Artificial Intelligence - School's Out For Ever?
Posted on: 29/06/2018Artificial Intelligence – School’s Out For Ever1?
‘We are approaching a time when machines will be able to outperform humans at almost any task. I believe that society needs to confront this question before it is upon us: if machines are capable of doing almost any work humans can do, what will humans do? We need to rise to the occasion and meet this challenge before human labour becomes obsolete.’
So said respected computer scientist Moshe Vardi in 20162. Perhaps his pessimistic forecast was prompted by a number of reports, such as the 2013 study at the University of Oxford by Frey and Osborne3 which predicted that some 50% of 700 jobs are under threat of automation in the next two decades. Ironically, Frey and Osborne’s report was partly generated by an artificial intelligence (AI) system!
Toby Walsh, in his book Android Dreams – The Past, Present and Future of Artificial Intelligence4, throws us a lifeline by arguing that the alarmist newspaper headlines which followed the Oxford report were unjustified. For example, some jobs will be only partly automated, some automation may not harmonise with customer demands (pilotless airliner, anybody?) and new technology invariably creates new types of job. Some readers might be old enough to remember the excitement of the early 90s, when we all thought that computers would lead to a 3-day working week for all. (This was about the same time that we were anticipating the Peace Dividend that would surely follow the downfall of the USSR!)
The part-automation of complex, skilled tasks promises huge benefits to society, and indeed is already beginning to impact upon a variety of professions. Yesterday’s Times and Telegraph newspapers reported that Babylon, a ‘chatbot’ which in some areas assesses patients who dial 111, achieved a high pass (81%) in the diagnosis exam set by the Royal College of General Practitioners (average mark 72%), and even outperformed a small group of experienced GPs (97% to 93%). GPs responded by saying that their ‘gut feeling’ helps them to care for patients – and I am certain that they are right. Experienced GPs build up, over thousands of consultations, an apparently intuitive ability (aka gut feeling) to identify unreported symptoms. Their huge knowledge base, built upon skills of social perception moulded over millions of years of evolutionary development, and their ability to communicate in the most appropriate way given the individual and the circumstances, provide them with professional skills which surpass those of Babylon. Babylon will be a useful tool to speed up diagnosis, and to assist those who cannot access a doctor directly, but there is more to diagnosis than self-reported symptoms, and more to medical care than diagnosis.
At the London Festival of Learning this week, research was reported which looked at the effect of teachers using high-tech ‘Lumilo’ glasses, which allow them to check individual performance during lessons while simultaneously monitoring the class5. This claims to be the first experimental study which shows that pupils can learn more if the artificial intelligence of a maths tutoring programme, which provides students with step-by-step guidance and allows them to work at their own pace, is combined with support from human teachers.
This is a super example of artificial intelligence working hand in hand with natural (teacher) intelligence. As Ken Holstein, lead author on the study, says, ‘Lumilo facilitates a form of mutual support or co-orchestration between the human teacher and the AI tutor.’
In this study the AI (an adaptive tutoring programme which continuously monitors the student’s progress and modifies the task accordingly) is coupled with new technology (glasses which present the teacher with visual data about individual student performance and motivation), helping the teacher to identify which students needed one-to-one help.
Other AI innovations will impact on education sooner rather than later, and will become mainstream. It is my view that schools and teachers will need to adapt as AI becomes increasingly integrated into teaching and learning, but that neither is under threat of extinction. We are social beings and schools are more than places of academic learning. Schools inculcate values and encourage the exploration of interests and the development of talents; they foster friendship, teamwork and resilience; they are places where traditions, culture and experience can be shared; pragmatically, they provide childcare; and perhaps above all they are places where childhood can be celebrated and where children can experience the wonder, delight and awe of the world around them. It will be an impressive ‘bot’ which can replicate all of that.
D.A. Crehan
P.S. The Frey and Osborne report puts the probability that teachers will be automated at less than 1%!
1https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Oo8QzDHimQ
3Frey, C.B. and Osborne, M.A. (2013) The Future of Employment: How Susceptible are Jobs to Computerisation? www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/academic/The_Future_of_Employment.pdf
4Android Dreams – The Past, Present and Future of Artificial Intelligence, by Toby Walsh (Hurst & Company, London)
5Student Learning Benefits of a Mixed-reality Teacher Awareness Tool in AI-enhanced Classrooms, by Kenneth Holstein, Bruce M. McLaren and Vincent Aleven (Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh)
