Episode Transcript
[00:00:30] Welcome to AI Today. I'm your host, Dr. Alan Badot. Today we're going to be diving into artificial intelligence in education.
[00:00:39] You know, you've seen the news. There's. There's a lot of different lawsuits that are taking place. There are cheating scandals all over the place. We see all the time, you know, somebody was using it in their profession and didn't use it the right way, causing a, you know, a massive issue personally as well as professionally. And, you know, realistically, this is probably the most debated topic in learning since really, the introduction of the personal computer into the classroom because it is that impactful. You know, one of the things I tell folks, you know, I know everybody's concerned about AI taking jobs and, you know, doing all these, you know, things that it's going to just, you know, rattle the foundation of. Of different industries. And, you know, we're not quite there yet. But what I do tell people is, is that people that understand, and students coming out of school that understand how to use AI are going to be the ones that are replacing the folks that don't. And the only way that we can get everybody on the same playing field is really to start early and, and drive it into, you know, education. So folks use it, right? And so we're going to talk about that, and we're going to really dive into a couple of use cases so I can show you some of the benefits around it. We're going to talk about some of the pitfalls, and then we're also going to figure out, you know, maybe together how we can. How we can move forward. So everybody has an opportunity to be successful. So let's take a little step back, though, because, you know, we know that school districts worldwide really are grappling with AI policies, how educators can navigate this new frontier. Let's face it, like everybody else, a lot of the educators don't even feel comfortable using some of these tools yet. And that's understandable because, you know, they're just as nervous about it, you know, as anybody else is. And, you know, there's a lot of ways and a lot, you know, everybody hears the promises that are out there, but they often ignore some of the pitfalls and really just some of the practical realities of taking AI and putting it in our educational system. You know, you have the opportunity really to enhance, you know, a student's engagement with a technology that really can change what their future is going to look like. And it's not only, you know, it's not only just going out and getting the answer I know a lot of people think that because, you know, they're just trying to, you know, deal with the issue at hand. But if you take, you know, a different perspective and you look at it from, well, now you have an opportunity to teach folks how to be better critical thinkers, how to examine what this technology can really do and provide different perspectives than what any other student, you know, has, has ever been able to achieve before. But then also with the pace of change that's taking place, you know, and the ability to almost get real time access to, you know, different types of data and different types of information, things that textbooks, your traditional textbooks can't do, you know, that's where that coupling and that's where that strength can really take place, you know. So as we are demystifying AI in a whole bunch of other fields, education is one that, you know, we've only touched on a little bit. But it's, it's really time to explore, you know, how we can help everybody develop those new skills that it's going to take to succeed. When you're looking at tools of the future, this is the fundamental tool that if they don't understand how to use as early as possible, it really can have a negative impact on what their future is going to look like. And it doesn't matter if you're an educator, if you're a parent, if you're a student. What we're trying to do with this episode is really just help you understand why AI just isn't this technology trend that, you know, that is going to, is going to be a fad and it's going to go away.
[00:05:06] It is a fundamental shift in how we can learn, how we can teach and how we can engage other people. And so as we're, as we're going through this, you know, keep that in mind.
[00:05:20] And you know, really what I'm asking is really just keep an open mind. We'll talk about some of the negative things, but we also want to make sure that we're showing you things to think about, especially if you're an educator, how you may be able to use it if you're a parent, things to think about that you can do with your, with your kids at home, especially on a snow day, for example. So we know that, you know, this debate is just, it really is all over the place, you know, with ChatGPT, entering classrooms, right or wrong, cheating or helping, it's in there. And if anybody has a mobile phone, it's in there. If you look at the dollars that have been spent almost eight and a half billion dollars in 2023 has been spent on trying to get AI into, into the classroom. And, you know, I, I saw a poll now whether or not, you know, I've seen, I've seen a whole bunch of different ones and distributions, and I've worked with some, you know, educational corporations, but about 75% of educators really think that, you know, AI is in the school somewhere somehow.
[00:06:31] That's, that's pretty standard if you think about it, because like I said, if they have a mobile device, it's going to be in there. Now that tension, though, between trying to innovate and trying to teach in a traditional manner is only going to get worse. We know that any technology like this, it only gets worse. And really there are major concerns on, you know, how AIs impact to fundamental learning processes are going to be, you know, you know, driven.
