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Showing posts with label ChatGPT. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ChatGPT. Show all posts

Monday, January 29, 2024

‘Education needs to level up’; Closing gaps in maths and science


THE world is seeing a digital revolution that is advancing technology beyond human skills.

To turn things around, the education system needs to put in a place the kind of learning that will move people ahead of the technology of modern times.

That, said Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) director for Education and Skills Andreas Schleicher, is about knowledge, skills and mindsets.

In the era of generative artificial intelligence (AI) such as ChatGPT, he said teaching the young how to frame questions, navigate ambiguity and manage complexities, instead of teaching them the answers, is of utmost importance.

“We know how to educate second-class robots – people who are good at repeating what we tell them but the kinds of things that are easy to teach and easy to test have also become easy to digitise and automate,” he said.

Drawing on an OECD study that tracked the extent to which AI could surpass typically gifted humans in education, he noted a clear improvement in the performance of generative AI in just one year in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) (see infographic).

“You can see AI is advancing at a breathtaking pace. We need to accelerate our progress,” warned Schleicher, who leads the team that oversees PISA.

Creativity, he asserted, is one of the most central resources in the 21st century that education can foster to help people grow in their competence.

“If you want your kids to be creative, you have to give them space to experiment. When they experiment, they take risks and if they take risks, they make mistakes. If our education systems do not help students learn from and with mistakes, they are not going to be so creative,” he said.

Citing the teaching of science as an example, he said making students believe in scientific paradigms, giving them numerous exercises to rehearse, and testing them on whether they remember the answers have nothing to do with scientific enquiry.

“Scientific enquiry is not about reproducing the established wisdom of our times but about questioning it. And that is true for many subjects,” he said.

He added that rather than teaching students knowledge like physics and chemistry, educators should put more emphasis on helping them to think like scientists.

“That is going to be useful and sustainable. If we just teach fixed knowledge and skills, the risk they are going to become obsolete is quite high,” he said.

Speaking at the Educational Publishers Forum (EPF) Malaysia 2023, held virtually on Nov 22 last year, he added that learning literacy is no longer about extracting knowledge from prefabricated text; it’s about constructing knowledge.

“Instead of repeating and reproducing what you learn, you need to learn to question what you see, and triangulate different information. They are very different skill sets,” he said.

He added that students must have the capacity to see the world in different lenses and appreciate different ways of thinking.

Pointing to the massive rise in the “wisdom of the crowds”, where a large number of people put their ideas into the mix on social media, Schleicher also emphasised the need for students to be equipped with digital navigation skills.

“In many countries, the majority of 15-year-olds are born into this digital world but they are not digital natives.

“You will not become automatically skilled – education needs to invest in this,” he said, adding that the ability to distinguish fact from opinion and integrate different information sources is the kind of skill needed to make use of the digital world.

Nurturing a growth mindset, according to Schleicher, is another focal point of importance to help students forge ahead.

“The mindset we create among students is an incredibly important predictor for their willingness to engage with new problems and address challenges.

“Education systems that develop students’ growth mindset tend to also excel academically, while those that have a fixed mindset typically show a lower academic performance.

“If students have a growth mindset, it’s a mirror of how they have been educated,” he said.

Students with a growth mindset, he explained, know that if they invest effort, they can overcome barriers whereas those without it believe that success is largely about the intelligence they inherited and there is nothing they can do about it.

In fact, he continued, the growth mindset is needed at every level of the education system, including policymakers, teachers and publishers.

He added that one’s willingness and capacity to learn, unlearn and relearn will also be essential.

“In today’s world, you have to learn for jobs that have not yet been created, to use technologies that have not yet been invented, and to solve social problems you cannot yet imagine.

“So, having a willingness to engage in the novelty, and to give up some of the favourite beliefs, knowledge and skills in order to acquire new ones, is absolutely essential – that’s a real test for education today,” he said.

Themed “Developing 21st Century Students: Policies, Strategies & Educational Materials”, the EPF Malaysia 2023 was organised by the Malaysian Book Publishers Association.

Calls for edu reforms in M’sia


Less volume, more depth


Malaysia has put very interesting reforms on track but there can be less emphasis on the volume of content – Malaysian students learn a lot of things. Instead, place more emphasis on depth and diverse ways of thinking. That is the most important transition the modern world will require for students in Malaysia.

Learning environments can be more student-oriented and teachers can go beyond the instructional component and become better coaches and mentors to their students – that’s very important to mediate the impact of social background.

Engage teachers in more collaborative professional development. You need to get teachers in a space where they also become lifelong learners.


