Hello everyone, welcome back to another episode of Teach Steep
Repeat. My name is Dylan.
And my name's Hayden. And before we start, Dylan,
you'll see your mouth going. You always pick on me at the
start of the episode, so I thought I'd pick on you.
You're wearing a Gym Shark hoodie right now, and you
haven't been to the gym in about 10 years.
Is there a reason for that? I'm also not a shark.
Well, you know, that was a bit more obvious.
I don't actually, but you have not you have not been to the gym
in a long time. Just came back to me and I am a
shark. Like in clothing I can realise
not not even a shark who can talk.
Just a shark. Not me in shark form.
A literal shark. Only at this point and I realise
a shark let me in the house, a shark got me a drink, a shark
took me upstairs, turned the lights on.
Not only that, I'm just doing dumbbells the whole time as
well. So what do you mean?
Yeah? I'm a gym shark.
Do you know what? Do you know what?
Bloody you take it all back? Bloody you take it all back.
Also, sorry, very brave coming from a man with some kind of
foreign language written on their top that could say
anything. Yeah.
Well, do you know what it says? No.
Well, I'll tell you then. In that case, it says this
podcast is great and you wouldn't even know.
You know, there's things of people who get tattoos and it
turns out it says like completely, yeah, that's you
right now. So funny.
That says something on the lines of teachers suck.
Look what he's saying to you guys.
It might do or it might. It might just say T-shirt, it
might just say extra large. I don't know.
Have you seen the flip version where there's pictures of people
in like Asian countries and it just says like smile?
Yeah, or again tattoos. They get something tattooed in
English on their on their arm and just doesn't make sense.
Loading like in their language it means really profound about
building up in English is just loading.
Yeah, yeah, does not have the same profound nature.
We took a bit of a detour there, but anyway, today's episode is
all about artificial intelligence.
Now something we talked about before, but the reason we want
to talk about it today is because we've just got back from
BET 2026 and I would say the biggest thing on my mind when I
finished was sure excitement. There's lots of real good use
cases for artificial intelligence now can help
education, but also I, I can't shake off and I've never been
able to do this in education. The reality of actually
implementing it and how realistic it will be and what
will actually happen then in the future.
So do you want to lay a bit of context down, a little bit of
our thoughts and what we even did there?
Who did we hear? Yeah, yeah, sure.
So like just to sort of jump on what you said, my first thought
at bet was, is there anything but AI?
Because there was so much stuff and even last year we went and
we thought, oh, has a lot of AI stands popping up now?
Because it was kind of, you know, the rise of AI, but it
felt like genuinely everything was about AI there, wasn't it?
Like all of the because we booked in for a few talks and in
the arena, which is really cool. And yeah, I looked at loads of
stand and it was just this everything has AI at the end of
the name AI in the name somewhere to be like, hey, look
us, we're using AI come and check us out.
So that I think that's important context in terms of clearly it's
on everyone's minds. So one of the one of the biggest
things that happened was Bridget Phillipson came out and did a
talk and we were in the arena at the time and.
Education Secretary for anyone listening who might not be in
the UK, thank. You for the clarification and
she. Hated talking by the way.
He's a host of TC Repeat everyone listening outside of
the normal listeners. What we might do is every
sentence, if you could. Just sentence is just a group of
words put together to make a phrase that makes sense on its
own if you. Could just summarise what I'm
saying each time, that'd be great.
Saying is when you're talking. You've done it in in a certain
tense. This is horrendous.
I'd be impressed if you can go on, right.
So yeah, Bridget Phillips came out and and did did quite a long
talk and a lot of it really was centred around AI and how she
thinks. And the government, I guess
think that AI can be a huge player in solving a lot of the
problems in education. It's it's quite a wide open
point. And if you want to sort of nail
down and start anywhere in this. Yeah, it, it was good.
Do you know what I'll say genuinely, Bridget Phillips, in
my time as a teacher, I think it's the most I've I've seen
passion come through. Yeah, for sure.
And genuine desire for implementing technology in a way
that's going to help teachers and just passion for education
in general and specifically around social mobility and SEND
that comes through in everything she says.
So like I, I was very, I, I feel very grateful.
You know, I've seen the merry go round of education secretaries
over the whole time that I've been a teacher.
And I do think that her message is on point and I do think she's
saying the right thing. So that's, that's a really good,
solid start. Genuinely.
I, I just feel like sometimes when she was talking about what
they're doing and implementing, she announced like 6 or 7
different things. Yeah, it turned into a bit of a
party political broadcast really, which, which I
understand. Obviously she's going to do
that. It's a good place to announce
these things. But it, it felt like, yeah,
they're putting money in the right place.
It's not enough money. I don't personally think, no.
And the big push about how technology can transform
education and help teachers, She was very, very, very clear it's
not about replacing teachers. We'll come on to that later
because I'm not sure in general what will happen, but she was
very, very clear about how it's helping teachers and students,
right and and kids to learn more.
My worry with it is that the actual physical hardware and
technology I've got an iPad here in classrooms does not remotely
match what the vision is for using it to help children and
teachers alike. For sure that that to me is the
thing that screamed out that I I'll just want to get on the
roof to I want to get I want to start a podcast, you know, where
I've got people listening and say only if only we had a
platform to sort the people and just say this is the issue.
Do you think then, because I've been really thinking about this
since at the first, I was very much on the side of one line of
thought, which is schools don't have enough money to get the
tech, to get the iPads, to get the computers, the laptops,
whatever it is, to be able to harness the full power of all of
this tech, whether it's AI or not.
And I've that's where I started and I'll share my sort of
thoughts now. But is that what you think?
Do you feel like the problem is simply this?
Schools aren't being given enough money to invest in tech?
That's it. There's multiple things going
on. Lots of schools have enough
tech, so where do they get the money from?
Yeah, right. They got the money daily, right?
I think lots of schools are making decisions, maybe to spend
money elsewhere. I think that's also because of
necessity half the time, right? We've got a bunch of money.
What we're going to spend on, OK, maybe cover because we need
to actually cover our teachers properly.
Or maybe I'm going to spend it on playground equipment because
PE is very important and physical health is super
important. And maybe in my catchment area,
actually we're really behind on a certain thing.
So I'm going to boost some money into that.
All these decisions are fine and makes sense, but unless you have
a real clear tech part that is for tech, money's going to
haemorrhage out of that. So I don't think it's just
simply saying the government aren't giving enough money.
I think it's a whole system of we need to simply have a set of
money and funding going into schools to make sure tech is up
to date and it's ring fenced and it's extra and it's, and it's
important to have because it feels like, again, it's just
another thing that the government can say is really
important and will really transform things.
Can you please just make sure you do it?
It's a, oh, wait, I've got 30 Chromebooks between 100 and 20
kids per year group, and four of the Chromebooks don't work.
At one point. It's like, OK, cool.
Let's look at all of the really good tech options for children
that can help their learning. We need more of a ratio than
that for it to actually be effective.
Yeah. So we have to, we have to make
sure that schools are getting the technology they need because
I can imagine a school in a rural area looking at what the
government are saying and nothing will cut through because
the first thing that score in the rural area needs is the
funding to have the technology to be able to access it.
That has to come first. Yeah, I fully agree.
There's a bit of a catch 22 as well in terms of the tech when
when schools don't have enough tech, sorry, don't have enough
devices to use the tech. Sometimes that can actually make
the tech they're trying to use genuinely A nuisance.
