Robot Proof: Higher Ed.

in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Sebuah perenungan: Bagaimana manusia memaksimalkan keunggulannya dari robot,
menggapai apa yang tak akan pernah dicapai oleh AI.

A LEARNING MODEL FOR THE FUTURE

 Prolog―”Humanity unique talent for creativity”

o According to LinkedIn’s list, every single one of the ten most desirable skills on the
planet is technological. Technology will be the best candidate for many jobs
o “New technologies will create new, good work, which might often benefit the less
skilled. But it will not be scalable mass employment. And it will not solve the
problem of labor abundance” – Ryan Avent
o education in elevating the majority of people to the next level of economic
development―education for the digital age needs to be robot-proof, nurtures our
unique capacities as human beings

 THINKING CREATIVELY―humanics helps people understand the

components of the technological world while giving them the ability to
utilize it, manipulate it, and ultimately transcend it: the new literacies
o a useful education will assist those of us without singular abilities in achieving
singular outcomes
o When we use convergent thinking, we weigh data and alternatives to achieve the
one best. Divergent thinking, on the other hand, is the creative generation of
multiple responses in a free flow of ideas
o The most popular TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) Talk of all time is Sir Ken
Robinson’s “Do Schools Kill Creativity?” “We don’t grow into creativity,” says
Robinson. “We grow out of it, or rather we get educated out of it.”
o educational system in the United States—both K–12 and college—focuses primarily
on training students to master convergent thinking.
o it tends to emphasize the skills most valuable in a world made up of factories,
bureaucracies, and ledger ink. this lopsided view of intelligence ignores the richness
of human capacity.
o college courses are not designed to nurture metacognitive skills explicitly and
systematically.
o “at least” 45 percent of the undergraduates they surveyed showed “exceedingly
small or empirically nonexistent gains in critical thinking, complex reasoning, and
written communication during their first two years in college. After four years, 36
percent of their sample still showed no improvement at all: “They might graduate,
but they are failing to develop the higher-order cognitive skills that it is widely
assumed college students should master.” – Arum, Roksa
o 30 percent of Americans aged thirty-four or younger with bachelor’s degrees failed
to score above two out of a five-level numeracy assessment. For its assessment of
problem solving, this dismal figure rose to 34 percent - OECD
 THE NEW LITERACIES: Literacy gives us the power to network with
the ideas and information produced by other people at any
distance of time or space. In a digital milieu, human beings
require more complex literacies that enable us to do more than
simply transmit concepts between human minds. Humanics’ three
new literacies—technological, data, and human—enable us to
network with both other people and machines.
o Technological Literacy: knowledge of mathematics, coding,
and basic engineering principles.
 empowers us to deploy software and hardware to their fullest utility,
maximizing our powers to achieve and create; mastery of logic.
o Data Literacy: capacity to understand and utilize Big Data
through analysis
 big data often can be misleading unless we understand its context - Michael
Patrick Lynch
 The purpose of data literacy, then, is to give us the tools to read the digital
record and also to understand when we ought to look elsewhere.
o Human Literacy
 giving us the power to communicate, engage with others, and tap into our
human capacity for grace and beauty
 Professionals need a strong grasp of human literacy because despite our
digital landscape, we live and interact with humans.
 fields become more interdisciplinary and complex and work becomes more
hybrid, more and more discovery is undertaken by teams. Effective
relationship work, not just knowledge work, is the key to a winning team
 extension of technology into every aspect of life has very human
ramifications that we have to address through politics, economics, law,
philosophy, and especially ethics

 THE COGNITIVE CAPACITIES: The new literacies are NOT sufficient

o Critical Thinking: Critical thinking is about analyzing ideas
skillfully and then applying them fruitfully― to synthesize
and imagine
 If a problem can be reduced to a train of yes and no questions, No. matter
how complex, then a machine can resolve it. But many real world problems
defy such reduction―contextual analysis.
 difference between successful and botched critical thinking boils down to
questioning assumptions—choosing to ask if an accepted input is, indeed,
correct
o Systems Thinking: understanding the elements of complex
systems and the ways their variables cascade into one
another, and apply this information to different contexts
 Systems thinking sees the details and the entire tableau,
exercising our mental strength to weigh complexity while
also testing our grasp on multiple strands of thought.
o Entrepreneurship
 as machines fill old jobs, we will need to invent new ones.
 2 dimensions:
  launching new ventures and new industries
 new fields that no technology can yet master.
 higher education can support initiatives that empower
students to experiment with business ideas. “The
entrepreneur’s journey has to be experienced”- Desh
Deshpande
 Entrepreneurship requires an acceptance and a sideways
view of failure.
 original research projects: teaches critical thinking, systems
thinking, and creativity, pushing students to contextualize
their ideas within the framework of existing knowledge and
then to imagine new avenues of discovery
o Cultural Agility: the mega-competency that enables
professionals to perform successfully in cross-cultural
situations.
 the flow of digital commerce is resetting workplace norms:
increased complexity in business dealings due to cultural
differences― increased chances of misunderstanding
Context is everything—and that context is not easily appreciated by even
the most intelligent of machines. Until advanced machines learn to
navigate the infinite variety of human belief and behavior, humans will
continue to be the masters of our shared intercultural milieu.

 But How to Teach It? expand our pedagogical toolbox

o thematic study across disciplines, project-based learning, and
realworld connections
 thematic study, instructors can turn an implicit process of
learning into an explicit one. delineate clearly what is being
studied, practiced, and acquired, explicitly identifying process
and goals in every component of a course. their syllabi ought
to describe the four cognitive capacities developed through
each step of study and discussion
 educators should be connecting their teaching of the four
cognitive capacities to applications outside the academic
cloister― to assess a complex problem through multiple
interdisciplinary lenses
 give students the opportunity to synthesize knowledge across
different fields
Unlike machines, our greatest teacher is experience.