What educational aims do we have in the age of artificial intelligence?

While preparing for a conference on "Challenges facing the education system in times of artificial intelligence (AI)", I recently came across a report from June 2016, which stated that over the last 10 years the average IQ in western countries has decreased.

Are our children really going to be dumber than us? This question alone is alarming for many. After all, as parents we are always keen to think of our little ones as geniuses. What is more, we want to believe that advances in science, technology and education mean that each new generation is increasingly intelligent. However, a study by Edward Dutton and Richard Flynn casts doubt on this. The authors provide indications of a considerable reduction in intelligence quotients measured in Europe between 1999 and 2009 (e.g., in France, UK, Norway, Denmark, Finland and Estonia).[1]

New technologies do not necessarily make us more intelligent

Various attempts at explaining this phenomenon are drawn upon, above all, the effects of environmental factors and endocrine disruptors on certain brain functions. But have we not always assumed that our cognitive abilities and our efficiency would multiply thanks to new technologies? That being able to access ever more information would make us increasingly intelligent? This expectation appears to be a fallacy. Richard Flynn even posits that the trend towards decreasing IQs could be permanent, because IQ development reached and even exceeded its zenith in the 19th and 20th centuries. Reasons for this, he suggests, are the industrial revolutions, the spectacular improvement of living conditions, and the ability of broader swathes of society to access education.

Technological progress itself does not automatically increase a population's intelligence level. Rather, as Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz claim in their essay The Race Between Education and Technology, it is political measures that aim to enable a population to exploit this technological progress. They refer to the huge efforts made in state education in the 19th and 20th centuries to prepare the population for the demands of new production systems. It is therefore high time to begin another educational chapter. A new wave of disruptive technological changes is on its way, which will see our education system faced with completely new tasks.

New educational demands

What qualifications does someone in the legal department need nowadays if they have powerful software tools for legal research at their fingertips? And what about a worker in the automotive industry whose colleague may soon be a "cobot" ("collaborative robot")? Requirements for specialist knowledge and social intelligence will change: cognitive agility, decision-making skills and creativity are becoming increasingly important.

Companies' requirements are changing very quickly, and with them expectations of education and training. Nevertheless, only few of the companies I advise ask themselves the question which skills they will (or will not) need in 10 years.

Europe is well positioned

In all European countries, we should work together with our social partners to systematically record which qualification profiles will be called for in the future, which professions will evolve or disappear, and what that will require of our education systems. They are no longer up-to-date.

Nevertheless, we still have every reason to be optimistic, especially in Europe. We are particularly strong in natural sciences and mathematical education. I often claim that a team made up of a French mathematician and a German engineer is unbeatable! But we need to think about education as a pan-societal responsibility. The new educational approach to preparing for the economic and technological challenges of the future must not be reserved for only the best qualified.

Promising new educational tools

It would be disastrous to only view advances in AI as a threat and to counter them with technophobic educational ideals. Technology is only ever a means that we can use to achieve our own ends!

As a consultant, I see advances in artificial intelligence as laying the foundations for the development of new tools and opening up thus far unforeseen and fantastic opportunities in education. We already deem free, open online courses at university level (so-called MOOCs - Massive Online Open Courses) to be a path to the future. With artificial intelligence, however, we can go much further. In tomorrow's world, professors could use mobile AI tools to monitor individual learning progress and offer tailored remote support to students. With the era of "Massive Individual Personalised Education", we would be creating a new relationship between teachers and learners and reverting back to the Socratic educational principle of imparting knowledge through personal dialogue.

This need not be a distant future. It could already be a reality for the next generation of students in schools and universities. However, nobody is addressing this subject yet in Europe. As always in the history of humankind, those who make the most of the technologies available will lead the pack. That is the greatest challenge for the education system in the 21st century, and we should welcome this challenge with open arms.

[1] The negative Flynn Effect: A systematic literature review Edward Dutton, Dimitri van der Linden, Richard Lynn, Intelligence, Volume 59, November–December 2016, Pages 163–169