【中英双语】人工智能时代，“下一代”教育从哪里入手？
How to Prepare the Next Generation for Jobs in the AI Economy
在大多数人眼中，自动驾驶汽车、语音助手和其他人工智能技术都具有革命性的意义。然而对于下一代来说，这些事物将成为司空见惯的事情。人工智能对于他们来说只不过是一个工具。在很多情况下，人工智能将成为他们的工作助手及其生活中常见的事物。
Most of us regard self-driving cars, voice assistants, and other artificially intelligent technologies as revolutionary. For the next generation, however, these wonders will have always existed. AI for them will be more than a tool; in many cases, AI will be their co-worker and a ubiquitous part of their lives.
要让下一代学会有效地使用人工智能和大数据，了解其内在的局限性，并打造更好的平台和更智能的系统，我们现在就应采取行动。这意味着我们须对小学教育进行一定的调整，并对早应该调整的中学计算机科学教育进行大刀阔斧的改革。
If the next generation is to use AI and big data effectively – if they’re to understand their inherent limitations, and build even better platforms and intelligent systems — we need to prepare them now. That will mean some adjustments in elementary education and some major, long-overdue upgrades in computer science instruction at the secondary level.
例如，想想孩子们如今如何与人工智能和自动技术进行互动：人们可以对Siri说“展示穿橙色裙子名人的照片”，然后泰勒·斯威夫特（Taylor Swift）的照片在不到一秒钟的时间内便出现在手机上，这看上去像是变魔术，但很明显，它跟魔术没有关系。人们在设计人工智能系统时，会仔细地将一个问题分解为若干子问题，并让这些子问题的解决方案能够进行相互沟通。在上述案例中，人工智能方案将语音截成若干小块，并发送至云端，对它们进行分析，以确定其可能的意思并将结果转化为一系列搜索请求。然后云端会对搜索出来的数百万个可能答案进行筛选和排序。借助云端的可扩展性，这一过程仅耗费十几毫秒的时间。
For example, consider how kids are currently interacting with AI and automated technologies: Right now, it might seem magical to tell Siri, “Show me photos of celebrities in orange dresses,” and see a photo of Taylor Swift pop up on a smartphone less than a second later. But it’s clearly not magic. People design AI systems by carefully decomposing a problem into lots of small problems, and enabling the solutions to the small problems to communicate with each other. In this example, the AI program divides the audio into chunks, sends them into the cloud, analyzes them to determine their probable meaning and translates the result into a set of search queries. Then millions of possible answers to those queries are sorted and ranked. Thanks to the scalability of the cloud, this takes just a few dozen milliseconds.
这并不是什么复杂的事情，但它需要众多用于解读音频的组件波形分析，辨别裙子的机器学习，信息保护加密等等。然而，这其中的很多组件都是数个应用中反复使用的标准组件，它并不是一个孤僻的天才在车库中独自估捣出来的作品。发明这类技术的人必须有组建团队、开展团队合作的能力，并能够整合由其他团队开发的解决方案。这些都是我们需要向下一代传授的技能。
This isn’t rocket science. But it requires a lot of components – waveform analysis to interpret the audio, machine learning to teach a machine how to recognize a dress, encryption to protect the information, etc. While many are standard components that are used and re-used in any number of applications, it’s not something a solitary genius cooks up in a garage. People who create this type of technology must be able to build teams, work in teams, and integrate solutions created by other teams. These are the skills that we need to be teaching the next generation.
与此同时，随着人工智能开始取代工作中的常规信息和手动任务，我们需要着重培养人力有别于人工智能的特质，即创造力、适应性和人际交往能力。
Also, with AI taking over routine information and manual tasks in the workplace, we need additional emphasis on qualities that differentiate human workers from AI — creativity, adaptability, and interpersonal skills.
在小学阶段，这意味着我们需要重点开展鼓励解决问题的练习，并教育孩子们如何进行团队合作。令人感到欣慰的是，八年级对于探究式或项目式的学习有着浓厚的兴趣，但我们很难知道有多少地区已开始采取这一方式。
At the elementary level, that means that we need to emphasize exercises that encourage problem solving and teach children how to work cooperatively in teams. Happily, there is a lot of interest in inquiry-based or project-based learning at the K-8 level, though it’s hard to know how many districts are pursuing this approach.
