ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR III
It would be unwise to disregard the signs of the times, it would be disastrous not to prepare for the same.
When Nokia was on the top of Cellular Phone business in the late 90s and early 2000s I was thinking that no phone will be ever made other than that Finland brand. In my mind it was the epitome of great engineering hard, durable, ingenious, functional and effective. But we knew the story, as Android Operating System came, Nokia, refused to adjust and now they are mostly gone.
Maggi Noodles was staple in every Filipino household, it was the main noodle soup and the market share was huge. In 2011, suspicion of Salmonella contamination was there and Maggi Noodles was recalled and today no Sari sari store shelf has that major staple. Maggi, failed to prepare for a safety issue and that ultimately ended its reign.
Nokia and Maggi are immensely popular in their heydays and now they are extinct.
At present, the education system is obviously to a large extent dependent to Information Technology. From Hardware (computers, PCs, Laptops, Projectors, recording devices, memory sticks, camera etc…) to Softwares ( Windows OS, Linux etc…)Education also has Search Engines in Google, Bing etc…Applications Canva, Video Recording Apps. Zoom, Teams, Google Meet etc…
In a nutshell, our education ways and means now are dependent on Information Technology and we cannot say for certain that it’s a dependence to a large extent or to a certain significant extent, but we can say for certain that we are not joking that indeed the dependence is there.
What would happen if the dependence become more intense and more significant? What would happen if the education as we knew it change to be more Computer based and less human based? Right, now Artificial Intelligence had became more involved in our lives than ever before and it may take over our jobs in the future. Appearing in Sensorium a Blog posts this alarming title 10 Signs that AI will Soon Replace (And Those That It Wont )
• Customer Service Representatives. …
• Receptionists
• Accountants/ Bookkeepers
• Salespeople
• Taxi and Truck Drivers
• Retail Services
• Proofreaders and Translators
• Security and Military Personnel
And soon enough , Teaching and of course teachers. Will Robots or Artificial Intelligence take our jobs away ? It may be sooner than expected. For teachers like me, it may be something we may not welcome but it is an inconvenient truth that will come.
How can we mitigate its take over ?Let me count the ways …
1. Educators must waste no time in reinventing itself as Educators. Human Touch in Tactile and Emotional Sense is something that AI cannot easily replicate nor provide, humans can take consolation on the fact that we are capable of that more than AI.
2. Harness the power of AI and use it to make teaching relevant and wonderful. Instead of fighting the trend, harness its advantage to be more relevant.
3. Find the niche beyond the knowledge level and go beyond. Since knowledge or information is nearly in abundance in our search engines , we can go to mindfulness, philosophy and other humanistic pursuits, Artificial Intelligence cannot easily out ran there.
For now this looms as a real challenge and these list is an informal list subject to the realities that will change it. Let us never stop moving ahead.
