AI時代に教育は学生を見捨てているのか

Education is Failing our Students in this AI-Driven World

Practical AI43分
AI時代に教育は学生を見捨てているのか

AI時代に教育は学生を見捨てているのか

Practical AI

0:0043:51

要約

Practical AIのDaniel WhitenackとChris Bensonが、AIが仕事や学習に浸透する中で学校や大学が変化に追いついていない現状を議論した回。AIの使い方を教えることと、人間が身につけるべき基礎を守ることの両面が必要だと語られた。教師には裁量がなく制度改革が必要という指摘や、学習の「struggle(苦闘)」の価値、PhDや起業が育てる曖昧さへの耐性についても話した。

この回のポイント

  • ●Chrisは、AIを禁止する初期の方針から、統合する方向へ一部で変わりつつあるが、カリキュラムや州の要件など制度化が遅れていると述べている。
  • ●Danielは、AIの使い方を教えることと、AIが干渉しうる人間の基礎的な学び(計算など)を守ることを区別して考えるべきだと提案した。
  • ●Chrisは、年間カリキュラムを初日に公開し、生徒がAIで先取り学習できるようにして、教師を個別化の「ファシリテーター」にする案を示した。教師にはその権限がないという声も届いたという。
  • ●AIが書いた小論文の誤りや改善点を批判的に分析させる授業など、AIの出力を鵜呑みにしない直感を育てる試みが紹介された。
  • ●トルコの高校生約1000人の実験では、汎用チャットボットで練習は進んだが、支援なしの試験成績が対照群比17%低下した。ハーバードの物理では構造化されたAIチューターが好成績だったという。
  • ●DanielはPhDの価値を、曖昧さの中で自信を持って立場を守る力を育てる点に見出し、起業や創作も同様だと述べた。

章立て

  1. 導入:親として見る教育の現状

    二人が子どもや大学との関わりを紹介し、AI時代に教育が遅れているという問題意識を共有する。

  2. AIは社会的メディアより影響が大きい

    SNSとの比較で、AIは日々の仕事や学習そのものに速く深く影響していると議論する。

  3. AIを教えることと基礎を守ること

    AI活用の教育と、数学や綴りなど人が学ぶべき基礎の線引き、苦闘の価値について話す。

  4. 教師の裁量と個別化学習の提案

    教師に権限がない制度上の制約と、カリキュラム公開でAIによる個別学習を促す案を述べる。

  5. 実験の自由と研究・大学の取り組み

    AI出力を批評する授業、AIチューター案、トルコやハーバードの研究、Purdueの必修要件を紹介する。

  6. PhDと創造性、曖昧さへの耐性

    PhDや起業が育てる曖昧さの中で働く力を論じ、基礎教育への応用を考える。

  7. まとめと教育者への呼びかけ

    教育は技術に遅れがちだが追いつけるとして、教育の専門家との接点を募る。

解説記事

AIが仕事や学習のあらゆる場面に入り込むなか、教育はその変化に追いついているのか。Practical AIの本エピソードでは、共同ホストのDaniel Whitenack(Prediction Guard CEO)とChris Benson(Principal AI and Autonomy Research Engineer)が、親であり大学の助言者でもある立場から教育の現状と今後を語った。二人とも教育の専門家ではないと断ったうえでの率直な議論である。

AIは過去の技術より速く、深く入り込む

Danielは、SNSと比べてAIの特殊性を指摘した。SNSは多くの職種で日常業務のやり方を大きく変えなかったが、AIは普及が速く、仕事の進め方も学び方も直接変えているという見方だ。Chrisは、当初の教育現場の指針は「AIの使用禁止、自力でやれ」だったと振り返る。AIを学習の流れにどう組み込むか想像できなかったためで、今は一部で統合を探る動きが出ているが、学区のカリキュラム承認や州の要件といった制度に反映されるには至っていないと述べている。

「AIを教える」ことと「人が学ぶべき基礎」

Danielは二つの論点を区別した。一つは、AIが仕事に組み込まれる以上、その使い方を教える必要があること。もう一つは、人間として学ぶべき基礎があり、AIがその習得を妨げうることだ。例として、子どもがチャットで数学の答えだけを得れば直感が育たないという懸念を挙げ、一方で綴りのように重要性が下がる技能もあり得ると述べた。

Chrisは、批判的思考や創造性に加え、AIと協働するには一定の文脈知識が要ると応じた。Danielは、人は不快さや苦闘を通じて成長するという自身の信念を述べ、基礎技能そのものより、適切な思考の負荷と回復力を養えるかが重要かもしれないと論じた。Chris自身もAIで生産性が上がった一方、苦闘は消えず場所が移っただけで、答えをすぐ得ず問題の性質を探る「自己課金型の苦闘」を意識していると話した。

