Generative AI's true revolution in education and beyond lies not in its intelligence, but in its unprecedented accessibility, fundamentally altering how we interact with technology and demanding a strategic re-evaluation of expertise, learning, and the role of educators.
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I need some more energy good
morning it's a pleasure to be here with
all of you uh today to talk about gen and
and
education um for those who don't know
what gen is imagine a
person who's often wrong but never in
doubt now be honest with me how many of
you thought about your
spouse I did not okay but that's
gen um and what I I want to talk about
is um what happens when we have large
language models like chpt and generative
AI intersect with institutions like
Harvard where I sit and I've been there
for the last 27 years currently
overseeing teaching and learning for the
University let me just um ask you a
question how many of you think in the
next 5 to 10 years generative AI will
have a very large impact on education
just raise your
hands how many would say a moderate
impact so we have a few how many would
say little to no
impact pretty much none okay uh let me
come back to this here's a chart showing
the rise of Technologies and the time it
took for different Technologies to reach
50% penetration in the US economy so if
you look at computers it actually took
20 years to reach about 30% penetration
radio it took about 20 years to reach
half the
population uh TV about 12 years
smartphones about 7 years smart speakers
about uh 4
years and chatbots about 2 and a half
years this is part of the reason we're
talking about this
today here's what we know so far about
gen and
Education First the transformative
potential St from its intelligence
that's the eye in AI okay
secondly as prudent Educators we should
wait until the
output is smart enough and gets better
and it's less prone to hallucinations or wrong
wrong
answers third given the state of where
bot tutors are it's unlikely I think
many believe that it's going to be
ultimately as good as the best AC
learning teachers who have refined their
craft over many many years and
decades fourth and Sal Khan talks about
this this is likely to ultimately level
the playing field in
education and finally the best thing we
can do is to make sure that we secure
access to everyone and let them
experiment before you take a screenshot of
of this
this
don't because I'm going to argue all of
this is
wrong now that I hopefully have have
your attention I'm going to spend the
next 10 minutes arguing
why uh let's actually start with the
first one which is the transformative
potential stems from how intelligence
the output
is I would argue and in fact we just
heard this from the previous speaker
we've been actually
experiencing AI for 70 years machine
learning for upwards of 50 years deep
learning for 30 years Transformers for 7
to 8 years this has been an improvement
gradually over time there were some
discrete changes recently but the
fundamental reason why this is taken off
I would argue has less to do with the
discrete improvements in intelligence 2
years ago as opposed to the Improvement
in Access or the interface that we have
with the intelligence what do I mean by
that I'm going to give you the one
minute history of human
communication so we started out sitting
around campfires talking to each other
from there we started writing pictures
on the walls that was Graphics from
there we start writing scroll s and
books that was formal text and finally
the Pinnacle of human human
communication which was ones and zeros
and that's
mathematics that's the evolution of
human to human communication the
evolution of human to computer
communication has gone exactly in the
opposite direction which is 60 70 years
ago starting with Punch Cards ones and
zeros for those of you old enough might
remember that then we move to things
like dos prompts commands that we had to
input by the way and this is the
fundamental thing the big difference
between Windows 1.0 and windows
3.0 functionally they were almost
identical the big difference was the
interface meaning we moved to a
graphical user interface and suddenly
7-year-old kids could be using computers
that I think is more similar to the
revolution we're seeing now which is AI
for a long time was the province of
computer programmers software Engineers
Tech experts with chat GPT it basically
became available to every one of us in
the planet through a simple search bar
that's basically the reason for the
revolution where is this going probably
towards just audio and I don't know if
anyone can guess what's the next
communication neural reading
emotions you might argue basically us
grunting and shaking our arms formally
that would be called the Apple Vision
Pro uh you could argue we are regressing
as a species on the other hand you could
argue that in fact what's happening is
that the distance between humans and
computers is fundamentally
shrinking so that's the first thing I
just want to say which is fundamentally
this is about access what does this mean
is this is
Photoshop there's a lot of people who
spend one year 2 years four years trying
