GEMS, the world's largest private school company with over 150,000 students from over 150 countries, 11,000 staff and over 100 schools in 19 countries, invited Matthew to present on the future of education in an exponential world. It is a world, he argued, where science fiction is becoming science fact, and where every student armed with the right insights, mindset and tools could change the lives of billions of people for the better.
He opened by giving the English teacher access to OpenAI's GPT-2, then the world's most dangerous AI text generator: a tool that can write anything from poems to essays, and that students could one day use to cheat.
"One of the biggest challenges we have as a society is preparing ourselves and our children for a future that will be increasingly fast and furious."Matthew Griffin, United Kingdom, October 2019
Matthew then showed the faculty how science fiction technologies from holograms to tractor beams have arrived, and how a rate of change that already feels fast will go exponential as self-evolving AIs and robots emerge, alongside technologies that let us teach children in new ways, end famine and energy poverty, and disrupt every industry on Earth.
The world our children will live in will be almost unrecognisable. In his view one of society's biggest challenges is preparing ourselves and our children for that future, as automation, autonomous companies and intelligent machines transform global culture, industry and society, with huge implications for skills and work. He left the faculty with one question: are your children prepared?
