Education is Failing our Students in this AI-Driven World

SPEAKER_1 (0:02)

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.

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Daniel Whitenack (0:41)

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 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 guest or listeners minds as they've expressed them to us. So excited to dig in with my co-host, Chris Benson 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?

Chris Benson (1:18)

Hey, I'm doing great today. How is it going?

Daniel Whitenack (1:22)

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. It's coming up rapidly.

I've been saying a couple months, but it's past that time. Yeah. Very rapidly.

For listeners that don't know, I'm about 40 years old. So 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. I've been thinking about things like, oh man, I'm going to be an older dad going into these parent teacher meetings or school meetings. All these teachers are going to be 24 years old or 25 years old. And I wonder what my perspectives will be 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 your mind, Chris.

Chris Benson (2:48)

Yeah, and you're not too high. So to talk about my background after coming through school myself, and then I had a previous marriage where I contributed to raising two step kids 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 went through the educational process with them as a stepdad and showing up at those meetings. And then in a 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 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 since we always 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.

Daniel Whitenack (4:15)

It is the season of fall.

SPEAKER_1 (4:17)

It's a dad pun right there.

Daniel Whitenack (4:19)

Yeah, there you go.

Chris Benson (4:20)

You got to get the dad joke in. So, 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 the show all the time how fast things are changing.

People are worried about jobs. They're worried about the future. What are they gonna 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? How, you know, what can we predict, or what can we only 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 that... 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 want 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.