Why Do Board Directors And CEOs Need To Value Quality Education Leveraging AI for Advancing The UNs Sustainability Goals?
UN Sustainability Goal #4 - Quality Education. Dr. Cindy Gordon reinforces this is a human right. ... [+] There is nothing more important that advancing our children's education access. getty  In my last blog the second UN Sustainability Goal: end hunger, achieve food security, and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture, was explored with AI innovation examples. This blog will explore the 4th UN Goal which is Quality Education,  and review Covid-19 impacts on education and then provide examples of how AI can improve educational access, content sourcing, and delivery strategies for personalized learning. Impact of Covid-19  Covid-19 has impacted over 91% of students world-wide due to the closure of schools. Education is the most powerful enabler to escaping poverty and accelerating socio-economic mobility. Some of the riveting UN Facts and Figures impacting childrens education and accelerating higher risks of poverty are:  Perhaps the most worrisome from an AI skills perspective is that more than half of all children and adolescents worldwide are not meeting minimum proficiency standards in reading and mathematics. In 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the globe, the majority of countries announced the temporary closure of schools, impacting more than 91 per cent of students worldwide. By April 2020, close to 1.6 billion children and youth were out of school. And nearly 369 million children who rely on school meals needed to look to other sources for daily nutrition. Never in our most recent history have we had so many children out of school. Learning has been severely disrupted, and the most vulnerable and most marginalized have been the most impacted. The global Covid -19 pandemic has jeopardized hard won gains made in improving global education and the set-backs will require tremendous educational innovation(s). The OECD Report provides a current review of the quantitative, internationally comparable indicators that are particularly relevant to the understanding of the impacts of Covid 19 on education at all levels, and digital learning/literacy for both students and teachers. A recent Unesco April Report also reinforced that although not all students had access to computers; the majority of families have a cell phone. Their research shows that in countries where illiteracy rates are high, access to physical educational materials is low, that large numbers of people read full-length books and stories on rudimentary small mobile screen devices. Despite extreme poverty in many regions of the world, the International Telecommunication Union estimates that of the 7 billion people on Earth, 6 billion have access to a working mobile phone. As math skills are a major foundation for AI skill development, finding quality education sources using AI in advancing math programs can be found from decades of learning science research at Carnegie Mellon University, Carnegie Learning has become a recognized leader in the ed tech space, using artificial intelligence, formative assessment, and adaptive learning to deliver groundbreaking solutions to educations toughest challenges. The solutions developed for the educational technology (EdTech) industry have covered all learning aspects from solutions that enable individual adaptive learning systems that power personalized learning and using AI coaching methods, to Smarter teaching software systems that assist classroom environment management, grading, evaluation and second-language skills development or comprehensive student enrolment and enquiry systems which often now use AI chat bots to interact with students to help them navigate university learning sources. To put this in perspective more, lets review the global VC market growth from 2008 to 2017, the global venture capital investment that flowed into AI-based education reached $1047 billion. During the most disruptive year to schools and society proved lucrative for the education industry, particularly for those raising private capital. In 2020, U.S. education technology startups raised over $2.2 billion in venture and private equity capital across 130 deals, according to the EdSurge Edtech funding database. Examples of companies like Outschool and ClassDojo turn first profits while startups like Quizlet and ApplyBoard reached $1 billion plus valuations. Diverse AI educational applications are listed in this thoughtful summary in IT Chronicles. One of the most fascinating game changing areas in Edtech is the value of a learning assistant in a cobot. A cobot is a robot co-worker that works alongside humans to help them perform their work, so an educational cobot is a robot designed to support human teachers. In a study conducted at the Temporal Dynamics of Learning Centre (TDLC), one of the Science of Learning Centers funded by the US National Science Foundation, they found that young children engaged with a robot called Rubi initially for about 20 min before their attention went elsewhere. However, when the robot was programmed to react to their gaze and look at them, the attention span skyrocketed. The research validated that we are biologically wired by evolution to respond to facial cues in interpersonal interactions. Rubi does not look much like a human, but researchers in Japan have been experimenting with much more lifelike robots. In a Tokyo elementary school a talking humanoid robot named Saya, that was originally developed by professor Hiroshi Kobayashi of the Tokyo University of Science, has been used in the classroom in a limited way. Saya can speak multiple languages, and has an array of motors in her head stretch the soft synthetic skin so that she can display emotions ranging from happiness and surprise to sadness and anger. The robot did prove popular with the students and provoked emotions among them, including one student who cried when told off by Saya. Imagine, though, if Saya had pedagogical skills to supply curriculum enablements. Some of the robots used in South Korean classrooms have been little more than a TV