our students for this future. So let's start with a prediction about AI that I heard from Steve Jobs in the nineteen nineties. Jobs was giving a talk where he imagined that computers could reach this point where they would be able to understand everything that the great philosopher Aristotle knew and would be able to simulate his mind, and you could have a conversation with him. You could ask Aristotle anything, just like Alexander the Great did. And I have to say, when Steve Jobs talked about this in the nineties, it seemed like a full fledged computer world fantasy.

It's not that students got dumber, It's that educators got smarter. We changed our approach to posing the questions to obviate copy and paste homework. We just stopped asking simple memorizable facts, and we started doing other things like getting students to present out loud to the class, or grading each other's work what new things did they learn, or getting students to grade the quality of information from different websites, and generally anything that made the questions an active exploration instead of a simple fill in the blank. Well, now we are faced with a new challenge from AI, and the question is is this the same kind of challenge we've always had, or is something different this time, and if so, what and how do we as a society best prepare ourselves and our students for this future. So let's start with a prediction about AI that I heard from Steve Jobs in the nineteen nineties. Jobs was giving a talk where he imagined that computers could reach this point where they would be able to understand everything that the great philosopher Aristotle knew and would be able to simulate his mind, and you could have a conversation with him. You could ask Aristotle anything, just like Alexander the Great did. And I have to say, when Steve Jobs talked about this in the nineties, it seemed like a full fledged computer world fantasy.

On the AI mountain.

On the AI mountain.

We hadn't even gotten our boots strapped on at the bottom yet, and yet.

We hadn't even gotten our boots strapped on at the bottom yet, and yet.

Here we are.

Here we are.

Now, We're so far up that mountain that now having a simulacrum of Aristotle just seems like part of the background furniture.

Now, We're so far up that mountain that now having a simulacrum of Aristotle just seems like part of the background furniture.

You can do this with any LM.

You can do this with any LM.

You just feed in all the books by someone and then you have a full, rich conversation. Now, why did Steve jobs suggestion of having a personalized tutor matter? Well, it matters because every classroom goes too fast for half the kids and too slow for the other half. So a tailored individualized education is a dream that many think in the education space have had for a long time, having an expert who could teach you with passion and patience and in every possible language. That's something that hasn't existed before, and now it's here. But here's the question I want to pose. If students were able to sit and have a conversation with Aristotle, would they or would they rather be hanging out with other students and making jokes and getting dates and so on. So I asked my thirteen year old boy this question of whether he would use a digital twin tutor, and he found it not that interesting because he was aware that he would run out of things to ask pretty quickly, because in fact, he wants to be with friends and play video games and run around. Also, there's what I call the problem of the mismatched internal model.

You just feed in all the books by someone and then you have a full, rich conversation. Now, why did Steve jobs suggestion of having a personalized tutor matter? Well, it matters because every classroom goes too fast for half the kids and too slow for the other half. So a tailored individualized education is a dream that many think in the education space have had for a long time, having an expert who could teach you with passion and patience and in every possible language. That's something that hasn't existed before, and now it's here. But here's the question I want to pose. If students were able to sit and have a conversation with Aristotle, would they or would they rather be hanging out with other students and making jokes and getting dates and so on. So I asked my thirteen year old boy this question of whether he would use a digital twin tutor, and he found it not that interesting because he was aware that he would run out of things to ask pretty quickly, because in fact, he wants to be with friends and play video games and run around. Also, there's what I call the problem of the mismatched internal model.

A typical student.

A typical student.