And then, you know, it's like, unless you have the full set of
equipment, the tech is actually less effective.
It's annoying because like you said, like things are not
working on one class they've got going on a rota now and then
they're just it's annoying to use and that just isn't good
because this is great tech solutions that people are then
going, Oh, this is rubbish. Doesn't work.
It's not that it doesn't work, it's just that you don't have
the right equipment to use it. So that's one point.
And then secondly, yeah, I kind of basically I agree what you
said about the tech pot of money.
It has to, it has, it's the only way.
Because I look at when you look at some schools where you say,
well, they've managed to do the tech, they've managed to get all
of the equipment in their school.
So therefore clearly all schools can do it.
I hate that generalisation because I'm like, we don't know.
You don't know what that school prioritised.
Yeah, they might have cut back on other things that when you
find out about what they cut back on, you think, oh, you
can't cut that. That's a significant thing.
You're just looking at the fact that they have the equipment.
So it has to be regardless of what schools already have or
don't have right now. I feel like there has to be a
top down approach of we are going to equip all of our
schools with enough equipment so that all of this stuff we're
saying about tech can actually be implemented properly because
one without the other doesn't really make any sense.
And that's when it comes back around to, and we've mentioned
this before in the past, lip service.
When people, governments, whatever policy makers say stuff
and it sounds great. There's a glaringly obvious
problem that could be solved that isn't solved.
That's when I go, oh, OK, this, this is meaningless.
And this is just lip service. You're, you're not actually,
you're not actually trying to solve this problem because, you
know, you know, these schools have no equipment and you're
saying tech is the solution and then going blind eye walk away.
Yeah, that's just not good to me.
We can solve teacher burnout because it's going to do lots of
marking for you. Isn't that fantastic?
Oh, really? Wait, can we have the thing to
do on? No, no, no.
OK, so it's not. Get it from your existing
budgets. We don't have our existing
budgets already completely stretched.
And if we if we would have to fire ATA to do this and we don't
really want to do that, it's ethical to consideration the
other school did it. Yeah, OK, that's up to them.
Like right. Can we all just have the same
part for this thing? Can you just say here how much
you need? Here you go.
Here's an iPad for every kid. That is such a good point you
made about how when you're discussing something in
particular, it's easy to make comparisons between schools.
But schools are so much more complex than that.
Like you said that school with one iPad per kid very much may
well not have any support stuff. They they may have made that
decision. Right.
And I'm not saying that's the right way to go either, because
I think people can sometimes think, oh, well, you're saying
one tech, more tech in the classroom.
That means at this expense that's bad, you're terrible.
No, it's not what I'm saying. I'm just saying that as a
baseline, we need to have that. There's there's something else
that really jumped out at me that I find fascinating is the
political problem. Like I genuinely understand how
it's easy for us to sit here and say, well, why don't you just do
that? Isn't that easy.
If you don't go on politicians, why don't you just give everyone
an iPad, etcetera. They must be constantly walking
a rope of appeasing people. At the end of the day, they're
there to serve the people. And there is a significant
portion of society and it's growing who look at tech and say
tech in schools and screens in schools equals bad.
So in the one breath you've got the government saying how
important tech is for the classroom.
I agree, by the way, because they're going to enter the real
world, which is so tech heavy. We have to make sure that
they're learning how to actually use these devices properly and
also just like get the most out of them, right?
But then at the same time, we're explaining how it's so important
to do that. Tech's really important.
It's going to save teachers time in the classroom.
Kids need to use it and and use it well.
At the same time, you've got people saying no screens in the
classroom, technology, what my kid has any technology in the
classroom, I'll be taking them out of that school.
Then that's awful for them and you've got the government
releasing a device on screen time, etcetera.
In the early years, they're going to be releasing, as
Bridget was saying, they're going to extend that and give
advice for infants, give advice for primary, give advice for
secondary, so that that's going to be given, right?
So it'd be really, really interesting to see how this
tightrope is kind of walked because my genuine opinion is we
need way more tech in schools. But I do think there'll be a big
push back from a, from a big, big section of societies.
Like how do you think about that?
I do wonder if that guidance they're going to bring out, you
know, the, the screen time guidance, which I starting with
sort of early years and then they're going to, she said.
They're going to work their way out.
It could be a really big force for good, you know, yeah, I
think it could be the government's way of very nicely
saying to parents and people who are more carers, whoever who are
sort of anti screen time completely and can't see the
nuance between YouTube algorithm brain rot and actual educational
software that's really helpful like Mapsu.
Like Mapsu, you know can't see the difference just.
Randomly pick one out there. Yeah, he just thought of one on
top of. Your head.
Yeah, massive. Yeah, exactly.
Demo down below. But the way you're clever,
you're not into this. So but what, what that guidance
might end up doing is actually saying, Oh yeah, a little nod to
it, yet all too much screen time is bad.
But and then really from a top down policy makers perspective,
just say, but you do just need to stop putting it all in the
same category though, because this is actually good.
Government is saying this is OK, this is fine.
Can we please stop panicking about it?
And yeah, this stuff that we all think is bad is is, funnily
enough, bad for kids. Strangely enough, yes, it's
unsupervised, isn't it? At the hands of the tech giants,
yeah. Your attention because I think
people worried that this guidance is going to come out
and just be like pandering to parents and carers who think
this and say Oh yeah, screen times terrible.
We're going to start banning screens in schools now.
I think people worrying, it's going to be that, like, I'd be
very surprised. It's not, it's not if that's
what it was. And also this is the thing,
there's no nuances. This is what I mean about.
It's a tightrope because I get what you're saying, right?
It could be, it could be a blessing in disguise where it
brings everyone together like it's lovely and roses.
What will what will actually happen is both sides will think
it doesn't go far enough for their side and both sides will
hate it. It's like the guidance that was
released about earlier screen time, right?
You had some people who said it, it should completely say no
screen time ever for children. That's ridiculous, isn't awful.
And it said actually it compared between 5 hours a day and 45
minutes a day, even 45 minutes a day is awful and they weren't
happy right. Then the other side, you had
children of parents of special educational needs, children who
say that the screen time is is a real device they can use to help
their children actually get through the day.
And they were annoyed because they were saying you're not
thinking about SEND children in this.
And I just look at them, everyone in this situation, I
just go it's a guidance document.
Do you know what guidance is? Guidance isn't every single
person in the world to follow this all of the time.
This is just some advice. What do you want the government
to do in this situation? Because if they wholly side with
you, they're going to alienate 99% of people.
This isn't for an individual, this is guidance.
It's best practise for most children.
It's not hitting everything at once.
And I just worry that as we extend this up, anyone who isn't
on the exact one percentile of what the guidance says will
think it's too far the other way.
I'm not quite right and it will end up making more people angry
than actually making them feel better about it.
And I just think that's what I mean when I say it's a
tightrope. And I think what the government
has to do and what I would love to see more of from politicians
in general is have an ideology that's backed up in evidence and
research and mean something and go with it.
And then spend their time trying to argue and convince people why
that's the right thing to do rather than trying to pander to
everyone and make everyone feel happy.
You will never succeed at that. So why don't you just go for
something you actually believe in and try and convince people
of it? You got voted in for a reason.
Just go forward and do it and explain why it's a force for
good. And you know what?
If it doesn't work in the long run, you'll be out of office
next time. Yeah, definitely, definitely.
I like your point about guidance.
Can't please everyone. It's true because it has to be
for the average person, like, like there's always.
