How can we tell if artificial intelligence threatens work?

by Stuart W. Elliott
U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine

New technologies tend to shift jobs and skills. New technologies bring new products, which shift jobs across occupations: with the arrival of cars, the economy needed more assembly line workers and fewer blacksmiths. New technologies also bring new work processes, which shift skills in jobs: with the arrival of copiers, office workers needed to replace ink cartridges but not use carbon paper. Economic history is full of examples of new technologies causing such shifts.

Workers often worry that new technologies will destroy old jobs without creating new ones. However, economic history suggests that job destruction and creation have always gone together, with a shift in jobs and skills that leaves most people still employed.

Will artificial intelligence (AI) differ from past technologies in the way it shifts jobs and skills? To answer that question, we need to know which skills will be supplied by AI and which will be left for people. If workers have the skills AI lacks, they will be able to find new jobs if AI automates their old jobs. In that case, AI will shift jobs and skills just like previous technologies. However, if workers do not have the skills AI lacks, these shifts will break down and the institution of work itself will be threatened.

As an example, consider literacy and numeracy. These skills are widely used in many jobs—so widely used that countries invest many years of formal education to help everyone develop them. The OECD assesses these skills in its Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC) because they are so important for work and education.

A new OECD study uses PIAAC to assess whether AI can perform these skills as well. The study is only exploratory, but its results are sobering. Current AI techniques are close to allowing computers to perform at Level 3 on the 5-level scale in literacy and numeracy—at or above the proficiency of 89% of adults in OECD countries. Only 11% of adults are above the level that AI is close to reproducing.

If literacy and numeracy were the only work skills, this new study would suggest that AI is not like other technologies. As current AI techniques are applied, many workers with moderate proficiency in literacy and numeracy would be displaced and would not have the higher-level skills for the jobs that remain. The usual shift of workers between jobs and skills would break down.

Of course, if this happened, we would need to improve education. The results of the Survey of Adult Skills show what might be possible. For adults with tertiary education, 21% are above the computer level in literacy and 23% are above the computer level in numeracy. And in the highest performing countries, these percentages for adults with tertiary education reach 37% in literacy and 36% in numeracy, for Japan and Sweden, respectively. These results are much better than the current OECD average of 11%.

With high-quality tertiary education, many more adults could develop literacy and numeracy skills above the current computer level. However, there would still be a serious problem if literacy and numeracy were the only work skills even with high-quality tertiary education for everyone. We do not have examples of education policies at scale that bring 80% or even 50% of adults above the current computer level.

Fortunately, literacy and numeracy are not the only work skills. There are many more skills that are important for work than the ones measured by PIAAC. Many jobs involve tasks using expert knowledge like scientific reasoning. Many jobs involve physical tasks like cooking. Many jobs involve social tasks like conversation.

PIAAC does not measure the other skills needed for such tasks and cannot tell us how AI might perform on them. However, computer scientists are developing AI to reproduce these other skills as well. Do AI’s capabilities in these other skills look as proficient as their capabilities in literacy and numeracy? We do not know.

The new study using PIAAC to assess AI in literacy and numeracy is only a first step. The OECD is working with the U.S. National Academies to develop a new programme to assess AI capabilities across all work skills. In the years ahead, policymakers will need this information to know whether AI will shift jobs and skills just like other technologies have done in the past—or whether this time is different.

Links
Computers and the Future of Skill Demand
Skills Matter: Further Results from the Survey of Adult Skills
Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC)

Follow the conversation on Twitter: #AI and #GoingDigital

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Why teaching matters more than ever before

by Stavros Yiannouka, CEO, WISE – World Innovation Summit for Education and Andreas Schleicher, Director, Directorate for Education and Skills

Teaching and learning lie at the heart of what it means to be human. While animals teach and learn from each other through direct demonstration, observation and experience, humans are unique in their ability to convey vast quantities of information and impart skills across time and space. We are also, as far as we know, unique in our ability to engage in and convey our thinking around abstract concepts such as governance, justice and human rights.

Technology has always played an indispensable role in this process. Starting with language and then writing, humanity was able to separate the process of teaching and learning from the constraints of direct demonstration, observation, and experience. The invention of paper and ink, and then the printing press, exponentially increased the quantity of knowledge that could be captured, stored, and disseminated. In this context, modern information and communication technologies are no more than extensions of a trend that began several millennia ago.

Technology however was not solely responsible for advancing teaching and learning amongst humans: abstract thought has perhaps played the most important part through the development of concepts such as education and knowledge. Formal education may have begun as an exercise in training royal accountants and scribes but it very soon expanded to incorporate literature, if only so that those accountants and scribes could, in their writing, emulate the great authors and poets of their time.

Much has changed in how we think about and practice education. Although in theory we still expect education to serve the dual purpose of imparting useful knowledge and skills, and instilling values, in practice most modern education systems place far greater emphasis on the former over the latter. The reasons for this are manifold. In large part it has to do with the pressures placed on education to support social development and thus to demonstrate ‘a return on investment.’ But it also has to do with the rise of moral relativism in some countries, the belief that values systems are inherently subjective and therefore best left to parental and cultural upbringing.

