To Educate Intelligently, Use Artificial Intelligence

Our children’s education is vital. And we are on the cusp of a pedagogical revolution, an upending of traditional instruction. We must invest now to keep education lock-step with technological progress.

Automation, machine learning, and artificial intelligence may be serving up the greatest challenge we have ever faced when it comes to education. As these technologies displace jobs at faster and faster rates, we’ll increasingly need a workforce that’s adaptable. We need people who are not just ready for some of tomorrow’s jobs. We need people who are ready for any of tomorrow’s jobs. We need a population that can learn new skills incredibly quickly and can perform complex problem solving across multiple domains.

Fortunately, the same forces disrupting the labor market can be harnessed to disrupt our educational system. Machine learning and artificial intelligence can assist in creating a generalized and flexible curriculum that trains a population of thinkers who can seamlessly transition between careers.

The technology is here, but in its infancy. MATHia is a machine-learning tool that aims to personalize tutoring. It collects data on students’ math progress, provides tailored instruction, and helps students understand the fundamental aspects of mathematical problem solving. Intelligent Tutoring Systems can assist in human-machine dialogue helpful in learning new languages.

These are admirable approaches, but they lack the much-needed problem-solving punch to train truly adaptable individuals across many domains. They fail to tap into what truly makes for effective teaching. A consensus report from the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) states that mentorship in the form of continuous and personalized feedback is key to effective learning. This is a far cry from the current state of education, wherein students are taught in large classrooms and assessed for rote knowledge on standardized exams.

According to the NAS, “accomplished teachers…reflect on what goes on in the classroom and modify their teaching plans accordingly. By reflecting on and evaluating one’s own practices…teachers develop ways to change and improve their practices.”

Thankfully, continuous reflection and improvement are the bread and butter of machine learning algorithms. AI will therefore be adept at delivering personalized feedback to every single student. This feedback, in turn, will provide students with the cognitive toolbox to transfer knowledge between a litany of different subjects.

The current lack of knowledge transfer is at the crux of today’s workforce debates: arguments are abundant on how to “reskill” workers displaced by automation. This is important. But the reskilling debate is nothing new, and it’s only one piece of the puzzle. We must also focus resources on creating a workforce that needs less reskilling. It’s a workforce that can adjust to new labor demands in the blink of an eye. We must begin early, in primary and secondary education.

In December 2017, the House introduced the “FUTURE of Artificial Intelligence Act.” Dead on arrival, it had only one small provision addressing education. This act must be resurfaced, and it must give AI in education its due. As the technology landscape changes, so too will the labor landscape. Education must evolve to meet this need.

Help! I Feel Like I’m Trapped Inside A Computer

By Pablo Sanchez

5:00- My alarm clock on my iPhone goes off
5:01- I check my phone for emails
5:01 to 5:30 – I respond to emails and start opening up apps
5:30 to 6:30 – I explore the apps on my phone in the same ways I always do
6:30 to 7:00 – I put my favorite music on my iPod, shower and get ready for work
7:00 to 8:00 – I stream my favorite TV shows from my iPhone to my TV while I make and eat breakfast
8:00 to 8:30 – I listen to my audiobook on my train ride into the office
8:30 to 6:30 – I spend all day searching the Internet and writing on my computer
6:30 to 7:00 – I listen to my audiobook on my iPhone on my ride back.
7:00 to 8:00 – I stream my favorite TV show from my iPhone to my TV while I make and eat dinner
8:00 to 2:00 – I stream my favorite TV show from my iPhone to bedroom TV while I also play on my iPhone until I eventually fall asleep

Repeat.

This is my life. This is my existence. I spend all of my life it seems staring down and spend almost no time staring up. I can’t help but think about how odd that would seem to my ancestors only a couple generations ago. People, like myself, grow up and never really look at the stars anymore.

The stars have always been the greatest seed of wonder and imagination for the human mind. They likely prompted the first real “bizarre” thoughts, things like, “Where are we?”

Who could explain why every time the giant fireball in the sky went away the same smaller fires in the sky seemed to light exactly where they were the night before? Who could explain why throughout the night they moved across the sky? Who could explain that after many moons, certain fires no longer appeared in the same place each night? Nobody could and so it made us wonder.

