American Leadership in AI-era Starts in Classrooms
By Roozbeh Aliabadi
It is no secret that artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming our lives in profound ways. AI is an enabling technology that is impacting everyday devices, products, and means of communications. It provides everything from our cars to cell phones with the capability to interact with the world around them. Although just starting, AI and related technologies are evolving, and they are having lasting impacts on our work, education systems, national and international politics, security, and very lives.
In every city across America and every industry, AI continues to lead and shape existing initiatives and allows new ones to take root. Today, even our politics is undergoing its macro-level impact, particularly in economics, due to advances of AI.
Mastery over the research and development of AI will become increasingly vital. The frontrunners of this upcoming AI era in human history will be the countries and companies that can build the most robust algorithms, collect the most talent, accumulate the most data, and obtain the most computing power. Putting aside the political noise of populism around the world, AI is the next great technology race of our times, and the stakes are high.
As a country, we must embrace the full range of social and political changes that these technologies will introduce; therefore, it is vitally important the education and training we provide our youth that will feed the engines of future AI, and consequently, geopolitical success.
Every aspect of our American life, healthcare, education, agriculture, energy, finance, national politics, security, is being reshaped in some form by AI. I believe K-12 education will be the pivot point around which the future of the US revolves. This is not only a matter of social change but, in fact, a more significant national issue.
As a country, we change the K-12 education system to prepare our next generation of leaders to directly determine whether the US maintains its leadership in critical fields of relevance in the emerging digital environment. Without a sufficiently educated population and workforce, America will likely shift behind other nations for whom AI is meant for improved social organization and strategic superiority and ultimately digital and physical conquest. If our classrooms lack AI learning, we will face a future in which America is second in the race for AI technology and leads our collective society to social, technological inadequacy with dire consequence.
In the 20th Century, we witnessed American capacity in leading on many fronts. Behind this unique American leadership was this sheer power of our intellectual and technical abilities and aptitudes. Behind that was a near vast supply of talented engineers, each trained by an education system undisputed in its excellence. Our 20th Century education system was built from the ground up, focusing on fundamental science, technology, and math in the numbers needed to ensure American strategic leadership.
We owe it to the health of our American way of life, our competitive advantage, and the strategic security of our nation, the basis for tomorrow’s system of education must reflect a deliberate tuned and calibrated approach that proactively emphasizes AI teaching and learning in every classroom across America.
I firmly believe US leadership in the 21st Century can be preserved, safeguarded, and sustained through a system of education that imagines the changes necessary and sufficient to embrace and apply relevant technologies. It will also be underwritten by educators who grasp the profound shifts in the pedagogical skills essential to the educational needs of the 21st Century.
Every classroom, every school, every district must adapt. We must collectively educate and train entire generations of educators to be relevant in the 21st Century and beyond. We must preserve American leadership in AI, big data, and supercomputing. And it can only be achieved through a highly educated society and acquired workforce, and even-further through leaders who understand these issues on a fundamental level and have the will to develop and resource a comprehensive plan for reimagining our national education efforts. Every school must adopt a strategy for the AI age to provide the best education and develop leaders’ next generation.
The fundamental question that every school district must ask of itself: are the teachers of today ready to develop the leaders we will need in our shared AI future? A difficult question, to be sure, and the answer today is no. I believe teaching and learning requirements must be substantially changed, and the dynamics of learning versus teaching in AI bases system of education will be very different. We must address the importance of conditions for teaching degrees and related certificates in this new environment and the necessary adaptation of the science of pedagogy to these changes.
In the next decade and with the rise of AI, every aspect of the traditional learning environment must change. Will virtual space using networked augment or virtual reality technology replace physical classrooms? There are also significant challenges in measuring the success of students in an AI-based educational process. For example, if students can become more deeply involved in their learning pathways through AI, the measurement could potentially take place moment to moment, the success of remediation. In a project-based approach, teachers will know at the end of each student’s day if he or she is meeting requirements and quickly corrects defined as necessary to stay on track.
It is vital for the private sector and schools across America to be routinely interested in creating synergy and symbiosis to enhance our educational process. Because one of the most profound aspects of K-12 education in the AI environment is that these technologies will unleash the potential and productivity of a vast sector of American and global society previously constrained by their educational experience and resulting lack of opportunity. Our K-12 education has an important responsibility. As the AI-powered digital space, “opportunity for every student” may become a reality for those who previously had little means of achieving their piece of the American Dream. Today there are large US segments where our education system, and our youth, have limited-to-no access to AI education. To achieve our digital potential and to continue to maintain our lead in AI and other emerging technologies, a national program to bring AI education to all our young citizens is essential and will, in any case, help to close the sometimes yawning gaps created by racial and income inequality in the US.
As AI promises to usher in a bold new era of human history, the machines we create will often be more innovative, faster, and more powerful than those who made them. Our schools have a responsibility to catch the train. Every school in America will face a new reality with profound implications for the field of education and introduces complex ethical, legal, societal implications that academics, policymakers, and average citizens alike will need to contend with as every aspect of society reshapes around them. To protect our next generation from the risk of inferiority at the global state, we must bring AI education to every classroom in America and further develop a comprehensive strategy for reimagining our education system at the national level.
As I visit schools across America, I witness that we are not training our young future leaders with the tools required to be successful in the digital age. I believe this very fact has deeply troubling implications for the future of our society. As a student of history, I think, just as the United States preserved through the Cold War through technological superiority, I remain hopeful that the 21st Century will once again be one defined by American leadership, which our best and brightest must lead.
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