Even that sounds bad. You mean although people listen
to you, right? Very quickly because you didn't
mean it in a bad way. But even you saying the average
person made me think of, oh, am I not an average person?
Oh, my God. Yeah.
No, I mean that, you know, automatically.
Yeah, No, I know what you mean. But there'll be people listening
about as my child, not an average child, just because.
They've got this. Yeah, it's not.
What, you mean it's just, yeah, I don't know how to explain it a
different way. The graph I'm thinking of in my
head in terms of like, everyone is in this graph somewhere and
there's always outliers in every graph ever.
Yeah. Ever.
Yeah. Like when you've got X&Y this
way, there is going to be someone, yeah, who's right up
here. And there's gonna be someone
who's right down here. And they are outliers to where
the general bulk of people are. And guidance generally comes in
to say, OK, we've got the big bulk of people here.
Yeah, this is generally guidance, but we're aware that
this might not be suitable for every single individual.
And the fact that people don't understand that I'm like, I
don't, yeah, you can't win. There is no win because you
can't please every single person.
So let's talk that that was Bridget Phillipson.
So she did, Yeah. Really interesting chat, very AI
focused. Very tech focused, very
interesting in your opinion on the whole.
Then you finish that chat, you know the government starts and
stuff. How would you rate it?
What do you feel about is it? Is it a solid position?
Do you agree with it in general? What?
What's your feeling? Overall, quite positive.
To be honest with you. I, I didn't really feel
negative. I, I, I felt like all the things
she was saying, it was a fairly strong position of I think she
could have pandered more to Oh yeah, no, tech is bad in schools
because of screen time. She didn't do that at all.
I felt like she was very much saying, no, actually tech is
really good and we're actually we're going to push more.
I think you know, there was and you find the right thing
allocated. Yeah, absolutely.
I think it is the right thing because like you said, we live
in a tech heavy world. It's only going to get more
techie. I don't know what world people
are living in where they think that we're suddenly going to
regress back in terms of tech and how much is in our lives.
It's not happening. It's just not happening.
And we can use it to for so much good, so much good, not just in
education across, you know, the world.
You see, you see loads of good uses of AI and tech in, in the
world of medicine and, you know, and in education, obviously it
can be used for good as well. Like, I don't know, I don't know
how it's so black and white to me.
So of course it was a good move. There's so much in my life as an
adult that tech has made better that I would hate it to have a
lobby group in that certain area go no, no, it's too much.
Yeah, yeah, Yeah. Well.
Oh, actually, that's made me have my screening more accurate
now for my health, actually. Exactly.
So that sounds quite good. Yeah, I get it.
With children, we want to protect children.
That's that's our number one aim as educators.
We always say if you were to ask me my role as a teacher, my
number one thing was always safety of children.
So I, I please don't think I'm not taking that seriously, but I
just think that you, you, that's why I think you.
Can do it, Yeah, yeah. That's why I think it's like,
without sounding common control tech, it's not actually that
hard to ensure the tech is safe. Like in in all seriousness, is
doing 10 minutes of your practise on a maths app in
school with your teachers like actually watching over you and
monitoring it and setting it for you and then when you finish
they give you some intervention. Are you are you?
Do you? Do you really going to try and
convince me? That that's bad.
Yeah, yeah, genuinely. Or that or that it's no better
than having a a sheet in front of them like and it's so easy to
say what number one, the two things to me, everything now of
tech, especially now we're building a mass platform, right.
Is does it save the teacher time?
That's what it's like a separate thing that's just great.
Anyway, does it save the teacher time?
Yes. Cool.
They get instant live gap analysis, for example, with like
with Mapsu or instant generation of multiple questions.
I don't know. Or the ability to see an
intervention group. I'm not trying, I promise.
I'm turning to a sales pitch, but it is.
It is. Doing all the things that the
tech should be good for. And then what, you're I'm going
to tear you up here because a lot of people say that's great,
but it's at the expense of the kids.
Yeah, and it's not because if it can save the teachers time and
it's also literally better for the kids because it's more, it's
more personalised, it's more adaptive.
It can do things that one person with a with pen and paper just
can't do quick enough. You might be able to do it if
you have three hours, but you don't have three hours.
You're in the middle of a lesson, like if it's better for
the children and it's better and faster and gives more deeper
analysis, stuff that you could never get as a teacher and saves
you time. It's a no brainer.
So the only barrier at that point is the kids haven't got
the, the, the equipment. So that's why full circle
finishing this conversation about Bridget Phillips and her
and her chat. That's why to me it's, it's been
out like this stuff's been around for like 20 years.
Do you know what I mean? Like iPads, It's not like it's
brand new and it's like, oh, we're working on it.
We're going to start getting that funding together for this
new tech, for this new equipment in schools.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Computers have been around for
like 30 years in schools. iPads have honestly been around for at
least 15 years in schools. Like what are we talking about?
Come on. It's it's been so long now that
there isn't really much excuse. It's just OK, let's just let's
just get it done. Yeah, get it done, get it done.
And then from there the kids will benefit.
Absolutely. I completely agree.
I'm I'm very excited by it. I just think that has to come
first. It just has to second thing then
before we go on to our. So the main bulk, what we'll do
later is we'll talk from a more, I suppose, practical point of
view from teaching how useful AI is for different jobs around,
around the classroom. What, what, whether it's a good
thing or a bad thing, come on to that.
But one thing I wanted to talk about very quickly was what I
found one of the most captivating talks I've actually
listened to in a long time where I was really like really on the
edge of my seat listening to every word they were saying.
And it was Amor Rajam from who hosts University Challenge.
Yes, an amazing journalist, does BBC as well.
And he's got a podcast a minute called Radical where he's going
in depth about people who like being radical in certain things.
That was one about foster carers recently.
He's got Jonathan Height coming on who did the anxious
generation talking about smartphones, etcetera.
So I'm really interested and you can just tell Amor really goes
into depth about the things he's talking to someone about.
And he's such a powerful interviewer because he knows it
really well, but understands that there's an expert over the
way. And he was talking to Hannah
Fry. Everyone knows Hannah Fry, Fry
squared. She's you're a big fan.
Huge. Fan just going back for a second
just gassing up Hannah Fryer. She's awesome.
I remember probably around the same same time we found it,
there was a YouTube channel called Number File.
Still is number file if you're into maths.
Which we are. Did you and you just?
You just like nerding out about maths things.
It's just cool math stuff. Number file is a great channel
and Hannah Fry, she think she still might do to be there but
she there was certainly a period of time like 78910 years ago
where she did loads of videos with number file.
And that is originally probably about 10 years ago how I got
introduced to her and I remember watching the video thinking
she's awesome. I want to watch her explain more
stuff. Also just fun fact, she does not
age. She does.
I was not age. I saw her on stage with with
ammo doing this talk and I was like, you look exactly, exactly
the same, Paul. Rudd and Hannah Fryer having the
same diet in your samples? Go.
Seriously, go pull up a pull up a thumbnail from 10 years ago on
YouTube. She has not aged at all as
mental. Whereas you do, I don't.
Actually I don't I will look like this hopefully until I'm
70. But the, the, the chat they had
was really interesting. It was all about AI, it was all
about artificial intelligence. And it kind of it was, it was
like embedded in education, but talked about like wider society
as well. And something I found so
interesting and it really got me thinking was they were talking
about how AI will transform education, right?
