I wanted to title this article educating for 21st century. But then that sounded too pompous. Nobody knows what the world will be like 20 years from now, let alone claim that 100 years from now the world will be like this, so do this. I think, the max we can do is foresee trends 5 to 10 years from now and plan according to that.
Whether you like it or not, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is going to have increasing effect on our daily lives. The impact of AI is pervasive. It is going to affect people from every walk of life; education, healthcare, finance, management, entertainment, anything and anywhere. Those who embrace the concepts and train themselves for it, will lead. Those who keep cursing AI will be left dependent on those who have embraced AI and are leading their fields. I believe, a basic literacy of AI should be made part of compulsory education across the globe.
The policy-makers should dedicate resources to channel the growth of AI towards betterment of humanity. This decision needs to be taken now before it turns too late, and a tool which could have been used to massively improve human life becomes an ugly genie which can’t be put back in it’s bottle.
With the rise of fake news and increased polarization across the globe, almost everybody is effected one way or another. The most effective tool to tackle this problem in the long run is education. All students must be taught psychology so that they learn empathy, so that they are aware of biases in their own decision making, so that they get to understand thought process of people who think different from them.
We must teach statistics to all students to help them understand how to differentiate between anomalies and norms. To help them understand difference between correlation and causation. To help them weigh risks and rewards while making long term and short term decisions. With tons of information available and much more to become available in coming years, knowledge of statistics will help them understand what piece of information to act on and what piece of information to ignore.
- With the current pace of advancement we don’t know what the world would be like 15 years from now.
- Education is the best long term investment one can make and it is the best way to contain widespread evils of fake news and polarization upon polarization happening today.
- AI, Psychology, and Statistics should be taught to all students, across the globe.