Simply doesn't have in his or her head the same questions or concepts that Aristotle had in his head, so there's not much of an interface there. They wouldn't think to ask him about his notion of four different causes that underlie everything, or his distinction between substantial properties and accidental properties of objects, or his theories about virtue or teleology or the unmoved mover. So if you were a student lucky enough to sit down with Aristotle, you just might not know what to ask. You're not that likely to probe him with really terrific questions. But I think the dream of a tutor isn't lost. It simply has to be cast correctly. There's a different way to think about the concept of tutor, and I think one of the best examples of this is coming out of the con Academy. It's called con Migo. Con Migo doesn't tell you what it knows. Instead, it challenges you to think critically and to solve problems without ever giving you direct answers. So you can learn algebra or programming or essay writing. But the key is that, unlike chatchpt, con migo does not tell you the answer. It guides you to find the answer yourself, and it does so with limitless patience. I won't say more about this now because next week we'll have Saul Khn of the con Academy on Intercosmos to talk with us about this, how it came about.

Simply doesn't have in his or her head the same questions or concepts that Aristotle had in his head, so there's not much of an interface there. They wouldn't think to ask him about his notion of four different causes that underlie everything, or his distinction between substantial properties and accidental properties of objects, or his theories about virtue or teleology or the unmoved mover. So if you were a student lucky enough to sit down with Aristotle, you just might not know what to ask. You're not that likely to probe him with really terrific questions. But I think the dream of a tutor isn't lost. It simply has to be cast correctly. There's a different way to think about the concept of tutor, and I think one of the best examples of this is coming out of the con Academy. It's called con Migo. Con Migo doesn't tell you what it knows. Instead, it challenges you to think critically and to solve problems without ever giving you direct answers. So you can learn algebra or programming or essay writing. But the key is that, unlike chatchpt, con migo does not tell you the answer. It guides you to find the answer yourself, and it does so with limitless patience. I won't say more about this now because next week we'll have Saul Khn of the con Academy on Intercosmos to talk with us about this, how it came about.

And where it's going.

And where it's going.

But the thing I want us to note for now is that this is not a tutor that replaces a teacher, but one that works with the teacher, and that leads me to the role that AI is going to be great at, which is AI as Tha.

But the thing I want us to note for now is that this is not a tutor that replaces a teacher, but one that works with the teacher, and that leads me to the role that AI is going to be great at, which is AI as Tha.

In other words, as a teaching.

In other words, as a teaching.

Assistant, AI can do more than just help with the teaching. It can also help with the job of teaching. There are all kinds of ways that teachers can use AI to help with grading, with creating schedules, with tracking attendance that gives the teachers more time and energy to spend with the students. AI is super helpful a teacher needs to write comments to parents on an individual student performance. If it saves the teachers fifty percent of their time, that's an incredible win. Or when a teacher has to make multiple versions of the same test because kids are going off to debate tournaments, or writing teacher letters of recommendation. All these are things that AI helps with to reduce the burden on educators. And the effect of all these efficiency gains is that it gives the teachers more time to have real human relationships with the students, and AI is also going to improve the structure of teaching. A lot of researchers feel that the big end of semester exam is going to go away in place of AI monitoring every problem along the way, so the teacher knows exactly how a student is doing on the fly. In other words, with the enormous amount of data available to collect about learners, I can process and translate that to provide useful insights to everybody, to teachers, to students, to parents, and it can give in the moment formative feedback to the students, so even before they turn things into the teacher, the AI can differentiate the learning experience based on that student's need, in other words, tailored education. The main thing is it can digest all this data on the fly and make it understandable to everyone. Okay, so what should we do next in our classrooms. Let's return to what I said about teachers having to change the way they gave assignments when Google appeared.