So whether we like it on our AI is here to stay, what's it going
to do? And they spoke about how
currently AI, for example, there's a lot of worry in in
university for students, etcetera.
Sixth form, how AI is writing essays for the children.
OK. And it's like, cool, I've got a
shortcut now I can just write an essay, get it done, get it
graded. There's my B, Boom, I've got it.
And it really highlighted this, this issue and this thought
about how what is the point of learning?
And AI has really put a microscope on it because for
those children, the point of learning was to get to the grade
at the end. And that is something I think is
so problematic in education all the way through that What's the
point of learning to pass the test?
What's the point in VA 6 to make sure the SAT results are good at
the end? What's the point in secondary
school to get your GCSE for your qualifications?
I understand in isolation why those things are important, but
it became the whole reason for education for a lot of teachers.
I've got to get them through this test.
I'm just doing it for the test. Doing it for the test.
AI comes along and makes the end product something you can just
do in five seconds. It solves the problem if you
think about it, AI solving that problem.
I've written an essay for you. I've saved you 6 hours.
Isn't everyone says AI is 4? Isn't that fantastic?
And for me, what it's highlighted is how education
needs a revamp. Whether we've got AI or not.
Education needs to be resented to the act of learning is the
point of learning. Why else do we learn if not for
the journey and the struggle and trying something and getting it
wrong and finding something out and seeing that it works and
spotting patterns? The act of doing that, much like
problem solving in maths, the act of doing something you don't
know how to get to the end, but you're going to try and get
there anyway based on what you've learned with someone, a
teacher normally alongside you, prompting you in the right
direction. That's the point of learning.
And it I found it fascinating how they spoke about how AI is
taking that away and it almost doesn't matter anymore.
And I'm interested to your points about, we talk about AI
in tech and how it's so important that it should be
implemented in education correctly.
Do you think that's a problem and an issue then that it could
end up being? We're not really focusing on
what's important. Oh, big time, big time.
I think I think Hannah, she went really like meta with this and
she was talking about almost like the whole world and just I
like even like lifespans and she was like we and I agree.
We really just need to challenge the status quo completely of
like how life works now. She was like, AI is going to be
so disruptive and such a fast moving tech that we already need
to stop looking at life as, Oh yeah, you go to school, you work
for X amount of years, you get these grades so that you can get
this job and you work that job for 40 years so that you can
retire and have a nice bit of time before you die.
That is what she said. And and she was like, that's
just not going to be a thing anymore.
Like we're already seeing the disruption of people having to
retrain after five years in a job because, oh, hey, I can do
it now. It's happened in the short span
of AI going from this little gimmicky thing to where it is
now of in that time, it's already eradicated certain jobs
or or at least huge, you know, chunks of certain jobs, and
that's just fast. It just fascinates me like it.
It not only does the education, you know, structure of education
just need to be completely dismantled all of life.
It's just. Like.
We need to start what are we preparing children for?
But ultimately it's for the workforce generally.
That's what we know people, society says about education.
Well, the workforce is changing rapidly, and the workforce is
going to be nothing like it used to be.
So actually, what are we preparing kids for?
Yeah. And it kind of went back to that
question of what are we doing? Yeah, just getting essays done
quicker and getting grades isn't even useful anyway.
That's the irony of it. It's like, you know, exactly.
It's not even that useful now. It's solving a problem that
doesn't need to be a problem. We've made it a problem.
So here's the beauty of it. It's solving a problem for the
workforce of yesterday. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It doesn't even solve a real problem anymore.
No, it doesn't make sense. So everything's outdated.
All needs to be restructured and rethought.
I think is a huge problem. I don't think is gonna be any
quick fixes to this at all. What I found really interesting
as well on the back of that was how, you know, it was a big
talk. That's why I loved it.
I think that's why I was captivated, because it was about
big, big, big things. And it started with education.
But you very quickly found out that actually education is life
is everything, right? And they spoke about how again,
this is backdated view, much like what you said about go to
go to school, get qualification, get a job, retire.
There's also a backdated view that you kind of don't have to
keep learning new things. And this idea of like learnings
for school keeper back then, it's actually with the advent of
AI. And she and she was saying, Amor
was saying both of them are saying how they're more curious
and find out more things than ever because they can use AI to
superpower things, to superpower research to find things out.
And I was like, yes, that's what we need as well.
We need an entire population who's thirsty for knowledge,
right? And unfortunately in school
right now, I don't think we're feeding that thirst for
knowledge enough. I think we're feeding a need for
to pass an exam feeling, a need for to write an essay.
AI is going to come along and do it even quicker and get us even
further from creating a generation of children who want
to learn for the sake of learning.
And what that will do is in the short term, cool grades might be
okay for a bit when we're just marking an essay, but it's going
to be a double whammy because like you said, the
qualifications won't matter anymore because the jobs won't
be there. But also then when they're
adults, they'll have no experience in the act of
learning or no desire to want to find out more because they just
think a bot can do it for them. And that's where we have to.
We have to teach children at some point in their journey
through education how to use AI to not do the work for them
necessarily, but to help them with their learning and the
journey themselves and make AI work for them rather than just
exporting all of the output. Couldn't agree more.
To superpower their critical thinking skills?
Exactly. To superpower their enjoyment of
learning a particular subject that they've just found out.
But how long? Have we said that it feels like
AI is just putting a microscope on it?
It's like, oh, AIS come along and can do the thing we've
always thought is pointless and stupid even quicker, so kids
have to do less. It's like, cool.
The the problem remains. As a teacher, I want to inspire
children, OK? I want to inspire them to want
to find things out. My job I always thought of when
I was in front of my class was I want to trick them into thinking
they're deciding what comes next.
I want to make them think that they're on their own journey,
which they do as much as possible, but I'm curating it.
My job as a curator and my job is to inspire, to make them
think something. I want them to think of the next
thing in the progression without them thinking I've made them do
it. Yeah, yeah.
Or without you just telling them, Yeah, because it's
obviously, you know, you're thinking, you're asking the
questions like, yeah, what would happen here?
You know exactly what happened. You're curating a curious mind.
That's what you're doing. Yeah, that's what you want to
do. And how boring and droll are the
lessons where you just stand at the front and just tell them
things? Yeah, if I wanted to.
There you go. There's AIAI can do that if we
want to. We just get it on a voice note
app, read out some facts to the kids.
Yeah, what's that going to do? I want to inspire them.
That's why I think there is still that difference between
the teacher delivering A curriculum inspiring children
and what AI can currently do right now.
I think there's still a big, big disconnect.
We have to focus more on what we as humans can do, human to
human. Well, that was a really good
example of maybe a part of the class and perhaps the AI could
be used for if it's literally just here are facts and you need
to know them. And there's no reason why a bot
didn't even have to be AI couldn't just give you those
facts. And in the olden days, they'd
call it a book, give a child a book by themselves and read it
to find out yourselves. But let's maybe we can go
through a few things then in the world of education that we think
and rank them as to how how good we think AI is at doing that
job. So in other words, how it almost
kind of coincides with how likely we think then AI is to
replace that job, because how the better it is, the more
likely. This is good.
It's good. So we'll give it a square out of
10 and we'll say basically how useful is AI for this?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'll start you off then you
can go with this one. So written lesson plans.
OK. I think a solid 8A, solid 8
explain. Because again, there's going to
be context to all of these by the way, people here, right?
And go what? Either way, the solid context
here is that AI now, especially large language models can be
trained on documents you upload. Actually might be uploading
documents from your curriculum. OK.
