COLORADO SPRINGS – Fully committed to AI.
This was the statement made by billionaire businessman Mark Cuban on July 25 regarding ways to enhance America’s educational system.
In an onstage conversation with Colorado Governor Jared Polis at The Broadmoor, Cuban addressed the National Governors Association, encouraging the leaders to consider unconventional approaches while discussing Polis’ “Let’s Get Ready! Educating All Students for Success” program.
Rather than exploring methods to integrate artificial intelligence into our existing educational system, which he claims has remained largely unchanged since the 1880s, he feels that teachers should harness the complete capabilities of AI.
Why wouldn’t you, A) first decide what you want your children to learn, whether it’s your own kids you’re homeschooling or students in a classroom,” Cuban stated. “Is it just reading, writing, and math so they can perform well on exams? Or is it about developing logical reasoning? Is it also about critical thinking, along with reading, writing, and math?
And wouldn’t it be more effective to use AI to create quizzes and training sessions that not only deliver the training but also collect responses and compare them with all other responses to identify weaknesses or areas of improvement, so that it can recognize which students require additional support.
The official, who is finishing his tenure as head of the National Governors Association, initiated the conversation about AI with his initial question.
Let’s begin with AI, in two aspects. First, how is it affecting the world we live in, both positively and negatively, on a large scale? Then, looking closer, what does this mean for our schools and what subjects should children be studying?
Cuban handled it from that point.
He mentioned that he inputted questions regarding ways to enhance our education system into various AI systems on his own prior to the July 25 meeting, recognizing that each—ChatGPT, Grok, Perplexity, OpenAI, and others—possesses its own unique advantages and limitations. Cuban stated that his remarks were formulated based on a combination of responses from multiple AI platforms.
Artificial intelligence can tailor problems, lessons, and assessments for each student in a manner that no educator could achieve, according to Cuban, by adjusting the content and speed based on their reactions. This ensures that both top and struggling students across all schools have an equal chance to enhance their understanding in areas that the educators designing the program consider significant.
Thanks to AI’s vast knowledge, any student with an internet-enabled device can access the work of physicians, advisors, almost every book found in libraries, and research conducted by scholars and academics, Cuban mentioned.
There’s nothing they don’t have access to,” Cuban stated. “Every governor in this room, your assistants are using ChatGPT, and now your four-year-old can access the same information? When has that ever occurred in the history of the world before?
That represents the highest form of democratization and equal access to knowledge. It’s amazing.
U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon took part in a previous Q&A session hosted by Polis and supported the broader integration of AI in educational settings. She praised the personalized learning she observed in a math class at a school in Austin, Texas, where each student was solving problems on their own screen, with the teacher keeping track of all 25 students. When the teacher noticed a student having difficulty, McMahon mentioned that she approached the student’s desk to provide assistance.
Cuban mentioned that the eight or nine leading AI companies are investing tens of billions of dollars each year, potentially exceeding $100 billion annually, in an effort to emerge as the leading global power in artificial intelligence.
That competition, Cuban mentioned, has everyone striving to obtain information in order to train their models. As they attempt to “silo” this information so it’s only accessible to their own models and not those of others, Cuban stated that governors should have no difficulty convincing them to offer free or reduced-cost access to their systems in return for the AI model’s access to the questions and answers from tens of thousands or even millions of students. Additionally, this would help students become familiar with a system they may continue using long after their schooling ends.
Officials and educators have the ability and responsibility to implement certain safeguards within the systems they adopt, he stated, to ensure students remain focused and finish their tasks. Additionally, he encouraged governors to require AI providers to keep records of all user queries and responses from individuals under 18, which should be readily available to parents or guardians.
Remembering that he often had his own children, who are now 15, 18, and 21 years old, sit in front of an iPad to watch “Scooby-Doo” to keep them entertained when they were younger, Cuban mentioned that he would now use AI, entering some questions to help them begin exploring topics that would spark their curiosity and give him a better understanding of their interests and learning preferences at an earlier age. For parents of older children who are concerned that their kids don’t enjoy reading, he suggested simply starting them on AI-driven exploration of whatever it was they hoped their children would learn from those books. Let their natural curiosity guide the process, Cuban said.
At home and in the classroom.
We possess a distinctive tool that has never been seen before,” Cuban stated. “We must utilize it to create a teaching method that has never been implemented before.
Reporter Kelly Lyell reports on education, breaking news, select sports, and other areas of interest for the Coloradoan. Reach out to him at[email protected], x.com/KellyLyell, threads.net/KellyLyell and facebook.com/KellyLyell.news.
This piece first was published on the Fort Collins Coloradoan:Mark Cuban discusses education with Governor Jared Polis, stating that AI has the potential to revolutionize teaching.
