Staying Relevant May be the Most Important Skill to Learn

Just a few days ago in a focus group at a school, we heard a parent say that the school should place more emphasis on coding because it was one area that would be impervious to automation. “The computer can’t code to solve a problem it hasn’t been programmed to solve,” is a paraphrase of what she said. Well, maybe not so much. This item from deepmind.com reports on Alphabet’s (parent company of Google) claim that it has developed a system that can write novel code as well as most humans. To quote:

[Alphabet] created a system called AlphaCode that writes computer programs at a competitive level. AlphaCode achieved an estimated rank within the top 54% of participants in programming competitions by solving new problems that require a combination of critical thinking, logic, algorithms, coding, and natural language understanding.

See the YouTube video here.

Call it the singularity or just the inevitable evolution of processing power, but it is increasingly clear that one novel problem that today’s students will need to solve (and then solve again and maybe again) is how to stay relevant in such fluid times.