Also very important, the prompts you put into it.
What I'm not saying in anything, I think I'll talk for both of
us. Now.
I don't think either of us are just saying press a button and I
hope it comes. We have to have the
understanding here that what we're doing is prompting AI to
do this for us. So this is only as good as your
prompts at any point. But if your prompts are good,
especially I'm thinking of medium to long term planning, If
you want AI to organise your learning in a structured order
and you're putting up the curriculum for it, I think it'd
be very good at putting that into a table for you and mapping
out across the year that kind of grunt work that you could sit
there and do it on Excel if you wanted to.
AI can do that in 10 seconds for you.
I think that's fantastic. The actual content itself, the
reason why it's not more than an 8 for me is because I think
personally, the content will always come from something else.
Even if I was curating it, I'd be getting my content from
somewhere else. I'd be reading through the
content and deciding what to do AI, I'd be giving it that right.
So it's still, it's still. Don't just think that I'm hoping
it does the right thing. And the reason it's not 9 or 10
is because afterwards I'd be spending time going through what
it did and editing it. But I think in general, for
written lesson plans, I think written lesson plans on the
whole, especially when you're more experienced, are an
absolute waste of time. Yeah, yeah.
I was going to say, what about in the classic situation where
you've already planned your lesson in terms of what, however
you do that, whether it's a PowerPoint or in your mind or
it's practical, whatever. And then the school policy is,
Oh, no, you have to have it written down on this, on this
planning format. You've already done the work.
There's nothing to gain for you in the situation of writing it
down. It's just for the score in that
situation, it's the 10 out of 10 because I'm like, I don't even
want to do this anyway. So if someone else and if AI can
just take what I've already done and and just put it into some
lovely written lesson for someone else, great.
So here's here's my big worry for AI.
Not worry, but I can see this happening already is people
become obsessed with AI and try to shoehorn AI into every single
part of their teams life. So let's say you're the head of
a school or a trust and you think I need to get AI and
everything for productivity? We must get it in everything.
Sometimes I think it adds steps that you don't need right?
So whilst okay, sure in your context there right of your
written plan, you've already got your smart notebook or your or
your PowerPoint for your lesson. You're ready to teach, you're as
ready as you can be, but there's a your your school go.
No, no, I need a written plan just put into AI.
It'd be so quick. It was like, OK, any second I
put into making that is a second I didn't need to spend yeah, but
they'll look at how long would it have taken you if we hadn't
had AI. It's gone from one hour to 10
minutes. Isn't that fantastic?
I really need people to understand here and just be
nuanced and think about stuff moment to moment because
actually, no, you haven't saved 50 minutes, OK?
You've wasted 10 minutes. Yeah, definitely.
It's like Amazon Black Friday. No, you haven't.
You haven't saved £200 on that Hoover.
You don't need OK from 400 to £200.
You've wasted £200 because you didn't.
Need it? Yeah, and you won't get about
anyway. Exactly.
Just flip it. Exactly.
Yeah, Yeah. You've no longer wasted 60
minutes. You've wasted 10 minutes.
That's the way to do it. No, you've saved 50.
Exactly. So thinking outside the box is
important, isn't here. In general, if just like is the
system broke, is is the system the problem, not can we make the
system quicker? Exactly right.
I'm going to give you, I'm going to communication with parents.
So letters, newsletters, notes in general.
Maybe as a teacher you want to e-mail parents.
Quite probably like a three or four for me.
Yeah, because I think the, I think, I think AI can do some of
the grunt work in terms of speeding up your notes perhaps
into a formal letter. That's quite good.
There's no reason. But like, realistically, all of
the content absolutely has to be created and created by you.
You know what I mean? You're talking to a parent about
their child. Like every child is unique.
It's a different situation. It's not like a curriculum
document. You can't just upload the child
into a into a thing and say this is like a national curriculum
document is one thing and it's objective, you know?
GDPR. Yeah, exactly.
But a child is like a child. Every child's experience and
life is different. I can't really.
I just need to talk to the parent and have a nuanced
conversation. Like I don't really think AI.
Hold that floor. Yeah, because I'm going to give
you another one straight away. Report writing that one.
Why is it different? I kind of said it already that
report writing is. Nuanced.
Every single child is. Different, true.
I guess I'm really putting emphasis on report writing on on
the writing bit. Communication with parents to me
is like phone calls and like you said, maybe notes or or chatting
after school. Like it's kind of like AI is.
I can't see it replacing much of that.
OK, so you so for communicate, let's be really clear then
because that's very interesting for communication with parents.
What you're saying is actually you should be doing in person
stuff more. Yeah, realistically and I, I
don't think AI should be taking that away from the experience of
school and the relationship between parents and.
School. OK, Very.
Interesting. Whereas report writing is
traditionally a piece of paper with writing on it.
And to me, I mean, I've done it for years, there's, there's just
no benefit to me writing out the paragraphs myself when I can
just put all of my bullet points that I would already have
written. So in both situations, AI or not
AI, I'm writing some bullet points out about a child and the
things I want to get across to their parent.
Then I'm spending either 1520 minutes curating a lovely
paragraph that's written really nicely, or I can spend 5 seconds
putting into AI and saying this is my writing style.
Can you just, can you just put these notes into a paragraph and
then proofreading it, always doing little bits of edits, but
the time saved is astronomical. When I started using AI for
reports, not only were they just better because I wasn't getting
the fatigue and starting to just be like, oh man, I've been
writing reports for 17 hours. Genuinely because I'm just, I'm
so fatigued that and it's all in my own time because no one ever
gets bloody report writing time nearly or never enough that I'm
just copying paragraphs from previous kids because they're
similar. I'll just change, tweak a word
or two. Oh, I'm just using a Bank of
stuff from five years ago, from 10 years ago.
Like like we all pretend that that was fine.
Maybe it was, but we can't then also say, oh, AI is terrible.
Actually, AI was making more unique paragraphs than ever
before. It was still mimicking my style
and I and it didn't have to copy and paste anything from any
other child. I could give it unique notes
every single time about each child, and all it did was just
formulate those notes into a paragraph for someone else to
read in a professional manner. So like the sheer amount of
grunt work that had to go into report writing for you bumps it
up from your free. So what would you give out of
10? For you, I'd probably still give
it like 7 because ultimately, yeah, it would be a 10 if if the
notes taking wasn't existed, existing even 7.
Probably a bit generous to be honest with you.
Because that is, I'm going to give it five.
I'm going down because I think half, half of the importance
there is is just from you, the teacher, your understanding of
the child, nothing to do with anybody else.
That bit is so important, even though it only takes 5% of the
time now. Yeah, very, very important.
So AI can't cannot replace that bit, but it can replace the time
saved with writing. So I'm going to very quickly on
this now, whilst we're talking about this, I'm going to ask
you, would you use AI for this thing?
It's all to do with this. OK.
Would you use AI to to when
sending an e-mail to a parent? Yeah.
Would you use AI when sending out a letter to a parent?
Yeah. Would you use AI when writing
reports? Yep.
Would you use AI when writing a HCP plan?
Yeah. Interest.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. What made you slow down?
Because I was thinking that's more sensitive and again, like a
bit more nuanced, but actually do.
You think it's worth the time notes or are you really
separating Outlook? I put the grunt, I put the
actual actually. Yeah, I think because you have
to put so much, so much careful consideration of thoughts into
the kind of your note taking process when writing the HCP in
the 1st place, that kind of becomes the HCP.
