Dr. Chris Dede’s Keynote

Complementing Human Minds with Digital Brains: The Role of GenAI in Learning

The global economy is moving into an era of Intelligence Augmentation (IA). Science fiction often portrays “intelligence” as involving complementary roles of reckoning and judgment. For example, In the Star Trek series the judgment and decision making of ‘Captain Picard’ are enhanced by the reckoning skills (calculations, analysis of multidimensional information, predictions) of the android ‘Data,’ a machine without human capacities like emotions. The human and machine work synergistically together to be better than their individual abilities. In the next few years, many occupations will shift to require working with a generative AI-based agent that has complementary skills and knowledge to the human worker. This talk will discuss what types of learning are most valuable for students and workers to prepare for these IA interactions in work and life, as well as how AI may aid in upskilling, reskilling, unlearning, and transfer.

About Dr. Chris Dede

Dr. Chris Dede is a Senior Research Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and was its Timothy E. Wirth Professor in Learning Technologies for 22 years.  His fields of scholarship include emerging technologies, policy, and leadership.  From 2001-2004, Chris was Chair of the HGSE department of Teaching and Learning.  In 2007, he was honored by Harvard University as an outstanding teacher, and in 2011 he was named a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association.  

In 2020 Chris co-founded the Silver Lining for Learning initiative. He is currently a Member of the OECD 2030 Scientific Committee and an Advisor to the Alliance for the Future of Digital Learning, sponsored by the Mohammed bin Rashid Global Initiative (MBRGI). Also, Chris is a Co-Principal Investigator and Associate Director for Research of the NSF-funded National Artificial Intelligence Institute in Adult Learning and Online Education.

His most recent co-edited books include: Teacher Learning in the Digital Age: Online Professional Development in STEM Education; Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed Realities in Education; Learning engineering for online education: Theoretical contexts and design-based examples; and The 60-Year Curriculum: New Models for Lifelong Learning in the Digital Economy.

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