After a large number of positions are replaced by AI, what do children have to learn so that they will not lose?
"A lot of jobs have been replaced by artificial intelligence, what do children have to learn in the future so that they will not be replaced?"
"AI can play chess, draw, write, what else can people learn?"
"Am I going to enroll my child in an AI class?" But he just entered elementary school, wouldn't it be inappropriate to be too young? ”
Now in the first month of school, some elementary school parents are starting to sign up their children for interest classes.
Since the beginning of this year, the artificial intelligence technology represented by ChatGPT has shocked the world again and again, but also brought new anxiety to these parents - technology changes so quickly, what can children learn so as not to be eliminated by society?
There is no doubt that AI is reshaping education. Zhang Zhi, director of the Shanghai Baoshan District Education Bureau, once summarized the impact of artificial intelligence on the education sector: "We don't know what kind of talents we need to cultivate in the future, and what core capabilities we need to have. Will the skills we valued in the past, such as listening, speaking, reading, writing, reasoning, arithmetic, and imagining, still useful? Will these competency models be less important than before? ”
Under such social emotions, the AI boom inevitably "rolls" towards children. What kind of talent do we need in the era of artificial intelligence? Does AI want to start with the doll? How should parents prepare? How should we educate our children?
The future society needs "more human-like people"
The fundamental task of education is to cultivate people with virtue and continuously cultivate and deliver talents to the society. However, technology is changing, times are changing, and the requirements for talents are also changing.
"The advent of the era of artificial intelligence has indeed put forward new requirements for talents." Ma Jun, principal of Hujialou Central Primary School in Chaoyang District, Beijing, said in an exclusive interview with China Economic Weekly.
As a long-term frontline educator, she deeply understands the impact of artificial intelligence technology on education. "The future society is an era of coexistence between humans and machines, and it is important to equip children with the ability to live with machines."
Ma Jun, principal of Hujialou Central Primary School, Chaoyang District, Beijing (Photo by Xiao Yi, chief photojournalist of China Economic Weekly)
So, what kind of talent do we need?
"My personal understanding is 'people who are more like people', simply put, people who have the ability that machines can't do, people who are closer to the essence of people." Mei Ying, head of the secretariat of SenseTime's AI Ethics and Governance Committee, told the China Economic Weekly reporter.
The words "people who are more like people" and "people who are closer to the essence of people" sound a little mysterious. Mei Ying further explained to reporters: "For example, independent innovation, independent thinking, imagination, getting along with people, building trust and love, these are all things that machines cannot do." And the cultivation of these qualities is a big project. ”
When you stay up late to memorize historical facts, and AI takes only a few seconds to sort out the highlights of the 5,000-year-old Chinese civilization; When you brush questions at your desk day and night, but find that you can't brush the machine, these situations remind us that rote memorization and completely test-oriented learning can no longer keep up with this era.
"In the past, children's learning was more based on listening, supplemented by expression. I believe that future children should not only learn to absorb learning such as listening and reading, but more importantly, develop the ability to express, especially the ability to ask questions. In the process of communicating with reporters, Ma Jun especially stressed the importance of asking questions.
She cites today's generative AI as an example, and to learn to use it, you must first learn to ask questions, especially with precision. And this is the most realistic ability to express at the moment. "I think it's very important to develop children's ability to identify problems, ask questions, solve problems, and connect problems to real life." Ma Jun said.
In the process of communicating with a number of education and science and technology practitioners, the reporter found that they all have a consensus, that is, repetitive and mechanical work will be replaced in large quantities.
Zhai Zhenming, professor of the Department of Philosophy and director of the Human-Computer Interconnection Laboratory at Sun Yat-sen University, said when talking about AI painting with the China Economic Weekly reporter: "Free will can never be replaced, and true originality will always have value." In the future, art will become more pure, and AI will be able to help us filter out real artists. AI can replace craftsmen, not artists. Repetitive, delicate product generation is left to AI, and artists don't have to work for it, they need to do more pure artistic creation. ”
Mei Ying also told reporters that the public does not have to worry too much about the current general concerns in society, such as strong standardization and high repetitive positions or problems that will be replaced. Because in this process, new jobs will also be created. She cites two sets of interesting data from the book "Dances with Robots" by Pulitzer Prize winner John Markov: In the Internet industry, for every job that disappears, 2.6 new jobs are created... In the future, every intelligent robot deployed will create 3.6 related jobs.
"Perhaps the point of anxiety should not be on whether there will be fewer and fewer jobs, but more on what new jobs are coming and how I or my children will get these jobs in time for me or my children in the future." Mei Ying said.
Does AI want to grab from the doll?
Talent standards are changing, which is also the root cause of anxiety among parents. When the learning methods of the past are no longer used, do we need to change the way we educate?
"I think it is necessary, very necessary, because the times are changing, and the way of education should also be reformed, and this change in education method includes not only school education, but also family education." Ma Jun believes that when cultivating children, school education and family education should form a joint force to cultivate talents that meet the needs of the country.
Ma Jun further explained by taking the registration of interest classes as an example: "In the past, parents may have enrolled their children in subjects such as Olympiad and English, and some parents would cultivate their children's skills in piano, art and other arts. I believe that in the future, we can pay more attention to the cultivation of ability literacy, especially the cultivation of students' thinking, such as problem-solving thinking ability, social adaptability, etc. ”
As Ma Jun said, family education should be adjusted according to the development of the times, and parents standing at the turning point of the times will also face many challenges in the future. For example, the first question in front of many parents of elementary school students - should children learn AI?
The reporter of "China Economic Weekly" interviewed a number of parents of primary school students, some of whom were very positive, while others were a little hesitant. The main point of hesitation is that they think that the child is too young and not receptive.