Now I don’t wonder, I Google. Now I don’t imagine, I watch. Now I don’t question, I listen and read. I don’t have time to wonder, imagine or question. The computer has given me access 24 hours a day to the Internet and I don’t know how to escape its allure. It attracts me. It is like a sick game. It is like the creators of the Internet and all the computing devices which act like portals to bring us there knew that the mind couldn’t resist access to that kind of stimuli, to that kind of information. If we just stopped adding things to the Internet it’s suggested it would take me 57,000 years to read everything. If we didn’t add any more videos to YouTube it’s estimated it would take me 60,000 years to watch everything. This requires me to do nothing else but read and watch. The average human life span in the US is about 72 years. This means if I used these years to read and watch as much as I could starting from when I couldn’t even understand what I was reading and watching, I’d only be able to tackle about 0.06% of all the reading and watching I’d need to read and see it all.

I’m trapped in a computer. I’m trapped in a digital world. I look down instead of up. I type instead of speak. I watch instead of dream. When I die the tombstone people will visit will be on Facebook instead of a cemetery. I love this world and I hate it too.

Maybe the solution for myself is to simply take the next step, to figure out how to virtualize myself so that I can live inside my computer. Maybe if I could live there in a virtual state I wouldn’t feel trapped because I’d be free to explore the vastness of the digital world. I wouldn’t have to waste my time with all the other things that keep me from spending all 72 years of my existence looking down. Maybe this is the next phase, the pressure to drive human evolution to a new form, an immortal existence in a digital environment.

Maybe I’m not trapped in a computer today, but rather maybe I’m trapped in a mortal human body. Maybe the key to my existence is to finally escape to a virtual reality, a universe where everything exists and anything is possible. At least then I’d have time to read it all, see it all, and still look up.

Reimagining the American Dream

By Charles Mueller

The American Dream is an idea, an idea that has driven this country and inspired the world for almost 300 years.  This dream was rooted in our Declaration of Independence with the words:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”.

As this country has evolved, so to this dream.  This dream is about finding comfort in the idea that we live in a country where there is opportunity for all and regardless of your race, creed, sex, class or the family you were born into, through hard work and determination you can create the life you want.  However, for many, the American Dream is beginning to feel like the American Nightmare, a sick illusion of hope in a world full of fear, hostility and inequality relative to times past.  Just as James Truslow Adams inspired a nation coming out of the Great Depression in his book Epic of America by first coining and describing the American Dream, our nation today, one coming out of its own era of financial despair, needs a reimagining of the American Dream.

The generation that emerged following the first references to the American Dream was the generation that helped save the world from the evil that prompted WWII.  This generations’ ethos was all about hard work, it was about survival, it was about creating a better future for their children, and their attitudes are what came to define the American Dream.  Overtime, this generations children evolved the dream to include a greater emphasis on the pursuit of happiness.  Happiness was not necessarily hard work, it was also about working the jobs you wanted and having time to enjoy the efforts of your labor with the ones you loved most.  As the country continued to mature, this third generation of the post-Great Depression American Dream became the first to truly reap the rewards of the sacrifices of the first generation; the world they lived in was evidence of the success of their grandparents.  This generation of people was promised the American Dream was finally the American Reality.

Unfortunately, the combination of the devastating effects of 9/11 on the American psyche and the Financial Crisis of 2008 on the American wallet has challenged the ethos of our time and exposed parts of the American Dream, which have turned out to be false.  The wealth gap in this country continues to grow, hateful speech is becoming more of the norm, and graduated students are entering the job market with university degrees only to find a genuine lack of opportunity compounded with a mountain of student debt.  Hard work no longer seems to be paying off.  While this reality is still greater than many other parts of the world, it represents at minimum the flattening of the trend President Franklin Roosevelt always said should be upwards in his last Inaugural Address in 1945:

“Things in life will not always run smoothly. Sometimes we will be rising toward the heights — then all will seem to reverse itself and start downward. The great fact to remember is that the trend of civilization itself is forever upward, that a line drawn through the middle of the peaks and the valleys of the centuries always has an upward trend.”

