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A fresh look at a “robot-proof” education in the new age of generative AI. In 2017, Aoun puts forth a framework for a new curriculum,
About the author
An internationally respected authority on higher education, Joseph E. Aoun has led Northeastern’s creation of a global university system across the U.S., Canada, and the UK. He has extended Northeastern’s signature co-op program through experiential learning opportunities in more than 140 countries. President Aoun is the author of numerous articles and books, including Robot-Proof: Higher Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (MIT Press).
Summary
Get a fresh look at “robot-proof” education in the new age of generative AI—now updated with new case studies on the challenges educators face today.
In 2017, the first edition of Robot-Proof foresaw the advent of the AI economy and called for a new model of higher education designed to help human beings flourish alongside smart machines. That economy has arrived. Creative tasks that, seven years ago, seemed resistant to automation can now be performed with a simple prompt. As a result, we must now learn not only to be conversant with these technologies, but also to comprehend and deploy their outputs. In this revised and updated edition, Joseph Aoun rethinks the university’s mission for a world transformed by artificial intelligence, advocating for the lifelong endeavor of a “robot-proof” education.
Aoun puts forth a framework for a new curriculum, humanics, which integrates technological, data, and human literacies in an experiential setting, and he renews the call for universities to embrace lifelong learning through a social compact with government, employers, and learners themselves. Drawing on the latest developments and debates around generative AI, Robot-Proof is a blueprint for the university as a force for human reinvention in an era of technological change—an era in which we must constantly renegotiate the shifting boundaries between artificial intelligence and the capacities that remain uniquely human.