to master this Graphics
design arguably we don't need this kind
of expertise anymore we can simply get
it by communicating directly in natural
language with computers now this for
those of you who don't know is epic it's
a medical software record my wife who's
a cardiologist does not like this she
spends 2 hours every single day filling
in notes on these software records You
could argue sometime in the near future
that communication will become much
simpler by the way one of the things to
keep in mind is for every one of you
sitting in organization ations and by
the way this is a happy organization to
think about what this is likely to do to
the or
structure if you think about the bottom
of this organization there's people who
have expertise in different kinds of
software okay some expertise in
Photoshop some in
concur uh some in different kinds of
software You could argue there's going
to be consolidation within those
functions the middle managers who used
to oversee all these software experts
it's likely we're going to see shrinkage
there in fact you could argue all the
way that the person at the top could in
fact do sales Graphics design design
marketing everything by just interacting
directly with the computer it's not a
stretch to say and some people predict
this that the first 1 person billion
dollar company is going to be likely to
be born pretty soon okay and people are
already working on this I would urge you
to think about this question which is
what does this mean for your expertise
and organizations or the organizations
you run
because that's going to have big
implications for how you run these
organizations all right so that's the
first point which is fundamentally this
is not about intelligence about how it's
accessed the implication of this is more
people will be able to use more
computers for specialized purposes but
it doesn't necessarily mean it's likely
to be the same people okay that's the first
first thing
thing
second I think we all look at these
hallucinations and we say let's wait
let's wait till it gets better
by the way that begs the question that
hallucinations are a fundamental
intrinsic property of generative AI
because they are probabilistic models
but I would go further and say even when
AI capabilities fall far short and
impair the human value proposition
there's still a reason to adopt it why
do I say that I'm a strategist as
strategist we think of two sides of the
equation one is the benefit side what
are customers willing to pay the other
is the cost or the time
side even if there's no improvement in
intelligence simply because of cost and
Time Savings there might be massive
benefits to trying to adopt this so the
metaphor I want you to think
company has anyone flown Ryan
Air uh what is the experience like
isan basic efficient basic efficient by
the way when I ask my students this they
often say I hate it every single time I
fly it and of course it begs the
question why are you repeatedly flying
it this is an airline like most lowcost
Airlines it doesn't offer any food on
board no seat selection you've got to
walk to the tarmac you got to pay extra
for bags no frequent flyers no lounges
and this is the most profitable airline
in Europe for the last 30 years
running why it's not providing a better
product it's saving cost
that's the metaphor I would love for you
to keep in mind when you think about
generative Ai and its potential so let
me just walk through this and sorry as a
strategist I have to put up a 2 x two
Matrix at some point there's two
Dimensions here I'd love for you to
think about the first is what is the
data that we're inputting into these
large language models and the data could
be explicit in the form of files like
text files numbers Etc that's explicit
data or it could be tacit knowledge meaning
meaning
creative judgment etc etc okay but the
second dimension is as important which
is what's the cost of making an error
from the output not the prediction error
what's the cost of something going wrong
in some cases it could be low in some
cases it could be high so let's actually
talk through some
examples first is explicit data low cost
of Errors that's high volume customer
support for the last 30 years this thing
is being automated by the way that
trajectory is likely to continue why do
I say that it is virtually impossible
for any company to have people manning
the phones to talk to 100,000 customers
this is the direction where it's going
even if we have two or three or 4%
errors it's okay it's simply much more
efficient to respond to customers in
this way okay so that's one
dimension second dimension is drafting
legal agreements for all the lawyers in
the room just watch out it's going to be
much much easier it already is to draft
legal agreements but we can't rely on
generative AI to Simply give us this
thing without checking it some of you
may have heard of that lawyer who did
that a couple years ago basically didn't
review the agreements there were some
errors he got fired so we might have
human in the loop you don't want to
basically take the output at face value
okay because the cost of making an error
is simply too
high third on the top right is creative