It is time we reimagine the American Dream.  It is time we generate a new idea, a new hope, a new vision for the future that will inspire this nation once again and give new meaning to our purpose.  In a world dominated by the advancements of science & technology (S&T) the definition of hard work looks much different from the days it was synonymous with long hours on the farm or at the factory.  This new American Dream should anticipate the future that will be arriving, one where we can communicate with our thoughts, have robots do our chores and free ourselves from the limits of our genes.

This new American Dream should be about making the pursuit of happiness easier.  This is a dream where people don’t have to work harder to move up, they have to work smarter, they have to work more creatively, they have to take advantage of the world that has been gifted to them and imagine it to the future.  This American Dream should be about providing everyone with the ability to do this, giving everyone access to things like the Internet and creating new jobs that seek out the human imagination.  It should be about developing a society where we reward our creativity and ability to dream up the futures no one else can envision.

The future of the American Dream should be that no matter who you are, you live in a place where your imagination can come true, where opportunity exists to let your bold ideas grow into things that will change the world.  This is a world where opportunity still knocks even if you fail.  It is a world about the future and it will take all of us to make sure this new American Dream becomes reality.

A Revolutionary Future

By Charles Mueller

At the Center for Revolutionary & Scientific Thought (CReST) we spend a lot of our time contemplating the future and imagining the kinds of impacts (both good and bad) science & technology (S&T) can have on the world.  We talk about S&T impacts in terms of 3 phases:

• Phase I is where S&T changes the way an existing process is implemented, making it more efficient.
• Phase II is where S&T leads to new processes that affect businesses, government and society
• Phase III is where S&T leads to entirely new paradigms, with new systems, industries and/or governments.

Last night, with all the world watching the President’s last State of the Union (SOTU) address, I thought the President was finally going to say the things we at CReST have been saying.  I thought he was going to finally call out to the world that it is time to imagine the kind of future only created by the Phase II and III impacts of revolutionary S&T.  Instead he described a future where we only imagined a world changed by Phase I impacts.  A world of automation would change things, but a world where we co-exist with AI or communicate to each other with our thoughts would revolutionize things more.  I’m sorry Mr. President, but the next moon shot is not a cure to cancer, it would be closer to a cure to all disease.

I wish the President had painted a future maximized by the Phase III impacts of revolutionary S&T.  Maybe he didn’t paint that picture because he knows his audience.  Maybe we have become so obsessed with “now” that we’ve started to forget to imagine tomorrow.  Maybe we simply don’t know where to look anymore for information to help us imagine a future where anything is possible.

When we go to a restaurant we ask to see the menu; our leaders need to be distilling the kinds of futures S&T can foster into a menu.  People need to talk about this menu of the future, people need to get excited about this menu and people need to elect leaders that will bring some of the those items of the menu to the table.  While I am glad our President told us to think about the future, I had hoped he would talk about a bigger future, a bolder Phase III impact kind of future. There are many more items that should have been on his menu.

At CReST we will continue to do our best to communicate to the world about the important S&T, the ones whose Phase III impacts will revolutionize the world.  If we do it right, hopefully next year in the SOTU address we will hear of a future maximized by the benefits of revolutionary S&T and well prepared to deal with its potential misuses.

Communication is Easier as Cyborgs

by Rebecca McCauley Rench

The Borg Queen in Star Trek is capable of understanding all of the Borg she is connected to implicitly and has acquired the cumulative knowledge of all assimilated alien races. Yet until assimilation, the Borg are incapable of understanding the motivations and emotions of those space farers they encounter. The holiday season spent with family and friends that you only see occasionally makes many of us feel like a Borg, incapable of communicating our thoughts with family and bewildered at the ideas our loved ones share. It can be difficult to communicate an issue with people speaking from a different reference point. We all want to understand the thoughts and feelings of loved ones, but actually putting oneself in their shoes can be an unachievable challenge. What if we could get assistance communicating with each other through neural technologies that helped us understand the concepts our loved ones are trying to share? Technologies could provide commentary or tell stories in a new way so that we can understand in a way relevant to our personal reference frame. Not only will these types of technologies help us communicate with those around us more effectively, learning becomes more effective as new concepts are explained in a way that fits our frame of mind.

