>> Support for "AI: Unpacking the Black Box" comes from viewers like you and from Goodwill Keystone Area.

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When you donate to Goodwill, you help provide skills, training, and career placement, and the things you loved start a new life, too.

>> Imagine you're a student in a one-room schoolhouse.

The year is 1900, and you're surrounded by children of all ages, from 6 to 16.

The air is thick with chalk dust, and the scratching of chalk on slate echoes through the room.

Now, your teacher, stern but caring, instructs you in reading, writing, arithmetic, the foundations of the world yet to come.

Now, the Industrial Revolution is in full swing, and the skills you're learning will prepare you for a life of factory work or farming.

Now, the world seems vast and unknowable, but your education is your ticket to understanding it.

Now let's fast-forward.

You're a student in a classroom in post-World War II in the 1950s.

The world has changed dramatically.

You sit in neat rows, learning about the wonders of science that will soon put a man on the moon and the complexities of a global economy recovering from war.

Your textbooks speak of a future filled with promise and opportunity.

Now, the Cold War looms, and a space race is on its way.

Your education is no longer just about basic skills.

It's about competing on a global stage, about pushing the boundaries of human knowledge and achievement.

The classroom around you buzzes with excitement.

Television has brought the world into your living room, and your teachers speak of computers, massive machines that can process information faster than any human.

You dream of being an astronaut, a scientist, perhaps working with these newfangled computers.

The future seems bright and full of possibilities that your grandparents could have never imagined.

But time doesn't stand still.

And here's another possibility.

Blink, and suddenly you're a college graduate in 2027.

You're about to receive a degree that seemed valuable when you started but now feels as outdated as those slate tablets from the one-room schoolhouse.

The world has shifted beneath your feet and continues to do so at an ever-accelerating pace.

Artificial intelligence, once the stuff of science fiction, now performs tasks with the level of skill and efficiency that makes human labor seem quaint.

Your carefully honed skills and your years of study all rendered obsolete in the blink of an eye.

The job market you're entering bears little resemblance to the one you prepared for.

AI systems are writing articles, creating art, diagnosing diseases, and even coding themselves.

They're not just replacing manual labor.

They're taking on the cognitive tasks that were once thought to be uniquely human.

You find yourself in a world where AI can draft legal contracts faster and more accurate than any lawyer, where it can design buildings more efficiently than architects, where it can even compose music that moves people to tears.

The skills that seemed cutting-edge when you started your degree -- data analysis, software development, digital marketing -- are now routinely handled by AI systems that cost a fraction of a human salary, and they work 24/7 without complaining.

And now these AI brains have entered the bodies of capable, never-sleeping humanoid robots.

As you stand on the precipice of this new world, questions swirl around your mind.

What is your place in this AI-dominated workforce?

How can you compete with machines that learn and adapt faster than any human?

What does it mean to be productive, to contribute to society when artificial intelligence can do almost everything better?

But perhaps these questions are just the beginning.

Perhaps the real challenge isn't competing with AI but learning to coexist with it, to find new ways of working that combine human creativity and intuition with machine precision and scalability.

Welcome to "AI: Unpacking the Black Box."

I'm John McElligott, where today we dive into the rapidly evolving landscape of education, jobs, and the workplace in the age of artificial intelligence.

How do we prepare for a future where the only constant is change?

How do we educate the next generation for jobs that don't yet exist, using technologies that haven't been invented to solve problems we can't yet imagine?

In today's episode, we'll explore these challenges and the opportunities presented by AI in the workplace.

We'll hear from educators reimagining curriculum for an AI-integrated world, from workers who have had to reinvent their careers in the face of automation, and from AI ethicists grappling with the moral implications of an increasingly intelligent machine.

Stay tuned as we unpack these complex issues and more, seeking to understand not just the technology itself but its profound impact on our society, our economy, and our very notion of what it means to be human in a world increasingly shaped by artificial minds.

>> I think what I don't want to see with AI in education is a deployment of AI that is based on just it's like, "Oh, it's cheaper than hiring teachers."

And the fear there is that you're removing the human connection.

You know, I think to learn anything, it actually requires confusion and frustration, things that are actually rather inconvenient and yet are so fundamental and essential to learning.

You know, it's like learning an instrument or learning to play a difficult video game.

I think this is what the state for future of education is that we optimize out humans, and we optimize out the importance of the right kinds of frustration and difficulty and confusion that comes with learning.

You know, what I really want from AI is not for it to take over being wise on my behalf.

The role of education was never like, "How do we use technology to educate people better?"

The role of education was always, "How do we educate people better?"

You know, as an educator, I don't want students to go to AI and be like, "Give me the answer."