skills design marketing copywriting
these are things where it's hard to
evaluate what's truly better or worse
and so in some sense the design outputs
we get the social media content we get
as suggestions from generative AI pretty
good the cost of making an error there
not that high and finally we get to the
top right where we want to be very very
careful because this is like large LGE
enterprise software integration you
don't want to go there pretty soon okay
or designing an aircraft now what does
it mean for Education let's actually
play this out I'm going to use our
example as an illustration if I'm
sitting at
Harvard basically we get when we open up the
the
website about 10,000 applications in the
first couple months for admission maybe
30,000 people who look at the website by
the way they have questions it's impossible
impossible
to speak personally and individually to
everyone who has a question this is
beautiful for chat chat Bots to be able
to Simply respond again if there's an
error in the response it's okay I mean
these are people who are simply thinking
about applying and they might find
information in other ways secondly legal
contracts with food contractors we want
to be careful about human in the loop
thirdly designing social media content
when we go to the top left this is
something we can do far more efficiently
today with generative Ai and finally I
can assure you we're not going to be
using this anytime soon for hiring
faculty or disciplinary actions against
students by the way think about this not
just for your organization think about
it for you individually so if I was to
do that responding to emails I get a lot
of emails every
day most of these emails are things that
are very standard Professor when are
your office ours where's the syllabus posted
posted
by the way even in other cases where
students ask questions like Professor I
have two offers one from McKenzie one
from B Boston Consulting
Group the cost of an error is not that
high in my response you'll be okay or
I'm trying to decide whether to go to
Microsoft or Amazon you'll be okay okay
I'm just kidding by the way I can assure
you I respond to all those emails
individually but you get the
point writing a case study it takes us 9
months to write these famous har
business school case studies the head of
the MBA program last year said I want to
teach a case on Silicon Valley Bank
tomorrow what he did was go to Chachi PT
said write a case like Harvard Business
School with these five sections
financial information competitor
information regulatory information it
spits it out he then said please tweak
the information give me this data on the
financials talk about these competitors
he iterated it kept spitting out
information from beginning to to end he
had a case study complete in 71
minutes um if you're not scared by the
way we are about what the potential here
is brainstorming a slide for teaching
there's a couple slides in this talk
where I took some pictures and I started
trying to resize it PowerPoint designer
simply threw up some suggestions saying
here's how you might want to do it in 1
second it didn't take me 10 15 minutes
to try and redesign these slides a
beautiful application for using this and
finally thinking about exactly how I
teach in the classroom or my research
Direction I'm not going there anywhere
soon I'd love you to think about a
couple things from this simple framework
number one we are obsessed with talking
about prediction errors from large
language models I think the more
relevant question is the cost of making
these errors meaning in some cases the
prediction error might be 30% but if the
cost of error is zero it's okay to adopt
it in other cases prediction errors
might be only 1% but the cost of failure
is very high you want to stay away so
stop thinking about prediction errors
let's start thinking about the cost of
Errors for
organizations secondly if you notice
what I've done I've broken down the
analysis from thinking about Industries
what's the impact of AI on banking or
education or retail into jobs and in
fact gone a step further and broken it
down into into tasks so don't ask the
question of what is AI going to do to me
ask the question which are the tasks
that I can actually automate and which
are the tasks I don't want to touch and
the third is I don't know about you in
my LinkedIn feed every single day I get
new information about the latest AI
models and where the intelligence
trajectory is going getting better and
better that's basically about the top right
right
cell I would say that's a red herring
for most organizations
because basically there's three other
cells where you can adopt it right now
and today with human in the loop okay so
that's just something I'd love you to
think about by the way we did this with Harvard
Harvard
faculty where we interviewed 35 Harvard
faculty who were using gen deeply in their
their
classrooms those videos are up on the
web if you just type in Google
generative AI faculty voices Harvard you
see all these videos here are some
examples of what they were doing a
faculty co-pilot chatbot it's almost
like a teaching assistant that simulates
