The wave is here
Will teachers and educators recognise the existential threat of AI?
The ‘Coming Wave’ of AI in Mustafa Suleyman’s book is crashing upon the world of education. Yet the majority of teachers and educators appear ignorant or complacent of this reality. This essay is an attempt to change that. Below, I outline nine key reasons why the education system is extraordinarily vulnerable to the latest BigTech disruption. We must recognise the very real possibility that we are the pre-Spotify UK musicians of 2008, the Black Cab drivers before Uber’s launch in 2012, the High Street, before Amazon. For the reasons below, and many more besides.
The primacy of productivity and growth
Orwellian language of BigTech
The normalisation of surveillance
A demoralised, increasingly fragmented workforce and education system
Little love for teachers
The COVID effect
Addicted users
Asymmetry of knowledge and power
Money
Before continuing, a very simple description of a possible AI future for education is needed. In short, children will learn via screens, directed by AI, and teachers will be redundant. Human ‘facilitators’ will ensure that students are ‘on task’. Surveillance will track pupils (and staff) at every step, including audio and video capture of classrooms and other spaces (also making human facilitators less and less necessary).
This is not a prediction. But it is a possible future, one being explored by schools such as The David Game College in London and numerous places in the Developing World, such as this tutoring experiment in Nigeria (supported by Microsoft and the World Bank). The UK Government has committed to the high speed roll out of AI experiments in education.
Those who scoff at the suggestion that such a vision could come to pass appear to be suffering from a combination of a lack of imagination, an inability to learn from the recent history of other industries and the Pessimism Aversion of Suleyman’s elites. Perhaps, they hold a false sense of security that education enjoys hallowed protection. If so, as I will now outline, this is devastatingly naive.
The primacy of productivity and growth
The ‘productivity problem’ of the UK has been a feature of news reports and Treasury concerns for nearly two decades, with various suggested remedies. Starmer’s recent pledge to mainline “AI into the veins” of the UK makes it clear that adoption and proliferation of AI is now the solution beyond compare. Government funds and planning will support three pillars, one of which is “boosting adoption across public and private sectors”. The aim is to both increase real GDP per capita (still lower in the UK than 2007) and improve provision by struggling services, such as Education and the NHS.
The government has staked its reputation on growth and has 4 ½ years, with a huge majority, to bring this about. As said today by Rachel Reeves, in relation to airport expansion, “growth must trump other things”. Concerns around children being taught primarily via screens, apps and AI will be put in the ‘other things’ basket. There will be little to no opposition from the Conservatives, captured as they are by their own financial interests and the lobbying of BigTech.
Productivity and growth is the mantra of this government and woe betide those who raise objections in the face of the political and financial capital already pledged to “turbo charge AI”.
Orwellian language of BigTech
Shoshana Zuboff, in her masterful book Surveillance Capitalism, demonstrated how BigTech co-opt and misuse powerful and commonplace phrases, such as “connection”, “community” and “empowerment”, leaving the general public discombobulated and open to manipulation. AI solutionism continues this trend, with the proliferation of phrases such as “embrace”, “enhance”, “unlock” and the aforementioned “turbocharge”.
In education, we will increasingly hear “personalisation”, “innovation” and “leverage”. Teachers will be told AI will “drive down admin” and improve “engagement”. Long standing conventions and terms, such as ‘holistic education’ and ‘choice’, will be turned on their heads, whilst those who raise questions will be accused of being opponents of emancipation and ‘inspiring’ learning in children.
The government has already decided on a label for such people: they are the “blockers”, a reworking of Michael Gove’s ‘Blob’. The roles and scripts have already been assigned for the revolution of education. It is play that teachers may struggle to name and therefore fail to resist.
The normalisation of surveillance
The new vision for education relies on surveillance and, fortunately for those currently constructing it, this is now part of our daily lives. Parents routinely track their children, increasingly into adulthood. Children voluntarily post their location on apps such as Facebook. Households install listening devices such as Alexa and Nest and even connect cameras in their living rooms via Ring security systems. Watching and listening to neighbours is commonplace. The UK has the highest number of CCTV cameras per capita of any European nation, possibly as high as 1 for every 11 people.
