ADAPT International Conference 2023 · 24 November 2023
Invited presentation
Overview
A presentation on expertise and AI in professional education, given at the 2023 ADAPT International Conference.
The title frames the argument as a collision. The unstoppable force is generative AI, which democratises access to professional knowledge: systems that can apply knowledge and explain complex ideas function as low-cost, personalised “expert mentors”, making contextualised learning available outside formal degree programmes. The immovable object is the university and its traditional role as gatekeeper of expertise — the institution whose value has rested in part on controlling who gets access to professional knowledge and who is credentialed to use it.
As that gatekeeping function weakens, the talk asks what formal professional education is actually for. If expertise becomes abundant, the answer is not to defend the old model but to raise expectations: to move from assessing whether someone can reproduce knowledge toward what they can do with it — through project-based learning and authentic assessment that ask learners to apply expertise in real contexts.
The closing provocation is that professional education may soon look very different in a world where expertise is abundantly available to all — and that this is an argument for ambition rather than anxiety. It is a companion piece to With great power comes great ambiguity, given the previous month.
Slides
