AI Trends In Education And The Workforce That You Should Know About In 2023

The field of artificial intelligence is evolving so rapidly that almost every industry is affected seemingly overnight.

The effect of AI on education in particular, from K-12 to adult learning, has been written about for years, but it has officially become mainstream as instructors and learners of all everywhere now have access to the technology for free through ChatGPT.

To better understand how technology is impacting education and how we can best prepare for the proliferation of AI from the classroom to the workplace, we went to one of the largest education technology conferences in the country, the ASU+GSV Summit, to hear directly from the people who create and impact the development of this technology such as Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI (creator of ChatGPT), Bill Gates and higher education leaders.

Here’s what you need to know.

Since ChatGPT became publicly available to everyone in November 2022, it has been adopted faster than any software tool in history, with over 100 million users to date (when founder Sam Altman was asked how many users it has now, he couldn’t give a specific number because it’s growing so fast).

With this viral growth, the tool began to permeate homes and classrooms almost immediately with students using it to answer difficult homework questions and take tests at home in a way that in the past would have hours of research using Google Search.

Because the AI ​​tool is generative, with a few well-crafted prompts and background information, you can ask it to write an essay or book report and it will generate unique written content in seconds.

With that, the concern about cheating became top of mind for teachers, and AI detection tools to try to deter it quickly became available.

When asked at the summit what he thinks educators should do to quickly react to the AI ​​revolution, Sam Altman tried not to downplay concerns about cheating, but focused on the positive impact in the classroom such as the ability of students to learn faster than ever before. get quick access to the specific information they want to explain in the way that is most useful to them and the ability to support struggling students at scale by using the platform as a personalized tutor.

The main takeaway for educators is that we can’t stop students from using these tools because they are transformative for learning, and the smartest teachers are learning how to implement them in the classroom and taking the time to feel- get comfortable with the capabilities of tools like ChatGPT. to provide specific guidance to students on how to use them in doing their work.

When calculators were invented, people worried that students would stop using their brains to do math, but what actually happened was that students were able to do math faster so they could learn more advanced principles in a period shorter time Similarly, AI should help students better understand how to craft compelling essays or answers to homework questions so they can spend their time doing more creative and complex thinking.

When Bill Gates was asked what he’s most excited about in AI technology given his foundation’s work to support educational outcomes globally, he focused on how the technology will help children to learn to read, as an example.

In the past, it was difficult for a teacher to provide sufficient attention and consistent feedback to 20 children who are learning to read. However, with this new technology, systems are already being developed that can listen to a child’s reading and provide feedback and a positive reinforcement loop in the process so that they can overcome mistakes and feel good about doing well.

This kind of customization at scale simply wasn’t possible in the past.

What about the impact of AI on the workforce and helping adults prepare for the coming changes?

One question that came up throughout the summit is how someone entering the workforce today should prepare themselves given that the AI ​​revolution is here.

OpenAI’s founder expressed skepticism about making predictions about the impact on the workforce, stating that throughout history, most people who predicted the impact of technology on jobs they were wrong

It is almost impossible to predict what new jobs will be created in the coming years. Just a few years ago, people thought that most blue-collar jobs, like truck driving, would be affected by AI first, and creative jobs like art and writing would be safe. No one expected that AI tools like ChatGPT, Dall-E and AIVA could write articles, generate visual art and even create music in the style of popular artists.

Altman’s advice was to get as comfortable as possible with the new technology, get a native feel for it using it in your daily work, and be prepared for the fast pace of change ahead.

A quote shared throughout the education summit was “AI won’t replace you, but a person using AI will.”

Many workforce experts see these new tools as a powerful human enabler and, just like the advent of computers and then the Internet, made people much more efficient and largely left behind people who refused to learn how to use computers, artificial intelligence is likely to. the same, but at an even faster pace.

OpenAI’s CEO shared that for adult students deciding what to study to prepare for work, it’s more important to focus on what you’re naturally interested in and good at, and how you want to contribute to the world, rather than how you do it. you can choose an educational field that prepares you more for the future.

AI will likely affect almost every field, from healthcare to film, so focus on learning how you can leverage technology in whatever field interests you and you’ll be in a good place when starting or changing your career.

Throughout human history, whether it was the agricultural revolution, the rise of the industrial revolution, or the invention of the Internet, the development of new processes and technology certainly reshaped the world, destroyed jobs that they were based on older inefficient ways of doing things, and created new jobs that were previously unimaginable. Along the way, there was a fear that technology would make people complacent and lose purpose.

In reality, what technology tends to do is make humans even more ambitious than they were before and enable them to achieve those ambitions faster. People want to be useful and inventive and the biggest impact of AI on education is likely to be an exponential impact on how quickly we can learn and the ability to apply that learning to change our lives for the better.