Good evening. Im glad you all are having a great time. Im happy to see you all, welcome alumni and friends to the m. I. T. Fall form event featuring northeastern president joseph aoun. Thank you m. I. T. Press for partnering with the Alumni Association to bring this event to come to pass and also a special welcome members of president aouns senior team that are here this evening to make sure we treat him well. We are very happy to have you here. I am the ceo of the m. I. T. Alumni association and im glad to say it first hello. Its my pleasure to begin the program tonight but first a few important details. Please remember to silence your cell phones. Your phones may be used as a question if you visit alq m. Alum. M. I. T. Edu you a to ask questions of our speaker. We are filming this event so please note that during the q a your face or voice may be live on air and if you choose to participate. Finally a final note please join us after the forum for conversation and coffee and dessert in a reception area. Given that we got together to celebrate the m. I. T. Community and the publication of a new book it is fitting that president aouns publisher and another m. I. T. Alum herself amy brand a ph. D. From a class of 1989 is here tonight to help kick things off. A few words about amy before she takes the stage with amy became director of the m. I. T. In july 2015. She had prior history in the press as executive editor as well as experience in the broader publishing world. The chair the impressive details on her but trust me when i say she knows a good book was he he sees one and we have one here to talk about this evening. Brand focused her attention as director of the press on balancing the strategies launching a partnership to enable libraries to enable hundreds of m. I. T. Books that have been previously unavailable previously in elevating the presses ability with a shiny new storefront in cambridge completes with a phone event series and im sure she hopes to see you up there in the future. While amy wohl properly introduce her steam speaker this evening i cannot surrender the microphone without offering a form very warm m. I. T. Welcome to president aoun. [applause] we are proud to have you with us here this evening. We are eager to hear your perspective. The m. I. T. Community of alumni included is known for its intellect and its universal desire to make things and fix things, to make things better. Your leadership of northeastern as well as this book about the distinctive capabilities of the human mind even as we witness the ascendancy of robots shows an m. I. T. Trained human mind at work to make the world better and we thank you and appreciate your presence here tonight and with that amy i will hand you the microphone. [applause] thank you to whitney. Im delighted to be here to open the program and to at a deuce him more formally. Some of the worlds most prominent authors ranging from science and technology to art architect architecture and including Higher Education and linguistics. The m. I. T. Do nothing less. The spirit is alive and well and are featured speaker joseph aoun has just published a book Higher Education in the age of Artificial Intelligence sub robotproof Higher Education in the age of Artificial Intelligence. Aoun challenges the university and literacy are so based on rote learning and memory are increasingly the purview of machines. This book makes us rethink the purpose of Higher Education in confronting the worlds problems. A robot education trains laborers not creators. As someone who reads a lot of books and reads a lot of the proposals some of the dry academic stuff let me say i was impressed with the possibility of this book but with many beautifully crafted sentences. I mentioned to a mutual friend j. Kaiser Professor Emeritus of linguistics at m. I. T. That i had the honor of introducing joseph tonight and jay replied quote i could never understand how he could bring himself to choose the presidency of northeastern over being associate editor of linguistic inquiry. [laughter] there is no accounting for taste. He was also my student and perhaps thats where he went wrong. For those of you who know him best quintessential jay. He earned his ph. D. At in the glow sticks at m. I. T. In 1982 serving as professor norm chomskys first teaching assistant during his first year. He is a native of lebanon and he studied in beirut and paris dakar before coming to m. I. T. And after m. I. T. Joined the faculty of uscs college of letters arts and sciences where he was named the an odd grow colder of the anna h. Dean chair Northeastern University named him a seventh president in 2006. Now in its 12th year in the role he has distinguished himself as an expert on global and Experiential Education. He shares many of these successes of the coop program in the book. Today the northeastern has worked studied and conducted research in 131 countries on all seven continents. In 2011 aoun received the robert a. A word from m. I. T. Which honors m. I. T. Graduates for significant achievements in humanities arts and social science fields. Announced just today aoun is one of seven university presents president s honored by the Carnegie Corporation with 5000 to advance Educational Initiative which is quite remarkable and typical of this commitment. He pledged a matching grant to take the award even further. After president aoun opens with his own remarks from his book David Rothman take the round and ask you questions and then we hope members of the audience will join discussion as well pick david is editor of m. I. T. Technology review. He has written extensively on chemistry biotechnology Computer Science and Environmental Issues but first please join me in welcoming president joseph aoun of Northeastern University. [applause] thank you. Good evening. Its good to be back at my alma