Education: Future Frontiers. The Implications of AI, Automation and 21st Century Skills Needs Report: Keynotes

The New South Wales Department of Education, a department of the Government of New South Wales in Australia, published a report Education: Future Frontiers. The Implications of AI, Automation and 21st Century Skills Needs where researchers examined the implications that advances in technology will have for education.

This discussion paper was a result of symposium Education for a Changing World, which took place at the end of 2017 in Sydney. The document explores some of the department’s initial thinking about the challenges of the big technological, economic, demographic and social shifts occurring around the globe. We prepared a summary of the most interesting thoughts and insights.

The kindergarten students who entered the school gate for the first time in 2017 will be graduating by 2030. These students and the 8 million young people estimated to finish school over the next two decades will be the workers of 2040. Developments in AI are one of a number of interrelated ‘megatrends’ changing the nature of the labour markets in Australia and across the world. The profound changes ahead demand an education approach that will provide young people with enduring capabilities and skills to harness the opportunities of technological change.

The pace of Technological Change

There is significant uncertainty about the full impact of artificial intelligence and automation on employment but the effects are already starting to be felt. Many experts believe AI will, in the short-term, replace or augment humans in undertaking certain tasks, rather than replacing jobs entirely. A recent analysis focusing on the potential for task automation in the OECD has put the proportion of whole occupations at risk of automation closer to 10%.

Whereas once automation was thought to be contained to low-skilled or routine tasks, advances in technology are resulting in the automation of more highly skilled, cognitive tasks. Improvements in mobile robotics and sensory technologies are leading to far more sophisticated automation of processes. Though much of its potential is yet to be actualized, AI-related technologies are already becoming integrated into daily living, from voice-recognition software in phones and laptops (Siri, Google Assistant) to the content recommendation engine underpinning Netflix.

While many people are yet to experience changes to their jobs as a result of AI first-hand, few doubt the potential for AI to radically disrupt the types of work that we will do and how we do our jobs in the very near future. The cumulative effects of these maturing and intersecting fields will have profound implications for the way humans and technology interact in all fields of work and life.

A Mix of Factors

While technology has always affected work and society, the complex interaction between the new frontiers of automation and AI, global economic trends and demographic shifts underscore the critical importance of investing in education and skills development.

Australia, technological development has supported competitive advantages that have resulted in broad lifts in productivity and wages. Australia has experienced a shift away from lower-skill and capital-intensive industries and a swing toward industries requiring higher-skilled, and higher-paid, workers.

While Australian trends don’t precisely mirror international experience, income growth has been uneven over the last two decades and there is a growing perception that those ‘in the middle’ are not reaping their share of the benefits of economic growth. Income growth in Australia has been strongest at the top of the earnings distribution and weakest at the bottom, with widening inequality since the mid-1990s.

Developments in automation and AI in the context of these economic and demographic trends will have significant employment implications for the next generation. The key for countries such as Australia is to make significant investments in human capital to produce skills that are complemented, rather than substituted, by technological change.

The Innovation Economy

In the context of these trends, innovation is a critical plank to ensuring Australia maintains productivity growth. The core competitive advantage that nations such as Australia have is the skills and capabilities of its firms and people.

In 2016, Australia ranked 19th overall out of 128 countries on the Global Innovation Index, which assesses the innovation performance of 128 countries. This ranking was down from 17th in 2015 and behind the United Kingdom (3), United States (4), Singapore (6), Korea (11) and Canada (15). Education in all its guises – school, the tertiary sector and in the workplace – will be a key driver for the delivery of the innovation economy. But looking just at the school level, the performance of Australian students has plateaued and not kept pace with the top performers internationally.

Implications for Education

The passport that today’s kindergarten students will need for life and work in 2040 includes the strong foundations provided by a great school education which starts with literacy and numeracy and which goes well beyond it and the higher order skills provided by quality post-school education and training. While 21st-century skills are by no means new, it is particularly in recent years that educators have explored whether they need to be explicitly taught, included in academic content standards and routinely assessed, and the extent to which these skills are subject specific or transferrable.

Advances in developmental psychology and research on the science of learning are increasing our understanding of how particular capabilities are acquired. But the evidence base is more developed for some of these skills than others and research is pointing to some complex interrelationships between them.

The next wave of education reform will need to consider the challenges and opportunities of an AI future and what this means for education and learning for all students both in school and beyond. It will need to consider what the ‘right’ set of future skills is, the role of the school in fostering them and the way in which schools should teach and assess them.

Author: AI.Business

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