教師には裁量がない:制度側の課題

Chrisは過去の放送後、複数の教師から「それは私たちに決める権限がない」と指摘されたという。そのため教師ではなく学区や制度のレベルで変えるべきだという立場だ。彼の「過激な」提案は、年間のカリキュラムを初日に公開し、生徒がAIを使って先に学べるようにすること。テストは別として、生徒の理解の深さを見極める方法を考え、教師は個別化を支援するファシリテーターになる。これで人間の教師の必要性はむしろ高まるという見方である。生徒一人ひとりにAIが付き、教師の指導を補いながら個別に問いかける未来像も提示し、既存の取り組みを知る聴取者に情報提供を呼びかけた。

Danielは、先生や教授が自由に試せる仕組みが必要だと述べた。例として、AIに作らせた小論文の誤りや改善点を批評させる課題を紹介し、AIの出力を絶対視せず検証する直感を養えるとした。

研究データと大学の動き

Chrisが事前に共有した資料として、二つの研究が紹介された。2025年のトルコの高校数学の実験(約1000人)では、汎用チャットボットが支援付き練習を助けた一方、支援なしの試験成績は対照群比で17%低下した。ハーバードの学部物理(約200人)では、慎重に設計されたAIチューターが、アクティブラーニングの授業より即時の学習効果が高かったという。設計次第で結果が大きく変わることを示唆する。またPurdue大学では全学部の学位でAIコンピテンシー要件があり、批判的思考や責任あるAI利用を扱うと紹介された。

Danielは、自社が新卒にAI活用を前提として期待する一方、大学ではAI検知や禁止の文脈でAIに否定的な印象を持つ学生もいると述べた。Chrisは、AI利用を不公正と見なすのではなく、測っているものが間違っていないか問い直すべきだと語った。

PhD・起業が育てるもの

Chrisの問いを受け、DanielはPhDが自分の自信、批判的思考、創造性を大きく伸ばしたと振り返った。AIが最新研究の整理や発見を助けるとしても、基礎を理解した上で枠の外に出て、懐疑的な専門家の前で自説を守る経験が、曖昧さの中で動く自信を育てるという。起業や創作も同様の苦闘を伴うと述べた。Chrisはこの考えを初等・中等教育に応用し、曖昧さや創造性、苦闘を早い段階で導入し、暗記や機械的作業はツールに任せる道筋を想像した。

まとめ

本回は結論を示すものではなく、教育の専門家への問いかけが中心だが、論点は明確だ。AIの禁止か許可かという二択ではなく、何を人が学び、どこで苦闘させ、何を測るかを再設計する必要がある。日本でも教育現場の裁量や制度の遅れは似た課題だろう。紹介された研究は、AIの使い方設計が学習成果を左右することを示唆しており、導入を検討する学校や企業の研修担当にとって参考になる。

文字起こし(英語・自動生成)

Welcome to the Practical AI Podcast, where we break down the real-world applications of artificial intelligence and how it's shaping the way we live, work, and create. Our goal is to help make AI technology practical, productive, and accessible to everyone. Whether you're a developer, business leader, or just curious about the tech behind the buzz, you're in the right place. Be sure to connect with us on LinkedIn, X, or Blue Sky to stay up to date with episode drops, behind the scenes content, and AI insights. You can learn more at practicalai.fm. Now, on to the show. Welcome to another episode of the Practical AI podcast. In this episode, it's just Chris and I, my co-host. In these episodes, where we don't have a guest, it's a lot of fun to just dive in. into some of the topics that are of interest to us and that are in the news or at the top

of our minds or listeners' minds as they've expressed them to us. So excited to dig in with my co-host Chris Benton today, who is a Principal AI and Autonomy Research Engineer. I'm Daniel Whitenack. I'm CEO at Prediction Guard. How are you doing, Chris? Hey, I'm doing great today. How is it going? It's going wonderful. It's a very exciting time in my life, both business-wise, lots of cool stuff going on. But I know you and I talking before and even about some of the things that we'll maybe talk about today, thinking a lot about kids recently. So for our listeners that don't know, I am expecting my first child in a couple months here, or less than a couple months. Yes, about a month down. Coming up rapidly. And I've been saying a couple months, but it's past that time.

Yeah. So, yeah, very rapidly. And so I am, for listeners that don't know, I'm about 40 years old. So it's been my wife and I, it's been a little while. We've been married quite a while. And so I'm going to be an older dad. And I've been thinking about things like, oh, man, I'm going to be an older dad going into these like parent teacher meetings or school meetings. All these teachers are going to be, you know, 20, 24 years old or 25 years old. And I wonder what my perspectives will be as I as I come into these situations. And not only that, but there's a lot of things changing technology wise, which I know has been at the top of top of your mind, Chris. Yeah. And you're not too. So like to talk about my background and, you know, after coming to school myself and then I had a previous marriage where I raised a contributed to raising two stepkids that I love.