the faculty that answers simple
questions and is available to you
24/7 secondly one of the things that we
as faculty spend a lot of time thinking
about is designing the tests and the
quizzes and the assessments every year
and we've got to make it fresh because
we know our students probably have
access to last year's
quizzes large language models are
basically spitting this out in a couple
minutes and of course as individuals we
would refine it we're not going to just
take it at face value we refine it we
look at it but it's saving a lot of time
third when we're giving
lectures students often have questions
which they're too scared to ask live in
front of 300 students oh it's beautiful
if they can simply type in the questions
have gen summarized the questions and
put it up on a board The Faculty know
exactly what the sentiment is in the
classroom and where students are getting
confused by the way notice one thing
about all these
examples every single one of them is
about automating the mundane it's not
about saying let's rely on the
intelligence that's getting better and
better it's the left column of that
framework I was talking about so these
are ways that it's being used nowadays
in our
classrooms the third thing this premise
that bot tutors are unlikely to be as
good as the best instructors
we had a few colleagues at Harvard who
tested this for a course called physical
sciences 2 this is one of the most
popular courses and by the way the
instructors are very good in that course
they've been refining Active Learning
teaching methods for many years what
they did as an experiment was say for
half the students every week we'll give
them access to the human tutors for the
other half give them access to an AI bot
and by the way the nice thing about the
experiment is they flip that every
single week so some people always had
access to the humans some people had
access to the AI for that week but then
they'd flipped the next week every
single week they tested your Mastery of
the content during that
week and what was interesting
was the scores of the students using the
AI Bots were higher than with the human
tutors and these are tutors who've been
refining their craft year in and year
out what was even more surprising is
engagement was higher
by the way this is a first experiment
the only point is we better take this
seriously uh next will it level the
playing field in education part of the
premises because everyone has access any
individual in a village a low-income
area is basically going to have access
to the same technology as those who are
in Elite universities and this is going
to level
everything there's a possibility it
might go exactly the other way which is
the benefits might ACR
disproportionately to those who already
have domain expertise why do I say this
think about a simple example when you
have knowledge of a subject and you
start using generative AI or chat PT the
way you interact with it asking it
prompts follow on prompts you're
basically using your judgment to filter
out what's useful and what's not useful
if I didn't know anything about the
subject I basically don't know what I
don't know so in some sense the prompts
are garbage in garbage out by the way
this is being shown in different studies
there was a metaanalysis summarized by
The Economist a couple of weeks ago
where they basically talk about
different kinds of studies that are
showing for certain domains and
expertise the gap between high
performance High knowledge workers and
no knowledge workers is actually
increasing we better take this seriously
why and this is not the first time this
has happened
12 years ago there was a big revolution
in online education Harvard and MIT got
together created a platform called edex
where we offered free online courses to
anyone in the world by the way they
still exist if you want to take a course
from Harvard for
free pay $100 for a certificate you can
get it on virtually every subject what
happened as a result edex reached 35
million Learners as did corera and
Udacity and other platforms
what was beautiful is roughly free 3,000
courses the challenge was completion
rates less than 5% Why by the way if
you're used to a boring lecture in the
classroom the boring lecture online is
10 times worse so there's virtually no
engagement people take a long time to
complete or may not complete but here's what's
what's
interesting the vast majority 75% of
those who actually completed these
courses already had college degrees
meaning the educated rich were getting
richer now think about that that's very
sobering why is that because those are
people used to curiosity intrinsic
motivation by the way they're used to
boring lectures they've gone to college
but this has big implications for how we
think about the digital divide so I just
want to keep that in your mind and the
last thing I just want to say is rather
than going out and trying to create
tutor Bots for as many courses as
possible I think what we really need to
do is have a strategic conversation
about what's the role and purpose of
teachers given the way the technology is
proceeding the one thing I will say here
is that when we think about what we