This will ease the normalising of cameras and listening devices in classrooms and other school spaces. Already, schools provide daily electronic updates of a child’s behaviour and attainment to parents, often multiple times a day, in some cases, lesson by lesson. According to the School Academies Show, “Today's parents are digitally connected and seek real-time updates on their child's progress, school activities, and events”. Meanwhile, voice recognition devices for the classroom are being piloted, such as this project in Idaho using Amazon ‘smart speakers’.
Anyone who objects to the surveillance of learning (The Blockers) will be asked “what do you have to hide?”.
The answer to this question, whose intention is rhetorical, is ‘nothing less than our humanity’. As Zuboff puts it so brilliantly “The real psychological truth is this: If you've got nothing to hide, you are nothing”. However, will teachers and educators have the strength and foresight to be so forthright in a culture that seems to have few qualms with spying on others and being spied on ourselves?
A demoralised, increasingly fragmented workforce and education system
There is a well documented recruitment and retention crisis in education, with various solutions being proposed, including flexible working (expect to see the introduction of AI into schools accompanied with the language of flexibility for teachers). In real terms, teachers’ pay is lower than in 2010 (13% lower for experienced and senior teachers, 9-10% lower for those in the middle and even starting salaries, particularly crucial if trying to attract new members, are down 5% in real-terms).
The Regulator, Ofsted, is feared and remains hostile to many schools, despite its response to the death of headteacher Ruth Perry, to which it was found to have contributed, being deemed by an independent review to be "defensive and complacent".
Pupil behaviour is, by many accounts, worse than ever and average secondary school class sizes are their largest since 2001.
Covid rocked education. Many staff still bear the mental scars (as of course do pupils) of the cancellation of GCSE and A-Level exams, the rush to online teaching, imposition of one way corridors and ‘bubbles’, the wearing of masks in lessons, being required to perform contact tracing (where teachers were compelled to actively tell pupils to stay at home) and, in common with many other professions, a profound sense of powerlessness.
The largest teaching union, the NEU, quite rightly campaigns on teacher and support staff pay and conditions. However, it is also engaged in multiple campaigns, leaving it without the time or serious thought to appreciate the existential threat that AI poses. Its current position is best summarised as having its cake (expressing a desire that AI be “harnessed to realise benefits to education”) and eating it (listing concerns from the environment to copyright).
The Academies and Free School programme, regardless of one’s politics on such matters, has clearly divided what was once a more homogeneous and united regime under Local Authority control.
Bridget Philipson is the 11th Education Secretary since 2014. Yes, that is, on average, one minister a year for the previous 11 years.
This is the territory into which BigTech marches. It is the unprotected “virgin territory” that Shoshanna Zuboff speaks of, a land of few predators and many docile beasts, to be conquered and ruled with impunity.
Little love for teachers
Teachers, like education as a whole, are something of a political football. On the one hand, they are loved for the care, concern and inspiration they give to young people. On the other, they are feckless, contrary, radical, intransigent and always, it seems, on holiday or on strike.
The government is routinely suspicious. The world of business, perennially disappointed in outcomes. ‘Why can’t they teach the kids to be useful workers?’ goes the refrain.
Many people have mixed experiences of school, including a residual dislike for some of their teachers (as well as an undoubted love and respect for others).
Ambivalence will be the most apt response, should teachers be replaced by AI. There will be no protests, no grand gestures. AI will take over slowly and then, all at once.
The response by the education sector to COVID was mixed, at best. The Prime Minister and the British public did not stand outside banging pots and pans for teachers.
The COVID effect
Everyone did the best that they could during COVID, but the experience left some parents with a lingering resentment that their child’s school, and therefore teachers, left them high and dry to look after and educate their child at home with minimal support. As former Ofsted Head Amanda Speilman put it, Lockdown “broke the spell” that bound parents and schools together. “The unquestionable belief that school must be attended was exploded” according to Tom Bennet and some commentators have claimed that schools have not done enough to restore trust and belief in school rules.
Lockdowns accelerated trends by years. As McKinsey state, “in just a few months’ time, the COVID-19 crisis has brought about years of change in the way companies in all sectors and regions do business”. This includes adoption of digital technologies and working remotely. Education, often characterised as slow to adapt, was forced into delivering online lessons and utilising digital learning platforms. Companies that support such activities, in a particular Google, made huge inroads.
