Thomas and John Cullerne at Winchester College invited Matthew to open the college's new academic year with a keynote on the impact of AI on the future of education, learning and work, a combination that looks at a student's whole life learning journey and the connections between each stage.
Founded in 1382 and part of the Rugby Group of schools, Winchester College is one of the most prestigious private schools in the world, with alumni including Rishi Sunak. Speaking in a hall steeped in that history, Matthew reflected on how far humanity and technology have come in what, by the college's standards, is the blink of an eye.
"Historically it's never an easy task to prepare students for careers that span fifty years, but today, as we sit on the cusp of creating the world's first true Artificial General Intelligences, that task looks more and more daunting."Matthew Griffin, Winchester, December 2023
For centuries the world changed slowly, and even in the late 20th century the changes the college prepared students for were manageable. Today, with AIs reaching near human levels of knowledge and performance, schools like Winchester are held back by a national curriculum that binds them to the past, while the gap between that past and the future widens exponentially.
Preparing students for careers that span fifty years has never been easy. In a world that changes month to month, on the cusp of the first true artificial general intelligences, it is more daunting still. That was why Matthew was asked in: to show the whole faculty the technologies and capabilities they and their students need to understand, compete with, and use to their advantage.
