The next generation of tech innovators need to be good citizens, not just good inventors
The future is what the next generation makes it. No surprise, then, that today’s visionary leaders including Elon Musk, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Stanford University are exploring how best to arm students with an education fit for innovation.
Elon Musk’s Ad Astra super-school is the most recent headline-grabbing initiative of this kind, making waves for its radical departure from traditional education. Musk designed the curriculum himself, to prepare elite science, technology, engineering, and mathematics students for pressing problems like nuclear proliferation or the threat of artificial intelligence.
Specifically, the school eschews arts and language training to keep a purely technical focus for its students.
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While its applied approach to education is valuable, Ad Astra’s single focus raises a concern about how we envision innovation as a technical discipline alone. Really, its success relies on multi-disciplinary teams which blend arts and science with human understanding, because solving problems with new technology isn’t purely a question of engineering or scientific brilliance.
Smart solutions developed in a lab or the back-end of an application mean nothing if they aren’t applied to have a net positive human impact.
And “human impact” is inherently hard to define. We’re challenged to do so accurately because each of us is individually limited by our own knowledge and experience.
We simply don’t know the challenges that we haven’t faced or learned through empathetic interactions with people who are fundamentally different from ourselves.
Consider automation – one of the most immediate waves of change on our horizon. For many leaders who see the efficiency and productivity-boosting benefits, automating processes is a no-brainer. But on the other hand, many workers rightly harbour some trepidation at the disruption of their livelihoods.
Finding a way to reconcile these dual viewpoints will be a major design challenge.
Beginning with empathy and personal engagement, we can learn how to deliver efficiency and sustainable livelihoods through implementation.
That means consulting with businesses in order to predict the alternative work these innovations will produce, and building in the organisational infrastructure and social support schemes which can retrain people to fulfil them – as well as ensuring that the automated process is fully capable of doing its job without a hitch.
Pulling off that level of comprehensive, human-focused design requires extremely diverse teams which bring different skill sets and personal backgrounds to a challenge.
Accordingly, that diversity begins with a multi-disciplinary education programme which perfects technical skills, while addressing broader human needs.
So, it’s heartening to see establishments like Stanford and MIT taking steps to blend their curricula to this end. MIT’s Urban Sciences major is a cross-breed of data science with public policy to maximise the applied value of data to the needs of urban communities. At Stanford, students can collaborate across fields of study to design services for the most disadvantaged social groups.
As we face an equally uncertain and exciting future, designing for human impact starts with collaboration and diversity, broadening rather than narrowing the scope of education.
If the vested interests of education, businesses, government, and social communities can bridge their respective gaps, the flow of new ideas and innovative thinking will better prepare us all for the challenges that are still to come.
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