The legacy lives on. Pupil attendance, for example, remains concerning (a recent report states that 23.4% of students were persistently absent in 2023) and schools are expected to continue to serve pupils both physically and virtually. ‘Solving’ the issue of poor school attendance will be one of the claims of AI device based schooling (despite the proliferation of online learning and smartphones being a factor in pupils staying at home).
Whilst the emotional and logistical fallout of COVID continues, in an atmosphere of artificially accelerated change, BigTech rolls in.
Addicted users
97% of 12 year olds have a smartphone. A quarter of 3-5 year olds. Whilst various campaign groups, such as Delay Smartphone, seek to change norms, the facts on the ground make a screen based, AI led education all the more normalised.
The negative impacts of screens will, perversely, make their proliferation in education more likely. Attention spans are reportedly lower. Reading is disappearing off a cliff.
Two roads diverge. Should education roll with trends such as these or be part of reversing them? The path of least resistance is the former. Will schools and teachers have the principles, the foundational beliefs, to argue the latter? The record to date suggests not.
Asymmetry of knowledge and power
BigTech firms such as Meta, Google, Apple and Amazon have unparalleled knowledge, wealth and political power. Elon Musk, recently valued at over $400 billion, boasted that he holds “more economic data in one head than anyone ever”.
Their algorithms and AI can already deliver GCSE courses to children with relative ease. Granted, they need to perform more testing, and this already underway in various countries, including Rwanda.
‘BigTeach’ already boasts the best presentation materials, videos, quizzes, games and activities. Schemes of work and curriculum design can be produced ad infinitum, iterated in milliseconds, ‘personalised’ at the touch of a screech.
Google ‘Classroom’ currently holds a wealth of educational information, from lesson plans to teacher presentations and carefully curated assessments. None of it is Google’s. They will steal it all, as they steal from artists and writers today.
Once properly inside education, everything will be taken, from pupil assessment data to attendance data to information on family background. In seconds, an optimum plan can be produced. A virtual school, with a full suite of courses and resources, delivering GCSEs and A-Levels to an infinite number of students, could be created in a moment, complete with tracking and interventions.
Schools, their pupils, staff and traditions, are nothing to BigTech. They are an irrelevance. Beta.
Money
Western economies are broke. In the UK, debt as a percentage of GDP is approaching 100%. In the USA it is 120%.
AI offers a way out of this situation. Never mind that, once in control, BigTech will raise the premiums and enshittify the service. What matters is now. Teachers are expensive, increasingly difficult to recruit and hard to retain. Their pensions are expensive as they live too long. They get paid when the kids are on holiday. Instead, we will have “automated austerity schooling”.
Education is the second largest area of government spending and AI will be used to reduce this. The vision I am referring to is privatisation by the back door, the replacement of State employed teachers by BigTech firms, machine learning and associated consultancies. It will involve the sale of education data, in the same way that NHS data will be sold, at a price far below market value. As Tim Cook so tellingly put it in 2019, in relation to Healthcare “We are taking what has been with the institution and empowering the individual”.
Under the guise of his eponymous Institute, Tony Blair is back, except this time it is not Iraq being invaded. It is our public institutions. It will, we are told, save us money and it’s probably true. Humans are just more expensive than software, especially at scale. It is a happy coincidence, no doubt, that this great sell off will also make Blair millions.
…….
The possible vision may not come to pass. The language of inevitability is a BigTech technique that I do not wish to emulate.
It could be, for example, that the multiple failings of EdTech continue as they struggle to master what may stubbornly remain a human process.
However, I would rather not chance it. Moreover, it would surely be better, more life affirming, for teachers and educators to reject an AI based education in the style of BF Skinner, not because it threatens their careers, but because it is an affront to the vocation of educating the next generation.
The so-called ‘Coming Wave’ is described by Sulyman as our “greatest dilemma”. But it is only a dilemma if we have a choice, if we have agency. To help realise this, we might do well to appreciate that, rather than ‘wave’ as a metaphor for power and upheaval, it might be something more prosaic:
A wave goodbye.