[00:07:05] Most people think that they're only using, or you only can use AI to just get the answer. Oh, I'm going to type something in and the AI is going to give me the answer. Well, that's not the case. What you can do, you know, as you broaden your scope of understanding of AI, there are ways that teachers can still make them show their work, can still make them engage, but give them opportunity to think about things in a slightly different manner, come in a problem in a different way than you would traditionally. And, you know, that's what the, the power is going to be because it's really, you know, the rush or the timing and just wait and see. You know, there's no real good answer and nobody can tell you what to do in your individual school district. I know there, there are some that are more proactive and some that are more traditional and don't want it in there. But you've got to want, I mean, the first thing you have to do as a school district is you've got to figure out what your policies are. You've got to have a roadmap. You've got to look at it so that, you know, you can help your parents that are out there with some sort of AI independence or AI understanding or AI training, because that is, that is a huge factor in this. You know, teachers are, some are 50, 50, some may be 60, 40. It really depends on, you know, how the, how the polls are worded. But that's usually about what the breakdown is on those that are in favor of and those that are against it.
[00:08:42] Some of that has to do with demographics. Some of it has to do language and Those sort of things. But, you know, the realities are students are using it, whether they're using it on their phone in school or they're going home and using it, they're using it and they're, you know, they're trying to get an advantage in some cases, and they're trying to do it faster. And those are some of the benefits for the kids. They can do, oh, yeah, I can get this done a lot faster and I can go do something else. Well, you know, that's not helpful either.
[00:09:14] But then from an economic perspective, those pressures that we see today that parents feel today are only going to become more heightened as kids get older, as they start to enter the workforce, as they start to go to school. Because if they're not prepared for what many of us see coming down the road, then you're only, you know, really serving them in a negative manner. You're not helping them from a technology perspective to be prepared. And so there's, there's got to be a balance in, you know, how we're doing this. But doing nothing is definitely not the right answer. So keep that in mind. You know, so let's just real quick from some benefits perspectives, right? And then we'll, we'll dive into some other example topics, right? You can do 24, 7 learning. If a kid has a question after school, they can ask the AI. You can do personalized feedback with the AI, you can do adaptive content, meaning kids can learn at their own pace as opposed to, you know, maybe having to wait for others. And so, you know, how those social skills can build and how those academic skills can build, really start to become more personalized. You can reduce teacher workload. At the same time, the amount of time that, you know, it takes to prepare lesson plans and, you know, really have that fundamental attention. You can start to really focus on some of those areas of need that kids, kids will have. And then from a performance perspective, if you do it the right way and you teach them how to use it the right way, just like a calculator, then they're going to be able to really accelerate. You know, what they're learning is how they're taking into account those other factors and how they are performing, you know, every day in school.
[00:11:09] Those are some basic ones. Now, the concerns, of course, privacy, cheating, you know, a technology dependence. I mean, I've seen a lot of, you know, psychiatrists and psychologists already say, oh, well, kids are already too dependent on technology. Let's give them AI and it's only going to make it worse. Well, That's a, that is a, that is a fair concern. That's something that does need to be monitored. You know, digital equity also, you know, those that have computers, those that have cell phones, those that, you know, have access, those that are more, you know, in more affluent school districts, you know, you're, you're giving them a tool, you know, potentially that is going to allow them to accelerate past those that don't have that same sort of access or, you know, financial, you know, ability to get access to these tools. And so those debates have to be, you know, taken to into account, you know, as well. But then also fundamentally looking at the AI, we always talk about bias, we always talk about ethics. You know, we're nowhere near that for, you know, commercial industries and just using these technologies, let alone some of the impacts that, you know, those, those algorithms can have and, you know, present information to, you know, to kids. And so we've got to, we've got to start to think about that as well and what are some of those, you know, impacts. And then lastly, really, you know, how do you implement it? How do you get teachers to embrace it? What's the infrastructure look like on some school districts that have to change? What are the policies that need to be developed around that? What is the way that we can balance those integration needs with the needs of getting our students up to par with some of the things that the rest of world is doing?
[00:13:03] That is definitely a hotly debated topic right now. And then really, protection.
[00:13:12] Kids that are on the Internet, they put too much on the Internet. You hear me talking about that all the time. We have to make sure that that information is not just, you know, accelerated so that somebody can get access to, you know, kids, you know, information when it's already going to be hard enough to, to protect it anyway. And we don't want to accelerate that. And so, you know, these are some of the topics that are going on right now. We cannot spend five years debating this though, because by that time we have, we have missed the boat. I mean, we may have 12 to 18 months before these, these, you know, issues really start to take foothold and start to drive what those learning plans and what those student drivers have to look like. And so hopefully you think about it from a variety of different perspectives. You get involved, you drive it, try to, you know, bring pilot projects into, into school districts, take baby steps. First contact, you know, some consultants, they can help you. But you know, stick around because I'm going to show you some ways and give you some ideas on how you can actually use it in the classroom and how you can accelerate learning without having a negative impact on the students, on their parents or, you know, on their technology dependence that we all know that they have. So stick with us. We'll be right back after a few short messages.