Assistant, AI can do more than just help with the teaching. It can also help with the job of teaching. There are all kinds of ways that teachers can use AI to help with grading, with creating schedules, with tracking attendance that gives the teachers more time and energy to spend with the students. AI is super helpful a teacher needs to write comments to parents on an individual student performance. If it saves the teachers fifty percent of their time, that's an incredible win. Or when a teacher has to make multiple versions of the same test because kids are going off to debate tournaments, or writing teacher letters of recommendation. All these are things that AI helps with to reduce the burden on educators. And the effect of all these efficiency gains is that it gives the teachers more time to have real human relationships with the students, and AI is also going to improve the structure of teaching. A lot of researchers feel that the big end of semester exam is going to go away in place of AI monitoring every problem along the way, so the teacher knows exactly how a student is doing on the fly. In other words, with the enormous amount of data available to collect about learners, I can process and translate that to provide useful insights to everybody, to teachers, to students, to parents, and it can give in the moment formative feedback to the students, so even before they turn things into the teacher, the AI can differentiate the learning experience based on that student's need, in other words, tailored education. The main thing is it can digest all this data on the fly and make it understandable to everyone. Okay, so what should we do next in our classrooms. Let's return to what I said about teachers having to change the way they gave assignments when Google appeared.

What do we do with chat GPT?

What do we do with chat GPT?

Well, first of all, last week I was giving a talk at a different university and I talked with several of my colleagues on the faculty there and I asked them, how are you changing the way that you do assignments to prevent students from using chat GPT, and many of them said, well, I changed my assignment up. Instead of just asking them to tell me the answer, I told the students to do something new, like compare two ideas or come up with three different ways of doing something. And I said, wait a minute, they could still just do that with their favorite LLM right, And the professors seemed to have one of two responses. One was, well, that would violate the honor code if they were doing that, and the other was I'm pretty sure my students are not doing that. But the fact is every student is doing it. There's no reason for a student not to do it. If you are a student and not using the available technology while your competition is using it, your chances of success are slim. So I think we should assume that all students are leveraging this technology. We need to work with that reality. But happily, as far as things to do, it's not that hard for an educator to modify the assignments. I'll give you an example. This is what I'm doing in my current class at Stanford.

Well, first of all, last week I was giving a talk at a different university and I talked with several of my colleagues on the faculty there and I asked them, how are you changing the way that you do assignments to prevent students from using chat GPT, and many of them said, well, I changed my assignment up. Instead of just asking them to tell me the answer, I told the students to do something new, like compare two ideas or come up with three different ways of doing something. And I said, wait a minute, they could still just do that with their favorite LLM right, And the professors seemed to have one of two responses. One was, well, that would violate the honor code if they were doing that, and the other was I'm pretty sure my students are not doing that. But the fact is every student is doing it. There's no reason for a student not to do it. If you are a student and not using the available technology while your competition is using it, your chances of success are slim. So I think we should assume that all students are leveraging this technology. We need to work with that reality. But happily, as far as things to do, it's not that hard for an educator to modify the assignments. I'll give you an example. This is what I'm doing in my current class at Stanford.

We used to have.

We used to have.

The final assignment as the writing of a twelve page paper. Now the students run a science experiment on their fellow classmates and they write up the results. Even if they get help refining the question that they want to pursue from an LLM, that's fine. They're still optimizing the question that they want to pursue and designing the experiment, and then they're contacting their classmates and running the experiment and understanding what goes wrong in real life and how they need to communicate, and finally how to analyze data and make charts, even.

The final assignment as the writing of a twelve page paper. Now the students run a science experiment on their fellow classmates and they write up the results. Even if they get help refining the question that they want to pursue from an LLM, that's fine. They're still optimizing the question that they want to pursue and designing the experiment, and then they're contacting their classmates and running the experiment and understanding what goes wrong in real life and how they need to communicate, and finally how to analyze data and make charts, even.

If they use GPT for help with that.

If they use GPT for help with that.

