A personal look at the future of EdTech and human development

So quietly crept up the New Year and Christmas!

In ordinary life, it is considered normal to sum up the results of the outgoing year and make plans for the future. Difficult...for many reasons...

Today I had a very interesting conversation with my eldest daughter, who is now hastily taking tests at the end of the academic term at the distance.

I drew her attention to the fact that writing a test through #zoom , referring to the answers in #google , is not the most correct way to gain knowledge and learn.

From this remark grew a very interesting, in my opinion, forecast for the further development of the education system in the world and the evolution of human as a whole.

It's no secret that artificial intelligence and neural networks are penetrating more and more deeply into all spheres of our life every day. Recent advances in this sector already allow virtual communication with an interlocutor who is practically indistinguishable from a living person. Some especially cunning schoolchildren are already "writing" essays and homework using ChatGPT , which are "excellent" by teachers. Also, many #edtech projects are already using #ai for learning in their work.

So what awaits us with such a development of technology in the horizon of 10-15-30 years, and maybe even try to look further ...

I don’t want to build strongly apocalyptic forecasts, but it seems to me that a very strong mutual integration of man and artificial intelligence will soon occur. Moreover, such integration will become younger and younger.

See how attitudes towards mobile phones and other devices have changed over the past 20-30 years.

Of course, in my childhood, cell phones, tablets and other things simply did not exist. It was hardcore, wooden and metal toys, sometimes nailed to the floor... (just kidding) And of course books, real, paper, smelling like printing ink.

If earlier, before the era of wearable electronic devices, a person had to “carry” everything in his head, keep a lot of information in memory, now almost everything is “at your fingertips” in your smartphone. You can test yourself if you memorize at least 10 mobile phone numbers of your work colleagues. If you remember, congratulate yourself on the honorary title of dinosaur!

The eldest daughter's first cell phone appeared at the moment when she went to school. She got access to the tablet even later.

At the age of 4, the youngest daughter confidently handled a tablet, and at the age of 6 she received her personal mobile phone, which she learned to use almost immediately.

Of course, some may object to me that all these gadgets are contraindicated for children and children should grow up just like we did. Now we will take out the dusty bag from the mezzanine and pin the wooden toys back to the floor. Come on…

Let's not try to resist progress.

So, what this progress can lead to in some distant or not so future. I will not prescribe all the details and prerequisites now, otherwise this post will be even more voluminous. I think you can easily see all the prerequisites yourself if you follow the latest developments at least a little. I will only try to state my vision of how the development of a person from childhood will look like in the future.

It seems that in the future all wearable devices will be combined into one device, which will either be implanted in the human body, or simply worn (ring, bracelet, headband) and will be connected to the human brain. In fact, many projects now (for example, Mark Zuckerberg 's Meta Corporation https://mixed-news.com/en/meta-reveals-new-research-avatars-ar-and-brain-computer-interface/ or #elonmusk 's Neuralink https:// neuralink.com/ , and even our DreamCatcher Project https://dreamcatcherlab.eu/ ), is one of the attempts to establish a "wireless" direct interaction between a computer and a human brain.

Given the already mentioned integration of AI and #neuralnetworks wherever possible, I think all operating systems for such devices will gradually be replaced by neural networks.

Accordingly, we will have almost complete integration of the human brain into the global information space, supported by the forces of ultra-high-speed cloud computing on quantum computers.

In this regard, a logical question arises as to how much the average individual will need memory as a store of information (by the way, it is not very perfect), and whether it will be necessary to develop their neural connections if computer neural networks perform many tasks much more efficiently and faster.

What, then, remains of the person himself, except for the battery (#matrix ?), where his personality will be. It seems to me that the most likely option will be that each individual will be "equipped" with a device from childhood, in which the basic AI-package will be "sewn in". During the growth of the child, taking into account the peculiarities of socialization, upbringing, environment, this basic AI-package will develop taking into account these features, gaining all the individuality.

In addition to the impact of external factors on the AI-package that determine its development, this package will include the main educational programs that will be broadcast taking into account the age and level of development of the individual. Thus, we get an essentially self-developing system in which everyone can share their knowledge and experience with others "at the click of a mouse" and at the same speed. All this will irresistibly accelerate progress to cosmic heights.

Of course, this is likely to take a very long time. All this will meet a lot of obstacles in its path. But I think we are still waiting for the emergence of such a society in which those who can better train their original AI-package and adapt it to the constantly changing conditions of existence and progress will become the leaders.

I don't want to think that it will be the evolution or degradation of the human species, let's leave it to anthropologists.

Thank you for reading such a long text, you can express your opinion in the comments.

And by the way, Merry X-mas and Happy New Year!