[00:15:18] Welcome back to AI Today. I'm your host, Dr. Alan Badot. And this week we're talking about AI in education. We talked about some of the pitfalls that folks are definitely thinking about. We talked about just briefly, some of the advantages, of course, for kids to use AI in school.
[00:15:40] And this session though, I really want to give you some examples. I'm going to show you how kids can use AI not just to get the answer, but also as critical thinking tool. You know, there, there are so many different ways and so many different tools already that are out there, you know, that can, can challenge, you know, some, some students. But I think we all saw during COVID and we've seen if you have snow days, you know, the, you know, the amount of work that can get done is, is probably not optimized, right. And we know that there are just easy challenges. If you give, you know, assignments that are online, it's very easy for kids to go look that stuff up. And they were doing that with Google and you know, those sort of sources long ago, being able to verify sources, fact check, you know, using AI to help in the decision making process maybe, and you know, maybe you can have them do labs and stuff like that, you know, on those, those days, but really just, you know, helping them develop skills to spot where some of the AI is going to have challenges, where it's not going to be correct, where they don't rely on it as, as much as they think they can. Those are still human, hugely valuable, you know, skill sets that, you know, folks need to learn as they're, they're coming out of school. So let's take for example, a snow day. Let's, let's pull up the application and let's look at, you know, a snow day example. And you know, maybe one of the prompts that the teacher provides is, you know what, it's a snow day.
[00:17:38] I need to practice my math and I've got to do flashcards and I need to though, show the teacher my work. And so I want you to generate a flashcard edition program and then check the first five answers. That's very easy for a teacher to be able to generate for their students. And you know what, let's see what happens when it does this. It's Live. Remember, these are live. Sometimes it works really well, sometimes it doesn't. We'll see what happens. Okay, so the AI is actually generating some code, and it's interesting. So the kids will be able to see something like this and, you know, see how these programs are made and developed, get them interested about, you know, these kind of tools as they are going forward. And then. Oh, there it is. So now we've got a flashcard generator that your students can use. And you, you know, I did this with addition. You can do it with subtraction, you can do it with fractions, everybody's favorite, or you can do it with algebra. You know, it really. It's really up to you in the level that you want to. To, you know, to teach them at. And, you know, we'll just. We'll just put in an answer. I'm not. I might as well use the prompt here. And we're going to put in, you know, 19. Oh, that's correct. Oh, there's the first one that it's tracking. Let's go to the next one. We're going to get. Okay, this is. We all know that's eight. We're going to type in eight there. And I'm going to get the next one wrong. No matter what it is, I'm going to say that is 30 just for fun. So you can see that it'll do things that are incorrect. Try again. Oh, see, look, there's three. Let's go to the next problem. You know, this is 23, of course. And then we'll get the last one wrong. No matter what, we're going to say that this is 15 just for the heck of it, right? And, you know, we'll see now. Very easy. That's great. It did that. You can see all five of the results if the teacher wanted to, you know, you can publish those results and then have them turn something like that in. That is fantastic. Being able to do something like this, right? I mean, it's just very simple, but it shows you the power of. It can do this on its own. It doesn't necessarily have to be, you know, the same prompt for everybody. Even, you know, imagine if you go to the website where, you know, the kids, you know, turn in their homework, for example, each student could potentially have a separate prompt. Maybe one is to do, you know, more around, you know, three or, you know, five, you know, digit problems or decimals or fractions, like I said, you know, really being able to customize learning from that perspective, especially on a snow day, is really Strong, and it's really powerful. And so thinking about it from just a pure math perspective gives you the opportunity and the ability to change, you know, how kids are forced to continue in that journey. Even if you have a snow day, imagine if you wanted to have your students write a paper on a snow day, right? Or it doesn't have to be a snow day. It can be any day, you know, that they're writing a paper and you want them to, you know, be able to dive deeper into a subject. But maybe they forgot something at home, or maybe you want to have them pull it together in a certain format. For example, and I just chose one that, you know, women's suffrage report template. And maybe you want them to have their own template. You can, you can tell them what that, that sort of thing is. But what it, you can do is you can have them see what a structure could potentially look like. We'll start up at the beginning where you want, you know, an introduction. You want historical events. And this is. These are the topics that they have to focus in on.
