Now that AI’s cat is out of the bag with the gold rush underway to find and mine the richest Chatbot veins…we logically turn to some of the experts in innovation development. One of which is Andreessen/ Horowitz (AH) of long duration and notable success in supporting startups that develop technology in market-leading ways.
Photo by Ricardo Gomez Angel on Unsplash
Of course, success for a VC is not that a high % of startups they’ve invested in succeed. Instead, the measure is that at least a “reasonable” number of their investments turn into successful companies. Which is not a well-defined bar to get over to establish credibility. VCs look to have at least one startup that turns into a corporation with mega-profits and/or mega market share. Credibility is required for investors to take the leap when the VC says “this is where the action is” as AH does below.
The field of EdTech has surely involved its share of assumptions, guesses, and lucky hits, or unlucky misses for the last 20+ years. The overall point is that funding for innovation in the private sector is risky, and needs the buzz du jour to prompt investors’ interest.
Two of AH’s recent investor white papers on AI are linked below, one on the specific opportunities of AI for learning, and a much longer “report/ prognostication” on the general topic of AI opportunities.
(See following posts for more on the Future of Learning in the Age of AI. Perhaps needless to say, all fields of endeavor will need to “account for” these buzz-heavy innovations in AI. Learning is definitely, or perhaps especially, not exempt.
PSA has posted a number of ‘prompts” asking what education is for, what kinds of learning are involved, and what constitutes the best teaching MOs to reach those educational goals …when we need them to adapt to AI-supported learning.
Those are not easy starting points to build/ rebuild education on. Ray Kurzweil has offered some perhaps very useful advice. AI is not something separate from man, but rather a sort of cooperating entity that we work with. We are the senior partner seeking to retain the boundaries we establish, while still trying to get the best out of the combinations of AI and humans.
EdTech might best be thought of in this way, but collaborating with AI in the “best ways” will take some leaps forward in understanding how to do it. Plus, innovation in EdTech is not going to stand still for our convenience.
Kudos to Gary for both links.
AI and the Future of Education and Learning - Five Predictions
Who Owns the Generative AI Platform? | Andreessen Horowitz