As featured in the Teachers Matter Magazine

Imagine a group of middle school students researching how to improve food security and agriculture through sustainable farming methods and aquaponics systems. After weeks of research and deliberations, they asked Microsoft Copilot to summarize their discussions in a concept paper. Copilot is an AI tool that can “listen” to their daily conversations.

With the document ready, students ask the AI to find potential investors for their idea on LinkedIn and develop a PowerPoint pitch presentation with images created by Dall-E, another AI tool. Now, imagine the students’ idea is an app anyone can access. They ask ChatGPT to write a code for a prototype based on their concept paper, which is done in seconds. They copy-paste the code onto GitHub, and a new app is born in minutes. Now, they are ready to meet with investors.

These students never went to college. They do not know investors personally and are not designers or experts in developing presentations, let alone apps. But they know how to ask questions. Yes, it is all about the prompt – or how to ask the right questions – with AI tools.

AI makes us smarter when we use it with a purpose. AI is an extension of our brains, our augmented intelligence. Think about it: in the past, we had to go to college to deepen our knowledge in a specific field. Today, AI already possesses this deep knowledge available at our fingertips. AI democratizes learning, bridging the gap for the ones who take advantage of it.

You may think this is a “romantic view” of using AI technology in education. Well, it is far from romantic – it is real. In its “Jobs of Tomorrow” report, the World Economic Forum shares the connection between technological change and labor market transformation. Generative AI augments the performance of various professions, especially those emphasizing critical thinking and complex problem-solving skills. These AI tools are augmenting human intelligence to increase productivity as never before. Thus, the choice is either to use them or be replaced by automation.

For some jobs, automation will happen regardless. Goldman Sachs' latest research estimates that AI might take over 300 million jobs. But even if some professions are fully automated in the near future, there is some good news: AI's evolution will lead to job creation, prompting us to transition careers three or four times in our lifetime. This shift promises widespread advantages: the integration of AI could elevate the world's yearly GDP by 7%.

I talked about the importance of evolving education to take full advantage of AI at an event a couple of weeks ago. An audience member asked: “How can we get our students to ask more meaningful and purposeful questions?” It is simple: practice, practice, practice. It takes 10,000 hours to be an expert on anything. Students spend 16,800 hours in school, from kindergarten to high school. Imagine how many hours of practice they can have at school, coached by their teachers – they will be experts when they graduate high school.

Now, I understand such skills will not be developed immediately. Like any other skill, asking meaningful questions may take time for some students. It does not mean they are incapable, so we better be patient. This is a 21st-century school!

Many suggest using AI in education is about personalizing students’ learning paths or serving students as a personal tutor. Those are valid applications, but they are just more of the same. I say we must expand our thinking to greater possibilities. Students can do more extraordinary things using AI rather than just more of the same things we do today. In the AI era, education is no longer about having answers. It is about asking meaningful and purposeful questions to solve real-world problems - and students can do it.