There are some things in teaching that artificial intelligence will not change

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The development of artificial intelligence is one of the biggest changes in how to live and work at least since the invention of the Internet. It will change how we all go through our days. It will change, already change, how to judge.

As a result, there are calls in almost every wealthy country to teach “how to use artificial intelligence” in schools or “artificial intelligence mode in the curriculum”, or to reformulate teaching and evaluation so that it reflects the extent of what we ask of school children to do already by artificial intelligence. On any specific week, I receive at least one e -mail per day from one group or another that calls for it exactly.

This debate revolves around a new technology, but it is part of a esteemed argument in the education policy about the extent to which the curriculum should be “based on skills” or “rich in knowledge”. Should schools prepare children with the skills they will need in the future or give them a wide basis for knowledge?

One of the reasons why the “rich in knowledge” curriculum exceeds the “skills -based” programs is that we are terrible in predicting the future. How can it be otherwise? It was not expected that someone began compulsory education in Ohio in 1977 that by the time when they left the school, their state had witnessed a large industrial organization, and the Cold War had ended and personal computers began to become affordable for all in most Central America.

What “skills” will children today need in the world of artificial intelligence? History teaches us that those who have believed before will guarantee that a reliable income forever is not a guarantee of anything like that.

Programmers, who were relatively late, have recently inherited the land, faced an uncertain labor market and may never return to the same position and safety they enjoyed, for example, five years ago. Or, to take another example, in the oil -rich Alberta In the middle of the past decadeThe unemployment between geologists – which had previously considered an iron profession – was 50 percent.

In some respects, the distinction between skills and knowledge is a false duo. Daisy Christodolo, the Director of Education, also puts more signs, like the question “The correct balance between ingredients and cakes”.

No more signs, which use artificial intelligence and other tools to reduce the amount of teacher time – the most expensive and also resources of the value of the most valuable in schools – are in themselves a good clarification of the difference. Automation of other administrative signs and tasks is the liberation of teachers, but, to take advantage of the additional time available, they need a base of knowledge to understand what they do.

Many of my friends who work in skilled professions make the largest part of their income in repair work, but their training did not start with a leaked click or defective wires – it started to gain a layer of basic knowledge. This is the other reason that makes knowledge rich in the heavy curricula of skills: it is a knowledge that allows you to spread and use your skills.

The same applies to artificial intelligence. Part of the effect of this technology effectively, in a group of fields, is the presence of the knowledge base needed to understand how it is used and issue judgments about whether it has given you the right or appropriate answer. When artificial intelligence becomes more advanced, my doubts are that our knowledge will concern more and more, as we will need to justify and explain the reason we were chosen for a specific option and why artificial intelligence reached its decisions.

This does not mean that artificial intelligence should not change what is in our curriculum. The curriculum in England is an example of the right approach here, as it aims to give students the ability to understand the basics of how coding and computers work.

While knowing how software instructions may not be a useful skill in the workplace in the future, understanding how to make software instructions and how computers “know” things will be vital. We will move in a world where the ability to understand the reason for the acting intelligence is as it is almost the most important thing in evaluating everything from how we control if we were receiving enough service.

A curriculum that provides children with artificial intelligence, living and working in a world that consists of, will remain one of the one who gives knowledge on Technology (and around computers in general), instead of sharpening certain skills. We will not prepare the next generation to get the utmost benefit from new thinking machines if we do not teach them how to think themselves first.

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