各阶段的教育还应更加重视道德教育。人工智能技术一直都面临着道德上的困境。例如，如何消除自动化决策所产生的种族、人种和性别歧视；无人驾驶汽车如何取舍乘车人与行人的生命等等。我们需要思维缜密的相关人士和程序员来完善这些决策流程。
Ethics also deserves more attention at every educational level. AI technologies face ethical dilemmas all the time — for example, how to exclude racial, ethnic, and gender prejudices from automated decisions; how a self-driving car balances the lives of its occupants with those of pedestrians, etc. — and we need people and programmers who can make well-thought-out contributions to those decision making processes.
我们并不是说要在小学设置编码课程，尽管这样做也没有什么问题，尤其是在孩子们喜欢这门课程的情况下。诸如Snap!和Scratch这类语言是很有用的。但是孩子们可以在其教育的后期阶段学习编码。然而，在学习编程方面无需担心这一理念会让人产生误解。随着世界变得愈发数字化，计算机科学在文理科中的重要性不亚于写作和数学。不管孩子们是否会成为计算机科学家，还是从事任何其他的职业，编程都有助于他们走得更远。这也是我们认为为什么要在9年级设置计算机编程基础课程的原因。
We’re not obsessed about teaching coding at the elementary levels. It’s fine to do so, especially if the kids enjoy it, and languages such as Snap! and Scratch are useful. But coding is something kids can pick up later on in their education. However, the notion that you don’t need to worry at all about learning to program is misguided. With the world becoming increasingly digital, computer science is as vital in the arts and sciences as writing and math are. Whether a person chooses to become a computer scientist or not, coding is something that will help a person do more in whatever field they choose. That’s why we believe a basic computer programming course should be required at the 9th grade level.
美国仅有约40%的学校如今设立了编程课程，这些课程的品质和严谨度参差不齐。参加计算机科学大学预修课考试的学生数量正在大幅增长，去年参加计算机科学大学预修课A考试的学生为5.8万名，但是与30.8万参加微积分大学预修课AB考试的人数相比，这一数字便会黯然失色。美国有三分之一的州在学生毕业时甚至都不计算计算机科学课程的学分。
Only about 40% of U.S. schools now teach programming and the quality and rigor of these courses varies widely. The number of students taking Advanced Placement exams in computer science is growing dramatically, but the 58,000 students taking the AP Computer Science A (APCS-A) test last year still pales in comparison to the 308,000 who took the AP Calculus AB test. A third of our states don’t even count computer science course credits toward graduation requirements.
在这一方面，美国已被众多的发达国家远远地抛在了后面。以色列已明确把计算机科学纳入其大学预修课程。英国最近也通过了其Computing at School项目取得了不俗的成绩。俄罗斯也在大踏步前进。奥巴马总统在2016年国情咨文中宣布了“全民计算机科学行动计划”，也算是朝着这一正确的方向迈出了迟来的一步。
The U.S. is woefully behind many of our peer nations. Israel notably has integrated computer science into its pre-college curriculum. The UK has made good progress lately with its Computing at School program and Germany and Russia have leapt ahead as well. President Obama’s Computer Science for All initiative, announced in his 2016 State of the Union, was a belated step in the right direction.
在高中阶段完善计算机科学课程不仅会让学生受益，同时也有助于计算机科学的发展，因为他能够鼓励更多的学生以及不同学科的学生将计算机科学纳入职业选项。尽管去年秋天几乎近半数的一年级新生都是女生，但学习计算机科学专业的女性和少数种族数量仍未见增长。将智能融入系统，在无处不在的数据海洋中发现独特的洞见是一个急需各行各业员工参与完成的任务。
Expanding computer science at the high school level not only benefits the students, but could help the field of computer science by encouraging more students — and a more diverse group of students — to consider computer science as a career. Though we were thrilled last fall when almost half of our incoming first-year class at Carnegie Mellon was female, the field of computer science is still struggling to increase the number of women and minorities. Engineering intelligence into systems, and finding insights in a ubiquitous sea of data, is a task that cries out for a diverse workforce.