[00:21:43] You know, what some of the key impacts were, what the pushes were for different, you know, constitutional, you know, amendments. And maybe you wanted them to potentially focus on different people or, you know, like Susan B. Anthony, for example, or write it from the perspective of Susan B. Anthony and the challenges that she had during that time period. You know, being able to play with what perspectives are being written about by the students, having the students, you know, really look at it from a first person, that they are the ones that are supposed to be Susan and B. Anthony, or they are the ones that are having a conversation and maybe they're interviewing Elizabeth, you know, Katie Stanton, you know, those kind of things are very, very powerful for students because it helps immerse them into the environment. It helps them learn more. We tell kids, you know, make sure you read and, oh, the book is always better than the movie because you can immerse yourself in it. Think about this as a, a book that students can ask questions of.
[00:22:53] They can go in and they can say, oh, geez, I, you know, you know, I didn't realize that, you know, there was these sort of activities going on. Can you tell me more about that? Can you explain it a little bit more? Those kind of, you know, interactions you can't have with a book, but you can sure have them with AI. And, you know, whether or not it's, you know, one of those things that, you know, is, is powerful enough for, for students, I would argue that that's always going to Be a yes. Because when you can interact and you can ask questions and you can get those other perspectives, then, you know, realistically it always helps kids to learn and be able to, to have, you know, those kind of positive impacts in what they're doing. And so we're going to do one more demo really quick. Let me pull over my, my topic here and everybody just be a little bit patient with me. What we're going to do is we're going to hold a debate.
[00:24:05] It's really one of those applications where, you know, being able to debate and get perspectives from a debatee or you know, whoever is leading that is really important and gives us an opportunity that we can, can really have some fun at the same time. And so we're going to have a debate real quick and we're going to debate one of the topics that are one of my favorites actually. And it's the argument between Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein on the relevancy of quantum computing. Now imagine if you were at the Copenhagen conference and you got to hear all that stuff that was taking place and you know, Einstein saying he didn't believe God played with dice and you know, those, those sort of comments. But now with AI, you have the ability to ask those questions. And so what I'm going to do, I'll have one AI over in the background. I'll have one so that you can see it this way everybody will be able to interact with it. And I'm going to be the moderator. I'm going to just ask it some quick questions. So what I'm going to do is I'll give it a prompt first. We're going to, we'll put our prompt over in here as you know, the preamble to, to things. And then I'm going to ask it a, a basic question. And let's see. So that one is supposed to act like Einstein.
[00:25:21] And so we're going to have one that acts like Einstein, one that acts like Neil Bohr. And we're going to have a debate just where, yes, I'm moving around so everybody can ask the question. So here is a question that I'm going to, to have it ask. So if you look at it, Albert is introducing himself. He's talking about Neil's boar and you know, they were pretty, pretty decent friends, right? And you know, they talk about his stance and, and why it's not, you know, like I said, why God doesn't play with dice and why quantum mechanics cannot fundamentally be the correct interpretation for physics. And you Know, that's just, you know, this, believe it or not, this is, this was like a soap opera back then. This was your modern day soap opera where there were news articles all over the place talking about, you know, what Einstein might have said, what Niels Bohr might have said in response to Einstein. And so we're going to take, you know, this comment back from, from Einstein and we'll put it over into Niels Bohr and then I'll tell you what his answer is, of course. But what's fun is being able to do this. You can do it in the same one. I like to do it in different ones just so I can, of course, get some different perspectives. But what Niels Bohr said, of course, holy goodness sakes. I'm gonna put this in there and I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna necessarily read it all to you. I'm actually, I'm not gonna be able to read much of it to you because it's huge. You know, this is a traditional debate response. You know, he talks about, you know, my dear Albert, he's talking about why he thinks that he's correct. He's going through, you know, his Copenhagen interpretation and what the importance of quantum phenomena are and how they're experimenting and it's going back and forth between those two. And I'm just watching it on the outside.
[00:27:21] I'm, I can ask it other questions. I can say, you know, okay, you know, Dr. Einstein. Let me ask the one off screen real quick. I can say, you know, Dr. Einstein, you know, your paper, your EPR paper on the paradox says that.
