[BLANK_AUDIO] Do you think we'll get to a point where we can augment the teacher in the classroom with AI? I think class size has always been an issue and AI can help with that. [MUSIC] [MUSIC] Hi, I'm Larry Dignan, Editor in Chief at ZDNet. Today we're talking about AI and how it applies to education. With me is Mary Jo Foley, our resident Microsoft expert and Andrew Brust who is CEO of a consulting firm called Blue Badge Insights. Mary Jo, how do you see AI being applied to education? And basically what's hype and what's reality. Eductaion is kind of in its early days. There are definitely some applications happening out there for it around things like predicting student behaviours, outcomes of class rooms, grading and scoring standardized tests. But in terms of much bigger, larger scale projects, I think it's still a bit early. For not just Microsoft but all of the vendors. There's a lot to be done in terms of evaulating how students are doing, how the student body in general is doing, and also how teachers are doing. And it doesn't have to be an invasive kind of evaluation. I don't think we're gonna see AI take over the job of a teacher. I think what we're hopefully gonna see is AI take on the more sort of tedious parts of follow up and data and allow the teacher to offer the kind of support And sophisticated outreach that teachers are great at giving these things. I think too you're gonna see more things like tools tailored to specific students who need some extra help. Things like tools for the kids who are dyslexic that learn from behaviors of dyslexic kids in the school system. A massive reading, things of that nature where it's kind of like AI for good but it's also meant to make it easier on the teachers who don't have time and have much bigger class sizes to deal with. What do you think a super [UNKNOWN] principal has to say to parents when they're talking about AI? It's hard to give individual attention And well I won't wanna say that the technology is substitute for individual attention. Technology can probably deliver a lot of this stuffs that missing one individualized attention isn't there and I think that super internet really need to convey that a lot of the issue in kind of delivery of education. Is around resources and technology and machines can really help you there. As far as the [INAUDIBLE] like every school district, every university they all have these systems and all those things running around. How do you bring all about that together to use an AI? And it's tricky too because a lot of schools whether public or private Seem to change their system every few years. So it's all really going to be about data integration. It's going to be about standards, so that even if there really is a whole motley crew of classroom management and curricular management, that we're able to put all this stuff together in a conformed way and build models that Kinda work across just strikes as industry standards. I think we'll get there. But it's as with many things in AI it's early days yet. Where do you think we need to go in terms of educating whether its a business school or engineering, how do we get folks schooled up on AI, data science, and those type of thing And this is probably the top priority, too. Because talent shortage is just the big thing in AI, in every industry. So you've got to think about education. They want to train more data scientists. So part of the way they're doing it, I know Microsofts participating here is getting more people certified around AI I think that one thing higher Add has to realise is that ultimately the way we're gonna get Air Aired a scale is to have it more encapsulated and not need as many data sciences to make it deployable and applicable. I think even current volumes the number of data sciences we're putting out there. There's more than enough room for those folks and it'll be great to have them But ultimately to make AI scale, it's gonna be to remove the dependency on data scientist to get it done. We're gonna need the skillset of enterprise developers to be sufficient. And the other thing just to throw out there, don't forget to lever lights, like into it they're actively recruiting English major And stuff like that, because to make AI legit, and AI to be used in a way that's actually human, you need people who can tell stories and those type of things. A big part of AI is cognitive science and philosophy. Natural language processing goes right into linguistics. There's a ton of liberal arts there, it's not all Three to five years from now, AI's [INAUDIBLE] what's the vision look like? What do you see happening? I think we'll see a lot of the systems that we have now for classroom management, assignments, communication [INAUDIBLE]. Students, teachers and parents. We'll have a lot more AI build into it. So, I think it wll be less about discrete AI and more about enbedded AI, more about contextual AI, that's really where it's going to become more powerful. One Note is huge, that's Microsoft's kind of biggest play into education, and right now they're trying to build more and massive Experiences and tools write into one note. So that you don't know you're using AI, but it's kind of taking your signals and increasingly adapting itself to you and getting smarter. Mary Joe, Andrew, thanks for joining me today. And to learn more about AI and how it applies to education, see the URL below. [MUSIC]