>> I'm really impressed with how quickly educators are jumping in and adopting this technology, seeing what it can be used for but also looking at how can we make sure that it's not something similar to social media, where there were unintended consequences that no one could be prepared for.

How can we make sure that this isn't damaging to students, that we're approaching it in the right way, that we're not just taking this "Let's ban AI" because it might right for a student approach.

I think people are moving away from that and instead are looking at what's next and how do we make sure we're equipping students for that future?

That being said, when I speak to audiences, I usually will ask folks, "Have you used ChatGPT or any type of generative AI?

Are you using it in education?"

And there's still a large percentage.

It grows every time I speak.

There's more and more people who say that they have used or they're using AI as part of their education process.

And also there's lots of really good organizations that are doing work to develop guidance around it for state plans and for school districts to be able to modify and use it in their areas.

So, that's exciting to see how quickly it is blowing up in the education community.

I think that every educator will have an AI copilot who's going to assist them and hopefully make their jobs more doable.

When you look at the retention rate for educators -- and it's a crisis.

We have classrooms that do not have teachers, or they have a substitute teacher who are filling in right now.

And that's been a problem for a long time.

So, I don't think we have to worry about right now teachers feeling as if their jobs might be replaced.

I think it will be enhanced, but we're always still going to need that human element.

I think that parents and society in general, they want a human in there connecting with their kids.

When you think about the amount of information that's out there in education, and there's no way that a new teacher at 24 years old, or even a teacher who's seasoned, has seen every case study and that they're able to accurately understand a child's very specific, individualized needs.

But when you have artificial intelligence, which is being updated every second and has access to all of the peer-reviewed literature, all the different case studies around the globe, and catch those little nuances and be able to make those connections and see that child's very specific needs, that's phenomenal.

And I think that one of the things that we have to focus on is what's not going to change, what's not going to change in the next 5, 10, 15 years -- you know, that ability to be able to connect, the ability to be able to learn and be able to have metacognition and think about your own thinking, all those different pieces that enable someone to continue to be successful even in a world of dynamic change.

Resiliency -- being able to handle the fact that they're not just going to do one thing, and for a lot of young people, that's actually really exciting.

And so having young people go in and look and see what are the jobs that aren't necessarily going to be around for a long period of time, but having them to really start thinking to be mindful of that and reminding them that in a sense they're going to be creating this next world.

They're the ones that are going to be those startup founders that are going to be choosing how to use that technology and determining what comes next.

And that's really empowering for young people to think about the fact that this isn't just happening to them.

They're active players.

>> You know, what's interesting is, I don't know, maybe almost half the students really don't want to have anything to do with it.

They are concerned about academic integrity, plagiarism, you know, like, they don't want to get kicked out of school.

They don't want to have a machine automating some other process, you know?

Of course, like any school, too, we've had, you know, students using it in context where they really shouldn't be using it, you know, right?

And some of them are, you know, playing around with it to do fun things, like write scripts with their friends or do recipes or travel planning or, you know, that kind of thing.

There's a certain demographic that would definitely benefit from having a tutor in their pocket, and they will listen to it and they will, you know, accelerate their education.

That's great.

But for the vast majority of students, what they need is somebody who seems to care about what they want to say.

And that's a human.

You know, students get it.

You know, talking to an AI isn't quite the same, even if it's very specific to the things that they're doing.

A lot of students have said that they like talking to ChatGPT because they don't feel judgment.

You know, the fact that teachers can judge and can form bonds is often a positive, but it sometimes can be a negative, too, you know?

If they're embarrassed that they missed a particular concept, you know, then they can ask whatever AI, and they don't have to go see the tutor, or they don't have to ask the teacher.

>> The faculty side of it, we started off Sky is falling, came to an agreement and an understanding of how we as a collective body can use it.

In our courses, as part of the syllabus, as well as part of our learning-management system, we all have this little block, and it essentially says, "What is the tolerance of this class for AI?"

And we're exploring with how we should be using AI.

The students were very interesting.

Our students saw this in all the media, and they said, "I'm going to use it to write my papers," of course.

And then they got responses back and they were like, "Oh, it's not that good."

And they shied away from it.

There was a lot of "This tool is going to ruin the classroom."

And many of the conversations, at least that I tried to spark, were, "Yes, it's going to change your classroom because it means that the assignment that you've been giving for the last ten years should change to meet the skill set and the tools that our students have."

I speak to a lot of K-12 teachers about these sort of technologies and things, and one of the things I mentioned to them was this idea that instead of telling the students to read chapter three of Anne Frank and write a 400-word summary, tell them to write, summarize that chapter and show how it aligns to their personal life.

You now get the students to reflect upon the information that they are consuming, and they don't have this tool on the side that they can cheat with.

