Artificial intelligence (AI) was the topic when professor Niklas Lavesson visited class 8C at the Nättraby school on a rainy November afternoon. There is no doubt that AI is an important part of our future. But what is AI? How is it created and what does the future hold?

These were issues aired in the classroom and many interesting discussions concerning the future followed, both in terms of AI’s benefits and risks.

AI is already here. It is used in Google’s search engine, by Siri in your iPhone and the film recommendations given by Netflix. How the future of AI will pan out for humans remains to be seen. To its extreme AI could either make all our dreams come true, or destroy society and the world as we know it.

Predictions for the future

We already know that the day will come when machines are smarter than humans. The pupils of class 8C are mainly
optimistic;
– “If we make machines smarter now, couldn’t the machines make us smarter later?” Elias argues. They are also confident new jobs will emerge, such as building, programming and supervising robots while gruelling, heavy tasks can be performed by robots. Teachers are probably safe they reason, reassuring their teachers listening from the back of the classroom. Teachers need to be creative, able to adjust lectures to students and make use of personal
experiences. There is more to teaching than merely informing.

At the end of the lecture it is agreed that precautions need to taken but AI isn’t as scary as it seemed a few hours ago.