And I'm still very close to, as we were talking about a little while ago, who are now grown and out in the world doing their stuff. and kind of went through the educational process with them as a stepdad and showing up at those meetings. And then in the second marriage, I have my current daughter. I know I mentioned her periodically on the show. She's now a freshman in high school, 14. And so I'm doing all that over again. And so I have kind of went through two series of public school all the way up through. In addition, just as I know you do, I work with a couple of universities in an advisory role and stuff, different roles with different universities. But I get to see up close and personal the education at that level well and get to contribute a little bit to the thinking around what should be done and stuff. And, you know, since we always kind of tend to start the show with a pun, we have all this beautiful fall weather.

I took a walk with my dogs a little while ago, and I was thinking about how education is falling short right now in terms of all the changes. It is the season of fall. It's a dad pun right there. Yeah, there you go. You've got to get the dad trip again. So, you know, it's been on my mind a lot. I've been in parent-teacher conferences. We're looking at college once again. and I'm thinking of all the things that we talk about on this show all the time, how fast things are changing. People are worried about jobs. They're worried about the future. What are they going to do? And as I have mentioned, I spend a lot of time thinking about this, partly because I'm actively working on a book about what life for humans will be like going forward as agentics are pervasive in all parts of life. It's a very, it's for a general audience, it's a very future forward book, but that gets me thinking about, you know,

what is my, when my 14 year old is now 40 and she's trying to deal with life at that point, what does that look like? You know, what can we predict or what can we only, you know, speculate a little bit less? And so I'm going through that thinking process. And as I do that and show up at today's, you know, school events and all that, I'm just constantly going, oh, my God, this is a disaster. So I'm not trying to pick on our school system, which I'll leave unnamed, or the universities. But I'm recognizing that education, just as the job market needs to kind of level up with AI, as we talk about quite a lot, education does too. And I was proposing that we have a conversation about that. And I know you were willing to jump in as a new dad here. And I wanted to just kind of talk about where things are at and what those gaps are and maybe bring some insights as to people who think a lot about these topics on where the future of education might be able to navigate to.

Yeah, I think I was trying to think of some other transitions that, you know, where I could draw parallels. And it's a little bit hard to like maybe you could say, you know, computing in general or personal computers or that sort of thing. And maybe those you could draw parallels there. I was thinking even with social media, I think a lot of what we've learned about social media is that maybe those of us that were in that first generation to adopt social media, we really had no idea what we were getting into. In some sense, it's like the introduction of opioids or something where everybody is like, you know, or some substance where it's like, oh, we're going to put this in everything. And now we realize looking back, maybe that was not the best way to handle things. But even with social media, obviously social media affects all of our lives, but it's not as connected maybe to the way each of us individually work and our roles in our work as AI is, right?

Unless you're doing digital marketing or something like that, or maybe if you're in HR trying to look up people's social media to see if there's problematic things coming your direction. But yeah, I think generally like if you were a mechanical engineer before or after social media, like maybe you have a LinkedIn now and there's some level of professional side of that, but it didn't really necessarily change the way that you did your day-to-day work. But AI has come on both more rapidly than social media, and it actually is affecting the way we all do our jobs, the way we all do our work and the way that we learn right in our educational system. So in a sense, it's both more impactful and happening faster than other things. It is. And I think I think, you know, we hear a lot about educational institutions at all levels struggling with that, you know,

and then kind of the initial guidance was kind of, you're not allowed to use AI. And, you know, you got to do the work yourself. And that was largely, I think, because there was no concept of how to integrate AI, the reality of that, into that work stream that students are producing for their education. I think that's starting to change a little bit, at least in some places, because at this point, you know, it's very clear this is not going away. So I think some forward-leaning people are starting to try to identify how do we integrate, you know, for the rest of these kids' lives as they grow up and they're in the workplace all the way. They're going to have these tools, and the tools are going to progress and get better and better. And so I think that's a big part of it is how do we – you have that happening with individuals, but how do we start getting that institutionalized so that school districts approve curriculums and states that have requirements that all schools have to meet, you know, get on board with that.

And that way the teachers have the flexibility moving forward to actually kind of move the ball to where the reality is because right now it's lagging. Maybe I'm curious if you see this distinction or if it's a distinction that even matters. But there's in my mind, there's one piece of it, which is AI is going to be a part of the way we all do our work. We need to educate people on how to use AI and how AI is integrated into our work. So that's one side of things. The other side of things is potentially. And I think different people have different opinions about this. There are certain things that we need to ideally learn as humans to function well in the world, like as part of our educational system. And if and if AI is interfering with the way that we learn those topics, then that could be problematic.