Hopefully for them, they learn that, "Oh, when a tool comes up, I shouldn't be afraid of it because it's different than what I know.

I should look at how do I evaluate that tool to figure out how I could potentially use it?"

>> Students are always going to use tools to kind of get around doing work, no matter where you are.

The hardest thing for us to do is to teach students.

How do we assess the credibility and the accuracy and veracity of the material that's out there?

Going back to the early days of the Internet, students would see anything and think that it was true.

And the biggest burden was, "How do we teach you to evaluate the credibility of these things?"

Ultimately, there's going to have to be a person that says, "Yes, that is adequate."

The folks that don't want to use it, I understand completely the rationale.

Writing is thought.

Language is thought.

If we outsource it to a machine, what does that do to us as individuals?

What does that do to us as a society?

Like, we're going to have to rethink everything -- like, assignments, learning outcomes, how do we assess learning?

We're going have to rethink everything -- everything.

We have a longstanding assumption that the more you know and the more that you can apply, the more valuable your time is.

And now I can have a device on my phone that knows more than any human on earth and can apply it faster than most people.

It could be wrong an awful lot.

But what does education mean when knowledge is free?

>> I don't think that AI will do away with all jobs.

I think it will create new ones.

I think that that might be -- I hope that that's the case.

The idea that any type of technical revolution, jobs went away -- the people that made covered wagons, they lost their jobs, but they started making cars.

And I think there are going to be more jobs that are going to be created.

I hope there'll be more jobs created by these technologies.

The hard part is, is the context of use.

In industry, it's about outcomes and about, like, how does this help my bottom line?

How does this make me, you know, to a certain extent, how does this make me a good corporate citizen, treat my employees well, treat my customers and stakeholders well?

It's about how do we use this to do "X"?

And it will allow us to be more efficient and possibly more effective.

I think it's actually -- take a step back.

Will people at some point be able to keep up and understand the rate of change that is -- this is a snail's pace compared to what it could be like, unless we put controls in place.

>> I know that there are some very real risks with artificial intelligence, especially with taking jobs, with people still having meaning.

But what I have found is that I use artificial intelligence every day.

AI is not making it to where I suddenly have all this free time.

As humans, we find more stuff to fill the time.

I think that every workplace is going to find more things for humans to do.

It's just going to look so much different.

So, I think that the folks who are having that -- yes, there are some very real threats.

When you hear Elon Musk and others say there's a 10% chance of an existential event because of AI, that's pretty real.

That's something we have to be aware of and cognizant of.

But at the same time, as far as just looking at the aspect of will people no longer have meaning, will people still have work to do?

Yes.

I think that we'll always have work to do.

>> If you think about who gets turbocharged by using these tools, it's scientists and programmers and, you know, teachers who can help, you know, build talent and skills in the economy.

That's remarkably cool because then we get downstream productivity effects.

Every time there's a technological upgrade, we change not only the size of, you know, technological efforts, say, in the farming industry or in finance or, you know, education, whatever happens to be, but also the direction.

Like, you unlock new capabilities that we wouldn't have had before.

So, like I saw people using machine learning to discover an entirely new class of antibiotics.

That sort of thing is phenomenal.

Like, the fact that we're going to unlock research directions with this.

I get really, really excited.

Rejecting the technology prematurely, that's something I worry about a lot because of fears that don't necessarily exist.

I don't see evidence in our data that we're going to see mass unemployment with this set of technologies.

So, we have to be pretty deliberate about how you train people and get them going up their career ladders.

You know, if we train everybody to do with GPT, like, what the best people are doing, because that's what's in our data, and now junior people can perform like folks who have been doing this at an expert level for years.

That sounds like a good story, but perhaps we've created a monoculture.

I worry about, you know, overregulating.

And maybe this is controversial, but I don't see the need to create a massive regulatory burden, especially for fledgling firms.

That sort of thing might cause a slowdown of innovation.

I think that smart regulations around protecting consumer privacy -- again, good policies in general, making sure that, you know, we build these systems well in a competitive way.

I think that's more important than, say, like, banning its use in various cases or, you know, sticking huge compliance burdens on all these companies that are trying to build something, you know, valuable and interesting.

>> Don't ask a child what they want to be when they grow up, because that job might not exist.

And the job that they may actually love may not yet exist.

We did not know what an Uber driver was 20 years ago.

We did not know what a web designer was 40 years ago.

What are the things that you love doing?

What are the verbs?

Because if you're able to dial into those, those will be hallmarks of the jobs of the future.

They will also be hallmarks if they are verbs like, "I enjoy taking care of people.

I enjoy connecting."

Those are also going to be timeless.

>> Just looking at history on a very high level over the technology revolutions that we've seen maybe in the last 40 years.