I'd probably avoid. It so there might actually not
be that much difference there because it's so it's so from.
You trying to see where maybe your line is basically like, you
know, like, you know, a letter out to a letter is just very
generic. Isn't it down to like a very
specific legal document over the plan for the HP that we're gonna
implement for? The child.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's got the Whether I'm
right or wrong, there's got to be a line somewhere.
In my opinion, I still probably. I think I would, you know, in
what, in what respect there purely if there was just some
crazy format I had to fill out and I was like, I've done all
the work and I just wanted to turn into that format.
I'd absolutely use that. And just be really clear.
I want to put a disclaimer in here because I know me and you
know this and this is like deep within our brains, we would do
not advocate and would never actually put children's names
and we would not breach GDPR by putting children's names and
data into things like ChatGPT. You can use blanks.
You can get it to structure sentences without using
children's names, and you shouldn't do it.
We should say that because it is very, very, very, very, very,
very important. Like there are people out there
who are lovely and don't mean any harm whatsoever, who won't
even think about it. They're not being malicious, but
it's bad and you should not do that.
So if you're doing your reports, don't put just put literally
like a string of letters or a or something in when you're putting
it into the thing, you still give the description, the bullet
points and then just manually replace put the child's name in
your. So that's how that's how to do
it. Just to be really clear, in case
someone's. Also that means, by the way, it
means that I built in my editing and reviewing whilst I was
putting name in. Yeah.
And I did one of the. I was like, oh, it's an extra
thing. Not really because I read it.
I always read them, Yeah. And any time it said name, I'd
write their name in, then I'd keep reading it.
And it may be something else. I don't quite like that word.
I think it's not quite right. I added that, put the name in,
put the name in it. It worked quite well.
Yeah, it was absolutely fine. It really was still a huge time,
save for unique reports. I'm going to give you 1 now.
So going back to the context of rating out of 10, how useful AI
is for something in the classroom, lesson hooks.
So that bit at the start of the lesson.
Yeah, I think this is where it can come into its own depending
on what you're doing. Like it can be 10 out of 10.
Genuinely, I've, I've not for every lesson ever, but you might
decide actually, do you know what?
I, we did some writing once before we were doing some
character description. Tell me the hardest thing to get
kids to believe is real when they're doing writing, is that
it? There's a real purpose behind
it, right? How much better is children's
writing when there's purpose? That's why, you know, when
you're writing a letter, you try and write that to someone
important. You say I'm going to send it to
David Attenborough, I'm going to send it to the Prime Minister,
I'm going to send it to Father Christmas, whatever it might be.
So purpose is massive in writing because you get children engaged
and want to do it. So we were doing some writing
before we did some character descriptions quite draw quite
boring, genuinely, like unless they've got a really vivid
imagination that some children don't have.
So AII remember at the front of the room we were doing some
shared writing together. We were talking about how to use
different descriptive words, etcetera.
What can make the, the, the monster thing they're doing,
monsters or aliens or something, really stand out?
And I then put that into image generation and it made the image
and they saw it and they immediately then could link
between the words they had chosen and what it looks like.
And then after that, we went back, we identified all the
adjectives in the sentence, for example, and we said, OK, that
that alien, it's, it's too big. It's too big.
Did we describe? Oh, you said it's enormous.
Rub it out, changed it went to something else.
It's green. I don't think Green's that good.
I think in the in that environment, I think it'd be
better to be like purpley or something, whatever it might be.
Go through, scrub out the adjectives and swap them.
Whatever reason to maybe change the theme or to change the feel
of the monster to make it from a cuddly monster to a scary
monster. So the kids were having purpose
because they knew it was about to be regenerated and we were
talking about the power of words in writing.
It became tangible for them. That hook was 10 out of 10 for
my kids because suddenly they were thinking every word they
wrote in their paper. They were thinking right when
Mr. Price generates this image, I said to them, going to
generate all your animals When Mr. Price generates this, is
that the right word to use? Or actually, I really want it to
look like this. What's a better word?
Let's get the thesaurus. Let's look it up.
There was so much purpose. Their writing was so much
better. It was meaningful.
And we said every word that goes in your page will be learned and
be shown. And it was 10 out of 10.
That hook worked so well. And that was using AI.
That's it. Do you reckon you're skewed
slightly towards English in terms of like where hooks are
really good? Yeah, because it depends.
It depends because writing, I've also before asked it like what
AI can do is give you lots of ideas.
Yeah, true, lots of ideas. So for example, what I always
say is never ask it for a hook, never ask it for an idea.
You might say, right, I'm doing a lesson this afternoon on, you
know, encampments or something, or Roman history or, or how, you
know, the Anglo Saxons came over to Britain, etcetera.
I made you didn't say Rivers, but yeah.
Rivers. Rivers are.
I'm really trying to avoid saying rivers usually.
Really. I'm doing a lesson on rivers.
How can I hook the children to get them interested in this
story? So you can say to them like, but
you can say give me 10 ideas. Yeah, definitely.
And it'll generate 10/7 will be nonsense.
Yeah, 2 will be all right, and 1 might be really good.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's just about ideas and it
can give you ideas. And I found again, I'll say this
again, AI for a lot of people is stifling creativity.
For me, I became more creative because it gave me more ideas.
I did stuff at the start of lessons that I would not have
done before. I always thought to myself,
what's a really good hook? And Oh my God, I just scoffed my
lunch down. I'm on duty for a bit.
I've got a lesson this afternoon.
I can't think for two seconds. Why don't you try starting off
by doing this? Yes, we're going to start off
with a little story. Wouldn't people argue that is
stifling your creativity though because you didn't do it?
No, it's not stifling by creative because the option is
I'm not creative at all or I'm choosing, I'm making my lesson
more creative. So that's what that's what I
mean. Like I without it, I would not
have done anything. So by definition, I was more
creative. But if I'm not, I'm not this.
I'm a teacher. I'm there to give children, you
know, option opportunities in a lesson to be more hooked and
engaged by something. It's a more creative lesson.
Am I personally going through the creative process of sat down
thinking about, no, I don't have time to do it, but it's made my
lesson more creative. It's made my children more
engaged. I'm giving more to the kids as a
result, just because I've used this as a tool.
I think for hooks, by all means, use your own hooks that you've
used in your whole career. There are some lessons.
I know what I'm gonna do all the time when I'm doing instructions
for the first time. We make a sandwich.
Yeah, yeah, of course. And we go, the kids say, put the
bread on top, I'll put on top of my head.
You're not being specific enough.
All that kind of stuff. This stuff I will always do, but
for lessons where you want something just whack it into AI.
The Egyptian lesson years ago and we used to introduce
Egyptians and we'd get we'd get the toilet paper out, dress up
as mummy, they'd get the sand out and they'd dig for treasure
just to get them hooked into the idea of.
Dig for treasure, that classic historical language.
Dig for treasure. Kids dress up as mummy.
Dress up as archaeologists. No one's taking primary learning
seriously. But it was hook, you know, and
the thought of like replacing that with that was the best hook
for that. Yeah.
I mean, that that didn't need AI, but you're absolutely right.
You know what AI might have been instrumental in thinking of that
hook in the 1st place. Do you know from that meta level
like, yeah, exactly. As well as actually being used
like in your English example? I want to do another one with
you because it's kind of linked. I think it's close enough.
Anyway, that was lesson hooks. What about in the main part of
the lesson, like the actual worksheet?