The impacts do not stop with those able to verbally communicate either. The Borg could communicate through their neural network. What if we could apply those same principles to interacting with our children? New parents with their babies often discuss the difficulties in knowing what a baby wants and thinks before their child has had a chance to learn how to speak. Most parents would agree that the first 2 years of a child’s life is difficult and normally completed in a haze from lack of sleep. The benefits of such communication technologies in our child rearing are clear – what if communications between you and your child allowed you to understand why they were upset or what they didn’t like about particular foods and toys? Would child rearing become easier? Perhaps parents worry about the impact on the “natural” progression towards cognitive development. We will have to wait for the data to come in to see how these technologies affect us, but with data in hand, sign me up for a cyborg baby.

All I Want For Christmas Is The Future

Dear Santa,

This year I want something for the world. I want to bring a bright future to the people of today so that our lives can be better and more fulfilling.  There are technologies and areas of science that just need a little help to flourish into the kinds of things that can revolutionize our daily lives.  I have two things I really want this year Santa.

My first wish is for a tomorrow where the human experience is truly enhanced.  I want a world where my best friend can be a sentient robot, where I can visualize my dreams and memories on my iPhone, where I can surf the web and learn new languages using just my thoughts and where I can enhance things like my ability to think critically or recover from ailments by altering the code of my existence.

We live at a time where if we dedicate the time and resources into areas of science like artificial intelligence, biotechnologies and neurotechnologies we can literally start to make our dreams become a reality. My hope is that these opportunities will free people from the limitations nature puts on us and bring the world together in a new way.

My second wish is that I want to live in a world where the laws and rules are rational and make sense.  I want a life where I can be a citizen of the world, not bound by the borders of nations.  I wish for a world where governance embraces the digital reality of our times and evolves as the technology does.

We are a digital society and we should govern ourselves like one.  We could and should be doing things like creating education policy that leverages customized software interfaces built on fifty thousand years of human evolution where we learned by mentorship and not classrooms.  We can use S&T to create a smarter world, a more rational world and a more stable world, but in order to do that we have to change, we have to embrace a future of digital governance and evolve it.

I know these are big wishes, but that is why I need your help.

If we do it right the world will come together and we will realize our future today.

Charlie

Life isn’t Fair. Should it be?

by Rebecca McCauley Rench

In our culture, we do not dictate who and who cannot have children. We limit government or societal intervention in the way we raise our children short of laws against child abuse and negligence. We, as a society, have decided that these selections and choices are solely the responsibility of the parents as long as they want them. There is no regard for the future impact on society despite the fact that this child will eventually become a voter and member of that society. Even with this lack of intention, some people are smarter than others. Some people are better athletes, or musicians, or CEOs. Life isn’t fair because we do not share all the same experiences or innate attributes that allow us to succeed (or fail). As a society, sometimes we try to make things more fair by re-distributing wealth, providing opportunities for those that are disadvantaged. However, we do not expect those with skills that allow them to succeed to stop succeeding. We encourage them because it makes our society stronger and better as a whole.

However, what if we wanted to be intentional and selective of the genes we passed on to the next generation? What if we wanted to create new genes that might make our children faster, smarter, and more productive members of society? Parents, at least the good ones, want their children’s lives to be better and more fulfilling. This is why parents are willing to sacrifice for their children. We are at the edge of a time in which we will need to make a decision on how this might impact our society. We might not even get a choice in whether it happens unless we choose not to allow immigrants based on their genetic heritage. It seems to me that we should welcome these changes, done in a manner that is safe for the overall genetic pool of the human race. Advances in science that allow us to create a better version of ourselves in the next generation (or even our own if we can teach nanobots or viruses to do the work) is just an extension of the choices we already make in who we mate with and how we raise our children. The goal is to make the next generation better and brighter and we should embrace the opportunity to do so with intent and control. Why stumble blindly through a dark room when you can turn on a light?

