In Independent Education Today, CENTURY Founder CEO Priya Lakhani OBE argues that technology will improve, not diminish, the role of humans in teaching. Click here to read the full article.
On any given day, a cursory glance at the news headlines will reveal yet more industries being ‘taken over’ by robots. As I write this, the top Google News results feature robots saving the coral reef, robots solving Amazon’s labour conditions woes, and even Iran beginning to produce a robotic surgeon.
There can be no escaping from the fact that many of these and similar developments will lead to a reduction in the role played by humans. In sectors from transport to healthcare to manufacturing, robots are increasingly replacing humans – and this year the ONS predicted that 1.5 million people in England alone are at ‘high risk’ of losing their jobs to automation.
But just as the invention of the telephone and the internet have brought humans closer together than ever before, technology itself does not intrinsically result in a reduced role for humans – in fact, it can often mean the opposite. Technology can allow us to perform the human-dependent tasks better and more frequently. Automating tasks that do not require human input allow us to maximise our time on those that do. Technology can magnify the human aspects of our jobs by diminishing the mechanical.
Click here to read the full article in Independent Education Today.