learned in school okay think back think
back many many
years we learned many
things tell me honestly how many of you
have used geometry proofs since you
graduated from high
school three people
why did we learn state capitals and
world capitals of every single
country okay uh foreign languages and by
the way this is Italian Davy is not a
goddess Davy in Italian says You must
okay they have
similarities um why did we learn foreign
languages when we think about business
Concepts in our curriculum I often get
my students who come back 10 years later
and say those two years were the most
transformative years of my life life I
often asked them what were the three
most important Concepts you learned they
said we have no idea I'm like no no okay
give me one no no we have no idea I'm
like so why do you say this was
transformative the point simply being
they're saying this was transformative
not because of the particular content
but because of the way we were learning
we were forced to make decisions in real
time we were listening to others we were
communicating what are they saying
they're saying that the real purpose of
case method was listening and
communication the real purpose of proofs
was understanding Logic the real purpose
of memorizing state capitals was
refining your memory by the way that
example there is the poem If by rard
Kipling some of you might remember this
from school it goes something like this
if you can keep your head when all about
you are losing theirs and blaming it on
you uh I have PTSD because my nephew
when he was reciting this to me
preparing for his 10th grade exams I was
like what the heck are you doing but it
was basically refining memory skills and
for for languages it was just learning
cultures and syntax when we go deep down
and think about what we were actually
teaching I think that probably gives us
a little more hope because it means it
doesn't matter if some of these things
are probably accessible through
gen when calculators came along we
thought it's going to destroy math
skills we're still teaching math
thankfully 50 years later and it's
pretty good so this is something that I
think is going to be an important strategic
strategic
conversation this is the slide I'd love
for you to keep in mind which is
basically everything I've just said if
you want to take a screenshot this is
the slide to take a screenshot thank you
all so much um and I hope to be in
touch and keep this
here at HBS I took Professor anan's
class on economics for managers
listening to him feels like being back
in class fortunately he didn't call call
anyone which is terrific so thank you
for that now I have a few questions
we've got young children and you've got
so much of knowledge available now on
chat prompts what's your advice to
everyone who's got young children and
are wondering about what should they be
teaching their children so that when
they grow up and when we don't know what
the actual capabilities of these
machines are that what they've learned
is still
useful how old are your kids rul so my
son is nine and my daughter is five what
are you telling them right now now I
want to learn from you and I know we
telling them a lot of stuff with a good
bad ugly I don't I'm trying to refine
that and give them a framework of what
we should be telling them so there's two
things so I think first of all this is
probably one of the most common
questions I get uh by the way it's
really interesting that the tech experts
and there was an article in the Wall
Street Journal about this 10 days ago
are basically telling their kids don't
science that skill at least basic
computer programming is
gone Advanced Computer Science Advanced
Data analysis if you want to do that
that's going to be fine what are they
telling their kids to learn they're
telling their kids to learn how to teach
dance they're telling their kids to
learn how to do plumbing they're telling
their kids to learn about the
humanities why are they saying that
implicitly they're saying what are those
skill sets that are robust to machine
intelligence now I will say it is
virtually impossible to predict that
given the pace at which this Improvement is
is
occurring I probably have a slightly
different kind of answer by the way my
daughter's majoring in Psychology
without me telling her anything so the
kids I think know basically where this
is going but the one thing I'll say
Rahul is I don't know when you started
out College what were you measuring in
journalism journalism you started out
with journalism okay that's enlightened
I started out doing
chemistry and then the reason I switched
to economics was probably like many of
you there was one teacher who inspired
me and that's what made me
switch and I would say to kids follow
the teachers who inspire you and the
reason is if you can get inspired and
passionate about a subject that's going
to build something that's going to be a
skill that would last all your life
which is
curiosity which is intrinsic motivation
we talked about in the last session this
is no longer about learning episodically
it's about learning lifelong and that's
I think going to be the most important
St in the way that Indian families
