The Future of Education | Yılmaz Köylü | TEDxEdUHK

Summary

The speaker discusses the impact of artificial intelligence on education and the workforce, emphasizing the importance of developing AI-proof skills in students. They highlight the need for cognitive, metacognitive, social, and practical skills, and stress the value of being human by leveraging unique human abilities. The talk explores how learning languages and creating new ones can enhance analytical and creative thinking, and the speaker calls for educators to prepare students to harness their core human skills to face global challenges.

Takeaways

• 🌆 The speaker wakes up to a view of Hong Kong's bustling student life, reflecting on the impact of AI on education.
• 🤖 Recent technological advancements in AI, such as GPT-4 and Dolly, are revolutionizing education with their capabilities in text, image, audio, and video generation.
• 📚 AI models like GPT-4 can generate content, but they lack creativity and common sense, as illustrated by the MTR line example in Hong Kong.
• 🎨 AI can mimic artistic styles, as demonstrated by the image generator creating art in the styles of Van Gogh and Salvador Dali.
• 📝 UNESCO and Sal Khan have outlined the educational uses of GPT-4, including personal tutoring and teaching assistance.
• 💡 The speaker emphasizes the need for educators to ensure students are 'AI-proof' by developing resilience and human skills that AI cannot replicate.
• 🌟 The OECD and the World Economic Forum both highlight the importance of cognitive, metacognitive, social, and practical skills in education.
• 🚀 The top five skills sought by employers, and necessary for being AI-proof, are analytical thinking, creative thinking, resilience, flexibility, and motivation.
• 🌍 Learning languages can enhance analytical and creative thinking, and contribute to understanding diverse cultural perspectives.
• 🌐 The loss of linguistic diversity is a global issue, with UNESCO estimating a 90% reduction in the world's languages over the next 75 years.
• 📖 The speaker's experience in teaching linguistics through project-based learning demonstrates the potential for creativity and analytical thinking in language creation.

Q & A

What is the speaker's concern about the impact of artificial intelligence on students?

The speaker is concerned about how recent technological developments, especially in AI, will affect the daily lives and education of students.

What are some AI tools mentioned in the transcript that are being used in education?

The AI tools mentioned include GPT-4, Palm 2, Microsoft co-pilots, Dolly, Adobe Firefly, and mid-journey.

What limitations does the speaker highlight about AI models like GPT-4?

The speaker points out that AI models cannot be creative or use common sense, and they can only regurgitate information already available on the internet.

How does the speaker demonstrate the capabilities of AI in image generation?

The speaker created drawings of an Asian woman in the styles of Van Gogh and Salvador Dali using an image generator AI, showcasing the AI's ability to mimic artistic styles.

What does the speaker mean by being 'AI proof'?

Being 'AI proof' means being resilient and immune to being replaced by AI in the future, which requires capitalizing on human skills that cannot be easily replicated by AI.

Which skills does the OECD emphasize as crucial in education?

The OECD emphasizes cognitive, metacognitive, social, and practical skills as crucial in education.

What are the five skills that the World Economic Forum suggests employers seek most?

The five skills are analytical thinking, creative thinking, resilience, flexibility, and agility, motivation and self-awareness, curiosity, and lifelong learning.

How does the speaker propose to improve analytical and creative thinking skills?

The speaker suggests learning new languages and creating a language from scratch as ways to improve analytical and creative thinking skills.

What was the outcome of the linguistics class project at Case Western Reserve University?

Students created their own alien languages, which improved their analytical thinking skills and sparked their creativity, as evidenced by their questionnaire responses.

Why is linguistic diversity important, and what is at risk if it is lost?

Linguistic diversity is important because languages are a window into human cognition, history, and culture. Losing a language means losing the associated cognition, culture, and traditions.

How does the speaker conclude their talk?

The speaker concludes by urging the audience to consider what makes them truly human and how they can harness those skills to be AI proof and address global challenges.

Outlines

00:00

🤖 AI's Impact on Education and Jobs

The speaker discusses the influence of AI on education, particularly in Hong Kong, and how it affects students' daily lives. The script mentions AI technologies like GPT-4, Palm 2, and Microsoft co-pilots, highlighting their capabilities in text, image, and data generation. The speaker emphasizes the limitations of AI, such as the inability to be creative or use common sense, using a Hong Kong MTR example. The content also touches on AI's potential to replace human jobs, with Goldman Sachs predicting 18% of global work could be automated by AI, and Hong Kong having the highest automation potential at 30%. The speaker argues that educators must prepare students to be 'AI-proof', resilient against the future impact of AI.