screen on wheels, with the facial expression being handled simply as video in contrast to the multiple motors of the Saya robot. Even with the clever synthetic appearance of Saya, it was obvious that she was a robot and students went and poked the skin of her face, something they would never do with a real teacher. Once their curiosity was satisfied though and they knew what they were dealing with, they could interact with Saya. Cobot interacting with a digital learning solution. getty  Other, off-the-shelf robots like Nao and Pepper from SoftBank Robotics have been used in classrooms and although they have a basic human form (head, eyes, body, arms, hands, legs and feet) they are short and not human sized. Pepper and NAO easily create an empathetic link with students, teachers and researchers by their eye-catching appearances, moderate sizes and humanoid behaviours. Proven by various studies and researches, the main characteristics of our humanoid robots meet the instructional goals in education. Pepper and NAO are versatile and high-performing robots to meet the expectations of teachers and researchers. They are advanced platforms for the in-depth study such as human-machine interaction, cognitive computing and autonomous navigation, etc. We will increasingly see more cobots move into educational and also home learning support systems, as the cost of a monthly subscription fee of $360-$400/month over 36 months leads to an investment of $14,000. Hanson Robotics is launching Little Sophia, the little sister of Sophia and she is the newest member of the Hanson Robotics family. She is 14 tall and your robot friend that makes learning STEM, coding and AI a fun and rewarding adventure for kids 8+ years old. Little Sophia was made available in early 2021. Our vision at Hanson Robotics is to bring robots to life, David Hanson, founder of Hanson Robotics has stated: our team of A.I. developers, engineers, roboticists, scientists, and artists have designed Little Sophia with the expressiveness and engaging personality that made Sophia the Robot so appealing, further extending the reach of our character-driven A.I. technology. Little Sophia when launched sold for $149 to $129 USD/month subscription. However, often pricing promotions featuring Sophia are at $99.00 USD/mo. Although these costs may seem high - costs will continue to drop as more mass consumption business models move to ensure all of Sophias learning brain power is delivered via your mobile device then learning enablements driven by AI will accelerate even further. I think we can all envision a future where $5.00/month will allow powerful learning assistants, like NAO, Pepper, or Little Sophia will be with us 7x24. Conclusion  Board directors and CEOs need to accelerate their knowledge of AI and appreciate how AI can be used to solve major global challenges - the number four sustainability challenge is quality education. To tackle the worlds biggest sustainability challenges, board directors and CEOs need to understand how AI, combined with advanced technologies, can enable education to be far more reachable and transform all educational operating processes. Edtech innovations are fuelling digital literacy reach in ways that twenty years ago we would have thought were simply impossible, ridiculed, or dismissed. Hopefully, these AI examples can help leaders think of how their sustainability goals can further support the UN Nations goal to achieve - higher quality education and access. As board directors and CEOs support on-boarding intelligent cobots into their office and home environments, new ideas will emerge. With Google amassing millions of search content relevance, daily, its search engines can today find you almost everything you are curious to learn about. Countries like China, South Korea and Japan are innovating rapidly in bringing educational cobots into their classrooms and homes to support personalized learning. Many kindergardens in China have adopted Keeko, an educational teaching assistant to support students learning needs. So far, Keeko cobots in China are already in over 1000 kindergartens. Guo Changchen, the CEO of Keeko Robot Technology, said. Teachers can prepare the lessons and upload the content to the robots. As more data is accumulated, the robots will become smarter and more helpful.  If you bring the perspective that all learning knowledge will be accessible to everyone in the future in low cost access channels, mobile devices, and in time cobots will simply be as affordable as renting Netflix/month at $8.99 USD/month. As Netflix looks to the future, we can already see the company amassing more educational content and what if Netflix partnered with Hanson Robots and brought Sophia to the Netflix channel as an interactive AI bot. Add in a partnership with Google, for more knowledge access flow to Sophias brain - or even better, perhaps Google will design and introduce its own Google Educational physical cobot - what ever transpires more emergence in design will be sure to unfold and make our world even more interesting. Quality education helps us fight poverty and build a stronger world. Every change starts with board directors and CEOs supporting new business transformation and sustainability funding pathways. What is clear is EdTech AI strategies and investments are enabling stronger foundations for achieving the UN Sustainability goal of ensuring quality education for everyone. More Information:  The United Nations developed in 2015 the Sustainable Development Goals as an universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet and improve the lives and prospects of everyone, everywhere. The 17 Goals were adopted by all UN Member States in 2015, as part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development which set out a 15-year plan to achieve the Goals. To see the full AI Brain Trust Framework introduced in the first blog, reference here. To learn more about Artificial Intelligence, and the challenges, both positive and negative, refer to my new book, The AI Dilemma, to guide leaders foreword. Note:  If you have any ideas, please do advise as I welcome your thoughts and perspectives.