Will AI 'Transform' Education Like MOOCs Did?

The year 2023 brought an overwhelming wave of excitement about artificial intelligence in education, reminiscent of another moment a decade ago. In 2013, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) dominated headlines with promises of revolutionary change in education. As someone who has witnessed both movements firsthand, I see striking parallels that offer valuable insights about technology’s role in educational transformation.

The MOOC revolution did bring remarkable benefits. Today, I can sit in my living room and attend lectures from renowned professors at Stanford or Wharton through platforms like Coursera, YouTube, and Udemy. For many learners, including myself, this level of access to quality education was once unimaginable. However, when we examine whether MOOCs truly transformed education as promised, the reality is more nuanced.

The fundamental challenge lies in how we think about transformation. Technology, whether MOOCs or AI, represents a means to an end, not an end in itself. Yet in education, we often struggle to clearly articulate what that end should be. This is where the real disruption is needed.

I’m reminded of my own educational journey - four years spent earning a bachelor’s degree in electronics technology, studying over 40 subjects and passing countless examinations. Today, in my professional life, I rarely use the specific technical knowledge I gained. The sine waves, civil engineering beams, and semiconductor principles that once consumed my studies have faded into memory. Those four years feel, in some ways, disconnected from my current reality.

This disconnect points to deeper questions that technology alone cannot answer. When I work with AI tools like ChatGPT, Bard, and Github Copilot, I’m genuinely amazed by their capabilities. I’ve even promoted their potential in my social media posts. Yet I remain unconvinced that these tools can replace human educators or fundamentally transform education on their own.

The real transformation requires us to grapple with essential questions about the nature of education itself. Should we teach nuclear physics to first graders? Is it reasonable to burden students with massive debt for higher education? How do we handle the explosion of skills in the modern workforce? Should education remain under state control? Can we create meaningful taxonomies of employable skills?

In my work as an Edtech entrepreneur, I’ve seen firsthand how AI tools can enhance certain aspects of education. Take language translation, for instance. While AI has dramatically improved our ability to translate educational content between languages, human oversight remains crucial for accuracy and context. This illustrates a key principle: AI serves best as an assistant to human educators rather than their replacement.

The parallel with MOOCs is instructive. A decade ago, MOOCs were heralded as the solution to education’s problems. While they’ve certainly improved access to learning resources, they haven’t transformed education in the way many predicted. Similarly, AI tools offer powerful capabilities that can enhance teaching and learning, but true transformation will require us to address the fundamental questions about what education should achieve in our rapidly changing world.

Idolizing any technology, whether MOOCs or AI, won’t transform education. Real transformation demands a deeper examination of our educational goals, methods, and structures. As we integrate AI into education, we must remain focused on these essential questions while leveraging technology thoughtfully to support our answers.

The future of education lies not in the blind adoption of new technologies, but in their careful integration into a reimagined educational system that better serves modern needs. This requires us to move beyond the hype cycles that characterize both MOOCs and AI, focusing instead on the fundamental purpose and practice of education in our evolving world.