Education must prepare students to work alongside AI
The rise of artificial intelligence has brought with it accuracy and efficiency; skills that are highly emphasized in the education system. Moving forward, these skills will be left solely to AI and will not be a competitive advantage in the marketplace. However, future workplaces will be looking for individuals that can think out of the box and use other ideas to solve problems facing their industry.
The use of advanced robots and AI has led to speculation that human labor may end up becoming obsolete in the marketplace. This will ultimately render many people jobless. Partly, the fear has strong grounds. Since the global economy founded on capitalism, people tend to rush where there is a decreased cost of production and increased efficiency.
However, this does not mean that people will become redundant. There are things that cannot be reproduced by AI and other advanced technologies now and possibly in the future. These skills will become very important after the basic tasks are taken over by AI. Some of the skills include:
Collaboration
AI is not able to collaborate with other parties to brainstorm a solution. Human beings will still be required to come up with innovative thinking by putting their heads together to deal with emerging problems as AI does all the other work.
Emotional intelligence
Emotional Intelligence is the ability to know, understand and manage own emotions. It is also the ability to recognize the emotions of others, understand them, and influence such emotions. Emotional intelligence is essential in influencing people’s behavior and way of doing things. It helps companies understand the needs of the clients in a bid to serve them better. This quality also improves engagement with the target audience in that the company can get the right trigger point to cause the audience to act.
Expression and Communication
AI has not evolved strongly enough to make deductions out of people’s expressions and non-verbal communication. These forms of communication are vital in every area of work including customer service, enhancing the quality working environment and collaboration. Future workers who have the ability to connect the dots in trends, customer requests and gaps in the workplace will be much sought-after.
How are These Skills Taught?
Unfortunately, the current mode of education is teaching skills that the machines can also have including recall, speed,and efficiency. Many capable students fail assessments due to their inability to replicate these skills. Education that prepares students to work alongside AI should strive to teach skills that will not be replicated by technology. It should teach them to come up solutions beyond a given set of variables.
One of the biggest challenges that the education system will face is empowering students to think differently. For long, students have been taught to conform to given laws and norms, with deviation seen as irresponsible behavior. This makes it hard for students to formulate solutions out of the norm. In addition,classroom innovations must be celebrated and encouraged. By so doing, students not only learn what is in the book, but they also learn to think with their head and come up with viable solutions for the marketplace.