Oh, this really depends. It can genuinely be 0 out, then
it can genuinely be absolute trash nonsense.
It can be quite useful, right? So let me be really specific
here, give you some examples. When I've taught GPS objectives
in the past and I've wanted ten questions to fill a gap with a
preposition or something, or choosing between as sorry and
and a right or choosing A determiner to go in the gap or
anything like that kind of nonsense that I hate anyway.
I don't want to spend 10 minutes putting a sheet together for
that. So AI was very good at
generating 10/15/20 sentences with the preposition missing and
maybe even in brackets 3 to choose from that kind of
generation of worksheets. Fantastic.
AI generated loads of times table practise for me.
And I said only do three and two times table mix up the
presentation. It could handle that.
Yeah, yeah, right. So in terms of that kind of
rote, repetitive fill in the box text level stuff.
Closed procedure. Exactly.
Closed procedure, that's the word.
I found it was very good at that, especially if you give it
the right prompts and told it what to do outside of that when
it gets a bit further. I don't know.
We've played around with different things, haven't we?
And I'm not going to sit and name all companies etcetera, but
but it can be hit and miss, right?
Yeah. I think if we sort of band it
together then with maybe lesson generation general, like slide
generation. So like your work, basically the
content that you might put in on a sheet for the kids to work
through, all the content that might be on your slides when
you're going through. But very quick, I think that's,
I think that's, I think it's completely separate in terms of
even the worksheets. Yeah, like I think even that
even those alone is such a wide range.
Oh, fair enough. Yeah, yeah.
But in terms of the no, because you're basically saying no
worksheet's fine. It's not like half the time like
if you, if you want a registered worksheet, like for example,
even in a maths objective, you know when you create maths
questions where in a row there's a reason why you put them in a
row. Like you know, 7 * 870 * 871 *
871 * 9 and and all that, you know, individual, you could sit
and work them out, but every single jump there's a reason why
you've jumped it and there's reasoning built in.
I find it really struggles of anything like that.
And if you want a real quality task for your children, I think
it's better to create it yourself sometimes, or get it
from a real trusted source where a specialist has done that.
That's all I'll say about that, but please crack.
On no, no, I was sort of bandaged together because I
also, I agree by the way, like with worksheet generation, go
back to that for a second. Even things like I think about
some of those sort of rich afternoon lessons we do
sometimes maybe in science or or history or something where it's
not actually in that lesson, just about like question,
answer, question, answer, knowledge, knowledge, knowledge.
Sometimes it's like a we're going to go out and we're going
to stick some leaves in and we're going to come back and we
analyse them and we're going to label them as stuff.
I felt like AI would was rubbish at doing that.
It was rubbish at create that thinking of that idea and making
a worksheet for me because I definitely tried it lots of
times and it was always very, very, very boring stuff.
So like, yeah, I agree, sort of three out of 10 is not not the
best at doing that. Then with slide generation, this
one is fascinating because I feel like it's the it's the
thing people are trying to crack at the moment.
And maybe it has been cracked, but I'm sort of yet to see it in
all honesty, that there's lots of bits of software out there
that say, oh, just put in some prompts and or tell it what your
curriculum is and it will make a whole lesson for you at the
PowerPoint. And I've tried a few and I'll be
honest, I would not use them in my class.
I would not use them. Like even you could argue or
maybe it just gives you a starting point, a base, a base
point to sort of adapt from. Even though it was, it was, I
was clutching at straws to be honest with you.
I was thinking, I have to edit this so much that I might as
well just start from scratch. Like this isn't really saved me
any time. And if I was to use it, it's
very very sub optimal lesson in terms of the resources being put
in front of kids. That's just my opinion, I'm sure
people disagree. A lot of people are enjoying
using these resources because I'm sure it does save them time,
but at what cost? So this is I would say we can
probably round off in terms of the talk here, because I think
this is the perfect example of how saving teachers time and
school staff time is genuinely at the forefront of everything
that we should be using with tech, right?
But it needs to be on a level with it being quality for the
for the for the students, right? For the children.
It has to be equal. It has to be because I feel like
a lot of the shortcuts currently for creating worksheets or
creating slides. I'm not saying it won't happen
in the future. I think we could get to a point
where it is very useful, but currently it's at the detriment
of the quality of what's being produced because AI can produce
slop. We know that it's still at this
stage getting better, but we know it can produce rubbish.
So when you look at these, I, I look at it, sometimes I think
that would not wash in my school if, if I made, if I made that
slide, I said, here's the lesson guys, for everyone.
That would not pass as a good enough lesson.
Not only sometimes in the generation of lessons that we
practise, we, we looked at and tried, not only sometimes were
the facts just wrong, which was a whole different conversation
about how it's scraping the Internet.
Sometimes the facts were literally wrong.
And as a teacher who's not a specialist in geography and
rivers, it could have it could have scraped something off.
That sounds right. What I'm gonna do research
everything. I might have just did a research
myself. Literally just picture that was
wrong as well. It was it was a historical
person. It was really important that
this picture was accurate. Just pulled up like a picture of
different people and I was like, oh, this is terrible.
This is. Not good.
It's like it should have been Winston Churchill, but it was
bloody, you know? Margaret Thatcher.
Yeah, it's something. I don't think Margaret Thatcher
was involved in World War 2. Yeah, or it was someone that
just looked a bit like Winston Churchill, and it's like this.
Oh, like he's clearly scoured Internet and thought this was
this. But it's not like this is not
good. And it's not going to pass
schools. Everyone who works in this
school, we talk about it so much how schools are obsessed with
uniformity as well sometimes and slides having to look the same
and following the same structure.
There's no structure. There was no structure to those
lessons. It was just like a story.
And it's like, cool if we've got absolutely no standards in what
lessons look like, maybe that's. Just so I think it'll get there.
In all honesty, with the great AI changing, I do think we'll
get there. It's just that right now I'd say
it's not the best at doing that job and it still needs a
teacher's touch. Let's get to the big one,
because I really want to ask you this one.
Teaching out of 10, AI replacing teaching.
Right. Right now as the hold as me as a
teacher in the classroom one. 1, not 0 but.
One, no, no, not 0, because you just have to be honest that
there are things that AI is better than me at.
Yeah, of course there is. Hannah Frye said anything that
can be done sat at a computer will be replaced by AI.
Yeah, it is some element of a teacher's job sat behind a
computer. We wouldn't have a bloody
podcast at all. How often we talked about how
we're not in this repetitive point in the class.
So let's take that away. Yeah, brilliant.
That's maybe it's a 2. But the teaching bit, you are
standing in front of kids and you are delivering content to
them and you are teaching and you are adapting on the spot and
you're doing all eight of the teachers standards.
That bit of teaching, pastoral right now.
Pastoral, OK, all of it. Yeah, right now is 1 out of 10,
isn't it? Yeah.
What do you think about the future?
Because this is where I think we have had lots of little
discussion about. Let's air this out now.
All right, all right. Where do you think we're going?
It is to me, and this is not me saying this is good to me,
inevitable, that the job of a teacher will be replaced by
artificial intelligence at some point in the future.
Are we talking robots or AI actually doing the entire job,
teaching the kids, the pastoral care, all of it.
Listen, I I don't like this prediction.
I don't think this prediction is good.
