The Power of AI in Numbers
Are you one of those who insist on being oblivious to the impact of efficiency using technology in the job market? Check this out:
Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Elon Musk invest heavily in efficiency. The difference between these individuals and the average worker is that the former works to improve processes to make their product more efficient, while the latter uses the same old process to perform their job. How much energy do you spend every day, every year, to have the same old results? In the meantime, Amazon uses artificial intelligence (AI) to offer you the products you may want based on the analysis it has from your previous purchases. Bezos doesn’t have to think at all when you buy more products, but AI combines data inputs from you and many other users to figure out what we want. Just a little over ten years ago, you depended on the salesperson’s knowledge to sell you something. Now, it is all automated by technology.
The U.S. alone is responsible for 52.3% of the world’s investment in AI, which has grown at an average rate of 56% every year since 2016. During the same period, the K-12 education budget in the U.S. has
increased at an average rate of 3% per year. Growing investment in AI is a statement that we believe AI is the future. Every day, engineers improve algorithms to make AI more efficient and less costly, while teachers still use an inefficient 19th-century system to make students’ biological intelligence (BI) work, oblivious to the likelihood that AI will soon surpass BI.
Furthermore, we will eventually see a symbiosis of AI and BI. In one of my recent articles – When Artificial Intelligence Merges with Biological Intelligence -, I share what will happen when we add implants to our heads. As small as 3mm, these implanted sensors connect to our phones and let us “program” or “reprogram” our brains. It will significantly benefit patients with Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, dystonia, depression, and addiction. It will also sharpen our mental skills, and alertness, and increase performance in endurance sports, such as cycling.
The good news is that AI merging with BI will solve many diseases, brain chemical imbalances, and physical limitations we have today. The bad news is that not everyone may have access to these implanted sensors. It may be a privilege for a few due to cost, health requirements, and so on. Inequality will increase as AI grows. We can see it happening already in the compensation disparity, as shared in the table above. We will see the same differences in cognition and brain capacity when AI merges with BI.
While this future may look scary, these changes are unstoppable. What does this mean for education? Learning is our pathway to cognitive control, and consequently, to living well in the era of AI. We must be prepared for the unknown, and we must prepare students for the unknown. Moreover, the people who will be making decisions about the ethical issues that future technologies will raise are sitting in your classrooms right now. Schools must prepare learners to have the right state of mind and the proper cognitive awareness to make good decisions. The future of humanity lies in their hands, and you and I are responsible for paving the way.
So, what can we do today to prepare for the future? The most powerful tool we have right now as human beings are our brains. As a transformational speaker, Leland Val Van de Wall said, “Learning is when you consciously entertain an idea, get emotionally involved with the idea, step out and act on the idea, and improve the results in some area of your life.”
It is time for us to redefine our biological learning experience. We have a lot to catch up on! AI is evolving at high speed, while BI is falling behind. Educational systems around the world must move toward more innovative learning approaches, such as the one I present in my book, Becoming Einstein’s Teacher. Our challenge is to make these approaches scalable and adaptable to any context.
