When most people think about a combination of education and AI, the result is overwhelmingly that they end up talking about how combining Virtual Reality with education can provide an enhanced experience to students because it allows them to actually interact with the material that they are learning about instead of just reading about it in a book. As Graeme Lawrie, Director of Innovation and Outreach at the U.K.-based Sevenoaks School put it “We are moving away from simply ‘learning’ a subject or topic to ‘feeling’ the content” (Lawrie, 2017). While this development can indeed open up new possibilities that sound exciting, this is most likely something that is applicable in the not-so-distant future. But what about the more distant future?
There are two ideas that have been proposed by two of the greatest innovators of our time. Yes, I am talking about Ray Kurzweil and Elon Musk.
The first idea was proposed by Ray Kurzweil in 2014 at a TED talk and he called the concept “hybrid thinking”. Basically, what he envisions is that twenty years from now (or I should say seventeen years from now as we are in 2017), we will be able to put nanobots in our brains that would serve as a synthetic extension of our neocortex that would allow our brains to be connected to the cloud so that we can have more brainpower.
The second idea was proposed by Elon Musk in 2016 at the Code Conference and he called the concept a “neural lace”. To explain it in simple terms, the idea is that a very small rolled up “mesh” (think of it as a tiny net) will be injected into the skull that then unravels itself to encompass the entire brain (Mercer, 2017). This will consequently, just like Kurzweil’s idea allow to brain to communicate with computer devices and the internet.
These ideas are generally being thought of as having the ability to help people that have really bad diseases such as Alzheimer and Parkinson’s disease.
However, think of how the application of such technology could disrupt the education system in the future. Because these technologies have yet to be fully developed and will most likely be very expensive at first when they are to the majority of the population, the idea that I’m proposing will certainly not be feasible for another 50 years. But imagine a future where such technologies are mass marketed and where young people can have access to them just as easily as we are able to buy our smartphones today. Having these technologies linking our brain to the internet, it will be possible to download and upload any information that we want between our brains and the cloud. This means that we could literally download any information that we are interested in to our brains. There will be no more need to go to school/college/university through the degree programs as we will be able to just download the information that a course provides to our brains and just know all the material in an instant.
The abovementioned development is certain to make most present state educational institutions obsolete, and I predict that this will cause almost all of education to shift their focus to innovation and entrepreneur courses, considering how only the discovery of new information will be relevant and not the remembering of old information.
Do you also see such a development happening in 50-100 years? Or do you think that these things will happen much sooner or maybe not even happen at all? Please leave your thoughts in the comments!
References
Mercer, C. (2017). What is neural lace? Retrieved October 22, 2017 from: https://www.techworld.com/data/what-is-neural-lace-3657074/
TED. (2014, June 2). Ray Kurzweil: Get ready for hybrid thinking. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVXQUItNEDQ
Recode. (2016, June 2). We are already cyborgs | Elon Musk | Code Conference 2016. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrGPuUQsDjo
Hello Ruenswin,
Nice article. To answer your question: I think this will happen much sooner! But I also think that some traditional courses will remain to exist. Like history courses, will always be important!
Hey,
Would this development be beneficial for society as a whole. It seems like a way for the rich to get smarter and in turn richer again. While it sounds far fetched, when it is a reality I think there is more of a likelihood that this will totally disrupt society rather than help it.
What would happen with competitiveness of education , jobs of teachers as well as feeling self worth of achieving an education or learning something? Do you think technology can go to far resulting in a net negative for society?