Stephen Downes

This is an early version of an article I wrote intended to appear elsewhere, and the two versions are quite different, and I like this version, so I thought I would post it here. The main intent is to move the discussion toward better questions about AI in education than we have been asking to this point. "To begin at the beginning: what is it we are even trying to do in education? Why exactly do we want to impart students with new knowledge and new skills?" Much of the discussion of AI assumes there is consensus on this point, but there generally isn't, and this colours a lot of our perspectives. But maybe it shouldn't: "What we are not asking, though, is whether we will need to do any of these things in the future at all."