That's fine. But I do think there will be a
point where it will be a choice by governments or whoever is in
charge to spend more money to get a real life human in front
of the staff. And it'll only be as long as the
resolve is there for humans to have humans with other humans,
that that will happen. I think it will get to a point
where artificial intelligence is better at everything that we can
possibly do. It's it's literally better at
building in the same way. Do you know, different people
have different strengths, Right? Yeah.
And if you lined up 100 people, you could line them up in the
order of how emotionally intelligent they are and how
empathetic they are and how how kind they are and how tall they
are and how angry they get. And it'll be all different
orders. There will come a point where
artificial intelligence will be at the top 1% of every single
one of them, right? In the same way me and you are
different. Artificial intelligence will
learn what makes us different and better and worse and be
better at everything than humans.
That will happen. The intelligence will get to
such a high level, it will skyrocket up where it gets to
the point where it knows everything and can do everything
better and always people. You'll never replace a human's
heart and a human's touch. I was like, yeah, well, do you
know what? There's, I can think of a few
human emotions and intelligences that I have that I think you
could learn to be better at than me.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm just saying I don't like
this fact and I don't think it's necessarily a good thing, but I
just think that humans are a bunch of chemicals, chemical
reactions, neurons are true there.
There will be a point where we can replicate that in a robot,
an artificial. Empathy for you.
You never learned that one that's that's low and that's
easy. AI does that now better than
you. Literally, that's my point.
And so I think it will replace it.
And I think it's going to come down to a cost evaluation.
And eventually there'll be so much pressure that they'll drop
you like, look, why, why can we sit here and say, and in the
chat people said all the white collar jobs are going to go, you
know, all all the different jobs.
They're like, you know, lawyers. They'll be, they'll be AI bought
another law inside out and within 3 seconds can work over
something's right or wrong. Can take about look at all of
the log of every single conviction ever.
Get rid of any kind of bias and just judge someone immediately,
right. Better than a group of 12 random
people from the whole country can.
What we are, of course it's better, but it's only going to
be the resolve of the humans in the system to say, no, we need
that human connection. They need to think of a really
good argument why we do it because eventually it will just
be, well, we're doing it just 'cause that's why.
And I think there'll come a point where it's like they're
just better off you go. And I think I will take over the
world. God, that's mad, isn't it?
I, I got a couple of things to say because I think your, your
argument is very compelling, especially when there's infinite
time involved. I mean, I'm sort of like, OK,
maybe in 3000 years that is. Definitely, I think sooner, but.
For you think, yeah, for sure. I think our, our understanding
of our differences mostly late in time, but even with the
government, I, you know, I always see things on the online
of being like, oh, this country is now going to use an AI member
of cabinet and stuff like this. And I'm like it.
It does make sense, probably long term to for for things like
governing bodies to be a bit more objective and, you know,
less likely to be corrupted if possible.
Let's So let's hire in the Mark Zuckerberg and Sam Altman
company. I'm not really sure.
Yeah, don't get me wrong. I think it's, I don't mean it's
going to get rid of right. I think it's going to hyper
concentrate it to a very few very, very rich people and
democracy will become a farce. That's what I think.
Potentially, but for the same reason that that that's dumb in
terms of like the corruption from a different way.
I do think the same thing is probably going to happen in
teaching in terms of, OK, let's get in this these two companies
now that control precisely what our kids are being taught,
rather than just, you know, the pick of all of humanity where
you get all sorts of teachers and all sorts of different
backgrounds and they get and children get access to all these
different teachers across their career in school.
I think that paired with the fact that I think the human
resolve, we need to give it more credit than then maybe you're
giving it. I really really really think
that even in 100 years when we have the most unreal AI robots
that can be the top 1% and everything, we're still just
going to want 4 year olds who don't understand anything about
the world yet in front of another flesh person.
You know, not an AI person. I think, I think we'll always
want that. I want that want is great.
Something happen. I, I there are lots of people
who didn't want self-service checkouts at Tesco because they
wanted the human interaction and going to talk to someone.
They didn't want one person in charge of 6 checkouts.
They wanted one person per person so they can talk to them.
Don't matter what you want because at the end of the day
it's better for the company, it's better for money.
You're going to make money. We're going to get more people
through the door. We're going to get more money
through the tills if we do it this way. 1 is a great thing.
I want it to, yeah. It's not going to happen.
Do you know what one situation I could imagine?
I think you probably told me this probably where it's come
from is firstly bigger class sizes.
Yeah, because I think that's, that's the first easy way to cut
costs of. OK, look, all right, we have 50%
real teachers, but 50% AI teachers and we can.
It's happening in America right now.
There's a school that does that. We're talking to Lee, Mr P Bet,
and he was saying how in America it has basically like 100 kids
in a room being taught something and then they go off to their
one to one individual AI tutor. Right.
It's happening. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's yeah,
very similar example I was thinking of imagine like a big
room where it's almost flipped like the the teacher is the AI
robot that's basically just sort of delivering facts.
It's not really doing the empathy thing very even if it's
really good at it, it's not actually we're not saying it's
going to provide the human touch.
And then the teaching assistants are basically just some adults
dotted around who can do that human to human interaction that
I don't think we'll ever, ever, ever not need.
I don't think we'll ever get to a point where we don't actually
want or need that as a society, no matter the cost.
But I can't imagine cutting costs of OK, yeah, but the the
one at the front delivering the knowledge is like that that can
be a robot. And there's just a few adults
around, just totally different roles.
It's not even teaching assistants anymore.
It's just the human to human connection people.
I don't actually disagree of anything you're saying.
I just, I'm just saying I don't think that will happen.
Like like I'm it's almost as if the two, the two like parts
we're having here are. But I think this is important
and we should still have that thing.
And I'm kind of saying, yeah, but we won't like I don't, I
don't disagree with you. I don't disagree with you at
all. I just don't think it will
happen. Is it better to have one to one
scanners at Tesco so you can talk to someone as you go for
it? I've got a problem with this.
I can talk to you right away. It's more immediate.
Is that better for the consumer? Yes.
Is it better for the shareholder of the company new because they
can make more money doing something else?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The big tech giants will be a
conglomerate. Everything will go through them.
They will take over education as well as everything else they're
taking over. And they will cut, cut, cut, cut
because only be a few of them left.
They will take everything. It won't be a good thing, but it
will happen. And that that would give it 30
years. Society will look like nothing
you have ever seen before. And we're going to have to
relearn everything, which is what we started off with.
The conversation with Hannah Frye.
I'm not saying that it's necessarily a good thing.
I'm just saying it's a thing. I mean, yeah, we'll have to
agree to disagree a little bit. I don't equally disagree.
I think that's probably what's going to happen.
But I like to think that. I like to think that human
resolve will come through a little bit stronger and we'll no
matter how good AI is not replaced, just even if it's just
a tiny bit plus a tiny bit of what teachers bring.
Still, now we've got people saying never use a screen ever.
We're like, Oh my. God, yeah, exactly right, Yeah.
I. Wonder how those people are
going to feel when they when they realise that kids teachers
an AI robot with a massive screen on its head.
Those screens, you say? No technology you.
Know what happened will be something some other crazy tech
development will happen in the next 10 years that will just be
wildly different again in the same way AI disrupted
everything. And it'll be something we can't
even comprehend right now. And it'll be like, no, it was
never going to be AI robots. It's going to be this other
insane, crazy, futuristic thing. Joe, we should do at some point
in the next year, release a podcast episode that is holy AI
and just see who notices. See who notices.
Yeah. And it'd be crazy, wouldn't it,
if it was this one. Bye.
See ya.