Giving Compass' Take:

• Betsy Corcoran, writing for EdSurge, interviews Chinese venture capitalist Kai-Fu Lee about his predictions that AI will alter teaching in the next 15 years and will be used to enhance student learning. 

• Lee explains that AI can take attendance, monitor facial reactions and track student participation. AI won't necessarily replace teachers, but will save class time for more critical activities and instruction. 

• Read about why the AI future will still include teachers. 

Artificial intelligence promises to have a dramatic—and yes, disruptive—effect on U.S. education and jobs in the next decade. But that technology won’t be entirely homegrown: Chinese companies, particularly those building products or services laced with the machine learning algorithms, are increasingly playing a role in the tools that we call “AI.”

There are few that understand what these forces mean for the world—and for education and learning—better than Kai-Fu Lee.

Lee has been an enormously influential researcher, driving forward work on AI. He worked at Apple, Microsoft and Google, where he served as president of Google China. He started a venture capital firm in 2009 based in Beijing called Sinoventures.

His latest book, “AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley and the New World Order,” is almost two books in one: It tells the story of the development of artificial intelligence and why we should pay attention to this work.

In the past 2.5 years, billions of dollars and countless researcher hours have been poured into developing “narrow AI”—specific applications that AI can do better than any human—or even team of humans. All that has led Lee to write this book and to make a stunning prediction: That in the next 15 years, close to half of today’s jobs in the US will be done by machines powered by artificial intelligence.

Read the full interview with Kai Fu Lee about the future of AI by Betsy Corcoran at EdSurge