An AI Czar’s Perspective on AI’s Role in Education
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The emergence of AI has brought with it a tsunami of new AI tools and products, all which can bring efficiencies to one off tasks we engage in our daily lives.
This can be a great initial step, but the long term strategy of educational institutions cannot be to purchase 10 new AI powered products in the spirit of transforming their school.
Transforming education will require a foundational vision for the educational experience, not just an AI policy on how to use AI tools for one-off use cases.
What does this vision look like? As we begin to paint a comprehensive vision for the role of AI across education — in classrooms, offices, hallways, and backpacks across the world — what are we driving towards?
The recently named Chief AI Officer at Sacramento State, Dr. Sasha Sidorkin, aka the AI Czar, and I grapple with elements of these questions.
Beyond having one of the coolest nicknames in the game, Dr. Sidorkin brings over 30 years of educational expertise in higher education, along with navigating many technological innovation waves to the conversation.
Here’s my takeaways from our conversation:
AI tools can’t replace the relational and experiential pieces of education
- While we may have tools which can curate knowledge instantly, they cannot replicate the human experience pieces critical to education. From deep relationships students build with each other and school staff, the meaningful guidance educators provide, and the life changing experiences students may have while at school, AI can give time back for more of the moments to happen, but it cannot produce these experiences in of itself.
The AI technological wave is happening faster than other waves of innovation…even in education
- While adoption may look different in education relative to the work force, the appetite for learning and talking about how AI can play a role in schools remains high. Additional thought leadership which contextualizes high impact AI use cases in education will increase adoption rates.
AI is mostly impacting mid range cognitive skills
- Foundational literacy is still needed to engage with AI tools and the most creative, original elements of writing may still require the human touch. For all of those skills in the middle — summarizing, comparison, contrasting— can all be leveraged using AI.
- One of the most powerful features of AI tools is their ability to take two concepts/products and achieve a task (compare, evaluate, sort, etc.)
Writing with AI can lead to learning and growth
- While it may look different than conventional writing, learning, navigating, troubleshooting, and crafting writing with AI tools has led to growth for students at Sacramento State.
Quantum computing will bring seismic innovation
- Many of us are already in awe about the technology and innovation over the past 15 months. The development of quantum computing means we may only be at the tip of the iceberg.
Special thanks to Dr. Sasha Sidorkin for sharing his perspectives.
Check out our full conversation here. Join the conversation at TheAIEducationConversation.com
I’ll be presenting at Sequoia Con 2024!! If your team, school, district, or institution is ready to take the leap in exploring AI implementation, my session will support with strategies for implementation and navigating change management!
The team at Evergreen is also giving any of my followers $50 off conference registration if you use my code: AICONVO.
You can register here. Hope to see you at my session!
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