Old Macdonald had a farm...
... AI AI ohh.
by Amy Ferguson
It is twenty years from now. A mother is singing her daughter a song before she goes off to sleep, one she remembers vividly from her own childhood.
“Old Macdonald had a farm…”
And yet the world is more different than we could ever have imagined.
I recently listened to Steven Bartlett’s podcast “Diary of a CEO” and the podcast from Google DeepMind Co-Founder piqued my interest (see below).
Mustafa Suleyman spoke at length about the benefits and dangers of Artificial Intelligence that will be shaping the way we live sooner rather than later. It is impossible to tell how the new technology will change our world in the years to come. We have come so far from robots playing chess.
Will there even be farmers five years in the future? Will we have developed technology that far surpasses our own capabilities in a variety of fields (pardon the pun), rendering the work of “Old Macdonald” unnecessary? Will traditional farms even exist in five, ten or twenty years’ time? How will food be mass produced? How will technology manipulate the world we live in, for better or for worse?
These are questions some people are asking and many more are asking as time goes on. AI is already an everyday feature of our lives. From the introduction of Chat GPT in November 2022, it seems to be growing more intelligent and more refined. How this new, sophisticated technology will shape our world in the future is still to be felt. We are on the precipice of a life-altering event.
How are we preparing our young people for the inevitable?
At the moment, we are still teaching our young people content-heavy subjects to help them become Doctors or Dentists or Teachers or Plumbers… how many of these professions will exist in the next five years? How many of them are likely to be operated by machines in the not too distant future? How are we upskilling our young people to prepare for a new wave of technology?
I have mentioned in previous blogs that the Scottish education system currently does not cater to our young people’s growth and development. Students are taught to memorise facts, work for exams and chase the A grade. What happens when the career they wanted to pursue disappears? Are we leaving our young people desolate in an uncertain future?
The answer remains clear – the education system must focus on skills-based qualities and attributes. Problem Solving, taking the initiative, team working skills and resilience will outlast a future shaped by technology.
We do not know how long we have until AI shapes outlives day to day. Instead of being reactive, we must become proactive.
Old Macdonald had a farm but if we chicken out now, we will all be sitting ducks.
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