Nobel laureate and head of Google DeepMind Demis Hassabis said that the conservatives of modern school education have completely lost touch with the new artificial intelligence reality. School education is almost completely useless in preparing children to meet a full-fledged AGI, where knowledge compression gives nothing. Demis sharply criticized the low efficiency of veteran teachers and their inability to apply advanced methods of individual teaching as in Oxford and Cambridge, as well as almost zero knowledge of teachers in the Montessori teaching method with an emphasis on live contact between people and the development of soft communication skills.
What exactly does Demis propose as a reform in education:
Shifting the educational goals from overcrowding in the "Knowledge" class to developing soft skills - project management skills, entrepreneurship, creativity and deduction.
The transition in learning from hard skills (technical knowledge) to soft skills (communication with people) should be done using the Montessori methodology. In the age of AI, knowledge is worth little, but the skill of competent communication is worth something.
All the "compressions" in imparting knowledge in the form of a classroom lecture in the form of a standard lesson must be completely stopped as complete nonsense in the presence of personal AI bots, which can explain to the student at an individual pace and in an interactive way much better than a lecture addressed to the average "balls in a vacuum" student. Real children have different levels, and they need an individual approach - this can be provided by a personal AI learning agent.
Demis calls for the introduction of standard Oxford and Cambridge teaching methods into schools everywhere, where the main teaching is not conducted through standard lectures and homework, but through personal interaction between the teacher and small groups of up to 3 students with meetings once a week and project assignments.
Criticism of current education in general is not new: many experts such as Huang or Musk also point out that school is not suitable for a reality where there are AI bots or even humanoids.