Anyway, it was an easy change for me to go from a final paper to a final experiment. And we also have quizzes every class where at the end of the lecture there are four sessions on a slide and the students write down the answers on paper. A lot of teachers are successfully moving in these directions. For example, many teachers I talk with say they used to give a big take home exam at the end of the semester. Now they give a bunch of smaller in class quizzes throughout. So I just want to emphasize the importance of being one hundred percent aware of the tools out there so that educators don't have to pretend that our students are not using them. And one way that educators can think about this is actually giving AI assisted assignments where the students are meant to use AI and couldn't complete it without it, and then you have oral defenses about what the student just learned. So just imagine the difference between having a student making a little diorama or whatever I did when I was a kid, versus having them build an AI enhanced science fiction world where the student works with AI to generate details about the new world, including the science, the cultures, the creatures, the technology that comes out of that, and then you have the student give a performance in front of the class. So it's not a matter of simply generating it, but refining it and knowing it and believing it and being able to be quizzed deeply on the fly about it. You can imagine these same concepts with AI assisted spoken word performance, where in combination with AI, a student might generate richer content to produce on the stage or AI designed next decade planning from social structures to technology and education.

Anyway, it was an easy change for me to go from a final paper to a final experiment. And we also have quizzes every class where at the end of the lecture there are four sessions on a slide and the students write down the answers on paper. A lot of teachers are successfully moving in these directions. For example, many teachers I talk with say they used to give a big take home exam at the end of the semester. Now they give a bunch of smaller in class quizzes throughout. So I just want to emphasize the importance of being one hundred percent aware of the tools out there so that educators don't have to pretend that our students are not using them. And one way that educators can think about this is actually giving AI assisted assignments where the students are meant to use AI and couldn't complete it without it, and then you have oral defenses about what the student just learned. So just imagine the difference between having a student making a little diorama or whatever I did when I was a kid, versus having them build an AI enhanced science fiction world where the student works with AI to generate details about the new world, including the science, the cultures, the creatures, the technology that comes out of that, and then you have the student give a performance in front of the class. So it's not a matter of simply generating it, but refining it and knowing it and believing it and being able to be quizzed deeply on the fly about it. You can imagine these same concepts with AI assisted spoken word performance, where in combination with AI, a student might generate richer content to produce on the stage or AI designed next decade planning from social structures to technology and education.

And daily life. This is how you give students a great.

And daily life. This is how you give students a great.

Education because they are learning how to use the tools of the day to build something creative and understand it deeply. Okay, so this is a direction where things can go. But things I think are even more exciting when we look out a few years. A colleague of mine, Rich Branyak, runs open Stacks, which is a service that provides textbooks in eighty five subjects for free. Now I just spoke with him, and he's put years into this project, but they're no longer certain that textbooks are the optimal way to carry information. So open Stacks is trying out many different things. And by the way, we are in a long period of discovery here, so some things will work well and some things won't. One of the things they're trying is this. Imagine that you need the students to read chapter seven of this book. You click a button to pass chapter seven to Google's Notebook LM, or even better now Google Illuminate, which turns the book into a podcast with two artificial podcasters having a conversation about the content.

Education because they are learning how to use the tools of the day to build something creative and understand it deeply. Okay, so this is a direction where things can go. But things I think are even more exciting when we look out a few years. A colleague of mine, Rich Branyak, runs open Stacks, which is a service that provides textbooks in eighty five subjects for free. Now I just spoke with him, and he's put years into this project, but they're no longer certain that textbooks are the optimal way to carry information. So open Stacks is trying out many different things. And by the way, we are in a long period of discovery here, so some things will work well and some things won't. One of the things they're trying is this. Imagine that you need the students to read chapter seven of this book. You click a button to pass chapter seven to Google's Notebook LM, or even better now Google Illuminate, which turns the book into a podcast with two artificial podcasters having a conversation about the content.

And you can set.

And you can set.

All the parameters like which age group this is for, and the level of difficulty, and so on. I'll play a brief clip for you from one of Google Illuminates podcasts. Here it's absorbed Charles Darwin's Origin of Species, and you can learn about the book in a conversation.

All the parameters like which age group this is for, and the level of difficulty, and so on. I'll play a brief clip for you from one of Google Illuminates podcasts. Here it's absorbed Charles Darwin's Origin of Species, and you can learn about the book in a conversation.

