However, there’s reason to be excited about these tools, according to educational leaders spanning preschool to college to upskilling, and that’s because they will promote creativity, which is something only humans can teach.
“There’s things the machines can’t do that we need to be really good at teaching our students,” Michael Spence, president and provost of the University College London, said last week during a panel discussion hosted by Fast Company at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
In addition to teaching the necessary skills to use AI, educators must also teach students “old-fashioned” skills, like how to suss out what’s true from what’s false, how to have meaningful conversations, and how to think critically, he added.
A huge opportunity is to use AI tools to challenge your thinking, which can actually help people become more creative, argued Jeff Maggioncalda, CEO of Coursera. “Humans with these tools can produce far more variations in creativity along certain themes than humans just sitting there with their own brain.”
The need for early-educational content like Sesame Street has never been greater because there’s an “important window” when young children develop the foundational skills of critical thinking they’ll need later in life, added Sherrie Westin, president of Sesame Workshop.
“We have both a responsibility to help keep children safe, but there’s also an opportunity as we’re building this digital world to do so with children in mind instead of an afterthought,” Westin said.
Fast Company © 2024 Mansueto Ventures, LLC. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