[00:27:38] Where's my paste button? Oops, Come on. You know, your paradox on, you know, it suggests quantum mechanics is incomplete. And Dr. Bohr, you know, says that, you know, some of the key elements are being overlooked by Einstein. What is that? What are some of the ramifications around that? And it will give Einstein's answer, of course. And let me go get what some of the main topics are with that. But you can start to see what some of the responses are and how you could take and have the student write a paper or a news article, for example, on what did that debate look like back then? What were, what were some of the challenges that everybody was trying to overcome? What were the fundamental critical thinking skills that these guys were using? We all know. Well, many of you know, and I've talked about it before, Einstein used to use thought experiments. He'd say, imagine I'm riding a train. The train's going at the speed of light. And I throw a ball, how fast is the ball going, right? And so from his perspective, you know, it's not going any faster than anything else because he's throwing it up in the air, and because he's riding the train with the ball, and it comes back down to him and boom, he catches it. It's going the same speed from a different perspective. A train going the other way, well, guess what? You know, it looks like it's going faster, but it really isn't. So it really starts to become about perspective when you apply that to AI. AI is giving you the same perspective. It's looking at it from different points of view. You can tell one of your students that it's their job to observe, look at the responses, look at the interactions, look at the fundamentals of physics that they're talking about. You know, it's that ability that is so powerful and so really exciting for students and that they are now immersing themselves into a debate environment as opposed to just really reading about it in a book.
[00:29:39] That is something that you can teach your students. You can teach them how to think from a different perspective that, you know, at the time, nobody really was quite sure what side to be on. And giving them the ability to be able to think that way is very powerful, very strong. You can encourage them to use it in a decision. You know, what the, you know, say, okay, AI, you are, you know, a college professor, and you don't know what side to be on. Can you give me the pros and cons of both arguments? And what would you do, you know, in, you know, the 1933, you know, or just, you know, whatever that example is, it's. It's giving students really that immersive capability. So not only are they reading about it, but they're actually interacting with it. Very powerful, very, very great tool to be able to. To use that for. Now, as you look at really other practical applications, you could do, you know, different solutions, and you could have the AI purposely create flaws that students have to say, that's not right, that's not right. Or you can have them use the AI to go get data and make sure that the data is real or the papers are real, the citations that the AI is using are real, make them really go through check by check and say, this is real, this isn't, and then really just building some sort of an assessment framework on how to ingest the AI outputs, how to validate those outputs, and then really how to use them to their advantage as they're doing other parts of their homework. So this is just one example at a very basic level how you can get students engaged and involved with AI. And you can see there's no right or wrong answer per se for the AI. It's helping them think through things and understand things a little bit more. So stick with us. We're going to dive into a little bit more advanced capability, but it's important that the fundamentals that we adhere to are still going to be the same. So come back and I'll show you how to use AI to you to develop your programming skills. And you can use that for students or you can use that in your professional career. So stay with us. We'll be right back.
[00:32:38] Welcome back to AI Today. I'm your host, Dr. Alan Badot. And this week we are talking about AI and using it in our educational systems. You know, it's a, it's a huge debate. There's a lot of, you know, folks that are really, you know, driving for it. There's a lot of folks that are really pushing against it. And, you know, whatever side of the debate that you are on, the reality is, is once technology is out of the, out of the bottle, you can't put it back in. And so folks are using it. They're using it today. Kids are using it in school today. You may not know, but they're using it. They're using it at home to do some of their homework, and they may not be using it the right way. They may not be, you know, because they're worried about getting in trouble. They're worried about cheating. They're worried about, you know, a whole bunch of other things that we know, kids worry about. And so, you know, one of the things that I want to show, and hopefully you got that from the last segment, is the ability to use AI in a way that helps their thinking process. It doesn't necessarily have to give them, you know, a math answer. We showed that, you know, a snow day, you know, quiz that you can track and have to turn in. Your, your work is, is very valuable and, you know, really can help, you know, from a homework perspective and driving forward when you're missing school. But more importantly, it was really around the, the thought process that would go into, you know, either monitoring or moderating a debate or monitoring, you know, what, what sort of work is being done. And we're going to continue that in this segment, but we're gonna, we're gonna pick it up a notch. We're going to look at something that may be, you know, more Advanced, you know, kids are taking, you know, especially in high school, they're taking programming classes. Today, they're curious. When they get into college, of course they're using that. Being able to get the AI really to help you learn and better understand and enhance your, you know, your analytical skills is huge.