– OECD director for Education and Skills Andreas Schleicher

Strengthen school curriculum

The curriculum is by far the most important ingredient in determining what students are able to do at the end of their schooling.

A fantastic teacher with a terrible curriculum is going to have a hard time ending up with successful students. And a teacher who is struggling is going to be supported by a terrific curriculum, so all teachers benefit from a strong curriculum. It’s something that policymakers should be reviewing on a regular basis. There is good data worldwide. We’re leaving a lot of good ideas on the table by not paying attention to what other folks are doing.


– University of Virginia, United States, psychology professor Dr Daniel Willingham


Ensure quality content

You can have highly-trained teachers teaching in classrooms with the most up-to-date devices and software but if the content being taught is second-rate or worse, then students will not get the education they deserve and your country will be left behind. If we want to reduce inequalities, then high-quality resources produced by professional educational publishers and adapted to deliver the government’s curriculum is what will guarantee progress.


– International Publishers Association president Karine Pansa
Focus on leadership

We need to review our curriculum assessment and pedagogical approach. First, the Education Ministry (MoE) should collaborate with stakeholders to reassess the curriculum. Second, it should redefine the role of teachers. Our teachers are imparting knowledge that can be obtained online. Allow teachers to learn, unlearn, relearn, and be mentors and facilitators. The focus should be on leadership as stated in the Malaysia Education Blueprint (MEB) 2013-2025.


Malaysian Association for Education president Datuk Satinah Syed Saleh 

  Decentralise the MoE 

 We need to decentralise the MoE. All schools should have a board of advisers. We have intelligent people in the community who can be advisers. This is about community-centred, rather than standardised, education. We need to do away with the Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM) exams. Instead, if students want to enrol into university, they can take a certain kind of exam for the course they want to pursue. Our mindset is industry-based. We need to move away from teaching people to be nuts and bolts. Learning should be lifelong. Universities need to redefine the significance of diplomas and degrees. The world has changed.


UCSI University architecture professor Prof Dr Mohd Tajuddin Mohd Rasdi

Address shortfall

Our National Education Philosophy is clear about producing holistic students in four aspects: intellectual, physical, emotional and spiritual. But how well we are implementing this in classrooms is something we need to address. The MoE needs to engage regularly with stakeholders.

We have to prioritise our initiatives. For example, we are not spending enough on providing professional development opportunities for teachers, even though it was recognised in the MEB.


University of Cyberjaya and Infrastructure University Kuala Lumpur adjunct professor Prof Datuk Dr Rajendran Nagappan

Replicate trust school model

The Trust Schools Programme, launched by Yayasan Amir and the MoE in 2010, came up with a model to transform teacher pedagogy skills underpinned by cultural change. It entails the schools shifting from a teacher-centric to a student-centric approach, and from teaching to the test to creating a positive learning environment that unleashes the potential of each student.

We have 94 trust schools across Malaysia, involving at least 10,000 teachers and benefiting more than 200,000 students. The MoE has the intention to replicate the model but hasn’t caught up yet.


- LeapEd Services chair Shahnaz Al-Sadat Abdul Mohsein



TO improve performance in mathematics and science, educators and learning materials need to transmit excitement of the subjects to students.

Referring to the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMMS) 2019, International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) executive director Dr Dirk Hastedt said students who liked the subjects scored significantly higher than those who didn’t.

In fact, the over 100-score point difference translated to more than a year of learning.

“It’s very important that students like learning these subjects,” he stressed, adding that learning materials should be designed to engage both boys and girls to narrow the gender gap seen in TIMMS 2019, where girls outperformed boys in many countries, including Malaysia.

Hastedt also said students’ self-confidence in mathematics and science strongly correlates with their achievement, with more than a year of learning separating those with confidence from those without in the same study.

“What we can see from our data is that learning materials need to be targeted and supported by positive attitude to these subjects.

“We need students with a ‘can do’ attitude,” he asserted.

He added that it is important to have prerequisites such as language mastery.

“From our Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), we can see an increasing percentage of boys struggling with language.

“If you don’t have language capacity, it’s more difficult to learn mathematics and science,” he said.

Other strategies Hastedt recommended for improving student performance include incorporating software tools in learning and providing support for underprivileged students.

“Some students may understand better when using learning software managed by teachers. This enables more individualised learning,” he said.

However, he emphasised that this requires not only the availability of computers but also the presence of software administrators and technical support in schools – more importantly, teachers trained in using digital devices efficiently in teaching.

He also said digitalised instruction requires more than just transferring paper materials into a digital format.

“New digital materials that are engaging and helpful need to be developed. It requires a support structure and teachers need to be trained to use the software and help students learn in a digital environment,” he said.

