AI-ready NAT creation is required

The engineering expert reminded us that humanity has gone through several periods of development. Before the mechanization of agriculture, nine people worked to feed ten. Today, a single agricultural worker provides for the needs of more than twenty people. Not because people disappeared from the sector, but because new types of jobs were created, while the remaining tasks were completely transformed. The same thing happened during the Industrial Revolution. The destruction of machines was born out of fear, because workers were afraid of losing their jobs. But destruction could not stop progress either. Machines became widespread, the number of manual workers decreased significantly, but those who remained had to deal with other things. Among other things, with operation, management, maintenance, and many new jobs have been created to create machines.

Now artificial intelligence is knocking, which many also call a “Job Killer”.

Artificial Intelligence is expected to really cause a huge change, as it far surpasses human knowledge with its unparalleled speed and almost unlimited data processing capabilities. It can quickly analyze, process information, create reports, write texts, occasionally program and much more that it is taught to do. However, it does not know two things: it has no real creativity and a sense of morality. If it is trained for it, it will be able to create images, but only based on the database presented to it. It will never create a new artistic direction.

“This is essentially the situation in the fields of engineering and IT. It performs the calculation and evaluation work, the programming. In fact, much faster than a human, but the engineer and the IT specialist tell it what to examine and what to program.” – emphasizes Dr. László Ábrahám.

He added that when computers were born, there was a forecast that the entire (at that time) computing needs of the USA would be met by 60-70 computers. Since the performance of computers has increased by orders of magnitude, new needs and opportunities have also multiplied exponentially, this early forecast has far from come true. For this reason, the expert is certain that STEM jobs will not disappear, and their number may even increase.

“The completely realistic scenario is that jobs will fundamentally change and engineers and IT specialists will have to be trained for them in a completely different way. Instead of teaching subject knowledge, the focus should be on students’ creativity, problem-solving skills, teamwork and critical thinking. AI does not have these qualities and perhaps will not have them for a very long time. That is why our current education system must be drastically transformed.” – draws attention to the president of the EJMSZ.

He believes that today’s method, which mainly requires subject knowledge, must be forgotten and methods that develop competencies must be introduced. This is a huge turnaround, a change in concept and it will not be easy to implement, but there is no other way if we do not want to fall behind. All educational materials must be revised in this spirit. A new NAT that prepares for AI must be created for primary and secondary schools, but higher education cannot be left untouched either. In this, the encouragement of critical thinking and teamwork and joint work must be strengthened. Modern pedagogical tools must also be used for this, but there are already some positive examples in the world that can be cleverly adapted.

The good news is that artificial intelligence can help a lot in the new education system, because it can “dosage” experience-based curriculum according to the students’ abilities and also selectively solve the assessment.  It updates the educational program by monitoring the individual, making teaching much more effective than in today’s educational framework developed for the average student. The member companies of the EJMSZ have started developing just such an application, called STEM Teacher Assistant, to assist teachers in their work. In this work, they are thinking together with an increasing number of supporting partners about the