05:03

🌟 Human Skills in the AI Era

The speaker explains the importance of human skills that AI cannot replicate, as outlined by the OECD and the World Economic Forum. These skills include cognitive, metacognitive, social, and practical abilities. The speaker identifies five key skills for the workplace: analytical thinking, creative thinking, resilience, flexibility, and motivation, along with self-awareness, curiosity, and lifelong learning. The speaker stresses the need to foster these skills in education, regardless of the subject matter, to prepare students for a future where AI is prevalent.

10:03

🌐 Language Learning and Creativity

The speaker shares personal experiences with language learning and its benefits for analytical and creative thinking. They discuss the importance of understanding linguistic diversity and the potential loss of languages, which equates to losing cognitive, cultural, and historical knowledge. The speaker's own teaching experience at Case Western Reserve University is highlighted, where students created their own languages, showcasing their creativity and analytical skills. The speaker emphasizes the need to preserve linguistic diversity and the role of educators in helping students develop skills that AI cannot replicate.

15:04

🚀 Becoming AI-Proof

The speaker concludes by challenging the audience to consider their own AI-proof qualities. They stress the urgency of becoming AI literate and leveraging core human skills that AI cannot replicate. The speaker calls for educators to ensure students are not only AI literate but also capable of harnessing their uniquely human abilities to address global challenges. The speaker ends with a call to action, asking the audience to complete a sentence that reflects their personal human qualities that make them irreplaceable by technology or AI.

Keywords

💡Artificial Intelligence (AI)

AI refers to the simulation of human intelligence in machines that are programmed to think, learn, and problem-solve. In the video, AI is central to the discussion on how it is revolutionizing education and potentially replacing certain tasks, yet it lacks creativity and common sense. Examples include GPT-4, Palm 2, and Microsoft co-pilots, which are AI models mentioned as having significant impacts on education and work.

💡Technological Developments

These are advancements in technology that lead to new tools, systems, or methods. The video highlights recent technological developments, particularly in AI, and their potential to transform various aspects of life, including education and employment. The speaker reflects on how these developments might affect students' daily lives and the future of work.

💡Educational AI

Educational AI refers to the application of AI in the educational sector to enhance learning experiences and teaching methods. The video discusses how AI tools like GPT-4 can serve as personal tutors and teaching assistants, providing personalized feedback and support to students and teachers, respectively.

💡AI Proof

Being 'AI proof' means being resilient and immune to being replaced by AI in the future. The speaker argues that educators should focus on ensuring students are AI proof by developing skills that AI cannot easily replicate, such as creativity, critical thinking, and emotional intelligence.

💡Human Skills

Human skills are those abilities and qualities that are unique to humans and difficult for AI to replicate, such as empathy, creativity, and ethical judgment. The video emphasizes the importance of nurturing these skills to remain valuable in a world increasingly influenced by AI and automation.

💡Cognitive Skills

Cognitive skills involve the mental processes used for thinking, learning, memory, and problem-solving. In the context of the video, cognitive skills are crucial for analytical thinking and creative thinking, which are essential for students to be AI proof and succeed in the future job market.

💡Metacognitive Skills

Metacognitive skills refer to the ability to understand and manage one's own learning process. This includes self-awareness, self-regulation, and the ability to reflect on one's own thinking. The video suggests that these skills are important for students to adapt and learn effectively in an AI-influenced world.

💡Social Skills

Social skills are the abilities required to interact effectively with others, including communication, collaboration, and emotional intelligence. The video highlights the importance of these skills in maintaining human connections and working in teams, which are areas where AI currently falls short.

💡Practical Skills

Practical skills are those that are applied in real-world situations, often involving hands-on experience and technical abilities. The video implies that while AI can automate many tasks, practical skills that require adaptability and innovation will remain valuable.

💡Linguistic Diversity

Linguistic diversity refers to the variety of languages spoken around the world. The video touches on the importance of preserving this diversity, as each language represents a unique window into human cognition, history, and culture. The speaker uses the example of creating new languages in a class to illustrate the creativity and cultural understanding that comes from linguistic diversity.

💡Lifelong Learning

Lifelong learning is the continuous pursuit of knowledge and skills throughout one's life. The video emphasizes that learning should not be confined to the classroom but should be an ongoing, self-motivated process. This concept is crucial for staying relevant and adaptable in a rapidly changing world influenced by AI.