Hastedt added that it’s important to move international assessments to the same digital format used in teaching and learning.

Cognisant of the need to keep up with the times, the IEA, which conducts TIMMS, introduced its fully digitised version, eTIMMS, in its 2023 cycle, he shared.

“We have to recognise that students today engage with the digital world through digital media and mobile phones. They find this more engaging than traditional methods. We have to keep up with the interest,” he said.

Hastedt, however, cautioned that digitalisation could exacerbate gaps in learning.

Citing a study on digital competencies, he said the gaps between different socioeconomic groups are huge – “larger than for reading, mathematics and science”.

“Digital competencies are not always well covered in countries’ curricula, and teachers sometimes don’t teach these competencies,’ he said.

A focus, he emphasised, is needed on the most vulnerable student groups as early as possible, starting from kindergarten or the early grades.

Citing a TIMMS study that highlights a difference of more than one year of learning between students from disadvantaged and affluent backgrounds, he noted that in Malaysia and many other countries, students with challenging socioeconomic backgrounds struggle more often with mathematics and science achievements.

“A focus on supporting students from lower social economic background would not only benefit these students, but also enhance the overall achievement of all students due to the positive peer effect.

“And if teachers can concentrate on all students because of a good level of knowledge, that benefits all students in the country,” he concluded.

Related posts:

Malaysian education heavily politicised, Quality & English standard not up to par!





Saturday, December 16, 2023

Goodbye 2023; Hello 2024

 


2023 will be remembered as a tipping point year when almost all mega-trends of finance, technology, trade, geopolitics, war and climate heating showed signs of acceleration in speed, scale and scope.


You can call this a state of permacrises, a series of cascading shocks that seem to be building up to a bigger shock sometime in the future.

In finance, the year began with the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank on 10 March 2023, followed by Signature Bank. The Fed and FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) acted fast to guarantee all deposits to stop what is now called “Twitter Deposit Runs” against banks. In Switzerland, Credit Suisse was taken over by UBS on 19 March, after the bank lost nearly US$ 75 billion worth of deposits in three months. Swiss financial credibility was hurt when Credit Suisse AT1 (Tier One bonds) bond-holders became outraged that they should suffer write-downs ahead of equity holders.



Although prompt action by the Fed and Suisse financial authorities averted global contagion and restored calm to financial markets, the Fed hiked interest rates four times in 2023 to 5.25-5.5% to tackle inflation. This month, gold prices touched a record high of US$2,100 per ounce, signalling anticipated inflation abatement, but escalated geopolitical tensions.




In technology, 2023 marked the seismic arrival of generative artificial intelligence (AI), through the public launch of ChatGPT in November 2022. Commercialized AI is considered the next big thing after the internet, sparking off a US tech stock rally, led by the Magnificent Seven companies in AI-related software and hardware. The rally averted a year of portfolio losses in financial markets hurt by interest rate hikes.

In trade, the latest UNCTAD Global Trade Update found that global trade will shrink by 5% to US$ 30.7 trillion in 2023, with trade in goods declining by nearly US$2 trillion, whereas trade in services would expand by US$500 billion. The outlook for 2024 is pessimistic because trade issues are now geopolitical, rather than purely market-driven. Global supply chains are either decoupling or de-risking to avoid possible sanctions which have been imposed for geopolitical reasons.




Geopolitics dominated headlines in 2023, as diplomacy played second fiddle to the militarization or weaponization of everything.

The biggest risk faced by businesses today is national security risk, in case companies or financial institutions are caught in geopolitical tit-for-tat arising from binary differences in values. Where national security is concerned, the business must bear all the costs of supply chain restructuring with no questions asked, or face possible existential shutdowns.

War broke out in Gaza/Israel In October with a scale of civilian slaughter more horrific and intense than the Ukraine war, which began in February 2022. The latest war count to June 2023 by The Armed Conflict Survey 2023 (1 May 2022–30 June 2023), showed global fatalities and events increasing horrendously by 14% and 28% respectively.



The authoritative Stockholm International Peace and Research Institute (SIPRI) reported that 56 countries were involved in armed conflict in 2022, 5 more than in 2021. Three (Ukraine, Myanmar and Nigeria) involved 10,000 or more estimated deaths, with 16 cases involving 1000–9999 deaths. Expect more conflicts when natural disasters hurt food, water and energy supplies.




