Bengaluru: As Artificial Intelligence (AI) is expected to dramatically change employment and education markets, experts attending the sixth edition of Education Innovation Conference in the city said that philosophy graduates will soon be on high demand across companies and corporations.
“With Artificial Intelligence (AI) expanding its base, companies will require more philosophy graduates in the possible ‘Chief Ethics Officer’ roles to look into AI-related outputs through a human lens,” predicted Mr Pratik Dattani, Managing Director, Economic Policy Group (EPG), an economic and strategy consulting firm in the city and London that hosted the conference. He was moderating a debate on how the world of education would transform by 2030.
During the debate, Mr Sreekanth Kakaraparthy (Chief Architect, IBM) and Mr Tamal Chowdhury (SVP-AI, Course 5 Intelligence) said that the slow pace of technology adoption by education institutions will prove to be a problem in the next two decades. “AI has got the approval of and is embraced by many major players in the financial services and healthcare sectors. It would play a pivotal role in course designs and formal curriculum as well,” they said.
Mr Satish Iyer (CTO, Indian School of Business) and Mr Raphael Nolden (Founder & CEO, Jaipuna) said that AI has already made inroads into curriculum development and teaching methods. “Today’s technologies make it possible to automate grading and create individualised learning paths with AI tutors. AI will make 'Trial & Error' less intimidating for the student, making the learning much better,” Mr Iyer said.
The audience which consisted of educators, technologists, government officials from education and employment sectors and representatives of NGOs said that schools and colleges should be receptive in embracing new technologies.
Mr Utkarsh Amitabh, founder, Networkcapital.co, that provides mentoring and career guidance to students and young professionals, said that policy makers and educators should ensure that the deliberations at the conference are turned into reality.
‘Learning through experiential learning essential’
In another session on the importance of ‘The Experiential Learning Paradigm,’ Mr Shivaam Sharma, CEO & Founder, Trans Neuron Technologies, said that a student’s full potential can be explored only if experience and exploration methods are adopted in teaching, instead of the present rote method. “Unlike boring theory and practical classes, materials should be made available to students to play around with at the beginning phase. The second phase should be to find out the right interest in each individual after which innovation should be encouraged. When they reach Grade 11, students should be linked to companies working in their areas of interest build the right career. This will make education completely meaningful,” he said.