Or there's also a need to maybe adjust our educational system so we ensure the learning of those topics. So I'm thinking of, you know, whatever it is, let's say basic math skills. Right. I think it's reasonable that a younger person. I don't know. This shows how ignorant I am and how I don't know. I don know anything about anything about a lot of what I be experiencing over the coming years but I don know typically at what level you know certain levels of math are introduced currently in curriculum But I imagine that a child could interact with an AI chat interface and get math answers way before they're even introduced to the subjects where they're expected to know and learn that intuition. And so if I'm only getting those answers from the chat engine and not, you know, learning actually how to do at least a basic level of math, many would see that as problematic.

I could also see just for a hot take on the other side, right? If you take the example of like spelling or, you know, cursive or, you know, there's probably a lot of examples where you could say, well, spelling now, if all I'm doing is putting text into Word documents and spell check is integrated, or maybe even AI is just generating those for me, well, spelling is no longer a relevant skill for anyone to learn. So why? So I think there's I guess what I'm saying is there's one side of this, which is we need to educate on how to use AI. There's another side of this, which is what are those fundamental things that we need to learn as humans outside of AI that are fundamentally or could be interfered with if we don't apply AI correctly in the educational system? Does that distinction make sense to you, Chris? I think it does. I think if you, to draw out, I agree with everything you said. I think to draw that out a little bit more, there are some skills such as the ability to do critical thinking across a number of domains, the ability to be creative across a number of domains, and then to have the content, like whatever discrete skills that you might be taught in school, as you pointed out.

And those may change and some things that we think of as foundational may be changing. But having enough context in your learning around your ability to do critical thinking and to be creative together so that you can collaborate with the technologies going forward and arrive. So without the context, and that's kind of what you're getting at there, you know, having the math skills that you need to be able to follow along, maybe with harder math that you might be working with an AI. but there's a certain level you got to get to. And so I think being able to find that mix of educational context mixed with those creative and critical thinking abilities to solve problems collaboratively going forward with AI because that's going to be the reality we're all facing. Yeah, maybe another way to put it is I, well, again, people have different opinions probably, but at least from my point of view or worldview or however you would frame it,

I don't think you really advance in your character and development as a human without discomfort and struggle. I agree with that. And so a part of whether that's advancing in your marriage, advancing in your ability as a worker, advancing in your character as a human being and the values that you want to hold to, the struggle of life is actually how that is stressed and how those things are built up, right? And so I would view a part of the educational system as, or maybe the counter example I'm trying to draw out is, well, maybe it doesn't really matter if basic math or spelling is a part is like a fundamental skill now. If it's stressing the right sort of thinking and allowing you to experience discomfort

that advances your mindset, advances your problem solving, advances your decision making, advances your resilience, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Like you were saying, Chris. Yeah. We've talked a lot on the show about how an AI agent needs an underlying harness that has connections into the real world, into MCP servers and real systems and data sources. That's the only way that it can work towards a useful goal. And that's why I'm so happy that we're partnering with SERP API, which is a web search API that gives developers real time structured access to search engine results. This is an amazing tool that you can plug directly into AI agents to power their actions and get them to the proper outcomes. This is very simple integration, and this includes access to over 100 APIs within SERP API to access things like Google, Bing, Amazon, YouTube, and many other sources.

So I would really encourage you to check out SERP API, integrate it into your AI agents. Visit surfapi.com slash practical AI to get started with Surf API for free and get 250 searches every month. Visit surfapi.com slash practical AI to get started with Surf API for free and get 250 searches every month. The points you were making there in that last segment, I think were spot on. I think right now we're at a moment where we need to start looking at things that have been foundational for generations in terms of what you need and figure out how does this apply. You know, you mentioned spell checking and how that does. And spelling is still important at some level, even though we have spell check, because it contributes to accurate communication that we have. And so, but the question of whether or not, you know, like there's a certain amount of, I think, analysis that needs to occur on if we take our foundational skills and look at what the world's going to be like a few years down the road, is that something that we're already, are we already offloading some of those skills to AI?