mater with friends and colleagues and some of my teachers. Amy and i graduated from the Linguistics Program so she is very biased in her introduction. Dont believe anything she said. I am going as you mentioned about the book essentially something you all know, smart machines are getting smarter and are displacing us on many levels many jobs are becoming obsolete. As a matter of fact studies have indicated and projected that over the next 20 years close to 50 of the jobs will no longer be needed. The quality we know today is going to increase even further. At the same time when we look at the marketplace, when we look at society and we ask ourselves and we asked people employers, institutions what kind are you looking for, they are looking for creative standards and entrepreneurial standards that can be global, that can think in a systematic way and this is something that is needed and this is something that everybody wants to have. Given the challenges of jobs and whats people in society is asking or education must change in order to make people robot proof. In my book what i am presenting is a blueprint for how Higher Education can change to make people robot proof. One, we need to rethink our curriculum. Second we need to integrate experiential learning is part of what we do and third, we need to move Lifelong Learning in order for it to become part of our mission. Let me start with im calling for a curriculum based on humanity. It is the mastery of free literacy. Tech literacy and the machines and understanding how to interact with these machines. The second is the understanding of the enormous amount of information that machines are and how we can navigate this information and make sense of it and be on top of that and the third is what i called the human mainly the focus on cultivating what is unique to human beings that machines will have difficulty duplicating. What are these attributes . Entrepreneurship, systems thinking, the billet to interact with people, to be empathetic, the ability to be culturally agile, the ability to be global and the ability to function in peace. How do we achieve that . We dont teach creativity. We dont teach entrepreneurship. We have to practice it. We have to live it and thats the second we have to practice it. We have to live it and thats the second. Experience or education is essentially the i believe the most powerful form of Experiential Education is based on the work practice or longterm internships. What are these . It allows the learners to test what she has learned in the classroom to refine it and to understand what she is good at, to understand how to work with other people, to understand her limitations and her potential ended to be a leader, to be a creator. And then to integrate the two together. I see it happening on a daily basis. The third aspect is Lifelong Learning. Machines are smart and getting smarter. No jobs are going to disappear and also new jobs are going to be created. If we are going to be obsolete, each one of us unless we educate ourselves. Lifelong learning is a necessity Lifelong Learning in Higher Education has always been viewed as secondclass operation to what we do. It has two become part of our mission. People need to educate themselves in order to remain robot proof. Its not going to be easy to integrate Lifelong Learning is part of our core mission because it will lead us to rethink our curricula. Are we the sole owners of the curricula . Are the learners and the employers, do they have a role in shaping them . Its going to lead us to rethink the notion of delivery. Its going to also lead us to rethink how we are going to bring the learners to us. They dont have the time. They dont have the ability. We have to go to them. The university has to go to learners. Its going to lead us to rethink our notions credential he. We need to meet these challenges society is changing. The world is changing. Higher Education Needs to change and i believe that Higher Education has the responsibility and the opportunity to make every learner robot proof. That is what my book is all about. Thank you. [applause] thank you. My name is David Rothman and im the author of m. I. T. Review and its a great honor to be able to participate in this conversation with you. I have to say this book is terrific and if people havent read it, they should. I think it does many things well but two of them air it provides the Historical Context in the current context on why robots are changing jobs and how technologies in the past have changed jobs and how this time its different. Its a nice discussion of what is happening and then secondly it not just offers the problem but it provides a really strong argument for why education helps people adapt to these changes. So, a terrific book. Im going to ask a few questions and open it up and hopefully have a discussion. I want to start by asking you, when did you start thinking about ai and rove bots and its affect on work and why education might change and sort of a followup as you begin writing the book and as you wrote the book how did your thinking change . You know there is work that has been done. This work was called into action because it raised the indications of what ai is going to do to society. That is one of the first books. Obviously ive been reading a lot of books on ai trying to learn about it. That was one of the turning moments for me and you know in Higher Education we dont talk too much about work. We want to educate our students but we dont care if theres an implication for work or not. I belonged to an institution where this has been part of the core mission of the institution and to think of the work not only of today but the work of the future. This starts as thinking about the application of the ai evolution the second machine age on work and society and frankly on Higher