This overtly utilitarian view of education lies at the heart of the modish idea that information and communication technologies can to a large extent replace teachers. If education is viewed solely as a process for imparting useful knowledge and skills then it is likely that technology will render traditional teaching redundant in the not too distant future. But education is always more than this, if its purpose is also to impart values, to inspire, and to socialise, it is one of the most enduring relational activities. It is no accident that high performing education systems from Finland to Singapore, all place the teacher at the heart of the enterprise. Much is expected from teachers but much is also given in the form of professional development, autonomy, and respect.

Technology alone cannot perform this role. But technology can amplify great teaching. And it can build communities of teachers to share and enrich teaching resources and practices. Imagine the power of an education system that could meaningfully share all of the expertise and experience of its educators using digital technology. What if we could get our teachers working on curated crowd-sourcing of educational practice, wouldn’t that be so much more powerful than things like performance-related pay as an approach to professional growth and development? Technology could be used to create a giant open-source community of teachers and educators outside schools and unlock the creative skills and initiative of its teachers, simply by tapping into the desire of people to contribute, collaborate and be recognised for it.

Throughout history, teaching was viewed as a noble and even spiritual calling. In the age of accelerations, it can be even more so.

Links
2017 WISE Summit: "Co-Exist, Co-Create: Learning to Live and Work Together"
For more on education and education policies around the world, visit: http://www.oecd.org/edu
PISA 2015: Compare your country

Join our OECD Teacher Community on Edmodo


Photo credit: @Shutterstock 

Which careers do students go for?

by Marie-Helene Doumet
Senior Analyst, Directorate for Education and Skills

Career decisions are wrought in complexities. Many students start by looking at their interests, selecting a career in line with their personal affinities or aspirations. They will consider their own self-beliefs in their capacity to perform and succeed in a given career, and then factor in labour market prospects, employment, earnings, and the possibilities to progress in their chosen profession over a lifetime.

But career decisions are not only about students’ choices: they also interact with a number of public policy objectives, such as making education systems more efficient, aligning skills to the demands of the labour market, and helping improve social equity. Some countries have sought to promote certain fields or pathways over others through financial incentives or by opening access. Conversely, other fields impose highly selective admissions processes. As students are confronted with more possibilities, it is essential to ensure that they have the proper guidance to navigate through the wealth of pathways open to them. That will ease the sometimes bumpy transition from education to the labour market.

This 2017 edition of Education at a Glance focuses on fields of study – who studies what across different education pathways . Results show that the most common field of study for tertiary students is business administration and law, whereas the fields of natural sciences, mathematics and statistics or information and communications technology (ICT) are the least attractive. Gender differences in enrolments are striking: 24% of entrants into engineering programmes are women compared to 78% in the field of education. The law of supply and demand determines the employment prospects of tertiary graduates. For example,  although they are among the smallest group of tertiary graduates, ICT graduates enjoy one of the highest employment rates. This signals a shortage of supply in the labour market. Data from a new indicator on the national criteria to apply and enter into tertiary education shows that, as tertiary education expands, some countries have turned towards regulating access to certain fields of study in order to link them more strongly with the needs of the labour market.

However, while educational attainment has been expanding over the past decade, there is no guarantee that everyone will progress smoothly through it. In fact, upper secondary graduation is still a challenge for some. A new indicator on upper secondary completion rates shows that almost one in four upper secondary students does not complete the programme within two years of its theoretical end date – of which most drop out of school entirely.

This is not the only area where equity remains elusive. Education at a Glance dedicates a full chapter to the Sustainable Development Goals, analysing where OECD and partner countries stand in their progress towards achieving “inclusive and equitable quality education and promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all”. Results show that while progress has been made, there is still a long way to go on the road to equity and more inclusion in education.

Want to learn more? Education at a Glance 2017 analyses 28 indicators relating to participation in and progress through education, the financial and human resources invested, and the economic and social outcomes expected across OECD and partner countries.You can access and download the data from the OECD Education at a Glance Database; visualise main results for your country from our Compare Your Country interface ; and better understand the methodology underlying the indicators with the updated OECD Handbook for Internationally Comparative Education Indicators.

Links
Education at a Glance (EAG) 2017
OECD Education at a Glance Database
Compare Your Country
OECD Handbook for Internationally Comparative Education Indicators

Follow the conversation on Twitter: #OECDEAG

Join our OECD Teacher Community on Edmodo

Awarding – and imagining – teaching excellence

by Andreas Schleicher
Director, Directorate for Education and Skills

Tonight, the winners of the Higher Education Academy’s newly launched Global Teaching Excellence Award will be announced. The award is a milestone in advancing the higher education agenda. It’s time for teaching excellence to attain the same status and recognition as academic research, which still seems the dominant metric for valuing academic institutions, whether we look at rankings published in the media or research assessment frameworks or at performance-based funding for research.

There are compelling reasons to change this, and the award makes a start.

Tertiary qualifications have become the entrance ticket for modern societies. Never before have those with advanced qualifications had the life chances they enjoy today, and never before have those who struggled to acquire a good education paid the price they pay today. There are always those who argue that the share of young people entering higher education or advanced vocational programmes is too large. But they are usually talking about other people’s children. In the past century, they would have probably argued that there are too many children in high school.