operate and as do so many Asian families
too parents want to equip their children
with the skills that are likely to be
most useful when they grow up so it used
to be say engineering and doctors back
in the day then uh it a few years ago so
if you were looking ahead what do you
think the children should be learning so
they acquire skills which are useful in
the job market years down yeah I think
that's honestly being too
instrumental as I said 10 years ago a
lot of my students were talking to me
and saying what should I major in I
never told them computer science if I
told them that that I would have
regretted it but I genuinely mean this
that's looking at it things too narrowly
what I would say is think about things
like creativity judgment human emotion
empathy psychology those are things that
are going to be fundamentally important
regardless of where computers are going
by the way you can get those skills
through various subjects it doesn't
matter it's not a one-o-one mapping
between those skills and a particular
topic or disciplinary ERA this is partly
what I'm saying really think about where
their passion is how do we teach our
children how to think because
everything's available on Google
co-pilot chat GPT you can just chat GPT
it so joining the dots giving them a
framework to be able to interpret
analyze and think how do you tell them
that when the easiest thing is go yeah
so uh it's a good question just two
things on that the first is there was an
interesting study done by colleagues at
MIT recently where they had groups of
students and they were asked to
undertake a particular task or learn
about a topic some students were given
AI chat Bots some students were only
given Google search with no
AI what they found is the students with
access to AI
intelligence learned the material much
faster but when it came time to apply it
on a separate test which was different
from the first one they found it much
harder the students who learned the
material through Google search with no
other access took
longer but they did much better on those
tests why is that part of the issue is
learning is not simple it takes effort
okay and so part of the issue is you
can't compress that
effort um the harder it is to learn
something the more likely you'll
remember it for longer periods of time
and so I think for me the big
implication is when I tell my students
look all these Technologies a are
available it depends on how you use it
my basic approach to them is just saying
study because if you get domain
expertise you will be able to use these
tools in a much more powerful way later
on uh so in some sense this goes back to
the notion of agency it's like we can be
lazy with tools and Technologies or we
can be smart it's all entirely up to you
but this is my advice you know some of
my friends in Silicon Valley have the
toughest controls on their children when
it comes to devices you know we look at
how much time our children can spend on
their iPads or TV we're far more lenient
and they're the guys who are actually in
the middle of the devices and they're
developing them and they know the
dangerous side effects now those devices
are also the repository of knowledge
which is where you can learn so much
from so as an educ every parent has his
own take and how much time children can
spend but as an educator how do you look
at this device addiction just spending
far more time picking up some knowledge
but also wasting a lot of time yeah I
think I mean there's a Nuance here which
is basically what they're doing is not
saying don't use devices they're saying
don't use social media and this goes
back again to one of the things we were
talking about
earlier uh we have gone through a decade
where things like misinformation
disinformation and so on there is no
good solution as far as we know
today there's also various other kinds
of habits and so on that are going to
improved that's partly what they're
saying stay away from they're not saying
stay away from computers we can't do
that and in fact you don't want to do
that but there's a Nuance in terms of
how we interact with with tools and
computers that we just want to keep in
mind when we think about guardrails
right are you seeing your students
getting more and more obsessed with
their devices and how does that impact
what are you trying to do to get them to
socialize more you know to spend more
time with each other and not be stuck on
their phones or that yeah it's a very
interesting question so in some sense
last year we had a conference at Harvard
we had 400 people from our community
attend the conference and some of our
colleagues were saying we should have a
policy of laptops down no laptops and
class take out
devices I was coming in for a session
right afterwards but part of the reason
I wanted them to take out their mobile
phones was I had two or three polls
during my lecture where I wanted them to
give me their input so I said mobile
phone's out okay and this was sort of
crazy but the story illustrates
something interesting which is these
devices for certain things can be really
powerful it can turn a passive learning
modality into an active learning
modality where every single person is