Let's talk about it. Absolutely.

Let's talk about it. Absolutely.

This is a classic foundational work in the field of evolutionary biology. It's amazing to think that it was published way back in eighteen fifty nine.

This is a classic foundational work in the field of evolutionary biology. It's amazing to think that it was published way back in eighteen fifty nine.

Eighteen fifty nine, that's quite a while ago. Can you tell us a bit about what makes this work so important?

Eighteen fifty nine, that's quite a while ago. Can you tell us a bit about what makes this work so important?

You bet, Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection was a total game changer.

You bet, Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection was a total game changer.

Now I'm only playing a bit of this, but it goes on to mention the key ideas and to break those down even further, such that in a short podcast you get a really good summary of the key ideas. Now, the thing I want to emphasize is that by this clever trick of turning it into two people talking, it becomes more interesting than a bulleted list of facts about the book. Why because it gets closer to a story, and we have a story shaped hole in our brain, and that's what allows things to go in rather than simply bullet points of facts. Now, it's not necessarily easy to turn everything into a story. But this technology that turns a book into a podcast gets us part way there because instead of somebody writing, here's a fact, here's a fact, here's a fact, now you have someone saying, wait, I'm confused, and the other person says, ah, hang on, this is amazing, and the first person says, wow, that really blows my mind. And now suddenly you're recruiting parts of the brain that we study in a subfield called social neuroscience, which is just to say, when other people are involved, we care more. And that's a big part of why we care about story. So this quick trick of converting a chapter into a podcast dialogue with a click allows story to be approximated and gets you part way there. And it's instant and free. And that's not all. If you, as a teacher, want to emphasize some aspect of the chapter in particular, you just steer the prompt that way. So open Stax is experimenting with saying, here's chapter seven of this textbook, but I really want my kids to concentrate on this aspect of it and not spend much time on.

Now I'm only playing a bit of this, but it goes on to mention the key ideas and to break those down even further, such that in a short podcast you get a really good summary of the key ideas. Now, the thing I want to emphasize is that by this clever trick of turning it into two people talking, it becomes more interesting than a bulleted list of facts about the book. Why because it gets closer to a story, and we have a story shaped hole in our brain, and that's what allows things to go in rather than simply bullet points of facts. Now, it's not necessarily easy to turn everything into a story. But this technology that turns a book into a podcast gets us part way there because instead of somebody writing, here's a fact, here's a fact, here's a fact, now you have someone saying, wait, I'm confused, and the other person says, ah, hang on, this is amazing, and the first person says, wow, that really blows my mind. And now suddenly you're recruiting parts of the brain that we study in a subfield called social neuroscience, which is just to say, when other people are involved, we care more. And that's a big part of why we care about story. So this quick trick of converting a chapter into a podcast dialogue with a click allows story to be approximated and gets you part way there. And it's instant and free. And that's not all. If you, as a teacher, want to emphasize some aspect of the chapter in particular, you just steer the prompt that way. So open Stax is experimenting with saying, here's chapter seven of this textbook, but I really want my kids to concentrate on this aspect of it and not spend much time on.

This other aspect.

This other aspect.

And even better than that, Open Stax wants to make it so the teacher can add his or her own voice, so that one of the voices on the podcast is the teacher saying the words.

And even better than that, Open Stax wants to make it so the teacher can add his or her own voice, so that one of the voices on the podcast is the teacher saying the words.

All of this is.

All of this is.

Easily done with the current technology, and it allows this story shaped hole to be hit. It's not a Kloak and Dagger mystery about Darwin, but it's a heck of a lot better than.

Easily done with the current technology, and it allows this story shaped hole to be hit. It's not a Kloak and Dagger mystery about Darwin, but it's a heck of a lot better than.

Reading a long list of facts.

Reading a long list of facts.