As 100,000 or so delegates leave the United Arab Emirates at the end of the COP28 this month, the UN painted an upbeat tone that the Conference marked the “beginning of the end” of the fossil-fuel era.  Scientists confirm that we have already passed the point of being able to limit carbon emissions for the average global temperature to remain below 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.   Most studies show that if most governments fail to meet their current commitments to NetZero, the planet will be struggling with temperatures above 2 degrees Celsius, meaning more natural disasters, rising seas and/or migration/conflicts.  Every three weeks, the US has experienced at least one natural disaster costing more than $1 billion in damages.  

As one cynic said, natural disasters are where the rich just pay in money, but the poor pay in their lives.

Putting all these mega-trend micro-disasters together suggests that a mega-system disaster may be on the cards. Historically, these seismic-scale disturbances are settled through a massive recession, like the 1930s Great Depression, or wars, which wipe out debt and make everyone poorer.

So far, the world has neglected to address these looming issues by either denying or postponement - printing more money and incurring more debt. Painkillers do not fix structural imbalances.

As my favourite poet TS Eliot said, the world ends not with a bang, but with a whimper. The world is in permacrises, with no one fully in charge. Democratic governance is in flux when no one can agree on the problems, let alone the solutions.

2024 will see some decisive but messy elections, especially in the US where both Presidential candidates may either be impeached or convicted by then. This cannot auger well for everyone, because 2023 marks the turning point when the US lost the respect of the Global South over its catastrophic handling of Ukraine and Gaza, both of which will be fought to the last Ukrainian or Palestinian. The morality of allowing other people to fight and die for one’s benefit shows not hypocrisy but hegemonic-scale cowardice.

The bottom line is that there is no shortage of technology or money to deal with the global existential threats of climate change and social imbalances. We cannot align policy intent (what politicians say they will do) with the reality that current policies are not delivering.

If man-made or natural calamities are looming, do we mitigate or adapt? On a single planet, we can run but not hide. So each of us must decide to do what we can, rather than relying on politicians to fix themselves, let alone our problems.

There is a wise saying about Christmas charity: give with warm hands. Do that now, or we will be giving with boiled hands or none at all.

Best wishes for 2024.

Andrew Sheng, Asia News Network




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Monday, February 13, 2023

Tight job market? AI meets worker shortage

FILE PHOTO-OpenAI and ChatGPT logos are seen in this illustration taken, February 3, 2023. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration

THE two investment obsessions of the year so far – artificial intelligence (AI) and super-tight labour markets – meet head on.

If the hype about the former is to be believed, concern about the inflationary impact of the latter should be well wide of the mark. If only they were so perfectly aligned.

Timing is everything of course. The speed with which ChatGPT-style AI tools zap swathes of white-collar desk jobs could be more glacial than any Big Tech rah-rah suggests – and at least slower than the 12-18 months of the Federal Reserve’s current policy horizon.

But two reasonable questions are being asked around investment houses.

Does the wave of layoffs in the digital and banking worlds this year relate directly to the presumed quantum leap in so-called generative AI – just as pandemic-related overstaffing and more recent job hoarding is being pared back?

And if it does, should policymakers relax more about what could be temporary worker shortages in the service sector, where most of the wage and inflation concerns seem to centre?

Far from relaxing, should office or home-based workers now fret that we’re in for anything but a tight jobs market over the coming years?

More questions than answers perhaps – but enough to have investment strategists thinking laterally and joining dots.

Morgan Stanley’s thematic research team said last week it was inundated with enquiries about generative AI during its recent client visits.

And while investment fads come and go, they said, this one is “worth considering seriously” given the speed of take-up and its diffusion across many industries.

Aside from stock price and valuation frenzies, the team said a new wave of AI fed the debate about white-collar industry disruption in a “creative destruction moment” – with possible side benefits from reskilling workers to better wage diffusion.

Citing numbers indicating employment in business, knowledge, customer and developer outsourcing in excess of 100 million across Asia alone, Morgan Stanley said the impact was already being felt even if the jury was still out on “the degree to which it is deflationary or productivity enhancing.”

If this generative AI takes the tech transformation to non-routine office work that it largely skirted over the last decade, it will affect tens of millions more jobs than currently assumed.

The two sides of the theoretical debate at least are whether that then leads to mass unemployment and demand problems – requiring a reconsideration of things like universal basic income to support economies – or whether productivity gains lift wages and see workers simply choosing to work ever fewer hours over time as bots take their place.

London-based Fathom Consulting last Thursday concluded that a “fourth industrial revolution powered by AI could greatly affect the demand for and supply of labour” and the United States and China were bound to vie for leadership.

“The speed and impact of this change will be profoundly disruptive for global politics and for the structure of the labour market,” economists Erik Britton and Andrew Harris wrote, adding that the United States needed to keep investing in tech that both supports and replaces labour in order to retain its edge.

