‘Teach our children well’: Jack Ma urges changes to China’s rural education in AI era

Education in China’s countryside should shift away from rote-based learning to focus on nurturing curiosity and creativity in the artificial intelligence era, Alibaba Group Holding founder Jack Ma said in a meeting with rural teachers on Monday.In remarks published by the Jack Ma Foundation on Tuesday, former English teacher Ma said the dawn of the AI era posed a challenge for rural education, but also presented an opportunity to “return to the fundamentals of education”. Alibaba owns the China-morning-post" class="entity-link entity-organization" data-entity-id="12558" data-entity-type="organization">South China Morning Post.“In the AI era, the question is no longer whether to use AI, but how to teach our children to use AI well,” Ma told teachers in a video conference call.“Education should no longer be about making children compete with AI in calculation and memory. Instead, we should help children maintain their curiosity, as curiosity is the source of ‘computing power’.”Since 2015, Ma has met annually with 100 new recruits to his foundation’s Rural Teachers Initiative, which identifies promising rural teachers around the country and provides them with financial support and professional training.His latest comments on AI’s impact on rural education came in response to concerns expressed by this year’s recruits that the rural education system would be “left behind” in the AI era, according to the foundation.