All this leads to the big question, which is what is it we want our students to learn in school. Well, one of the most important aspects of school is this social education, learning all about other people and how to deal with them, and that's obviously much more than simple fact gathering. Beyond this, there are two fundamental things we need them to learn and to get there, I'll step back to the great German thinker Gerta, who in the eighteenth century suggested that children need two things from their parents, roots and wings. That is the ability to know what has come before them that's the roots, and the courage to move into the future and create something new that's the wings. So what does this mean in the context of our future world? We need to be thinking about what this translates into for our students, because lots of jobs will get outdated, just as always happens. Think about buggy drivers and phonograph makers and telephone operators. There's always been no point in teaching towards particular vocations, but that's especially true now. In ten years, it is really difficult to know what jobs are going to exist. Twenty years from now, it's probably impossible. Our students of today are going to have job titles we can't even imagine right now, and the question is how do we prepare them for it. Well, in this context, my interpretation of the Gerta quote about roots and wings translates to this, for schools, everything is going to change. So the roots we want to teach our children that's critical thinking, and the wings we want to give them that's creativity. And I'm going to argue that, even as everything else changes rapidly around us, these are the two finest gifts that we can bequeath to the next generation. So let's concentrate on critical thinking first. The idea of writing an end of term paper, or memorizing a bunch of formulas or dates, all of that is becoming less important because AI can take care of that instead, the central job for us is to focus on how to think, how to critically reason, how to make good decisions. And let me tell you what I think is a beautiful example of how AI can be leveraged.

All this leads to the big question, which is what is it we want our students to learn in school. Well, one of the most important aspects of school is this social education, learning all about other people and how to deal with them, and that's obviously much more than simple fact gathering. Beyond this, there are two fundamental things we need them to learn and to get there, I'll step back to the great German thinker Gerta, who in the eighteenth century suggested that children need two things from their parents, roots and wings. That is the ability to know what has come before them that's the roots, and the courage to move into the future and create something new that's the wings. So what does this mean in the context of our future world? We need to be thinking about what this translates into for our students, because lots of jobs will get outdated, just as always happens. Think about buggy drivers and phonograph makers and telephone operators. There's always been no point in teaching towards particular vocations, but that's especially true now. In ten years, it is really difficult to know what jobs are going to exist. Twenty years from now, it's probably impossible. Our students of today are going to have job titles we can't even imagine right now, and the question is how do we prepare them for it. Well, in this context, my interpretation of the Gerta quote about roots and wings translates to this, for schools, everything is going to change. So the roots we want to teach our children that's critical thinking, and the wings we want to give them that's creativity. And I'm going to argue that, even as everything else changes rapidly around us, these are the two finest gifts that we can bequeath to the next generation. So let's concentrate on critical thinking first. The idea of writing an end of term paper, or memorizing a bunch of formulas or dates, all of that is becoming less important because AI can take care of that instead, the central job for us is to focus on how to think, how to critically reason, how to make good decisions. And let me tell you what I think is a beautiful example of how AI can be leveraged.

Here.

Here.

One of the things I'm going to discuss with Saul Kahan next week is the issue of teaching critical thinking by debate. So, without giving that discussion away, I'll just say we're all interested in teaching students not to pipe off with opinions that they believe are incontrovertible, but instead to teach them how to think by being challenged. Now, somehow our schools have gotten less good.

One of the things I'm going to discuss with Saul Kahan next week is the issue of teaching critical thinking by debate. So, without giving that discussion away, I'll just say we're all interested in teaching students not to pipe off with opinions that they believe are incontrovertible, but instead to teach them how to think by being challenged. Now, somehow our schools have gotten less good.

At that training.

At that training.