But just what is the scale of the likely disruption?

A frequently cited study by business consultant McKinsey from 2017 showed 60% of occupations worldwide have at least 30% of work activities that could be automated – even though automation may well create more jobs in tandem.

That tallies with numbers from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, which reckoned 10% to 15% of jobs will be lost due to tech changes over the next 20 years – but about as many may be created in other industries.

While varying hugely among the 46 countries it examined, the McKinsey study said up to 30% of activities could be displaced by 2030 – with advanced and ageing economies more likely to move faster given higher wages and incentives.

More recent polling from McKinsey last year showed companies saying at least a quarter of their tasks could be automated over the next five years but less than a fifth of respondents reckoned their firms were yet in a position to do that.

And that observation underlines the timing of all this in terms of years. How soon do tech revolutions change the world – and at least aggregate demand or supply for workers?

As the flub by Alphabet’s chatbot Bard illustrated in spectacular fashion this week, the big problem for the latest wave of emerging AI is still one of accuracy.

“While ChatGPT’s output is credible, accuracy is its Achilles’ Heel,” Morgan Stanley’s team wrote. “Manual validation should act as a breakwater to this employment threat for now.”

If creases take years to iron out, perhaps it’s not so useful to see the craze providing a timely offset to tight labour markets and wage inflation.

There’s even a chance the trepidation may exaggerate the prevailing conundrum and cause as many problems as the reality.

In a discussion paper published by the Centre for Economic Policy Research last month, economists Marta Golin and Christopher Rauh said their work found a “strong relationship” between worry about automation and intentions to join a union, retrain or switch occupations, preference for taxation and government handouts, populist attitudes and voting intentions.

Much like the pandemic, fear of automation could have as big an economic impact as its actual spread. — Reuters

Mike Dolan is a columnist for Reuters. The views expressed here are the writer’s own. 

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Tight jobs market? AI meets worker shortage :Mike Dolan


LINKEDIN EMPOWERS MALAYSIA’S TOP EMPLOYERS

To assist companies in charting effective talent management strategies, LinkedIn, Shahul, Yee and edotco Group chief people officer Ramon Chelva will share insights in a panel on Feb 21, 2023.

Information and registration here: https://events.thestar.com.my/event/the-talent-magnet-how-to-build-a-thriving-workforce/

 

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  H ow Scientists Predict Where Earthquakes Will Strike Next The pair of earthquakes that hit Turkey and Syria this week left the region .
 
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Saturday, February 11, 2023

ChatGPT And The Future Of AI, Turkey Earthquakes.Part 1

 


How Scientists Predict Where Earthquakes Will Strike Next

The pair of earthquakes that hit Turkey and Syria this week left the region grappling with death and destruction. Despite the region being seismically active, this particular area hadn’t seen an earthquake of this size for decades. There are ways of knowing where the next big earthquakes will happen. —but not when. Scientists use knowledge of fault lines and historical data to make their predictions, but saving areas from mass casualties often relies on infrastructure policies. Building codes that prioritize strong buildings can save lives, but older structures remain vulnerable.

Across the globe, in California, the health impacts of electric vehicles are beginning to be seen. A study published this month finds that for every 20 EVs in a zip code, asthma-related visits to the emergency room drop by 3.2%. This is a striking number for a technology that’s just now becoming more commonplace. Joining Ira to talk about these stories and more is Umair Irfan, staff writer at Vox, based in Washington, D.C. 

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ChatGPT And Beyond: What’s Behind The AI Boom?

The past few months have seen a flurry of new, easy-to-use tools driven by artificial intelligence. It’s getting harder to tell what’s been created by a human: Programs like ChatGPT can construct believable written text, apps like Lensa can generate stylized avatars, while other developments can make pretty believable audio and video deep fakes.

Just this week, Google unveiled a new AI-driven chatbot called Bard, and Microsoft announced plans to incorporate ChatGPT within their search engine Bing.  What is this new generation of AI good at, and where does it fall short?

Ira talks about the state of generative AI and takes listener calls with Dr. Melanie Mitchell, professor at the Santa Fe Institute and author of the book, Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans. They are joined by Dr. Rumman Chowdhury, founder and CEO of Parity Consulting and responsible AI fellow at the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard University. 

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ranscripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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ChatGPT, the future of AI

 7 problems facing Bing, Bard, and the future of AI search

 

 

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  OpenAI, which Elon Musk helped to co-found back in 2015, is the San Francisco-based startup that created ChatGPT. The company opened Ch...
 

 Microsoft is rolling out an intelligent chatbot to live alongside Bing’s search results, putting AI that can summarise web pages, synthesis.