Highlights

The speaker wakes up to a view of Hong Kong's bustling student life, reflecting on the impact of AI on education.

Artificial intelligence revolution in education includes advancements like GPT-4, Palm 2, and various AI tools.

AI models can perform incredible tasks but lack creativity and common sense, as exemplified by a tourist navigation scenario.

The speaker demonstrates AI's capabilities in image generation, creating art in the style of Van Gogh and Salvador Dali.

UNESCO and Sal Khan have outlined the educational uses of GPT-4, including personal tutoring and teaching assistance.

AI's potential to automate work tasks, with Goldman Sachs estimating 18% of global work could be automated by AI.

Hong Kong has the highest percentage of jobs at risk of automation, at about 30%.

The speaker advocates for making students 'AI-proof' by fostering resilience and human skills that AI cannot replicate.

The OECD and World Economic Forum emphasize the importance of cognitive, metacognitive, social, and practical skills.

Five key skills for the future workplace are analytical thinking, creative thinking, resilience, flexibility, and motivation.

The speaker shares personal experiences of teaching linguistics by having students create their own languages.

Creating a language from scratch enhances students' analytical and creative thinking skills.

Language learning and creation contribute to understanding diverse cultural perceptions and improve cognitive abilities.

The speaker emphasizes the importance of preserving linguistic diversity, which is at risk of significant loss.

The speaker concludes by challenging the audience to consider what makes them human in the face of AI advancements.

The talk concludes with a call to action for educators to ensure students are AI literate and capitalize on their unique human skills.