Making Our Existence Better with S&T

By Charles Mueller

Imagine a world where there is no such thing as a genetic disease, a world where nobody dies of cancer, takes insulin shots for diabetes or loses their life’s memories from Alzheimer’s. Imagine a world where you can learn anything instantly. Imagine a world where you don’t have to worry about how many times you go to the gym per week because your cells work naturally to keep you in better shape. Imagine a world where we control our existence and anything is possible.

Let’s create that world.

Who we are today and the world we live in have only been made possible because of our continued belief in science & technology (S&T). As we have continued to invest our time and resources into S&T, we have continually been given better knowledge and tools to help us understand and navigate our world. S&T has helped us create a world that a few centuries ago would have been pure fantasy. A world where people can fly over oceans, communicate instantly with the touch of a button and prevent contracting a deadly disease by simply taking a shot. We live in a truly awesome time thanks to S&T and as long as we continue to invest and believe in it, it will only help us make the future better.

There are several areas of S&T today that are working day and night to figure out the next great way to enhance our existence, to make our lives better. Advancements in the development of neurotechnologies are making a future possible where people can communicate and access any information with just our thoughts. New developments and applications of biotechnologies are beginning to provide real solutions to things like world hunger and genetic disease. We have always had control of our existence, but today’s world of S&T has given us a level of control we’ve never had before, a level where anything is possible. In such a world, it becomes up to us to figure out what the next chapter in our existence will be.

We need to approach the next phase in our existence with the kind of wisdom that is required for the control we have. With tools that can help us create the world we envision, it is important we have a vision of what that world should be. Without a strategy we open up the real possibility of making things worse rather than better. We can strain out those bad realities and make only the good ones possible with if we elect leaders who understand this new reality and have a real strategy for creating a better future. The right leaders can ensure we have the right policies for investments into S&T and are using the right S&T to make policies that will create the world we want.

Imagine the world you want to be a part of. Imagine a future where that world is possible. Then remember we live at time when we can start making that happen.

Let’s create that world. Let’s make our existence better.

New Intelligence

by Paul Syers

Who’s ready to be a cyborg? I am! In discussions about the future of intelligence, most people think about A.I. or bioengineering. With both technologies, people worry about the dangerous consequences. I see promise, however, in a third option: human enhancement through electronics. In today’s society, we have already developed a symbiotic relationship with technology. Why not embrace that symbiosis and enhance it for the betterment of mankind?

Instead of worrying about developing an independent intelligence in a computer that could one day overpower humanity, why not develop ways to use computers like just another organ? I imagine a future where our brains can interact directly with multiple soft A.I. programs, allowing us to outsource many functions – like sensory systems, memory storage, and data mining – while still using the human brain to retain overall awareness and analytic control.

Unlike genetic engineering, this type of intelligence augmentation would have the advantage of not being permanent. Humans could plug into and unplug out of the added capabilities. This allows us to continue to answer the question of “what it means to be human” on an individual level. Those who reject augmentation can opt out at any time and we can build in ways to reasonably prevent people from forcing augmentation on others.

Some might argue that intelligence augmented in this way is not human intelligence They cannot deny, however, that at least some part of it is human, and at least in the earliest stages, the human part will have control. Eventually this path leads to the ability to fully download a human brain into a computer, but there is much more understanding we can gain along the way.

There will still tough questions to answer, such as how best to provide access, how to ensure some amount of fairness, and who owns the products of augmented intellects. I think these questions, however, will be much easier to reach a consensus on than the questions brought up by fully independent A.I. or radical genetic manipulation. I see this hybrid approach as containing the possibility to create something that is better than the sum of its parts, while at the same time lessening the consequences of failure.

We already have many of the tools and knowledge to move in this direction. Microelectronics are more than cheap, small, and light enough. Advancements in prosthetics and other R&D projects are discovering how to make electronics talk to neurons. The research being done through the BRAIN initiative could also be harnessed to help us reach this goal, but sadly it is not. Mapping the brain is a noble goal, but it won’t lead to the advancements in medical technologies that it promises. Similar promises about curing diseases and genetic defects were made at the outset of the Human Genome Project and they have not materialized. With just a minor shift in the goals and policy of the BRAIN initiative, we could reap so many more benefits. Let’s do it, so that in a few years I can read this blog post directly on my retina.

Internet Providers Are Now ‘Common Carriers’: What Does That Mean For You?

