Start teaching artificial intelligence in 4th grade

By: Eli Amdur
Vantage Point NorthJersey.com
07/30/2023

..... Bobby Kennedy used to say, "Some men see things as they are, and ask why. I dream of things that never were - and ask why not."
..... The magnitude of the statement - and the magnitude of the things to which it can be applied - cannot be overestimated.
..... With artificial intelligence upon us we are a Bobby Kennedy moment. To repeat what I've stated often, AI will be the biggest civilization-chaining advancement ever made, and as such, will have the greatest potential for constructive sue in history. Problem is, it will also have the greats possible destructive power ever.
..... That shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. Pick any great advancement and you'll see the same pattern of human behavior. We invented stone tools three million years ago (humans' first technology), and no sooner were we using them to build things than we were bashing each other's heads in with them. We invented alphabets and, with them, recorded history, but we also spread propaganda and lies. The Wright brothers got us off the ground in 1903; 11 years later there were guns and bombs on planes and a world war was being fought with them. We invented pharmaceuticals, giving us the ability to cure and to addict. We did both.
..... AI will likewise present this conundrum, as surely as you're reading these words. The meta-ethical question is, what do we do - right now - to maximize the constructive and minimize the destructive? I don't think we need to engage in at protracted Socratic process to arrive at the answer.
..... Here's my answer. Start teaching AI in fourth grade. Yes, at 9 years old. This is not to say we're trying to produce 9-year-old programmers. As a matter of fact, the technology part of this shouldn't even enter the equation until after the study of higher mathematics has begun.
..... What's important is that we instruct the rising generation in the social, civic, cultural and educational aspects of AI, which will be - whether you are prepared to accept it or not - the new world order. That assumes, of course, that we'll be teaching AI skills - not in how to produce AI, but in how to use it, how develop good query systems, how to verify truth and veracity, and how to make it a key supportive part of our lives rather than a dominant force over us.
..... This all translates into a renewed emphasis on embedding critical thinking into our curricula at all levels and in all subject areas,. I'm sure that, if you're with me so far, you'll not disagree with my assertion that critical thinking appears to be an endangered species, threatened most directly by the way we use the Internet, with its links and images snuffing out reading and discourse.
..... Teaching AI could be what saves this. One has to be a critical thinker to use AI productively, creatively, and consequentially. In essence, what could happen is the development of a symbiotic relationship between human and artificial intelligence, where getting better at one makes someone better at the other. And vice versa.
..... With AI there is so much potential for good if we seek it, and so much potential for bad if we permit it, and the upside here is tremendous. AI, as we already know enhances the performance and functionality of everything with which it's used: vehicle, aircraft, appliances, computers, medial equipment, and so on. It also being heavily promoted in the world of invention and innovation.
..... The World Economic Forum projects that AI will create 97 million jobs worldwide by 2025, which is not even enough time for our fourth graders to reach high school. let alone fill some of those jobs. In fact, I'm willing to bet a kilo of good Dutch chocolate that by the time they graduate high school in 2031, there will be mere jobs that sue - or are totally in - AI than not.
..... So, it makes all the sense in the world to get our schoolchildren ready for the world not as it exists today but as it will exist, well, just about as soon. They must learn how to understand and manage AI, and to be comfortable coexisting with it.
..... Come to think of it, that goes for us old-timers, who are well past the fourth grade. We live in the same world and have no choose.
..... And I'm sure Bobby Kennedy would have looked at AI and said, "Why not?"

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