How can we make sure that our students are given that challenge, that training such that they're able to understand the other side of an argument well enough to steal man it. Steel manning is the opposite of straw manning. It's where you hear someone else's opposing argument and then you try to reproduce it and possibly even strengthen it to demonstrate your understanding of it. So, in this way of using AI, a student takes a hot button topic and debates it with the friendly but firm AI, and the student is graded on how well she defended her position with logical arguments as well as how well she was able to steal man the computer's argument, and then the sides are switched. Now, to my mind, this is one of the most powerful approaches to how AI can be leveraged in leveling up education. A student can get the time and patience and practice to meaningfully learn how to think this way. As I said, we're going to come back to this in more detail next week, and now let's turn to creativity in theory. The aim of the National curriculum is to prepare children for life, right, but many worry that it has drifted into the realm of teaching for the next test, and we sometimes miss the fact that the content of those tests isn't in the right aim, because we're still training kids for what was important in the last generation, not the upcoming one. And I mentioned a moment ago the issue of jobs that won't even exist anymore and the unimagined jobs that are coming down the pike. So presumably the important thing is not to teach rote knowledge, but instead to teach the ability to learn to be cognitively flexible, to be creative. And AI is extraordinary at helping with this, students and all of us can throw the ball farther every time by having a thought partner. Fundamentally, what's happening in the brain is that creativity happens because we absorb information from the world and then remix it by bending it, by breaking it, by blending it. If you're interested in this topic, please check out my book The Runaway Species or listen to episode fifty eight for more on that. And what AI gives is plenty of practice with this bending, breaking and blending. It's so good at working with us to do these remixes. And if we zoom out to AI and our technology more generally, what it is extraordinary at is giving us the ability to consume a larger diet, which gives us the warehouse of materials that we can remix. This is now something that students have the opportunity to do at a whole new level, to have an incredibly expansive storehouse of knowledge, bigger than any generation before them. For many of us, when we were young, we'd get our information by going down to the library and pulling out the Encyclopedia Britannica.

How can we make sure that our students are given that challenge, that training such that they're able to understand the other side of an argument well enough to steal man it. Steel manning is the opposite of straw manning. It's where you hear someone else's opposing argument and then you try to reproduce it and possibly even strengthen it to demonstrate your understanding of it. So, in this way of using AI, a student takes a hot button topic and debates it with the friendly but firm AI, and the student is graded on how well she defended her position with logical arguments as well as how well she was able to steal man the computer's argument, and then the sides are switched. Now, to my mind, this is one of the most powerful approaches to how AI can be leveraged in leveling up education. A student can get the time and patience and practice to meaningfully learn how to think this way. As I said, we're going to come back to this in more detail next week, and now let's turn to creativity in theory. The aim of the National curriculum is to prepare children for life, right, but many worry that it has drifted into the realm of teaching for the next test, and we sometimes miss the fact that the content of those tests isn't in the right aim, because we're still training kids for what was important in the last generation, not the upcoming one. And I mentioned a moment ago the issue of jobs that won't even exist anymore and the unimagined jobs that are coming down the pike. So presumably the important thing is not to teach rote knowledge, but instead to teach the ability to learn to be cognitively flexible, to be creative. And AI is extraordinary at helping with this, students and all of us can throw the ball farther every time by having a thought partner. Fundamentally, what's happening in the brain is that creativity happens because we absorb information from the world and then remix it by bending it, by breaking it, by blending it. If you're interested in this topic, please check out my book The Runaway Species or listen to episode fifty eight for more on that. And what AI gives is plenty of practice with this bending, breaking and blending. It's so good at working with us to do these remixes. And if we zoom out to AI and our technology more generally, what it is extraordinary at is giving us the ability to consume a larger diet, which gives us the warehouse of materials that we can remix. This is now something that students have the opportunity to do at a whole new level, to have an incredibly expansive storehouse of knowledge, bigger than any generation before them. For many of us, when we were young, we'd get our information by going down to the library and pulling out the Encyclopedia Britannica.

But now you can get the entirety.

But now you can get the entirety.

Of humankind's knowledge from a rectangle in your pocket. That makes an enormous difference. And you had whatever homeroom teacher you had in your little town. But now students get to absorb a larger world due to technology. Our devices have flattened the world and zero the distances. I run into kids all the time who say something really smart, and I.