So, in my mind, that's the personal computer in the 1980s, the Internet in the 1990s.

And now, let's say AI since 2015.

The first two, for sure, we did not see a decrease in jobs available.

Yes, many things became automated when office software and personal computers became more widely available -- lots and lots more automation and things that could be done very quickly rather than being done by hand or pencil and paper.

And so, huge gains in productivity, and perhaps in very short term job losses, but not in the medium term.

Even though it always seems scary because this great, new technology is going to come along and replace what you and I or someone else is doing for most of their day right now, it just doesn't seem to work out like that.

Jobs morph and change and even hopefully improve rather than literally being replaced in the vast majority of cases.

There will be an argument that this time is different, and maybe it is this time.

I can't say for sure.

Looking just at the U.S., our productivity has roughly doubled since 1980.

It's actually more than doubled.

So, you and I and everyone participating in this economy on average is producing twice as much stuff.

So, rather than envisaging a dystopia in which lots of people are laid off or just have a few hours of work and are sort of skulking around feeling very depressed because they have nothing to do, maybe human society can just move on to where we're going to do lots of fun things, like music, dance, art, conversation, computer games, movies, whatever form of entertainment evolves in the future, especially if it involves personal interactions, human interactions.

All of these activities -- cooking -- these are things that we can spend more of our hours on rather than less in the future if it does turn out that AI is literally displacing jobs, but that's not necessarily going to be the case.

We have to wait and see.

>> As we close tonight's episode, let's take a glimpse into a possible future 20 years from right now.

Now, imagine a world where the line between humans and machines is blurred almost beyond recognition, a world where skills can be uploaded directly into our brains through Neuralink devices, where learning a new language or mastering complex skill takes mere hours instead of years, or maybe even seconds.

But this brave new world is not without its divisions.

Humanity is split into two distinct groups -- those who have embraced AI integration, augmenting their abilities and pushing the boundaries of human potential and those who resist, clinging to a notion of pure humanity.

Now, the AI integrated live in gleaming smart cities, their every need anticipated and met by invisible AI assistants.

They work in industries we can barely conceive of today, solving problems on a planetary scale.

But this progress comes at a cost.

Privacy, once fiercely guarded, is now an almost foreign concept to the integrated.

Their thoughts, memories, and desires are part of a vast, interconnected network.

Individuality, creativity, the very notion of the self all are beginning to be redefined in this new paradigm.

And on the other side of this divide are the unintegrated, their lives eschewing the high-tech solutions of their integrated counterparts.

To them, the integrated have lost something essential.

They've traded their humanity for speed and convenience.

They keep alive the old ways of learning, of working, of being human.

They're the artists, craftspeople, philosophers, the guardians of way of life that is increasingly under threat.

Yeah, they, too, benefit from the advancements of the integrated world.

They're benefiting from medical breakthroughs and environmental protections while maintaining their distance from the technology that made it all possible.

Now, this divide shapes every aspect of society, from education and employment to politics and personal relationships.

The two groups eye each other with a mixture of fascination and suspicion, each believing that they've chosen the right path for humanity's future.

As we stand at this crossroads, we must ask ourselves, "What does it mean to be human in a world where the line between human and machines blur?"

How do we navigate the ethical minefield of AI integration?

What are we willing to sacrifice in the name of progress?

And what must we preserve at all costs?

And perhaps, most importantly, how do we bridge the divide between these two visions of humanity's future?

Can we find a middle ground that allows us to reap the benefits of AI without losing the essence of what makes us human?

Now, these are not easy questions, and their answers will shape the course of human history.

As we continue to unpack the black box that is AI, we must remember that technology is a tool, not just a destiny.

The future is not predetermined.

It's a choice that we make every single day, with every decision, with every innovation.

And these are the questions that we will continue to explore as we keep unpacking the black box.

Until next time, keep questioning, keep learning, but remember the future is not set.

We're it's architects.

The world of tomorrow is being built today, and each of us have a role to play in its construction.

Whether you're an artificial- intelligence enthusiast or a digital skeptic, a tech wizard or a nature lover, your voice matters in this ongoing dialogue about our collective future.

So, let's make sure we engage, debate, and, most importantly, stay curious, for in the end, it's not the technology that will define us but how we choose to use it.

I'm John McElligott, signing off from "AI: Unpacking the Black Box."

Good night.

And I hope your dreams will be as boundless as the potential of the human mind, augmented or not.

>> Support for "AI: Unpacking the Black Box" comes from viewers like you and from Goodwill Keystone Area.

It's the last tea party for Krista with Miss Marshmallow and Sarah's first day of management training at Goodwill.

When you donate to Goodwill, you help provide skills, training, and career placement, and the things you loved start a new life, too.

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