Education. What has changed from when i was writing the book is that the acceleration happened. Mainly when people started talking about ai people thought this is remote and this is not going to happen and suddenly we are seeing it around us, jobs being redefined and at the same time we are seeing many politicians are denying them. We have politicians who say this is not the problem but we should be concerned with and you know so therefore we need to regulate that. We need to tax it and we need to do x, y and z. What has happened is something that started as a formal academic discussion became central to many discussions happening and thats why i had to adapt and integrate the elements that i didnt think about before. I think both the pace of the development of technology has been much faster than we anticipated and i think its become more evident that we are unprepared for those changes. Absolutely, absolutely. I was mentioning to david if you look across Different Countries europe is much more sensitive and much more worried about that and its happening at the government level. Here the government is saying this is to be concerned with. Its interesting and england and the uk is looking at the possibility of asking each company to put a small fraction in order to focus on educating and reay dictating their workers, their executives and their future employees. I was struck at one point in your book you called it one of the most powerful skills that we have is people versus machines is creativity and creativity is still an advantage that a person has and will maybe always have. I was wondering if you could expand on i think you mean creativity in the very general sense in a very broad sense. Maybe expand on what gives the advantage of machine over robot . Here at m. I. T. Creativity is everywhere and in society, lets go beyond Higher Education. An entrepreneur is a creator and an entrepreneur is looking at the problem and looking at the possibility and seeing it in a different way. Similarly somebody who is launching notforprofit either in roxbury or in africa is a creator and this shaping something new. People who are working in various industries are rethinking industry so its not only the research, the fundamental research that is creative. Everything we do, the way we look at the world than the way we look at the problem is based on creativity. This is something that has been the purview of human beings and human species and its very difficult. I havent seen yet the robot that is going to see the next creator and apple or have a new theory so thats why i think we have to focus on these aspects that are specific to human beings. There are many things that will get more and more powerful and i certainly believe is you just outlined creativity is something that will be elusive for the foreseeable future for ai. And hopefully other aspects too. The ability to look you in the eye and understand whether im happy with what you are saying the ability to read your body language and the ability to interact with you. When you are happier when you are sad, the ability to work with you and be led by you. All these aspects to who we are as human beings. This is something we need to continue to cultivate and focus on. One thing i wanted to ask and you touched on it in the book is we hear a lot these days about skill gaps in terms as there are not enough people to higher for jobs and you point out in the book some do not believe its true and its such a complex issue. I wanted to ask you your take on the skill gap and how we address it and how we make sure people are prepared and how companies perhaps work with the university to make sure we are training people for the right skills in the right jobs. To survey what is needed in society now and those surveys, the Business Education form did that and the chamber of commerce did that. You see for instance we need cybersecurity you know. This is not a surprise. Theres an enormous demand. Clearly others you can add Design Thinking and various other aspects but you ask me how society and how we can look into that. There are two types of learners that i am discussing in my book. Those that i call short on experience, long on time and those are undergraduates that teach and others are the learners who are long on experience but short on time. So you know there will be new demands for new jobs etc. What has happened for instance and thats Lifelong Learning. What has happened is society has answered in fact Higher Education has not answered that by creating forprofits and by creating boot camps. The number of boot camps that were started now they are teaching you big data and their are doing it but we are seeing the limitations of what they have done. If you have a boot camp lets say encoding the employer thinks this will get you into the job but will not allow you to really think and master and be the creator. Its rote learning so in some Ways Companies have answered that by saying we are going to create our own university. Thats interesting and every time a company starts its own university that means why should they start their own university and it m. I. T. I have m. I. T. Tshirts. So i design tshirts but i dont manufacture them. I go to somebody who knows how to do it. Everytime a company thats a failure of Higher Education. To answer your question society has done that by allowing the forprofit to flourish. Society has answered the need by allowing, i dont need to be allowed to do it but its a company doing Lifelong Learning. You are referring to the fact that if indeed i and robots are going to displace us as people who have jobs, you know, who are going to be the consumers, with who are going to be the taxpayers, and also that will be great winners and many losers. Varied by society. So what is happening is that there are discussions about, you kn