participating we don't want to take that
away what we want to try and deal with
is people playing games while you're
lecturing now by the way me personally I
just put it on
myself if I'm not exciting enough or
energizing enough for my students to be
engaged use your Mobile phones that's on
me okay but that's partly what chall Eng
show fans how many felt engaged during
many okay no so uh that that that which
is why Agent take Ai and chat Bots can
never do what professors can right so uh
we I'll take some questions KH has a
question KH go
ahead hi professor uh you mentioned that
one of the things that we should work on
to teach our children is empathy how do
you actually teach empathy in know
formal educ Ed ation system or does this
just go back to then parents and
family it's a it's a hard it's a hard
question um in fact this is by the way
one of the most important issues we're
facing today on campuses it's related in
part even in higher education not just
younger kids when we talk about
difficult conversations on
campus part of the reason we're facing
those issues is because people are
intransigent it's like I don't care what
you say I'm not going to change my mind
one of the things we introduced a couple
years ago on the Harvard application for
undergraduate is a question that says
have you ever changed your mind when
discussing something with anyone else
okay or something to that effect but
that's basically saying how open-minded
are we that's one version of empathy
there's many other
dimensions I think part of the challenge
is that we don't teach that in schools
right we don't teach that formally in
schools which is partly why there's this
whole wave now of schools not just in
other countries in India which has
stared to talk about how do we teach the
second curriculum the hidden curriculum
how do we teach those social and
emotional skills The Book of Life so to
speak and I think I mean it's not rocket
science to say this it starts at home
right like that's basically what we do
with our kids every single day um but
that's something that's I think going to
become fundamentally more important
partly because of the reasons are what
what I talked about Dr sanjie B has a
up yes Dr wonderful wonderful listening
to you um just with regards Ai and
Technology I've always said that uh Ai
and digital technology is not an
expenditure It's actually an investment
so very quickly if you allow me just 60
seconds in healthcare it gives you
better clinical outcomes it has has
decreased from number one cause of death
as Hospital acquired infections in many
Hospital chains as practically less than
1% so it gives you a safer outcome it
gives you a better patient experience
the turnaround of the bed strength is a
lot quicker and more importantly is it
gives you better operational excellence
so all the hospitals as far as medical
facilities are concerned who have not
embraced it as yet will find it
difficult to operate in the present
environment the what Ai and digital
technology has made us learn as doctors
is that data is the new gold if you
don't analyze data if you don't see what
your results are if you don't see where
your clinical outcomes are then you
can't go forward so AI is what is in the
future for us all of us thank you that's
more in the form of an let me just
elaborate on that in two ways one is I
think I would just go back and useful to
contextualize AI right like right now we
we often get obsessed by the latest
technology when we think about
upskilling reskilling in education
there's a revolution that started a
decade ago as I alluded to there's
basically 3,000 courses available to all
of you today on any subject so the
notion of let's wait for AI no no no
it's already there my father-in-law
who's 92 years old during covid he said
bat what should I do I said we have all
these these courses from Harvard
available in the last two years or three
years he's completed 35 courses wow okay
at the age of 92 wow wow by the way he's
paid $0 for that because he said I don't
need a certificate and so I told him
you're the reason we have a business
model problem okay but that's one
aspect the the second aspect is sort of
thinking about where you're going I
think you're exactly right sanj which is
every organization is going to have lwh
hanging fruit the one thing I just
caution is there's going to be a paradox
of access meaning if every organization
every one of your peers has access to
the same technology as you
it's going to be harder for you to
maintain competitive advantage that's a
fundamental question okay this is just a
basic observation so I just want to sort
of mention that but you're absolutely
right about the lwh hanging fruit in
medicine and Healthcare okay Toby Walsh
has a question or an observation and
then we I there lots of hands up okay I
don't frankly know what to do because
we're also out of time so let this just
be where we conclude one of the greater
challenges especially in higher
education is the cost has gone through
the roof are you optimistic that AI is
going to be able to turn that around so
again I'll just go back uh to what's
happened in the last decade as I said
you can now get access to credentials