[00:34:53] The foundation has to be set though. You've got to equip them so that they understand that they have to evaluate different types of information. They have to be able to think whether or not the AI is giving a right answer or a wrong answer. And they also have to be willing to go check, you know, it's not a Google said type thing. It is a, you know, AI gave me citations based on its response. I'm going to go out and I'm going to check them, I'm going to validate them. Is the data right or is it not? So what you're doing is you're forcing the student to become more analytical, to use the scientific method significantly more. You know, just because the AI went out and got the answer doesn't mean it's right. And in some cases it's badly wrong. But forcing them to go through the process to understand it is just as powerful, you know, as they're, as they're working through that. And so what we're going to do now, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to show you just some, some quick examples on how you can use AI as a trainer. And by trainer I mean tutor and a helper, a programming helper. You know, whatever, whatever that is, is going to, whatever you call it, it's really up to you. But allowing them to master some of those, those programming skill sets that are out there and if you want to really mess with them, you can do it in a different language. Right? Because you know, there are different object oriented languages there, there are other ones, of course, that we're using that are not object oriented today. Send them back to, you know, the 70s and have them use Cobalt, for example, or you know, some of my favorites and you know, Fortran, those two languages. You laugh. You know, the reality is there's over 6 billion lines of COBOL still being used today in the federal government.
[00:36:51] You know, some of the scientific community is still using Fortran to do modeling and simulation simply because it's fast. It's faster than Java, it's faster than the other languages that are out there today and they've got a ton of code with it. And you know, so a student coming out of college that has never taken those languages because they're, they're dead to them.
[00:37:15] You know, is, is something that, you know, AI can really help with. And so we're going to do that today. I'm going to type in something really quick into the screen share and it's going to be, you know, I need to learn. And we're going to go way back. Fortran 66, boy, that's. I. My professor made me cut my teeth on that when I was in grad school. And it was painful, you know. Can you help me develop a learning plan for one week with examples?
[00:37:55] Simple, right? Simple. Wait till you see the Fortrano. Not simple.
[00:38:02] So it goes through looking at some of the fundamentals. You can see. Here's a, I'll, I'll scroll back up so you can see some of these things real quick. But, you know, it's looking at some fundamentals saying, okay, here are some basic fundamentals, here's some, some ideas on what the code can look like. If you want to do your standard hello world. Right, Everybody has a hello world example. Fortran had a hello world example as well. You're looking at your. If your do loops and your go to statements and I'm going to flash back and probably start to shake a little bit as you're learning some of these things. But that's why you have code that is 500,000 lines long, because you've got 50 different do loops and IF statements in there. But learning how to recognize those and understand those is huge. And just being able to talk, go into meetings as you're transitioning to a new position, just being able to understand what everybody's saying is exceptionally important so you don't fall too far behind. Then you start looking at how you can do matrices and arrays and how those things are assigned and how you do data. And then you start, it says, looking at subroutines and different functions. And then of course your read, write statements, your traditional things and you know, of course some, some problems that, that you can have. So then it also says what some of the resources are. And so actually that gives me an idea. Let's look at the resources and we'll say, you know, can you show me some numerical methods for fluid dynamics in Fortran? There's a couple of books I would expect it will pull up.
[00:39:59] Let's see. So it's going to. Yep, here we go. It's giving you some. Oh, there's your, your 2D flow solver. Anybody knows Navier Stokes equations? Then these are some of the fundamentals that you would see around that.
[00:40:12] But this is just an example of how you can start to then deep dive. And then what's really awesome is the Poisson equation. That kills me.
[00:40:24] That was part of my dissertation, honestly. But what's fun is being able to take this code and you're going to cut and paste it and you're going to say, well, you know what? Part of my job as I'm doing this today is I've got to refactor this, I've got to turn it into a different language.
[00:40:42] How the heck am I going to be able to do that? I've only been on the job for a week, but what am I going to do? And so what I'm going to say is, can you rewrite the Poisson equation in Java, this example?
[00:41:04] And then I'm gonna cut and paste, right? I'm gonna cut and paste my code in here and see what it comes back with.
[00:41:14] Oh, here it is. It's rewritten the Poisson equation in Java now, and it's giving you a solver to be able to do that. Now you're gonna say to yourself, fundamentally, why in the world did I do that? And it's gonna give you some examples. But now I wanna know some deep dive. I wanna know why, you know, not just that I was told that I need to do it or that I need to, I want to understand it because I want to be able to solve this problem and I want to do it for other languages. I want to try to figure out, you know, how I can move code from one language to the other and do those. And so of course my question is going to be, why would I want to go from Fortran to Java?
[00:42:01] Remember, punctuation and prompts is good. You'll, you'll do better, you'll get better answers if you punctuate your things.