and how are we collaborating to solve really tough problems. To your point about the struggle, I know that in my own life as I'm working with AI every day, I know both you and I are collaborating with AI models all the time. And that has changed the workflows on how I engage a lot of problems. And in a lot of ways, it supercharged what I can do, the productivity. I know I've mentioned that before in terms of what I can generate. So my output is way above what it was possible a year ago. And so I'm starting to really look at how am I doing that, but I am noticing that that struggle still exists. It's just being placed in different places. You know, I can turn out, for instance, if I'm working, I'm just making up an example, if I'm working on a website that I need for some function, I can turn out a bunch of code pretty quickly. And depending on what it's, you know, what it's necessary for,

there's a certain amount of rigor that goes around that. But in a lot of cases, I'm able to offload a certain amount of that and focus on the creative process that's driving it. And I think that's one example of how good I am at Rust, which is what I usually use these days, is mattering less now than it was a year ago right now. And so, you know, that's just one of many, many examples. I'm doing a lot of authoring, like I said, and in that authoring, a lot of the research uses tools to go out and qualify things that I'm about to suggest or put forward and stuff. And so I think the thing that we need to do is to establish kind of what does this look like now? What does this look like over the next few years? And how do we want to start making adjustments? Because if we lag too far in education, the kids of today are going to have a really hard time. And, you know, I'll finish by saying in the workplace, I end up mentoring quite a few younger people that come in out of university.

And they'll be in their early or mid-20s or even late 20s. And the ones from the university are struggling a little bit to adjust to the new realities of workforce to some degree. And so I think we need to speed up the self-reflection process is what I'm getting at. So I think that that, so I agree with everything you're saying. Maybe I'll be a little bit divisive here or something like that. And with basically say, okay, well, in light of all that, if I'm an, if I'm a high school teacher, should I let students use AI on their assignments? And in what ways is that question, I guess, useful or maybe not useful? Maybe that's a good way to frame it. I think I'm going to pivot you a little bit because I got smacked down a while back. About a year or two ago, we were actually having an episode and I was talking about teaching and stuff like that. And I had multiple teachers reach out to me after that episode and say,

you just put something in our lap that we don't have the authority to do. control of. We don't have control of. That comes down from on high and we're within those boundaries. And they implement. Yeah, that's correct. So for all of you teachers out there. Understood. Good recommendation for when I go into parent-teacher conferences. I might be grumpy about other things, but I should keep that in mind. You probably will at times. You'll be frustrated because you'll walk from your world, which is very modern, into it'll feel like you're going into your child's world, which is a little bit archaic. And that's frustrating as a parent to say, why is it still this way? And yes, you know, the academic handcuffs are on to some degree. So I try to keep that in mind as I'm having parent-teacher discussions. But I do think that school systems, I would say the one that I'm in, you folks know who you are. A few of you listen to the show. You might be

thinking about that. It might be if you are finding that you're using tools to learn yourself in life, bring that down for the kids, you know, figure out how can I do that? I know for me, using these tools and I suspect it the same for you I rarely go and just get an answer unless it a trivial thing unless it a completely trivial thing I usually go and explore the nature of a problem so that by the time I get to an answer I've used these tools to ensure that I've done a certain amount of that struggle myself. And it's a self-imposed struggle so that I've learned. And I found that by doing that, these tools are catering to me. I've helped them. I've kind of given the profiles about me and they're able to present information that's really optimal for me. And so even at 56, my current age, I am learning rapidly, certainly as fast as I have done over the last few decades or faster because I have these tools to do that. What I'm suggesting is we need to push that down into more of a systematic approach

in the school system and let these tools help kids at an individual level learn. I'll give you one example before I shut up. I'm going to be radical here. But I did suggest this to a set of teachers recently, and I think their face just dropped. And that is, I think school systems, most of the curriculum is well set long before, and the teachers know what they're teaching far before they actually get to a given day when they're teaching it. Put that curriculum out there. So I'm not talking about the tests. I'm not talking about quizzes. But on the first day of school, have the whole year's curriculum out there so that you have the ability. The kids are going to use these tools anyway to some degree. And rather than call that cheating, let them learn the material and find ways of determining how deep they're getting. Are they just getting shallow answers? Are they diving into it? But you can actually, as a parent, I can smooth out in certain areas

where I know my daughter might struggle in certain areas, and I can smooth that out, introduce things earlier, expand the period of time she's exposed to it, and get her learning because I already do that as a parent. And so when I suggested let everybody do that, their faces kind of fell. But I think that you could be a lot more efficient about getting individual students learning in specific ways that are specific to their learning styles and let the teachers become, through school policy, through district policy become kind of facilitators of that customization process. And I think teachers as humans would become much more useful in years ahead if they adjust their role to do that. I think we'll find that the need for human teachers stays very high rather than just saying, well, they're going to get replaced by AI. So there's my radical suggestion. Yeah. Yeah, coming soon to a newly established Benson Academy for youth.

