Who Said That? (about the jobs of today, tomorrow, and the future!)
As we approach March 8th and our Intersect 2017 conference, our minds are laser-focused on jobs, skills, and technologies — what’s critical to know today, what’s changing, and how do we adapt?
We’re thinking about who is hiring right now, what they’re looking for, and what skills are most in demand. We’re thinking about the future of work. Which education paths will be the most valuable and valued, and what fields offer the most promise for anyone pursuing rewarding and meaningful employment?
We are turning to the brightest minds in the most compelling fields as we probe these questions, and we’re thrilled to present so many of them to you at Intersect 2017.
Early Bird Tickets available here!
Among the speakers and panelists on hand will be Dr. Steven Abrams, VP at IBM Watson, Dr. Ashwin Ram, Head of AI R&D at Amazon Alexa, Maureen Fan, CEO and Co-Founder at Baobab Studios, Dr. Rana Kaliouby, Co-Founder at Affectiva, and Sebastian Thrun, Founder and CEO at Udacity.
Here is a small sampling of the kinds of insights these incredible leaders can offer our conference guests. Can you guess who said what?
On the future of education and learning:
“We’re now at this place where we can make the evolution of academic content match the evolution of the world.”
“I’d really love to see a business model for higher education going forward that is actually affordable, that uses modern technology to reach scale and quality, and that really reimburses the services rendered in a way that’s meaningful to everybody.”
“With the advent of open education resources, social networking technologies and new pedagogies for online and blended learning, we are in the early stages of a significant disruption in current models of education.”
“‘Learning’ is beginning to peel away from ‘Education’ as a separate market, with its own set of opportunities and challenges for practitioners, technologists, and entrepreneurs. While ‘education’ is driven by schools, colleges, and governments, ‘learning’ focuses on empowering the individual to take charge of their learning.”
(1, 2 — Sebastian Thrun. 3, 4 — Dr. Ashwin Ram)
On intersections of creativity and technology:
“We are trying to develop systems that will help human beings expand their ability to discover and create.”
“Creativity is the crowning achievement of human intelligence — Can we make a computer be creative?”
“It goes beyond entertainment. It’s changing health, education… It’s magic. Once you try it, there’s no questioning its power.”
“When the novelty wears off, it’s still going to be the storytelling that matters at the end of the day.”
(1, 2 — Dr. Steven Abrams. 3, 4 — Maureen Fan)
On the coexistence of humans and machines:
“Artificial intelligence is almost a humanities discipline. It’s really an attempt to understand human intelligence and human cognition.”
“Tt is now becoming practical to utilize AI techniques in many everyday applications including transportation, healthcare, gaming, productivity, and media.”
“This new era of systems is one that is not about programmes. They can talk or ingest natural language, they can understand what they read and they can help us make decisions about areas to explore and finding answers.”
“We have a golden opportunity to reimagine how we connect with machines and therefore how we, as human beings, connect with one another.”
“Emotion AI systems will augment human capabilities in a way that extends our capacities, making us more productive and efficient.”
“Robots and other AI systems will take over some of our jobs, but they will undoubtedly create new jobs and opportunities that did not exist before.”
“We can’t wait to see AI free us of mindless, menial work and empower us to unfold our true creative powers.”
(1 — Sebastian Thrun. 2 — Dr. Ashwin Ram, 3 — Dr. Steven Abrams. 4, 5, 6 — Dr. Rana Kaliouby. 7- Sebastian Thrun.)
Excited to attend?
Then make sure to register before February 18th, because Early Bird Tickets are available for just $295–40% below main ticket pricing!
If you’re a Udacity student, keep an eye on your email inbox, as you’ll be receiving an exclusive code that discounts this rate even further.
Register for the event today by purchasing your tickets here, and we’ll see you at Intersect 2017!
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This post was written by Christopher Watkins, Senior Writer, Udacity.
