How AI may fundamentally transform educational institutions by 2050

By 2050, the landscape of education will appear significantly altered from its current state, according to psychologist and social researcher Howard Gardner — the pioneer of the multiple intelligences theory — and Anthea Roberts, a visiting educator at Harvard Law School and founder and CEO of the AI platform Dragonfly Thinking.

Gardner, addressing attendees during a seminar on Wednesday at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, characterized AI as a transformation to education comparable to any major shift in the past millennium — even suggesting it might make obsolete many cognitive processes he is well-known for outlining. 

“The expectation that every student in the classroom needs to be engaged in the same tasks, evaluated uniformly, will feel entirely outdated,” he remarked. 

The seminar, titled “Thinking in an AI-Augmented World,” convened in Longfellow Hall and was facilitated by Martin West, academic dean and Henry Lee Shattuck Professor of Education.

“AI is already influencing the future of education in manners that everyone in the field, from policymakers and leaders to educators, guardians, and learners, must comprehend,” West pointed out.

Gardner and Roberts provided differing viewpoints on an AI-enhanced educational framework. 

In Gardner’s perspective, by approximately 2050, every child would require several years of education in the Three R’s: “Reading, ’riting, ’rithmetic, and a touch of coding,” he noted. Following that, educators acting more like mentors would introduce students to experiences that challenge their reasoning, expose them to concepts, and steer them toward careers that inspire them. “I don’t believe attending school for 10 or 15 years as we currently do is logical,” stated Gardner, the John H. and Elisabeth A. Hobbs Research Professor of Cognition and Education. 

Roberts presented a different vision. Previously, knowledge generation was “the performer on the stage, the player on the field, the author of the book,” but the upcoming generation must learn to coordinate a group of AIs. “You become the director of the performer, you become the coach of the player, and you become the editor of the author,” she explained. “It necessitates having robust skills in terms of your engagement.” 

Gardner indicated that artificial intelligence has led him to reconsider some previous notions regarding essential cognitive skills. His theory of multiple intelligences, introduced in the 1983 work “Frames of Mind,” delineated specific types of intellectual proficiency: logical-mathematical, linguistic, musical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, and intrapersonal.

A later work, “Five Minds for the Future” (2005), proposed five types of minds that educational policy should strive to cultivate: the disciplined mind (studying subjects such as history, biology, or math); the synthesizing mind (integrating various strands of thought meaningfully); and the creating mind (“This one piques interest, but is infrequent: It’s the generation of something innovative that truly resonates,” Gardner remarked). The other two modes — the respectful mind and the ethical mind — assist us in navigating our interactions with others and addressing complex societal issues.

Artificial intelligence, Gardner indicated, may very well soon replace three of these five. 

“I assert that most cognitive functions — the disciplined mind, the synthesizing mind, and the creative mind — will be performed so effectively by large language models and other systems that whether humans continue to perform them will be a choice,” he explained. “Conversely, I do not believe for a moment that elements of respect — how we interact with fellow humans — and ethics — how we manage challenging issues as citizens and professionals — can or should be relegated to even the most articulate and diverse, intelligent machines.”

The speakers recognized anxieties that learners might transfer cognitive responsibilities to AI, potentially undermining their critical thinking skills. 

“You will certainly have the opportunity to cognitively delegate,” Roberts affirmed. “And you will undoubtedly have the chance to cognitively grow. Our responsibility as individuals and educators is to determine how to facilitate that growth rather than that substitution. There isn’t a definitive solution to this yet.”

Roberts conveyed that she was driven to shelve her academic books and commence developing AI tools after a younger colleague created a “Robo-Anthea” that could converse fluently from her viewpoint. 

“I now devote nearly all my time to engaging in ongoing dialogue with LLMs,” noted Roberts, who is also a professor at the School of Regulation and Global Governance at the Australian National University. “Throughout all my scholarly endeavors, I have Gemini, GPT, and Claude active and in conversation. … I share their responses with one another. I’m perpetually involved in a discussion among the four of us.”