Yeah, see if you get funding for that one. I think I have a challenge in front of me there. There's a struggle there. I like maybe a way to extrapolate a principle out of what you're saying there, Chris, is I do think that or a piece of this is some sort of way in which both the elementary, high school and university systems can allow for experimentation with this technology in ways that they aren't now. because to your point, teachers are very much, their hands are tied in a lot of cases in terms of what they can or can't allow, or even in some cases like, hey, you are going to use this tool to determine if this essay is written by AI or something like that, or it's integrated into those things. And so they may or may not have a choice to do that, but somehow there needs to be the chance for experimentation.

I know some of the things that I've heard is a bit of reprioritization and tie in of AI. So less the focus on memorization and repeating facts. Right. And maybe a way for you to look at the output of AI and find what is maybe not not accurate. Right. So one one thing that I've heard certain teachers doing is saying, all right, here's here's our topic that we're all going to write an essay around. You are going to put this and ask for this essay into AI. And then what I want is your critical analysis of how that essay could be improved in the output or maybe where what is not accurate in that essay or what is framed incorrectly. And just assume that there are things framed incorrectly or there is something to be improved. Right. And I guess you could argue, well, that could be done with AI, too.

but it is teaching a different sort of mechanism with AI, right? Which is this, well, it is really a, you're looking at the output of this and not treating it as a gold standard, right? But you're building intuition that this needs to be checked and you're working back and forth on improving and there's still critical thinking where you have to determine what is best, what is not, what is better, what is worse, et cetera. So I'm not saying that's the perfect way to do it. I think I more mean teachers and professors likely need the freedom to be able to try some of these things. And I don't know. I'm not familiar enough, obviously familiar enough with the educational system to know the mechanism through which that could happen. And, you know, maybe our listeners, if they're aware of some of I'm sure that there's innovative programs going on in our country and other countries. If our listeners are aware of some of those things and maybe want to point us to some of those things, we would love maybe to have some of those experts on the show to highlight some of the more positive side of what's going on there, which I'm sure there are people experimenting.

I'm sure I would actually like to follow up and kind of put a challenge out there to viewers and listeners on this. And, you know, if we're looking at a future going into the classroom a few years down the road and we have we still have our human teacher facilitating this process. And, you know, not a new idea right here. I'm sure everyone's heard of it. but the notion of every student has a personal AI in the classroom with them that's designed to help educate them along these things that we're talking about. And maybe the AI, you know, I'm just going to throw maybe there's an earpiece in that the kid has. He can hear or she can hear the teacher clearly. But there's also an AI talking and saying, well, you know, how would you think about this? And as the teacher is working on that and the AI is observing the kids struggle through the process and they can cue them in ways that are customized for that particular student. So the AI that the next student over may be cueing them a little bit differently, but it keeps them on track, keeps them focused on the work and keeps them on a learning curve.

I love to hear that's not a new idea. You know, we've heard about those things in the past. I'd love to hear how people are thinking about that, whether that's on track, whether there needs to be something different and how you would use that kind of capability. So, Chris, just to highlight a couple of things, which you had sent me prior to this conversation, which I think are interesting, just a couple of data points here. There was a 2025 study field experiment with nearly a thousand high school mathematics students in Turkey. That found that a general chatbot improved assisted practice but reduced subsequent unassisted exam performance by 17% relative to a control. Then another study that was from Harvard undergraduate physics program. This was with around 200 students found stronger immediate learning gains with a carefully structured AI tutor across two lessons than with its active learning classroom comparison.

I know actually even when I was a teaching assistant at Purdue, this sort of active learning stuff was very much the thing that everyone was experimenting with. I don't know that that field in its entirety, but I know that was a big thing back then. So it is encouraging that people are doing some of these experiments. I know that Purdue, which is in the town where I live, for those that don't know, local here to me, you know, there's all sorts of mixed things. different departments are handling things differently. But I know the system, to your point, Chris, the system is doing certain things. So Purdue, and I know that they're not the only ones doing this, but they have now an actual requirement in the undergraduate, like across all undergraduate degrees, that there's an AI competency requirement. And they say it's AI focused coursework designed to build critical thinking, responsible AI use and workforce ready

skills. So, yeah, I think to your point, Chris, you were mentioning mentoring people coming in out of university. I, you know, I struggle to believe that, well, or maybe the way to put it is a lot of those students coming out of university, at least if they're working in my company. So maybe I just speak to my own experience. If they're not comfortable with wanting and digging into AI assistance in their day-to-day work, then that's going to be a problem for them at our company. That is an expectation. However, that's not necessarily what they're learning in their university program where maybe they have very much this, even if they like using it personally, they might have a negative association with AI in their day-to-day work because their day-to-day work has been university work and their university professors are up in arms about, oh, I'm guessing that you're using AI on this, or I'm trying to prevent

you from using AI on this, or I'm using AI detection to prevent you from gaming this thing, right? Which, again, I feel for the professors because a lot of times their hands are tied there or maybe they don't know what to do. So I definitely see that side of things. But certainly those students, if they form that association, that's not what is present a lot of at least. And I know certain companies are not as far along in their AI adoption Right But the reality is we going that direction whether anyone likes it or not And for you to have a job and a role you going to use AI in that role So that is going to be an expectation. Yeah, I think, you know, when you tell me this, you know, when you talk about the professor, you know, trying to say don't do this and trying to detect it, I don't have the answer to that. But what I do have is my reaction to that is maybe we're measuring the wrong thing. Maybe we need to find how do we get the student where the student needs to go without telling them that the tools that are going to be embedded in their lives for the rest of their lives are not fair.