Transcripts

foreign

District in Hong Kong and this is the

view that I wake up to every morning as

I prepare to go to work every day I see

thousands of students walking around and

running around in the schoolyard and I

cannot help but wonder how the recent

technological developments particularly

in artificial intelligence are going to

impact the lives of thousands of

students every day this is because

recently we are going through an

artificial intelligence revolution in

education we have gpt4 we have Palm 2

Microsoft co-pilots Dolly to Adobe

Firefly and mid-journey and these can do

incredible things with text Generation

image generation audio video and

synthetic data generation using gpt4 for

example you can write a book for example

in a matter of days and you can create

images

how many of you have a fear that in the

future what you are doing now may be

replaced by artificial intelligence

and I see some hands so all those

artificial intelligence models what they

can do is to regurgitate whatever there

is already on the internet they cannot

be creative they cannot use common sense

let me give you an example from Hong

Kong suppose you're a tourist you are

just visiting Hong Kong and you are in

the Jordan station which is on the red

line over here and you want to go to

mongkok East which is on the blue line

there right you ask gpt4 which MTR line

should I take from Jordan to mongkok

East it will probably give you two

options one option would be to take the

South Route and the other option would

be to take the north round right

but if you just use your common sense

common sense and creativity you would

know that actually you know what I don't

have to take the train there I can just

walk there nevertheless these language

models can do amazing and incredible

things

uh this is

some content that I created uh using

um an image generator AI right I just

asked it to create a drawing of an Asian

woman in the style of Van Gogh and this

is what I got and I asked it to create

another image of an Asian woman in the

style of Salvador Dali and this is what

I got and you can see some resemblance

here right to Salvador Dali paintings

the things in the sky what the woman is

holding the bird so

this is incredible but it's still an

amalgamation of whatever we can find

already whatever already exists on the

internet

recently United Nations educational

scientific and cultural organization

UNESCO released a document outlining how

gpt4 particularly can be used in

education Sal Khan recently gave a TED

Talk actually outlining how gpt4 and

other large language models can be used

there are so many uses actually but the

two main uses are

um gpt4 being used as a personal tutor

by each student and it's being used by a

teaching assistant by each teacher right

so teachers can use gpt4 they can input

student work and they can get personal

feedback for each student work so you

don't have to read things anymore if

you're a teacher but we still have to

actually there are so many other users

you can use it as a guide you can use it

as a motivator or a study buddy right

and because gpt4 and other large

language models can be used in education

and they have so many uses this also has

implications for work because there are

so many examples of AI exposed work

activity what it means is that there are

so many examples of work that can be

completed by artificial intelligence

tools and that obviates a human being

there so we don't need a human to do

those repetitive tasks for us anymore

and because of this reason Goldman Sachs

recently released a report in 2023 and

they are argue that globally 18 of work

could be automated by artificial

intelligence and very interestingly the

percentage for Automation in Hong Kong

is about 30 percent it's the highest in

the world so it means that a lot of

people will be losing their jobs

to automation

so then what do we do as Educators

because I can see that some students

don't see the value of Education anymore

they are questioning why do they even

have to attend classes anymore right

in this talk I want to argue that there

is one and only one thing that we need

to do as Educators and that is to make

sure that our students are AI proof

what do I mean by being AI proof it's an

adjective that means

being resilient being immune so that we

will not be replaced by AI in the future

we will not be negatively impacted by

artificial intelligence in the future

but being AI proof also requires us to

be human what do I mean by being human I

mean using and capitalizing on our human

skills

that cannot be easily replicated by

artificial intelligence right

now I want to talk about those specific

skills according to the organization for

economic and cooperation developments

oecd

the most crucial skills that we need to

pay attention to in education are

cognitive and metacognitive social and

practical skills

the world economic Forum has a similar

take on the skills required for students

and these are cognitive social and

physical skills

and very recently the world economic

Forum released their future of jobs

report they also argue that in the

workplace these are the five skills that

the employers um

seek for the most and these are

analytical thinking creative thinking

resilience flexibility and Agility

motivation and self-awareness curiosity

and lifelong learning and I argue that

these are the five skills that we also

have to try to Foster in our classes

irrespective of what we are teaching

what content we are teaching let's look

at a definition for each of those what

is analytical thinking for example it's

the ability to systematically and

logically work through an issue

what about creative thinking it's

finding novel and practical ways to

address challenges

what about resilience it's the ability

to recover from setbacks and I have

something special to say about Brazilian

sometimes I see among my students that

they do not have that much resilience

they don't have that much confidence

because they think that their English is

not that good enough well let me tell

you one thing

fluency in English is not an indicator

of intelligence

and pronunciation in English is not an

indicator of intelligence what about

flexibility it's the ability to change

to suit new conditions now we have large

language models and artificial

intelligence what is next month what is

next year what awaits us right so we

have to be ready agility is the ability

to think and draw conclusions quickly

motivation is being able to initiate and

maintain goal-oriented behaviors

self-awareness having conscious

knowledge of one's own character and

abilities strengths and weaknesses

curiosity we should be

we should be eager to learn we should

have an eager desire to learn and

lifelong learning finally it's an

ongoing voluntary and self-motivated

pursuit of knowledge we have to let our

students know that learning is not just

limited to classroom environments

learning is a lifelong process right

so how can we improve all those skills

that make us truly human that cannot be

easily replicated by artificial

intelligence well language learning is

one way

for example I'm Turkish and I can assure

you that if you study Turkish and if you

learn Turkish you'll be more analytical

why because you you have to analyze such

sentences all the time

this is just one word but in English

it's a full sentence why because it

means meet meh is the negation yeah is

the future marker Larry is the third

person plural me is the question and D

is the past tense morphine

so if you're doing this whole time while

you're learning a language be Turkish or

