AI and robotics will drive Education 2.0

It is a fact. Different populations will face different outcomes with robots, and some countries are already on their way to become more powerful by developing a workforce that will be in great demand globally. How? By investing in Education 2.0 and equipping people with skills and knowledge needed to deal with new-age technology.
But first let's assess if conventional education has a future when artificial intelligence and machine learning are expected to take over a lot of jobs?
Yes, it does. For every job position that will be displaced by a robot and use of artificial intelligence, three new roles will emerge:
1-To invent new robots/AI
2-To manage and give instructions to them
3-To maintain existing robots/AI
Now, this will work out for countries that invest more in education and are able to teach technological skills. And it cannot be done using traditional education methods.
Let's consider the future of a few jobs. In the near future, a lot of concierge jobs will be replaced by AI and IoT (internet of things) with natural voice language processing. Currently concierge jobs can be done by anyone who knows the local language and has customer service skills. But the three new jobs mentioned above will strongly rely on population trained specifically on technology. New roles will emerge and countries that have invested in different education systems will be successful.
Your future doctor may not be a human, courtesy the rise of AI in medicine. From mental health apps to robot surgeons, AI is already changing the practice of medicine. Lifeguards of the future would be the ones who know how to pilot a drone. A drone can save and support up to eight drowning people at a given point in time. Comparatively, it is an impossible task for a single human being.
Therefore, countries in the Middle East must keep investing in enhancing the technical capabilities of its populations, and soon the region would be second to none. Schools should teach kids how to code; explain how search engine algorithms work; make them understand algorithm of big data analysis; teach them how to develop robots; how to pilot a drone; and also let them learn the ropes of neural networks and how to develop video games.
However, the foundation should be laid in primary schools rather than universities. If students are taught at an early age, by the time they reach universities, they would be able to create a new future for the Middle East.
So far we have been taught in a linear manner, through people to people exchange, mainly in schools. Linear education, however, can be made more interesting by using technology. It's called 'enhanced education' where technology plays a major role. Types of enhanced learnings include e-learning courses of your choice that can be taken up online from experts globally.
Then there is augmented education, a system that demands a hands-on approach to real-life situations. Such forms of education use augmented reality and robots as professors to teach and it records responses to study the outcomes of the situations. All the three systems of education mentioned here are combined into one system called the circular education: people training robots to train other people using technology.
This opens a world of opportunity for us all. Welcome to the era when machines will teach us and where we are going to train the machines, and not only a human being.
Silvia Vianello is Director Innovation at S P Jain School of Global Management