Of humankind's knowledge from a rectangle in your pocket. That makes an enormous difference. And you had whatever homeroom teacher you had in your little town. But now students get to absorb a larger world due to technology. Our devices have flattened the world and zero the distances. I run into kids all the time who say something really smart, and I.

Say, how did you know that?

Say, how did you know that?

And they say, oh, I learned that from a Ted talk where you've got somebody giving the best talk of their lives in fifteen minutes. To my mind, this is one of the most beautiful things about AI and technology in our lives. It's about consuming a larger diet. Children now have an opportunity which we never had. They can build whole new worlds with AI. They can figure out how to implement anything not on a year's timescale, but in a few dedicated hours. As a result of our increasingly large diet, we have become a species with a runaway imagination. Our innate cognitive software has produced a society with increasingly faster innovation when that feeds upon its latest ideas, and our students now are on the steepest part of the curve that we've ever had in the history of the species. There are now more materials than ever for them to absorb and remix.

And they say, oh, I learned that from a Ted talk where you've got somebody giving the best talk of their lives in fifteen minutes. To my mind, this is one of the most beautiful things about AI and technology in our lives. It's about consuming a larger diet. Children now have an opportunity which we never had. They can build whole new worlds with AI. They can figure out how to implement anything not on a year's timescale, but in a few dedicated hours. As a result of our increasingly large diet, we have become a species with a runaway imagination. Our innate cognitive software has produced a society with increasingly faster innovation when that feeds upon its latest ideas, and our students now are on the steepest part of the curve that we've ever had in the history of the species. There are now more materials than ever for them to absorb and remix.

And the question for us as educators is.

And the question for us as educators is.

How do we meet them there on their terms, with current technology and with their method of learning.

How do we meet them there on their terms, with current technology and with their method of learning.

We're entering a.

We're entering a.

New world with AI in scientific discovery, AI and art and music, AI and social sciences and engineering and legislation. And there are patterns emerging that we can't conceive of with our twenty twenty five minds, but will look obvious enough in twenty thirty five. So to wrap up this thought, few endeavors hold as much power for our students of today as critical thinking and creativity. Everything is going to look very different from the world we know today. There's going to be new medical treatments, fl forms of communication, new works of art, and the road to that future begins in the classrooms of today. So let's do a good job making sure that our students have the tools to go out and build the next.

New world with AI in scientific discovery, AI and art and music, AI and social sciences and engineering and legislation. And there are patterns emerging that we can't conceive of with our twenty twenty five minds, but will look obvious enough in twenty thirty five. So to wrap up this thought, few endeavors hold as much power for our students of today as critical thinking and creativity. Everything is going to look very different from the world we know today. There's going to be new medical treatments, fl forms of communication, new works of art, and the road to that future begins in the classrooms of today. So let's do a good job making sure that our students have the tools to go out and build the next.

Generation of our world.

Generation of our world.

So please join me for the next episode, Part two, where I'll be interviewing Saul Khan, founder of the kN Academy. As a preview, he's not opposed to teaching, wrote knowledge, and he'll argue why that is to some degree a really important thing, and he'll talk about the incredible work he's done with the con Academy over the years, and also where things are going with our new world of technology. So until next week, I'll just end by reminding us that very little is going to remain status quo in our society. There are many fronts on which we'll watch and see what happens, but I suggest the most important place for us to take action now is with the education of our children. As the slope of change increases, we need to keep in how we can make the right moves now so that we can successfully bequeath to our children roots and wings. Go to Eagleman dot com slash podcast for more information and to find further reading. Send me an email at podcast at eagleman dot com with questions or discussion, and check out and subscribe to Inner Cosmos on YouTube for videos of each episode and to leave comments until next time. I'm David Eagleman, and this is Inner Cosmos.