“It’s creepy, I know.” American Jeff Maggioncalda (55 years old), executive director of Coursera – a platform in which 136 million people have registered in a decade to follow one of the 6,000 distance courses of its 300 partners (large universities and companies) – teaches on a computer the latest technological advances that apply. Thanks to artificial intelligence, the Mountain View (California) company has translated 4,000 courses in 17 languages in a few months, also into Spanish – it takes them eight hours each – and predicts that with the machine learning (machine learning) in one year the language will no longer be a professional barrier. In a recorded video, she shows her best Coursera face with a speech in English, Spanish (with a Mexican accent), Portuguese or Arabic dubbed with her voice thanks to the technology.
With a degree in Economics and English from Stanford University – where Coursera was born in 2012 by two professors – Maggioncalda took the management reins of this provider of massive courses (some of which are free) in 2017, which has two million registered users. Spain. He is surprised by the average age, 37 years – “I have not seen such a high average in any country, the average is 32 years,” he says in Madrid – and that the top courses in Spain are led by those designed by Google, not from great American universities. He sneaks in among the most in-demand programs, one on psychological first aid from the Autonomous University of Barcelona and another to learn professional English from the University of Pennsylvania. “Soon the best teachers in the world will be able to speak any language,” he congratulates himself.
Ask. Has the pandemic changed distance learning?
Answer. There has been a globalization of talent. Great work and learning opportunities have opened up. I was talking about it yesterday in Germany, they look for talent abroad because they need it. Whereas, when I talk to students from Singapore or the Philippines, they tell me that they will work for where they get paid better.
Q. What is Coach for?
R. We include ChatGPT within the courses to ask a question or understand a concept. He is obviously not a teacher, but he is a small trainer with whom you find out what the materials are for. You personalize it. You can ask him: how can I relate this concept to my work?
Q. Will all workers have to retrain?
R. Technology impacts everyone, even if you have a PhD. Before, artificial intelligence affected the most manual, predictable and repetitive professions, but ChatGPT affected everyone. A 2016 OECD report included a list of jobs that were at risk of being automated and those that required a lot of training appeared to be saved. But not anymore. ChatGPT is very good with the language and many jobs use it. It’s not that everything will be automatic, but some tasks will. We need new skills. For this reason, the World Economic Forum predicts that more than half of workers will need retraining, but only half can have access to training. It is fantastic that universities post their courses on our platform so that they can reach more people [Coursera tiene acuerdos en España con IE University, Esade, la Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, IESE o la Universidad de Barcelona]. My feeling is that people are going to adopt generative artificial intelligence very quickly. You are much more productive writing, thinking, creating images…
People are going to adopt generative artificial intelligence very quickly
Q. Maybe too fast.
R. Faster than you imagine. What do I do? I talk to ChatGPT again and again, again and again to clarify. It’s going to be faster and cheaper every time. McKinsey has done a study on productivity growth by sector: in operations with clients by 40%. The call centers They are going to be completely different. There will be humans, but supervising. The bots They will listen, make a transcription, look for the answer and make a report. I’m fascinated. This was presented just yesterday by OpenIA [por el 7 de noviembre].
Q. What will we dedicate ourselves to?
R. Now computers are capable of automating much knowledge, but human skills will continue to be very important: self-knowledge and entrepreneurship are necessary to dictate what you want.
Q. And how does AI affect teachers?
R. If you take a look at a McKinsey report from 2017, the interesting thing in education is that non-generative AI did not have much impact on the tasks of adult teachers, because few could be done with them, because everything is communication. But this new type of AI makes it possible. The older teachers are the ones who will see their work modified, they will learn tools of software, languages and concepts. I think the younger ones are more accustomed to these rules and cooperating with each other. Teachers will do three times as much homework if reading, writing and marking are automated; and they are going to have to teach the students to do their work. In offices, someone will be able to automate 90% of assistant tasks.
Q. So the universities are superfluous.
R. No! My niece, who is now in Madrid, is going to university, she is meeting people from all over the world, acquiring ideas other than those of California. Technology domesticated animals and then humans created civilization, the industrial age, the microchip age… which now gives way to the information age. But artificial intelligence can’t give you these views [un piso 13 en la Gran Vía madrileña] or the experience of eating today with my niece.
College professors have spent a lot of time doing worthless tasks
Q. But universities will be different.
R. Yes, I think they are not going to focus so much on examining, but on their community, on the experience of learning together, on debates. University professors have spent a lot of time doing worthless tasks when they have to devote themselves to teaching and research.
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