In this regard, Ma Jun believes that from the perspective of acceptance, parents can give their current children more confidence. Just as the young people of Generation Z grew up with smartphones and iPads, now these children will be the natives of the digital age who grew up with artificial intelligence. They have a higher level of knowledge and participation in AI than parents and parents.
"I personally support the establishment of such a course at the primary school level, so that children can be exposed to some basic knowledge of AI from an early age." Ma Jun said bluntly.
At the same time, she believes that the difficulty of knowledge can be adjusted for children of different ages. For example, the lower grades can allow children to have a preliminary cognition and understanding of artificial intelligence, guide children's interests and hobbies in AI, and increase the difficulty step by step in the middle and upper grades to meet the needs of students in different school stages.
"If we equate AI learning with programming, we worry more about learning thresholds and so on. But the AI learning I understand also includes AI thinking, problem awareness, dialectical thinking, problem-solving ability, etc. Ma Jun said.
Education reform is imminent
Technological change has arrived, and education is constantly being reformed.
The first is macro policy action. The "New Generation of Artificial Intelligence Development Plan" issued by the State Council clearly states that intelligent technology will be used to accelerate the reform of talent training models and teaching methods; The Ministry of Education issued the Action Plan for Artificial Intelligence Innovation in Colleges and Universities, and successively launched two batches of pilot work on artificial intelligence to promote the construction of teachers; The Cyberspace Administration of China and other eight departments jointly identified a number of national experimental bases for intelligent social governance, including 19 characteristic bases in the field of education, and studied the intelligent governance mechanism in various educational scenarios in the intelligent era; In March this year, Zhejiang fired the first shot of local AI education, announcing the inclusion of artificial intelligence into the basic curriculum and compulsory courses of primary and secondary schools...
On the market side, many companies have also laid out "AI + education" for many years, and driven by the rapid development of large models this year, the application of AI education has accelerated. In April this year, SenseTime released the "Daily New" large model, among which the natural language large model [Discussion] and the Wensheng Diagram large model [Second Painting] can bring rich human-computer interaction experience to children, which can help children improve their own prompt words and stimulate creative potential; In May this year, NetEase Youdao officially released a spoiler video of AI speaking teachers developed based on the "Ziyue" large model, which can provide students with open chat scenes, more in line with the real speaking practice environment, and quickly generate result reports after the dialogue; In July, Hao Future's Xueersi Online School launched the industry's first generative artificial intelligence course "Artificial Intelligence First Course" based on self-developed large language models; In August, iFLYTEK officially launched the V2.0 version of iFLYTEK Spark Cognitive Model, and launched more diversified application landing products for teachers, schools, enterprises, developers, etc...
SenseTime's series of artificial intelligence teaching materials (Photo by Guo Jiyao, reporter of China Economic Weekly)
Schools at the forefront of education have been relatively slow to transform.
Ma Jun believes that the current school education, especially primary education, still has the following three challenges in the process of artificial intelligence transformation.
The first is the issue of teachers. "At present, there is a very shortage of teachers, and the shortage of science and technology teachers and professional teachers is particularly prominent, so teachers are the biggest problem we encounter." Ma Jun said.
In response to this problem, Hujialou Central Primary School tried to carry out a dual-teacher classroom and explore the formation of two modes: "two to two" online dual teachers and "one to many" resources. She further introduced that the online double teachers of "two to two" are the backbone teachers and teachers of the same discipline in other schools of the group to prepare lessons and design teaching activities, and use online class software (such as CLASSIN) to create online virtual classrooms for interactive live broadcasts, and the backbone teachers serve as bishops, teachers in other schools serve as teaching assistants, and the backbone teachers teach together in their own classes and other classes in the online group school, and when discussions or student activities are required, the teaching assistant teachers lead the students to complete in their own classrooms. Finally, there is a group interaction; "One to many" resource dual teachers, that is, backbone teachers design courses, produce complete course resources and record the virtual teaching process, and focus on designing open student activities and resource packages, other teachers only need to use the recorded virtual teaching videos to teach, and lead students to activities as required. The two dual-teacher models make full use of information technology to give play to the radiation role of backbone teachers and promote high-quality and balanced development.
The second is the resource aspect. "We are especially looking forward to bringing in social resources to help schools solve some difficulties, such as the shortage of teachers." Because social resource units accept new things faster and resources are more abundant. We want them to come into school with resources and ideas. ”
Finally, the development of artificial intelligence technology is very fast, but the current teaching materials, teaching aids, teaching equipment, etc. cannot cope with the development speed of the times.
Ma Jun, principal of Hujialou Central Primary School, Chaoyang District, Beijing (photo provided by interviewee)
"Education reform based on the era of artificial intelligence should be imminent." Ma Jun said frankly.
It is precisely because of this sense of urgency that Hujialou Primary School in Beijing, where Ma Jun is located, actively explored and put forward the "PDC practice education concept". According to Ma Jun, PDC stands for project, drive, and create, which includes using projects to drive students' desires and interests, practices and experiences, thinking and consciousness, generating experience and skills, literacy and emotions, attitudes and values, so as to activate, change, develop students, construct their values, let students have the ability to survive and live, and let knowledge be applied to what they have learned.
Ma Jun said that the PDC education concept in the era of artificial intelligence as an exploration and attempt of educational reform, the most important thing is to give children the ability to cope with the future based on the characteristics of their growth, and also give parents some guidance to alleviate their anxiety. In the future, PDC projects will also be adjusted accordingly according to the development of artificial intelligence technology to meet the requirements of the times.
"The changes of the times also require teachers to continue to learn and education to constantly reform, so as to meet the needs of children." Ma Jun said.
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