A Super Intelligent Future

The future is super intelligent.   

Nowadays, we are surrounded by TV news, publications, and conversations that suggest that the

world will be run by computers before we know it, and you can’t help but wonder what that means

for the future jobs and careers of students about to enroll in Year 1 - who will graduate from

university in the 2030s and have a working life that will continue until the 2070s. Artificial

intelligence is fast taking over from humans in its ability to retain knowledge and recall facts and

answers to any questions asked within a matter of seconds......just ask Siri.

 

Facts and knowledge often referred to as Academic Intelligence, plays a large part in the current

school curriculum and education of students, and a crucial one at that. But now, in addition to

academic intelligence, schools must develop and adapt their curriculum to ensure that students

graduate with a wealth of different skills on top of their academics. The future is not just AI, but a

combination of AI and HI… that being, a synergy of artificial intelligence and human intelligence

which will lead to a future of super intelligence.  

 

As educators, we must evolve and ensure that the skills taught today are the ones needed for

tomorrow. In doing this, we need to add to our current knowledge-based curriculum, with an

intelligence-based curriculum. There are key areas that humans will always remain superior in, such

as emotional intelligence, critical thinking, creativity, strategy, and problem-solving, and these are

the skills and qualities that will stand our students apart in an increasingly automated world.

For budding engineers, inventors, and entrepreneurs, for example, building problem-solving skills,

critical thinking, and using their imagination is key to creating, developing, and exploring new

opportunities and ways of doing things. Or let us take emotional intelligence: technology is a long

way from recognising, never mind responding to human emotions appropriately, and as the saying

goes ‘people do business with people, so empathy, communication, instinct, and that gut feeling is

all going to play a crucial role in the jobs of the future, and something that school’s need to help

students embrace and develop.

 

Much of business and marketing is becoming automated, - you can set up a million emails to go

out at once, or send a tweet a minute if you like at the touch of a button, but someone still needs to

decide on whether these are the right actions and that’s where strategy comes into play and

understanding human reactions, combined with sound business acumen and decision making.

Recognising our own emotions, our capabilities, and our motivations also allows us to make

informed decisions, not only informed by data, but by our social knowledge, our emotional

knowledge, and by being creative and working in collaboration with others. All this together is what

is important in the careers of the future. Students must build a broad range of skills on top of their

academic success, and this is what will enable them to succeed in the future, as well as the ability to

work with artificial intelligence, to take advantage of a world of automation and knowledge and

bringing in skills that support and complement it.

 

At Oxbridge School, we want to prepare our students for their futures by taking a holistic approach

to education and ensuring that they leave us not only with strong academics but with the ability to

thrive and prosper in the new world of super intelligence.