Schools ‘should spend a third of the day teaching ChatGPT', says academic
Schools should spend a third of the day teaching children how to use AI tools such as ChatGPT, according to an Oxford academic.
Dr Daniel Susskind, an economist and senior research associate at the Institute for Ethics in AI at the University of Oxford, said pupils are being taught antiquated methods and need to adjust to the changing technological landscape or risk being cast adrift in the 21st-century job market.
'In the 20th century, the best ideas we had about the world came from the heads of smart human beings. In the 21st century, I think the best ideas we have about the world – innovation and technological progress – are going to come from these technologies,' said Susskind.
Use technology effectively
Speaking at the Hay Festival, he said: 'If you walk into a lecture theatre or classroom today, and then you step into a time machine and go to a lecture theatre or classroom 100 years ago, it is going to look remarkably similar. Fundamentally, the way we educate hasn't changed and that can't be right.
'What I think is required at the moment in schools and universities: we should be spending about a third of the time we have with students teaching them how to use these technologies effectively.
'How to write effective prompts and get these systems to do what we want them to do, to understand the history of these technologies and how they work, to understand their limitations, to anticipate what they might get wrong and what they might hallucinate, and the ethical issues around using them.'
'Uncertainty is flexibility'
He added that this sort of education should also be available to adults.
'There is a very strong cultural presumption that education is what you do at the start of your life and essentially, once it's done, you don't need to worry about it much again. You move through life drawing down on the human capital you built up when you were young,' Susskind said.
'And that is a big mistake because there's a huge amount of uncertainty about the future, what jobs are going to have to be done, and exactly what skills are going to be most valued.
'The best response we have to that uncertainty is flexibility, a willingness to retrain and reskill later in life.'
Dr Susskind is a research professor at King's College London whose most recent book, Growth: A Reckoning, was chosen by Barack Obama as one of his favourite reads of 2024.
Susskind was asked at the festival about the ethical implications of AI replacing human creativity. He replied: 'A decade ago it was very common to hear that creativity was a unique human thing. And I think that turns out not to be quite right.'
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The Independent
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BBC News
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Reuters
an hour ago
- Reuters
Bank of England is 'not sanguine' about inflation hump, Greene says
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