Last updated on 7/23/2024

A powerful, global, Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based, next-generation, lifelong learning platform -- meant to help people reinvent themselves quickly, safely, cost-effectively, conveniently, and consistently. And speaking of people, this new platform will require -- and will rely upon -- human beings to create it as well as to drive its effectiveness.

In the future, the lifelong ownership of the learning-related records and credentials will belong to the individual learners themselves. They will be the ones who control who else can access these records.

Some recent items/quotes/ideas to consider:

The Progressive Case for Reforming Higher Ed — from insidehighered.com by Michael D. Smith
Customized, digital education offers a path for progressive reform, Michael D. Smith writes.

That’s the bad news. But there’s good news, too. New digital technologies have arrived during the past decade for delivering instruction and evaluating individual student learning at scale. If we embrace them, they can make real reform possible and allow us to imagine a fairer, more accessible system of higher education—one that will enable us to better serve the many students who are left out of our existing scarcity-based model.
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I think it should be to reform our educational system in ways that will benefit society. And with the advent of new digital technologies, we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to do just that. If we embrace those technologies now, we can democratize access to the knowledge that students from all socioeconomic backgrounds need to discover and develop their talents, and we can make it possible for them to earn the credentials they need to signal their knowledge to employers—all so that they can use their talents to make a difference in the world.

But in the years ahead, thanks to these new technologies, the broader ecosystem that these institutions exist in is going to expand and change dramatically. Gradually, elite residential colleges and universities will lose their dominant place in that ecosystem, and customized digital learning will first disrupt and then come to dominate a new system of higher education—one that reaches more people, and generates greater benefits for society, than ever before.

School 3.0: Reimagining Education in 2026, 2029, and 2034 — from davidborish.com by David Borish

 

The landscape of education is on the brink of a profound transformation, driven by rapid advancements in artificial intelligence. This shift was highlighted recently by Andrej Karpathy’s announcement of Eureka Labs, a venture aimed at creating an “AI-native” school. As we look ahead, it’s clear that the integration of AI in education will reshape how we learn, teach, and think about schooling altogether.
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Traditional textbooks will begin to be replaced by interactive, AI-powered learning materials that adapt in real-time to a student’s progress.
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As we approach 2029, the line between physical and virtual learning environments will blur significantly.

Curriculum design will become more flexible and personalized, with AI systems suggesting learning pathways based on each student’s interests, strengths, and career aspirations.
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The boundaries between formal education and professional development will blur, creating a continuous learning ecosystem.

Deep Learning: Five New Superpowers of Higher Education — from jeppestricker.substack.com by Jeppe Klitgaard Stricker
How Deep Learning is Transforming Higher Education

While the traditional model of education is entrenched, emerging technologies like deep learning promise to shake its foundations and usher in an age of personalized, adaptive, and egalitarian education. It is expected to have a significant impact across higher education in several key ways.
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…deep learning introduces adaptivity into the learning process. Unlike a typical lecture, deep learning systems can observe student performance in real-time. Confusion over a concept triggers instant changes to instructional tactics. Misconceptions are identified early and remediated quickly. Students stay in their zone of proximal development, constantly challenged but never overwhelmed. This adaptivity prevents frustration and stagnation.

Introducing Eureka Labs -- from eurekalabs.ai

We are Eureka Labs and we are building a new kind of school that is AI native.

How can we approach an ideal experience for learning something new? For example, in the case of physics one could imagine working through very high quality course materials together with Feynman, who is there to guide you every step of the way. Unfortunately, subject matter experts who are deeply passionate, great at teaching, infinitely patient and fluent in all of the world's languages are also very scarce and cannot personally tutor all 8 billion of us on demand.

However, with recent progress in generative AI, this learning experience feels tractable. The teacher still designs the course materials, but they are supported, leveraged and scaled with an AI Teaching Assistant who is optimized to help guide the students through them. This Teacher + AI symbiosis could run an entire curriculum of courses on a common platform. If we are successful, it will be easy for anyone to learn anything, expanding education in both reach (a large number of people learning something) and extent (any one person learning a large amount of subjects, beyond what may be possible today unassisted).

⚡️ Excited to share that I am starting an AI+Education company called Eureka Labs.
The announcement:

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We are Eureka Labs and we are building a new kind of school that is AI native.

How can we approach an ideal experience for learning something new? For example, in the case… pic.twitter.com/RHPkqdjB8R

— Andrej Karpathy (@karpathy) July 16, 2024

These items provide evidence of the various
pieces that are coming together >>

What does the vision entail?

• A new, global, collaborative learning platform that offers more choice, more control to learners of all ages – 24x7 – and could become the organization that futurist Thomas Frey discusses here with Business Insider:

"I've been predicting that by 2030 the largest company on the internet is going to be an education-based company that we haven't heard of yet," Frey, the senior futurist at the DaVinci Institute think tank, tells Business Insider.