然而，为了取得成功，我们必须改变编程课程的授课方式。我们大都仍在按照20世纪90年代的思维来教授编程课程，当时，编程的细节（像Visual Basic）被视为计算机科学的核心。如果你能够顽强地通过编程语言细节关，你会学到一些东西，然而这仍是个痛苦的过程，但它不应该是这样。编程是一个创造性的活动，因此，开发一门有趣、生动的编程课程是完全可行的。例如在纽约，“女童子军”组织启动了一个项目，教授女孩子使用Javascript来创建和提升视频效果，这是一项孩子们喜闻乐见的事情，因为它很有趣，而且和他们的生活息息相关。为什么我们的学校不照搬这一模式？
To be successful, however, it is critical that we update the way programming is taught. We’re too often teaching programming as if it were still the 90s, when the details of coding (think Visual Basic) were considered the heart of computer science. If you can slog through programming language details, you might learn something, but it’s still a slog — and it shouldn’t be. Coding is a creative activity, so developing a programming course that is fun and exciting is eminently doable. In New York City, for instance, The Girl Scouts have a program that teaches girls to use Javascript to create and enhance videos — an activity that kids already want to do because it’s fun and relevant to their lives. Why can’t our schools follow suit?
在9年级之后，我们认为学校应提供选修课程，例如机器人学、计算数学和计算艺术，以培养对成为计算机科学家感兴趣，并有这方面天赋的学生，或那些未来需要使用电脑来提升其工作效率的学生。如今，很少有美国高中在开设备战APCS-A考试所需的课程之余还提供其他课程，但我们也有一些非常成功的案例，例如纽约的Stuyvesant高中，以及达拉斯TAG（天才学校）这些学校都拥有敬业的、来自计算机科学专业或接受过此类培训的教职人员。
Beyond 9th grade, we believe schools should provide electives such as robotics, computational math, and computational art to nurture students who have the interest and the talent to become computer scientists, or who will need computers to enhance their work in other fields. Few U.S. high schools now go beyond the core training necessary to prepare for the APCS-A exam, though we have a few stunning success stories — Stuyvesant High School in New York City, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Virginia, and TAG (The School for the Talented and Gifted) in Dallas, among others. These schools all boast committed faculty members who have a background or training in computer science.
我们还敦促高中数学部门减少对连续数学的关注，包括高级微积分，而是去更多地关注直接与计算机科学有关的数学，例如统计学、概率学、图论和逻辑。这些将成为明日数据驱动型劳动力最实用的技能。
We also urge high school math departments to place less emphasis on continuous math, including advanced calculus, and more on the math that is directly relevant to computer science, such as statistics, probability, graph theory and logic. Those will be the most useful skills for tomorrow’s data-driven workforce.
主要的障碍在于，学校严重缺乏拥有计算机科学背景的教师。美国的科技公司可以在这一方面给予很大的帮助。例如，微软发起了TEALS项目。在这一项目中，高中教师每周跟随计算机专业人士学习数小时。然而，要教授上百万名学生，我们需要数万名的教师。今后，我们有必要进一步加大这一方面的力度。在学术方面，得州大学在奥斯丁的UTech项目便提供了一种STEM教师的培训模式，目前已扩张至21个州的44所大学以及哥伦比亚特区。
A major hurdle is that our schools face a severe shortage of teachers who are trained in computer science. This is where U.S. tech companies could help immensely. Microsoft, for instance, sponsors the TEALS program, which pairs computer professionals with high school teachers for a few hours a week. But we need thousands of educators teaching millions of students. Even greater commitments will be necessary going forward. On the academic side, The University of Texas at Austin’s UTeach program is a model for preparing STEM teachers and has expanded to 44 universities in 21 states and the District of Columbia.
我们还需要投入更多的精力。在科学和数学方面，我们需要相关的政府标准，推动12年级的计算机科学教育，并开发教科书、课程，以及在全国范围内提供训练有素、符合上述标准的计算机科学教师骨干力量。计算机科学教师协会一直是这一领域的领导者，它制定了一套标准框架和一系列临时标准。
Much more is needed. As with science and math, we need governmental standards driving K-12 computer science education, along with textbooks, courses and ultimately a highly trained national cadre of computer science teachers that are tied to those standards. The Computer Science Teachers Association has been a leader in this area, promulgating a standards framework and an interim set of standards.
从长期来看，了解下一代人如何理解以及与大数据和人工智能互动是一笔能够让所有人都获益的投资。
Investing in how the next generation understand and interacts with big data and AI is an investment that will pay off in the long run for all of us.
时青靖 | 编辑
大卫·克斯比(David Kosbie),安德鲁·摩尔(Andrew W. Moore),马克·斯特里克(Mark Stehlik) ｜文
大卫·克斯比是卡耐基梅隆大学计算机科学学院的副教学教授。安德鲁·摩尔是卡耐基梅隆大学计算机科学学院的院长。马克·斯特里克是卡耐基梅隆大学计算机科学学院的外联事务副院长。