You know, that that is cheating, that kind of perspective. I think that needs to change. We need to find a way of getting those critical skills to those students, acknowledging that this, you know, we all go and drive cars and do things that are just completely part of our life. This is also now part of that life. And so we need to acknowledge that education is never going to be without this again. And so that's kind of what that's kind of the little parental mission that I'm on right here is trying to do. Don't claim to have all the answers, but it's a process, I think, that we need to engage in in the large. It's a societal problem that's only going to get worse as we go forward unless we actually do that. I love hearing about Purdue's efforts and trying to start moving things incrementally forward on that. I'd like to ask you a question. What are your thoughts? You know, I'm talking to my daughter a lot about college. I'm talking to her about higher education.

You know, what does it look like to go through graduate school? what is a PhD in, you know, what kinds of passions that she has, given the fact that the world is changing rapidly and none of us really know, you know, what kinds of changes in our career will be required because the world is changing. What are your thoughts on higher education and the utility of the PhD or how that utility may need to evolve to keep it relevant? What are your thoughts there? Yeah, I would say maybe just in reflecting on my own journey, which is mostly what I can do, I guess. Sure. what's interesting is I would say that in I grew more as an individual and my abilities as an individual in terms of confidence critical thinking problem solving creativity in my PhD program like by many many orders of magnitude than undergraduate or or high school sort of

environment. And I think that one, that's because obviously it was a lot harder. And so again, that fits maybe my leaning towards that side of the utility of struggle in terms of your growth. But I think also the PhD, if you're thinking about PhD specifically, it is different from other educational endeavors in that it is necessarily like you can't get a PhD without publishing novel research, right? And so regardless of how well AI systems can help you parse through the state of the art, they at the end of the day know the state of the art. And I know that people are working on AI systems that can kind of autonomously make maybe discoveries of their own, Right. And so I do think that AI systems could assist in that exploration of what is novel.

But to some degree, the Ph.D. does force you to say, well, here are the fundamentals. I have a mental model of the fundamentals. Now, where can I draw outside of the lines? Knowing also that others who deeply know the fundamentals are going to be skeptical of me and question me around this where I'm drawing outside of the lines. Right. So I I very much appreciate and love, you know, looking back. And I still love this to this day, the idea of the poster session. Right. I drew outside of the lines. I was creative and I'm saying that this is new territory. And I think I'm making this progress in this area and I'm putting it on a poster in a room with 50, you know, very experienced experts and physicists and professors and researchers in this room. And they're all going to come up and ask me on the fly, you know, to they're all skeptical about, you know, my my work. Right. And and I love that. And I think that that it's not for everybody.

And I'm not saying that everyone should do a Ph.D., but I think it is unique within that, you know, educational paradigm. And it produces some of that unique outcome where I think a lot of my confidence in operating and ambiguity came out of that process. So maybe it's less so the individual discoveries that I think are still valuable in that graduate school PhD program. Because I think you could argue, well, AI systems, if they're good enough, they could help us explore these topics and make new discoveries. And it's more more of that comfort level and working with ambiguity through the struggle towards a defensible position that you're confident in that. That's actually a very creative process. And I think that that's a value. I think it's not the only way you can do that. Right. Entrepreneurs that create ventures. Right. Have a very similar type of process. Right. And you could have an A.I. generate your business idea.

But at the end of the day, that doesn't mean it has product market fit. And even if it does have product market fit, you can still sabotage your own business to make it not succeed. It's a very creative and difficult and struggle filled endeavor. And so that produces that level of working in ambiguity, creativity, et cetera. And you could probably come up with other examples. So there's the PhD, there's entrepreneurship and venture building, there's creative pursuits, right? Whether it's you mentioned writing, writing a new piece, you know, writing a book or or art or whatever those things are that are pushing those boundaries where human creativity is still it is still what's needed. I think I strayed quite a bit from your initial question, but those are some of what what it makes me think of. Those are maybe it's a definition of where is where we finding value in our creative endeavors as humans and how do we promote more of that, which could be through a Ph.D. program.