• A learner-centered platform that is enabled by – and reliant upon – human beings but is backed up by a powerful suite of technologies that work together in order to help people reinvent themselves quickly, conveniently, and extremely cost-effectively
• A customizable learning environment that will offer up-to-date streams of regularly curated content (i.e., microlearning) as well as engaging learning experiences
• Along these lines, a lifelong learner can opt to receive an RSS feed on a particular topic until they master that concept; periodic quizzes (i.e., spaced repetition) determine that mastery. Once mastered, the system will ask the learner as to whether they still want to receive that particular stream of content or not.
• A Netflix-like interface to peruse and select plugins to extend the functionality of the core product
• An AI-backed system of analyzing employment trends and opportunities will highlight those courses and “streams of content” that will help someone obtain the most in-demand skills
• A system that tracks learning and, via Blockchain-based technologies, feeds all completed learning modules/courses into learners’ web-based learner profiles
• A learning platform that provides customized, personalized recommendation lists – based upon the learner’s goals
• A platform that delivers customized, personalized learning within a self-directed course
(meant for those content creators who want to deliver more sophisticated courses/modules while moving people through the relevant Zones of Proximal Development)
• Notifications and/or inspirational quotes will be available upon request to help provide motivation, encouragement, and accountability – helping learners establish habits of continual, lifelong-based learning
• An online-based marketplace, matching learners with resources

Ideally, the learner is using two displays simultaneously:

• A Subject Matter Expert (SME) giving a talk or making a presentation on any given topic
• A need to display multiple things going on at once, such as:
• The SME(s)
• An application or multiple applications that the SME(s) are using
• Content/resources that learners are submitting in real-time (think Bluescape, T1V, Prysm, other)
• The ability to annotate on top of the application(s) and point to things w/in the app(s)
• Media being used to support the presentation such as pictures, graphics, graphs, videos, simulations, animations, audio, links to other resources, GPS coordinates for an app such as Google Earth, other
• Other attendees (think Google Hangouts, Skype, Polycom, or other videoconferencing tools)
• An (optional) representation of the Personal Assistant (such as today’s Alexa, Siri, Google Assistant, etc.) that’s being employed via the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI)

• Voice-based commands to drive the system (via Natural Language Processing (NLP))
• Language translation (using techs similar to what’s being used in Translate One2One, an earpiece powered by IBM Watson)
• Speech-to-text capabilities to provide real-time closed captioning and transcriptions -- as well as for use w/ chatbots, messaging, inserting discussion board postings
• Text-to-speech capabilities as an assistive technology and also for everyone to be able to be mobile while listening to what’s been typed
• Chatbots
• For learning how to use the system
• For asking questions of – and addressing any issues with – the organization owning the system (credentials, payments, obtaining technical support, etc.)
• For asking questions within a course to obtain information -- such as asking questions of a historical figure
• As many profiles as needed per household
• Similar to asking questions of a chatbot, we will be able to use holographic storytelling where learners can ask questions of a hologram (examples here and here)
• The ability to use the learner's webcam to take pictures of equations in order to get instant feedback and/or links to other resources
• Polling
• (Optional) Machine-to-machine-based communications to automatically launch the correct profile when the system is initiated (from one’s smartphone, laptop, workstation, and/or tablet to a receiver for the system)
• (Optional) Voice recognition to efficiently launch the desired profile
• (Optional) Facial recognition to efficiently launch the desired profile
• (Optional) Upon system launch, to immediately return to where the learner previously left off
• The capability of the webcam to recognize objects and bring up relevant resources for that object
• A built in RSS feed aggregator – or a similar technology – to enable learners to tap into the relevant “streams of content” that are constantly flowing by them
• Social media dashboards/portals – providing quick access to multiple sources of content and whereby learners can contribute their own “streams of content”
• A twist on the flipped classroom approach, whereby students can check out videos of equations, problems, etc. and put in their "markers" with accompanying comments throughout the videos, alerting the SMEs where they have questions, comments, and/or issues

In the future, new forms of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) such as Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), and Mixed Reality (MR) will be integrated into this new learning environment – providing entirely new means of collaborating with one another.

Consider the items below:

In the future, we won't just be able to find movies or shows, but rather, we will also be able to quickly locate up-to-date, relevant learning-related content and participate in highly-practical, learning-related experiences.

And check out what they are doing now with radio stations! So...what can be done with learning-related streams of content?!

Consider the type of service/value being offered in the graphic below...and that such a service will be constantly available on a next-gen learning platform. That is, the system will:

• Scan open job descriptions
  
• Present a constantly-updated list of the top/"hottest" skills and occupations
• Offer the relevant courses, modules, webinars, local learning hubs, discussion forums, etc. that will teach you the necessary skills to land those jobs (similar to what is shown in the above grapic involving justwatch.com or suppose.tv and what those vendors are providing for the entertainment industry).

© 2024 | Daniel Christian
However, this vision/idea goes back much further than the date listed on the
graphic below -- and the pieces continue to come together!