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Comment by keeda

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Comment by keeda

Education as we know it is doomed. But we have to realize that all our education systems were shaped by the means we had available to us in the past for imparting education, learning, and testing knowledge at scale, and critically the kinds of jobs we were being trained for. To put it bluntly, the entire system was tuned for producing cogs in a machine. (Or just bricks in the wall, if you will.) Because that is what the world needed.

With AI everything has been upended.

And by "everything" I mean everything: how we teach, learn, test, and most importantly, the kinds of jobs we will have in the near future.

With AI, all the "cogs in a machine" jobs are essentially gone. There is no economic reason to employ people when AI will do 80% (and rising fast!) of the work at a fraction of the cost without pesky things like perks, leaves, raises, promotions, or heck, even sleep. Humans will be needed only for the 20% (and dropping fast!) of work that AI cannot do and to keep it honest.

And unfortunately, to get to that 20% we had to go through years and years of the 80% to "pay our dues" and learn enough to get up there; the exact 80% that is usurped by AI. Not only is education hosed, so is expertise building through on-the-job experience.

But! On the flip side, we can now have a dedicated, personalized, omniscient, always-available tutor! Do we even need school or college? Like, literally a 100% of children are naturally curious and exploratory; just that formal education (shaped by understandable economic pressures) is very effective at beating it out of them. What if we free children from the restrictive rails of rote, conventional education and let them explore wherever their interests take them? They could stay home to spend more quality time with parents who outsource work to their agents.

And AI makes it very easy to just do things, and we learn best by doing, so let them do! Would that not be a good way to nurture motivated, practically skilled talent that is truly passionate about whatever discipline they choose, which will be the exact quality needed to drive them to push the boundaries where AI cannot yet reach?

We have to critically examine with brutal honesty what jobs will be needed in the future, wholly rethink from first principles how we should prepare young talent for those, and start adjusting our society and economics to safely transition to that future. I do not know what that looks like, but I know it will be tumultuous and that we must start immediately.

This is Schroedinger's Future, simultaneously terrifying and glorious.

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