[00:42:08] And now it's going through and it's giving you different examples to say, well, you know, here's the reason why to stay with Fortran, here's the reason why to go with Java. And then it talks about, well, for fluid dynamics and scientific computing, Fortran is generally preferred. Yes, thank you. I just said that. You know, it's understanding though. It's you trying to figure out, you know, what is the right balance. Trying to figure out not only a new language, but a new framework and new potential skill sets that could impact what your career or what your, you know, your choices on, you know, inside of college or high school or whatever that's going to be are going to look like, you know, having again, more perspective from different vantage points is important. It's important in the decision making process. It's important in the convergence of AI with other technologies as we go forward. Because, you know, if you think about it and we, I, you know, I have these debates with, with companies all the time and it's, they're healthy debates. You know, they all say I'm modernizing my framework of my IT and I want to upgrade all of my programming languages and I want to standardize how we do things. And I'll say, okay, what are the types of programs that you have? And we'll look at those and we'll see. Maybe they do have scientific computing stuff and they don't care. They just want to go to Java because Java is easier to maintain. Well, if you are okay with a 30% to 40% slowdown and the amount of time it takes to calculate some of these things, then by all means go use Java.
[00:43:58] But those are problem solving things that I can now show with AI and I can justify those with AI as opposed to just having to take, you know, my word from an experience perspective. You can also again show them the different capabilities that are out there, you know, today. And you can say, well, you know, can you give me some timing studies around the performance of each. No, AI has not made me a better speller. You guys know that I'm awful. I get comments every week. You spelled this wrong. I know I'm a terrible speller. I have been. And it's only getting worse. Can't help that. But so what we're doing is it's gonna, it's gonna pull up some results, it's generating some different, you know, activities, different grids. And let's see what, let's see what it comes up with.
[00:44:57] Hopefully it, the amount of time it's saying is, is pretty good. It's looking at some benchmark results and it's saying Fortran and takes about 0.8 seconds and Java, it takes 2.3 seconds.
[00:45:10] Yeah, that means you've made an informed decision on hopefully keeping FORTRAN over Java. But you're learning Fortran at the same time. You know, we talk, we talk about you don't want to, you don't want to try to build the airplane while you're flying it. But in some cases we all know we don't have a choice. You've been handed something, you have no idea how to program in Fortran. You have, and you have deadlines that you have to hit you have things that you have to meet. This is a tool that can help you along those ways. You see that it talks about the performance factors, it talks about the compilers, it talks about the memory, and it talks about really some optimization capabilities that are better supported in Fortran.
[00:46:00] Those sort of things are huge.
[00:46:04] Because now you have a way that you can go through your process, that you have that you've learned, that you're. You're going through your learning in school and at the same time, help justify that, help bolster your skill sets, help you better understand why things are going the way they are. Because if I just would have said, you know, Java is a modern language, we're going to switch over to Java, if you didn't question that, then that's, that's not good. Part of educating students is getting them to question the things that they need to come up with good answers around that. And AI is one of those tools that allows you to do that. You know, I tell people all the time, I am a stick figure artist. If you want an engineering diagram, I am your man. If you want something that looks pretty and is a work of art, I am not. I am awful. It'll. It'll look like one of those commercials with stick figure and everybody's bald or maybe they got a couple of strands of hair. But it's terrible with AI, though. If I have a vision, then I can tell the AI what my vision is and it's going to do a better job than I can. If you look at some of these programs that are out there today, they're fantastic replicate. I can put in what I want it to look like and boom, it gives me pretty much what I want it to look like. I can't do that. I can't draw it. But I have the vision that I want and AI can execute it. And it's the same thing with programming. If you have a vision, the AI can help you execute it. If you have homework, if you're a teacher, you can make the AI form the questions the right way and make the students use those prompts.
[00:47:58] It'll help them really learn to execute their vision and think more critically instead of just trying to find the answer. Just trying to find the answer is something that is not new. You know, you used to, you know, if you were reading a book, you'd go watch the movie and you'd hope that the movie was really close to the book. Why do you do it? Because you just want to get through it. You want to find the answer with AI, you can make it more interesting. You can immerse them in that. And it doesn't matter if it's software development or if it's, you know, math 101, or if it's, you know, algebra, you know, fifth grade algebra.
[00:48:40] Having a tool that helps you learn, helps you understand it better, is a powerful tool. It's our job to make sure they learn the right way. So stick with us. We'll be right back to close things out. And I think, you know, really, really emphasize what we have to do moving forward to make sure that we keep pace with the rest of the world. Stick with SA.
[00:49:34] Welcome back to AI Today. I'm your host, Dr. Alan Bideau. And this week we are talking about education and using AI to, you know, enhance that.
[00:49:46] Enhancing criticals and anecdotal skills is really been the fundamental mission of mine today to try to help you understand the power of using these tools. You know, we know that kids are using them today already. If they have a mobile device, like I said, or if they've got access to it at home, they're using it. The important thing, though, is that we have to teach them how to use it the right way, how to use it safely, and then really immerse themselves in it. And so that as they're asking questions, as they're driving some of these examples home, that their teachers have put in front of them as they are writing papers, that they have so much more power to look at it from different perspectives than they've ever had before.