and certificates at a minimal cost
compared to the cost of getting a degree
okay just to put it in perspective we
have 177,000 degree students every year
who come to Harvard they are paying a
lot of money those who need financial
aid get financial aid by the way can
anyone guess how many students we have
touched over the last
decade 10 times 100 times that it's
about 15
million that is not a story We publicize
but that's a story about the number of
students who've actually taken a Harvard
course or enrolled in a Harvard course
so in some sense I think where we are
today is the marginal cost of providing
education is very very low what we need
for that is not incremental Improvement
on the existing model we need to
basically break it apart and say how do
we put it back together again in a way
that makes sense for everyone um there's
an organization that we just started at
Harvard called axim jointly with MIT
with the endowment from the sale of the
ax platform whose only function is to
increase access and equity in education
and by the way their focus is on 40
million people in America Who start
college but never completed not just
because of cost for many other reasons
right in some the potential to reduce
the cost is massive but it's going to
require leadership and strategy this
gentleman here has a question can
please uh so uh earlier it was okay use
Ai and it will summarize and help you in
productivity but with the latest open AI
models like o03 minia and all that they
are doing reasoning which is much better
than humans so the people who are not
using it are at a dis disadvantage
so isn't it right that the students use
Ai and uh be familiar with it and uh be
be up to speed with that rather than not
using it and be at a disadvantage to
other students yeah absolutely there's
no question about that by the way I sit
at Harvard overseeing the generative AI
task force for teaching and learning and
we have 17 faculty the most interesting
conversations I've had about adoption
are with our
students now there's when we understand
that Behavior it just throws up things
that we wouldn't even have thought about
I'll ask you one question we had a
Sandbox that we created for the entire
Harvard Community which was a safe and
secure sandbox giving them access to
large language models as opposed to
using public open AI the adoption rate
amongst our faculty was about 30 35% in
the first year what do you think the
students it was about
5% so we were surprised when we went to
them we said what's going on are you
familiar with the sandbox they said yeah
we are we said are you using it they
said no we said are you using AI in any
way yeah yeah we have access to chat GPT
we have our own private accounts there
so we're like wait a wait why are you
not using the secure Harvard
was they said why would we use something
where you can see what we're
inputting now by the way as faculty
members if the number one question we
talk about with generative of AI is oh
we're worried about cheating and
assessments our students are listening
to us they're like oh if that's what
you're worried about we're not coming
anywhere close to you okay so part of
the point is the students are far ahead
of us in terms of using this they're
using it to save time they're using it
for engaging in deep learning we better
understand that ourselves to figure out
what we can do
join brilliant presentation just wanted
to understand one side of the spectrum
you have all the you know the positives
what's on the other side what risk do
you think is there on the other side it
starts coding on its own gets out of
hand is that a possibility what's the
possibility so so the risks are the
things I talked about towards the end
okay which is number one we put our head
in the sand as institutions and we don't
take this seriously that's the first
risk the second risk is lazy learning
the way I would call it now again that's
agency it partly depends on you as a
student do I want to be lazy do I not
want to be lazy the third risk is
everything we were talking about in the
previous session with respect to misinformation
misinformation
disinformation the fourth big risk is
asking the fundamental question what's
our role as teachers and I'll just share
one anecdote in closing there's a
colleague at another school who called
me and said my students have stopped
reading the cases they're basically
inputting the assignment questions into
generative Ai and by the way they're so
smart they're saying give me a quirky
answer I can use in class okay the
assessments are compromised and get this
The Faculty have stopped reading cases
they're inputting the cases and
basically saying give me the teaching
plan that's the
downside you know we we met on a flight
from Delhi to Mumbai and we had a long
conversation about the future of
Education we've been able to in the past
45 minutes recreate the magic of that
conversation here on stage can we have a
very warm Round of Applause for the
professor for making the effort of
coming here and for joining us and for
delivering this master class thank you
absolute pleasure thank you so much
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