I think they're still relevant. It could be through these other pursuits. But, yeah, there's a real creative element at its core. You know, I know that you were saying that you had deviated a bit from the question, but you definitely inspired some thinking as we're winding up here on our discussion. One of the things I think I'll take away and that maybe others might want to consider as well is with you talking about the value of ambiguity, creativity and the struggle itself and how that really, you know, enabled you to grow as a person. You know, you said orders of magnitude. And as I'm looking at what if you were to take that process a little bit earlier in the educational process down to where you are addressing fundamentals, how might introducing ambiguity, creativity and struggle, you know, and then allowing for some tooling to be part of that process, introduce fundamentals in a way that creates that critical thinking, enhances that creativity.

allows kids to do it, though it may be a different path on how they're achieving that from what we're doing today. You know, a little bit less memorization and that kind of stuff and a little bit more driving them forward and relying on the rote stuff to the tool. So that's where you've taken me, Daniel, and I appreciate that. So it's given me something to think about. Any final thoughts from you in terms of, you know, new dad about to hit the world with this? All is with the caveat of I have no idea what I'm talking about, but I think that's like maybe it ties back to the maybe it ties back to the Ph.D. thing. It's like I'm perfectly fine operating in this space where I don't I don't know everything and still having opinions and creativity. And I think, you know, I recognize that caveat that I am no educational expert. But I think it is an evidence of the fact that you can we can, I hope, into this future still develop people that have confidence and problem solving skills and creativity.

But I definitely think it's going to be going to be different moving forward. And I guess maybe there's a follow up show here in the future to maybe dive in with some educators specifically around around how that's developing. I certainly know from even my experience with other technologies that the educational systems are often behind, you know, even before AI, that was true. And that's problematic. Right. The same with legislation. Right. Legislation is always behind what we're doing with technology, and that creates its own problems as well. But it doesn't mean that we can't catch up and make changes. And so we'd love to get any connections to educational experts out there from our audience. If you have them, please send them our way. Good way to wind up. Thanks for thanks for the conversation today. Yeah. Same here. Talk to you soon, Chris. all right that's our show for this week if you haven't checked out our website

head to practicalai.fm and be sure to connect with us on linkedin x or blue sky you'll see us posting insights related to the latest ai developments and we would love for you to join the conversation thanks to our partner prediction guard for providing operational support for the show. Check them out at predictionguard.com. Also, thanks to Breakmaster Cylinder for the beats and to you for listening. That's all for now, but you'll hear from us again next week.

番組の概要欄(原文)

<p>Schools and universities are failing to adapt to our modern world, in which AI is becoming increasingly pervasive in all aspects of life and work.  In fact, AI may be changing what should be considered foundational knowledge that all students must learn.</p><p>In this Fully Connected episode, Daniel and Chris explore the role of AI in education and the future of learning.  They note the bureaucratic inhibitors to educational reform, and the fact that classroom teachers don’t have the authority to innovate and personalize the learning process for their students, and discuss how AI tools can support personalized learning while preserving critical thinking, creativity, and problem-solving skills.</p><p>Featuring: </p><ul><li>Daniel Whitenack – <a href="https://www.datadan.io/">Website</a>, <a href="https://github.com/dwhitena">GitHub</a>, <a href="https://x.com/dwhitena">X</a></li><li>Chris Benson – <a href="https://chrisbenson.com/">Website</a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisbenson">LinkedIn</a>, <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/chrisbenson.bsky.social">Bluesky</a>, <a href="https://github.com/chrisbenson">GitHub</a>, <a href="https://x.com/chrisbenson">X</a></li></ul><p>Sponsors:</p><ul><li><strong>SerpAPI</strong>: A Web Search API that gives developers real-time, structured access to search engine results. Visit <a href="https://serpapi.com/?utm_source=spotsnowpodcast&amp;utm_campaign=practicalai">serpapi.com/practicalai</a> to get started for free and get 250 searches every month. </li></ul><p>Resources and Events:</p><ul><li>Register for <a href="https://practicalai.fm/webinars">upcoming webinars here</a>!</li><li>Prior <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRpRdFmBfdF6boDgAD3nNaLm8Yx4KN2Vt">Webinars from our partner Prediction Guard</a></li><li><a href="https://midwestaisummit.com/">Midwest AI Summit 2026</a></li></ul><p>Chris’s new book <strong><em>The Art of Swarming</em></strong> will be published soon, written to be the seminal foundational book for the fledgling swarming industry, defining the principles and architecture that enable autonomous agentic UxS swarms with emergent unified embodied intelligence.</p>

出典・この記事について

番組
Practical AI(Daniel Whitenack and Chris Benson)
元の回
Education is Failing our Students in this AI-Driven World
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要約作成日
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practicalai.show

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