Anthropic Co-Building the Future of AI in Education with Partners
One of the frontier AI companies, Anthropic has been partnering with large educational organizations. My inner journalist was keen to find out more! So I chatted with these amazing and thoughtful people,
Þórdís Jóna Sigurðardóttir, Director of the Directorate of Education and Schools Services in Iceland on their pilot with Anthropic and the Teachers’ Union in Iceland to learn about how AI might actually support teachers by reducing administrative tasks and supporting planning.
Karishma Galani, Co-Lead of PraDigi Innovation Centre lead Pratham International on how they’re building huge possibility for assessment (and verification) anytime, anywhere and ensuring access and capability-building for millions of underserved people in rural India and around the world.
Stephen Jull, Global Head of AI and Edtech at Teach For All on how they are supporting educational entrepreneurs in the 63 TFA countries to collaborate, learn and build AI literacy and applications together, as part of fostering collective leadership.
Kavi Ramburn and Stefan Coetzee on their amazing work with alx_africa demonstrating the incredible tech possibilities being built in Africa, and enabling access, across the continent, to AI capability development, in partnership with forward-thinking governments, such as the Ministry of Education in Rwanda.
We explored:
Questions of access and equity for young people in rural areas and marginalised communities.
Questions of 1-to-1 tutoring as a way to fill the gaps of lack of teachers availability.
Accessible pathways for education for older young people who are starting their careers and learning what is needed to be productive and useful in our current global economies.
What these tools mean for a continent with a huge rising generation of young people, set to be the largest in history.
Teachers as "co-architects" of not only AI pedagogies but also AI development.
Free model use for accessibility.
What does assessment anytime anywhere.
Young people as co-learners.
Communities of practice for educators to feel safe to ask stupid questions.
Dynamic WhatsApp groups of educational entrepreneurs all over the world asking what is needed, and building together.
Piloting in order to genuinely learn and gain more clarity, rather than simply increase speed of implementation.
Reflecting on the kinds of questions that teachers and testing regimes in education are asking of young people.
How do we use AI capabilities to support and reduce the teacher workload administration that pulls teaches away from the human relational work of working with young people.
Clearly there are major challenges in having technology companies influence the direction of education, and I was conscious that I didn't want this to be simply a "puff-piece" for Anthropic. However what I heard from 4 significant education systems innovators was a company that was open to co-building the future of what is needed for our young people.
I still have major reservations about the profit incentives involved and the way in which AI technologies might nudge young humans away from individual screens rather than towards them.
But the fact of AI and its continued development is unarguable. So having committed passionate educators motivated by the well-being of young people and our planet steering the ship feels like a non-negotiable! It was a real pleasure to have had the opportunity to meet some of them in this series of conversations.
