Letters to the Editor: If AI will reshape work, it should start reshaping our schools now

To the editor: Nicholas Goldberg’s column on artificial intelligence and its role in the workplace is one of the best pieces I have read about AI reshaping work.

Today’s K-12 students are preparing for jobs that do not yet exist. The pandemic highlighted the critical need to be adaptive and to problem-solve quickly. I could not agree more with public policy professor Harry J. Holzer’s proposition that K-12 education needs to be retooled to prepare for the 21st century, providing our students with communication skills, critical thinking skills and creativity.

I cannot help but feel we missed a golden opportunity to retool public education coming out of the pandemic. Instead, I see schools dusting off the pre-pandemic playbook of preparing students for annual standardized tests, just like they had for decades before.

Jason Y. Calizar, Torrance

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To the editor: Goldberg wonders if AI will allow us to have a four-day work week. That is a great question.

The eight-hour work day became a rallying cry for organized labor in the U.S. in 1866. The 40-hour work week became law in 1940. Technological advances and productivity have since gone through the roof, but our work hours have not changed.

For each advance, the carrot of more leisure is dangled in front of our nose, but it never seems actually to be given to workers. Why should it be different with AI?

The hard fact is that we do not vote democratically to accept advances. They are imposed on us. Usually there are great benefits to progress but also hardships, as our system mostly advantages the few.

If we could decide whether to accept technological progress, we could add some conditions to our approval — such as a four-day work week.

But I won’t hold my breath for this.

Marie Matthews, San Pedro