[00:50:35] You know, you can now teach students ways that they can develop their own problem solving frameworks. They can use the AI to really identify different patterns, to customize their own learning paths. And even better yet, teachers can customize what those paths are to, you know, really individualize what sort of material they, you know, a student is prepared for and, and how much they're. They're ready to use it.
[00:51:08] Now, information is power. We know that. It's always been power. Now data, you know, is, is power and put AI on top of that, then, you know, there is an awful lot of power that you would be putting in a kid's hands that, you know, right or wrong could be, could be overwhelming in some cases. And those are really the ones that we have to, of course, pay attention to. You know, there are just some students that, you know, pick up really anything that you put in front of them. But having a teacher be able to really focus and hone in their skill sets, spend more time on different pieces of that learning journey that students are going on at their own pace is something that I think most teachers would agree is going to be a positive experience for students. And then when you combine that with the creativity aspect of it, you're not limiting yourself to language arts and history and math. You can really start to blend that more with the creative side of. Of things. You know, I am a firm believer that, you know, kids that participate in, you know, music and art and, you know, other, you know, activities do much better than they. They would otherwise. And that can only be enhanced at the same time. You know, being able to, you know, generate music, being able to break down music, being able to generate art based on your vision, being able to look at things from a different perspective and say, you know, what, Pretend you're Michelangelo and, you know, you're. You're trying to paint a school bus. What's that going to look like? Or just, you know, just some odd things that, you know, kids come up with that now they can, you know, actually have the power to see what those results are.
[00:53:08] That is, that is fundamentally what we need to be able to do with AI. We've got to protect them, of course. We've got to protect their information. And there are ways that you can segment those. Those sort of things off. But teaching them the right way to collaborate with AI should be our fundamental mission over the next 18 months. And I say 18 months because I don't think we have much more time than that. You know, we already have seen, you know, students from other parts of the world that have been using AI already for almost a year.
[00:53:50] And if that doesn't scare you, then it should, because our students cannot fall behind anymore. The only way to accelerate that is to use AI and to use AI the right way and to teach them the right way of. Of using it. So teaching them how to collaborate with AI, come up with creative, innovative solutions, is a good way to go. Now, that also means, of course, you know, we have to overcome some of the challenges around, you know, that AI is just a tool. And that's all it is. It's just a tool. And you cannot replace a teacher.
[00:54:25] It will not work. You cannot replace a teacher with AI, but you can give a teacher more power to control the things that are learned, the activities that take place, and the important things around skill sets and solving problems, as opposed to just getting an answer. And that, at the end of the day, is what we all want. I believe we, you know, parents want their students to have the best tools. They want them to be prepared. Teachers Want the exact same thing. Me as an, you know, somebody in industry, I want the same thing too because I spend probably the first three months teaching my new employees how to use some of these things because they're not prepared to do that.
[00:55:12] And you know, we just, we just can't continue as a society to fall behind that way because that makes us, you know, vulnerable to economic challenges, to political challenges, to all those other things that are going on around us that over the past we've really been insulated from. We are not going to be insulated from this. This is a tidal wave that we have to prepare for and we've got to start doing it now. And you know, that is the biggest challenge that we have. Getting everybody, you know, at least to agree that we should move forward as opposed to really putting their stake in the sand and not being willing to move. And it doesn't matter, you know, what side of the aisle are you on? You, you have to figure out what that solution is going to be because otherwise we are not doing our kids a favor at all. If anything, we are holding them back and we are not future readying what their, what their capabilities are that they need to be successful in life. Because otherwise, you know, they're going to struggle. They're going to struggle getting jobs and struggling being prepared for the digital world. That is, that really is coming. This is just the beginning. It's only going to get worse. It's only going to get more intense. So we've got to get them prepared. We've got to teach them to use it the right way, teach them to protect themselves. And if we can do that, then they'll definitely be successful. Appreciate everybody for watching tuning in this week. Next week we'll have another great topic. Please, if you have any questions, if you are a teacher, reach out to me. I am willing to help you for free. Just give me, you know, an opportunity to talk to you, your, your administration, whatever. We'll, we'll, we'll debate some things. I'll, I'll help you get ready. I will do that for free.
[00:57:00] But you know, I look forward to helping you with your journey. Everybody stick with us. You know, like I said, next week we'll have another great topic. Thank you and we'll see you then.
[00:57:12] This has been a NOW Media Networks feature presentation. All rights reserv.
