Face facts, AI revolution to force education rethink

With Siri able to announce every fact available, is it time for an almighty shake-up of the education system?

Joe Schoendorf believes education must change to suit a new labour market.

“Give me a single fact that you learned in 12 years of elementary education or four years of college education that you cannot get by going ‘Hey Siri’,” Silicon Valley veteran Joe Schoendorf says.

Mr Schoendorf, a partner with Palo Alto venture capital firm Accel Partners and key speaker at the ADC Australian Leadership Retreat at the Gold Coast last weekend, said that education was facing a fundamental shift with the advent of artificial intelligence.

He pointed to the latest evidence that machine learning programs were making huge pro­gress: the Project Debater built by IBM that last week faced off against two human debaters on stage at IBM’s San Francisco office.

The audience, which reports say included IBM staff who might have favoured the machine, voted the computer the winner in the second debate.

“We all spend 12 years getting facts drilled into our head but they’re already on our wrist (available on an Apple watch) and our wrist is only going to get smarter,” Mr Schoendorf said.

“Are we really doing the right thing by making our kids go to school and learn a small subset of what’s on our wrist, or should we be thinking completely differently what a well-educated person of the 21st century is supposed to be and know?”

Mr Schoendorf, who was one of the founding investors in Facebook, said millions of old jobs would be lost and millions of new jobs would be created in the new economy.

“The education system we have is based on the industrial economy, it wasn’t designed at all for the intelligent economy,” he said. He said there were not nearly enough people with the right skills for the jobs available in Silicon Valley.

“Right now in Silicon Valley we have 80,000 openings for technical people. There is no starting salary for an engineer in Silicon Valley which doesn’t have six figures in US dollars,” he said.

“That’s how much demand there is for great engineers.”

The conference also heard that universities would have trouble ensuring their courses kept abreast of the rapidly changing needs of industry because of the time it took them to build new curriculum.

Short courses, offered by unaccredited providers such as the Silicon Valley-based Udacity, could fill the gap.

Others said that personalised education would take off, using the power of AI to deliver education targeted at the needs and skill level of each individual.