another language of course you'll be

more analytical

let me give you an example from my own

Cantonese learning experience I'm really

interested in learning more and more

expressions in Cantonese and recently I

came across the saying

I hope you don't mind mine my horrible

Cantonese

intonation and tones

literally means

thank you so much literally means you're

finally getting married today right so I

was thinking about this expression

because literally the expression in red

means shutting the Skylight so why

should it mean to get married this

opened up New Horizons for me because we

don't have such an expression in English

or in Turkish let me ask you a question

what is the sound that a cat makes in

Cantonese

meow what about the sound that a dog

makes in Cantonese

okay

so let's let's look cross-linguistically

the variation of those nature sounds we

call onomatopoeia in linguistics in

English a dog barking is Bow Wow

in German it's

wow wow French is Spanish is wow wow

Hebrew is how how

Hindi is Bobo

Mandarin is Wang Wang Japanese is one

one and Greek Greek is

and in a cat meowing it's kind of

similar across the board it's meow but

interestingly it's Japanese it's meow

and in crickets meow

right it's more nasal so learning new

languages

is a way to understand how individuals

with different languages and cultural

backgrounds perceive the world

differently and of course learning

different languages make us more

analytical and creative because it opens

up New Horizons for us

let me tell you another way how we can

be more analytical and creative let me

give you an example from my own teaching

experience in 2019 I was teaching at

Case Western Reserve University in

Cleveland Ohio and I was supposed to

teach a Linguistics class

my students didn't seem too interested

in linguistics

so I had to motivate them right what I

did I said okay what we are going to do

is we are going to make this class a

project-based class first I'm going to

teach you more about Linguistics

subfields of linguistics like phonetics

phonology morphology syntax and

semantics and pragmatics and then I'm

going to have you create a language from

scratch students were really puzzled at

the idea of creating a language from

scratch they're like how on Earth am I

going to create a language you are crazy

they said

but I gave them an example and I said

you know what Suppose there is a movie

and here is a movie poster a movie is

called case Clause because it was case

vessel Reserve University and I said

okay you're supposed to create a

language an alien language for this

movie just like the navi language in

Avatar or Klingon in Star Trek or Elvish

language in um Lord of the Rings right

and students did amazing work they use

their creativity and they did amazing

work look at this one so this student

created an alphabet they create a

language and they named it eagle and

they created an alphabets so these are

the International Phonetic symbols and

this these are the symbols that the

student created for their writing

systems so this is

you get the idea

and this student came up with a system

whereby

words appeared in peripheral shapes

based on the parts of the speech for

example verbs appeared in squares like

run

it appears in a square

adjectives and adverbs appeared in

triangles

and names

nouns and pronouns appeared in circles

look at the word and because it's a

connector conjunction it doesn't have a

peripheral shape right so this was kind

of fascinating and mind-blowing and this

student came up with some vocabulary

items that were really interesting like

pretty but fragile it's EU Maisha

and only in daydreaming or Out Of Reach

and these are the symbols that the

student came up with

yet another student created a language

and they called it quat

and this student told me that they were

studying chemistry and they were really

fascinated by chemical structures and

they used those chemical structures to

create an orthography a writing system

for their language

and this is what they created

and look at the consonants that they

created look at per for example and

they look very similar but they are

distinct right yet another student

create a language and they named it

logon

because it's a logogram a logogram is a

language where the symbols represent

real life objects and the student said

these morphemes are examples of a

logogram and resemble the process of

writing for the verb form of rain all

here represents the Sun and this curvy

line and the straight line under that

represents the cloud and these vertical

lines represent the raindrops you see

how rain as a verb is more Dynamic than

rain as a noun

that was also very interesting

and this student created some vocabulary

items I want you to look at the word

animal and animals animal as a singular

it doesn't have a full circle at the

bottom animals as a plural it has a full

circle at the bottom so you see the

creativity in the language system that

the student created right and I want you

to look at the word animals and flowers

and I want you to look at the word bees

because animals and flowers you combine

them you get bees so in the language

that this student created flowers sorry

bees are basically animal flowers right

another student came up with the

language they named it cantarin actually

they didn't create a language they

created a writing system for Cantonese

they were a Cantonese speaker they told

me that they found Cantonese orthography

very difficult traditional Chinese

orthography and they create a new

writing system for Cantonese look at

this so they said okay this could be and

this could be per and this could be um

and it goes on like that

and look at these words for example Lei

ho this is the traditional Chinese

orthography and the student created this

a simplified orthography for Cantonese

and look at joygin the second one so at

the end of the course I gave students a

questionnaire to see whether they like

the course and whether they were able to

master the contents

the results show that not only were the

students able to master the content of

linguistics but they were also having a

lot of fun in the cree in the creation

of their languages and the questionnaire

also showed that students were able to

improve their analytical thinking skills

because a lot of students either

strongly agreed or agreed with the

statement

so why am I talking about

learning languages and creating a

language as a way to improve our

analytical and creative thinking skills

and motivation why

it's because we are losing linguistic

diversity in the world that's why and

that's a major major Global issue that

we are facing

according to UNESCO there are about 6

000 languages in the world and we are

going to lose about 90 of all those

languages in the next 75 years

but languages are a window into human

cognition history and culture

when we lose a language we're not just

losing a language we are losing the

cognition culture and all the Traditions

that come along with a language

now I want to ask you are you AI proof

because tomorrow is too late to AI prove

ourselves

to be AI proof as Educators we have to

make sure that we help our students to

be AI literate but we also need to make

sure that we help them to capitalize on

their core human skills that cannot be

replicated by AI

ending my talk I want you to complete

the sentence I won't be replaced by

technology or AI because

and in completing this sentence I want

you to think of what truly makes you

human

because only by harnessing those skills

that truly make us human can we address

major Global challenges

thank you

foreign