The Future of Education: AI
26th November 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM GMT
Artificial Intelligence is the latest in a long series of high-profile technology ‘disruptors’ of education. What futures for education does it promise, and are these desirable? Who is driving the discussion about its potential? And what might it mean for the act and profession of teaching? Current debate on AI in education is intense, and often torn between competing visions of education’s social purpose. This panel brings together researchers, writers and thinkers working in the area of AI to discuss what a future of education permeated by AI might look like, what it should look like, and how it might support education for public good.
Speaker Biographies
John Warner is a writer, editor, speaker, researcher, and author of eight books, including Why They Can’t Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities (Johns Hopkins UP) and The Writer’s Practice: Building Confidence in Your Nonfiction Writing (Penguin). John has been blogging about higher education at Inside Higher Ed for over a decade, and writes weekly about books and reading culture at the Chicago Tribune and his associated newsletter, The Biblioracle Recommends. His ninth book, More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI (Basic Books), will be published in the U.S. in February 2025.
Araba Sey is a researcher and educator whose work examines digital technologies, socioeconomic development, and social equity. As Deputy Director at Research ICT Africa, she leads research evidence-building for policymaking on digital and data governance across Africa. Her research includes studies of the relationship between digital and social inclusion, gender digital equality, artificial intelligence for development, misinformation and disinformation in Africa, and inclusive research design and decision-making for community development. She is motivated by an interest in resolving disconnections between rhetoric, action, and realities around the potential of new technologies to foster human development in Africa and beyond.
Dr Ben Williamson is a Senior Lecturer and Co-Director of the Centre for Research in Digital Education at the University of Edinburgh. He has conducted research on digital technologies, data and artificial intelligence in education for more than ten years, with books including Big Data in Education: The Digital Future of Learning, Policy and Practice, and the edited collection Digitalisation of Education in the Era of Algorithms, Automation and Artificial Intelligence.
Books by JL Williams include Condition of Fire (Shearsman, 2011), Locust and Marlin (Shearsman, 2014), House of the Tragic Poet (If A Leaf Falls Press, 2016), After Economy (Shearsman, 2017) and Origin (Shearsman, 2022). Published widely in journals, her poetry has been translated into numerous languages. She has read at international literature festivals and venues in the UK, Sweden, Germany, Denmark, Turkey, Cyprus, Canada, Hungary, Romania, Montenegro and the US.
She wrote the libretto for the opera Snow which debuted in London in 2017, was awarded a bursary to develop a new opera with composer Samantha Fernando at the Royal Opera House and was a librettist for the award-winning 2020 covid-response Episodes project by The Opera Story. She was commissioned to write the 2023 English Touring Opera children’s opera, The Wish Gatherer. Williams is hopeful about the simple and mysterious power of poetry that allows us to know ourselves, each other and the world more deeply. www.jlwilliamspoetry.co.uk
Sian Bayne is Professor of Digital Education at the University of Edinburgh, where she is Director of the Centre for Research in Digital Education, and leads on Education Futures in her role as Assistant Principal. Her research is critical and interdisciplinary, currently focused on higher education futures, AI, utopia and theories of ‘enhancement’. http://sianbayne.net
