Stephen Downes

It's basically a trope now to compare the current wave of AI technology to previous ed tech innovations, like MOOCs, say, and to say "they didn't wipe out universities so this won't either". It's lso misleading. With the exception of on very foolish person, nobody said MOOCs (or anything else) would spell the end of education as we know it. They did say it would be transformative, and I think that remains true. Sure, you could take MOOCs as implemented by educational institutions and criticize "the video-and-quiz approach to learning that MOOCs popularized." In the same way, you can criticize AI tutors that emulate lectures and even coaching. But none of this addresses the real impact the technology has had. It has changed what we need to learn, where we learn it, and how we learn it. Ultimately, the MOOC was about people learning to teach themselves, rather than to consume education as though it were some consumer good. You have to look outside institutional learning to see it, though,