The evidence is clear. On average across OECD countries, men with at least a bachelor’s degree earn over ÚSD 300 000 more than what they paid for their education or lose in earnings while studying, compared with those who only have a high school degree. And taxpayers too realise a return of over USD 200 000 per tertiary graduate in higher public revenues and lower social transfers. It is hard to think of a better investment at a time when knowledge and skills have become the currency of modern societies and economies. And despite the burgeoning number of graduates, we have seen no decline in their relative pay, which is so different from those with fewer qualifications.

But it’s also clear that this entrance ticket to the knowledge society is expensive; and people are generally allotted just one. That makes it so important to get it right. And this is where teaching excellence comes in. We all know that more education alone doesn't automatically translate into better jobs and better lives. We might know graduates who can’t find a job even as we hear employers lament that they can’t find people with the skills they need. Teaching excellence is about ensuring that the right mix of knowledge and skills is delivered in effective, equitable and efficient ways.

And the value of teaching is only bound to rise as digitalisation unbundles educational content, delivery and accreditation in higher education. In the digital age, anything that today you call your proprietary knowledge and content is going to be a commodity available to everyone tomorrow. Accreditation still gives universities enormous power to extract monopoly rents, but just think a few years ahead. What will micro-credentialling do to this system? Or think of what happens when all employers can see beyond degrees to the knowledge and skills that prospective employees actually have. That leaves the quality of teaching as perhaps the most valuable asset of modern higher education institutions. It becomes harder for universities to hide poor teaching behind great research. We are living in this digital bazaar and anything that is not built for the network age is going to crack apart under the pressure.

Future jobs are likely to pair computer intelligence with the creative, social and emotional skills, attitudes and values of human beings. It will then be our capacity to innovate, our awareness and our sense of responsibility that will harness the power of the machines to shape the world for the better. That means faculty need to look for outcomes that are fresh and original, that contribute something of intrinsic positive worth. Achieving these outcomes is likely to involve entrepreneurialism, imagination, inquisitiveness, persistence and collaboration.

As a result, universities’ previous priority of preparing a select few for research has given way to providing up to half the population with advanced knowledge and skills. The result has been the rapid expansion of the higher education sector and the establishment of more diverse types of higher education institutions. There are now over 18 000 higher education institutions in 180 countries that offer at least a post-graduate degree or a four-year professional diploma.

This historic shift has been accompanied by changes in funding regimes. The rising costs of higher education are increasingly borne by students themselves (see, for example, the United Kingdom). So it follows that students are becoming more discriminating consumers. And in choosing between universities, they are also thinking ahead about securing future employment. In response, institutions are competing to provide more relevant knowledge and skills through more effective teaching.

These sweeping developments in the higher education marketplace are intensifying competition. Indeed, a global education market has emerged. In 2015, there were 3.3 million students travelling across OECD countries to study. Others look to the new, internationally available, digital platforms to provide or supplement their learning.

Taken together, these developments have created an urgent demand for data to measure and improve the quality of teaching and learning in higher education. Institutions need data to build on competitive strengths and address weaknesses. Governments need data to determine policy and funding priorities. Employers need data to assess the value of qualifications. And, perhaps most important, students themselves need data so that they can make informed decisions about their preferred place of study and show prospective employers evidence of what they have learned.

But these demands are still often unmet. Without such data, judgements about the quality of higher education institutions will continue to be made on the basis of flawed rankings, derived not from outcomes, nor even outputs, but from idiosyncratic inputs and reputation surveys.

Everyone knows how important data are to me, but I’m also well aware that throwing data into the public space does not, in itself, change the ways students learn, faculty teach and universities operate. We need to get out of the “read-only” mode of our education systems, in which information is presented in a way that cannot be altered. To really change education practice, we need to combine transparency with collaboration.

I am always struck by the power of “collaborative consumption”, where online markets are created in which people share their cars and even their apartments with total strangers. Collaborative consumption has made people micro-entrepreneurs; and collaborative consumption is fuelled by building trust between strangers.

Perhaps the most distinguishing feature of technology is not only that it serves individual learners and educators, but that it can create an ecosystem around learning. Technology can build communities of learners that make learning more social and more fun. And it can build communities of faculty to share and enrich teaching resources and practices. Imagine the power of a higher education system that could meaningfully share all of the expertise and experience of its faculty.

What if we could get faculty working on curated crowd-sourcing of best teaching practice, and perhaps even across institutional and national borders? Technology could create a giant open-source community of faculty, unlocking the creative skills and initiative of so many people simply by tapping into the desire of people to contribute, collaborate and be recognised for it. And we could use technologies to liberate learning from past conventions, connecting learners in new ways, with new sources of knowledge, with innovative applications and with one another. Maybe that’s something for next year’s teaching excellence award.


For the latest data on tertiary education, look out for Education at a Glance 2017, which will be published on 12 September.

Links

Global Teaching Excellence Award

Education at a Glance 2016: OECD Indicators

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