Jennifer McArdle

On February 26, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted in favor of reclassifying broadband Internet Service Providers (ISP) as ‘common carriers’ under Title II of the 1996 Telecommunications Act by a 3 to 2 vote. So what does that mean for you?

Well, it depends on who the ‘you’ is, because that answer differs based on whether you are a regular consumer of Internet content, a provider of Internet content, or an ISP. However, essentially, this ruling is about net neutrality—the ability to access the Internet free of discrimination. So let’s break this down a bit.

Prior to the February 26 ruling, ISP’s were regulated under Title I of the 1996 Telecommunications Act and classified as “information services.” The FCC also put in place specific anti-blocking and non-discrimination rules as part of their 2010 Open Internet Order. Basically, the FCC was attempting to ensure two things: one, that ISPs could not block or deny consumers access to an Internet site of their choosing, and two, that ISPs could not create a tiered access system, with higher paying users accessing the Internet on a ‘fast-lane’ while others are regulated to a ‘slow-lane.’

In January 2014, Verizon, one of the largest ISP’s, sued the government and challenged the FCC’s regulations designed to implement net neutrality. The US Court of Appeals, DC Circuit upheld the FCC authority to use section 706 of the Telecommunications Act to regulate the Internet; however, it struck down the specific anti-blocking and anti-discrimination measures, giving Verizon the leeway to disregard the FCC’s rules. Five months later, the FCC issued a notice of proposed rulemaking on the Internet regulatory structure, which eventually received over 4 million public comments, the large majority of which were in favor of net neutrality. This set the stage for the FCC’s ruling last month.

By defining ISP’s as common carriers, the FCC is essentially defining broadband Internet service providers as a utility. They are mandated by government to provide the same service to everyone without discrimination—much like electricity and gas services.

So, what does that mean for you?

You, the content consumer

By classifying ISP’s as common carriers the FCC has banned ‘paid prioritization’—there will be no fast lanes and slow lanes of the Internet. And this is a good thing for the average consumer. Last June, John Oliver on his show Last Week Tonight (which is well worth watching) noted that 96% of Americans have access to two or fewer cable companies. That means that even if your Internet was being delayed or distorted you may not have the option to change to another provider.

Moreover, privacy advocates have noted that in order for ISP’s to play bandwidth favorites, they need to monitor what you are doing online via deep packet inspection. While deep packet inspection is certainly important to protect against nefarious viruses or malware, it can, under certain circumstances, lead to invasions of privacy. Defining ISP’s as ‘common carriers’ helps prevent against that.

The FCC resolution is designed to ensure that you the average content consumer— regardless if you consume high- or low-bandwidth—has access to Internet content free of discrimination, much like your access to other facilities deemed essential for public life, such as canals, rails, and the telephone.

You, the content producer

Last year, Netflix consumers noticed that there was far more buffering of Netflix content. That is because broadband providers insisted that Netflix users were consuming much of the available Internet bandwidth and therefore the ISP’s slowed it down. Netflix reluctantly agreed to pay interconnection fees to broadband providers in order to ensure its content consumers could stream its videos. Netflix, not surprisingly, is for net neutrality.

However, it is not just the giant content producers that stand to benefit from this ruling. President Obama has noted that ‘paid prioritization’ stacks the deck against small content producing companies, which are unable to challenge the dominance of Internet giants such as Twitter, Facebook, and Netflix.

Defining ISP’s as ‘common carriers’ ensures that content producers are not held hostage to ‘last mile Internet gatekeepers’ and can ensure their content reaches consumers free from bias.

You, the ISP

Not surprisingly, this ruling was not the best for ISP’s who stand to make money from a tiered Internet access system. Moreover, opponents to net neutrality argue that if broadband ISPs cannot collect fees from companies who take up an outsized portion of bandwidth, they lose the incentive to invest in maintaining and upgrading their current infrastructure. This may indeed be true.

The Future?

While the February ruling seemed to settle the debate on net neutrality, it may really be just beginning. The Title II ruling is not set in stone yet and it is already beginning to be legally challenged on the Hill. What that means for ‘you’ may fundamentally change in the months to come.