The video explores the transformative role of digital dialogue in learning, drawing parallels between the introduction of generative ai and historical shifts in educational methods. It emphasizes the importance of dialogue in personal and societal advancement, noting its potential to engage individuals more deeply compared to traditional learning models. The speaker argues for the revival of socratic teaching methodologies, enhanced by modern technology, to counteract disengagement and enhance personal agency.

The significance of digital dialogue is highlighted through its ability to provide personalized learning experiences, resembling one-on-one tutorials, which significantly enhance learning outcomes. Historical and contemporary examples are provided, such as the adaptation of personalized tutoring through platforms like Khan Academy, demonstrating the effectiveness of digital dialogue over conventional educational systems.

Main takeaways from the video:

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Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:

1. generative ai [ˈdʒɛnərətɪv eɪ aɪ] - (noun) - Artificial intelligence that can generate new content, ideas, or solutions based on the input it receives. - Synonyms: (creative AI, AI generation, content-producing AI)

And it's my contention, I'm going to try to convince you that the fact of digital dialogue, which is what we have had introduced into our human ecosystem in the context of generative ai, is the most powerful force that we've seen in learning since the book.

2. digital dialogue [ˈdɪdʒɪtəl ˈdaɪəˌlɔɡ] - (noun) - Interactive communication facilitated by digital devices, often involving AI. - Synonyms: (online conversation, virtual communication, electronic interaction)

November 2022 is the first time the machines talked back, the very first time. That was the birth of digital dialogue.

3. hive mind [haɪv maɪnd] - (noun) - A collective consciousness or intelligence, typically in a group or community. - Synonyms: (collective intelligence, group mind, communal thinking)

This notion of returning to dialogue now with a hive mind, silicon based conversation partner is the most powerful thing to amplify, the most powerful thing in the universe.

4. socratic teaching [səˈkrætɪk ˈtiːtʃɪŋ] - (noun) - An educational method focused on dialogue and asking questions to stimulate critical thinking. - Synonyms: (dialogue-based teaching, question-led learning, interactive teaching)

And there I learned about socratic teaching.

5. alienation [ˌeɪliəˈneɪʃən] - (noun) - The feeling of being isolated or estranged from a group or activity. - Synonyms: (estrangement, isolation, detachment)

And I believe Marx was right in terms of the alienation that that creates.

6. malaise [məˈleɪz] - (noun) - A general feeling of discomfort or unease, often difficult to identify. - Synonyms: (discomfort, unease, depression)

There's a whole malaise and a worry that people aren't going to have a future.

7. industrialized education [ɪnˈdʌstriəˌlaɪzd ˌɛdʒʊˈkeɪʃən] - (noun) - A system of education modeled on industrial processes, focusing on standardized methods and large-scale teaching. - Synonyms: (standardized education, mass education, assembly-line education)

So they created modern education with people in class, classrooms 1 to 30, age relevant, stacked like so many boxes in a warehouse and industrialized education.

8. revamp [riːˈvæmp] - (verb) - To improve or renovate by making changes and updating. - Synonyms: (renovate, update, refurbish)

Second thing, we have to revamp education.

9. empower [ɪmˈpaʊər] - (verb) - To give someone the power or authority to do something. - Synonyms: (authorize, enable, entitle)

I believe that first of all, organizations need to empower employees to do this.

10. amplify [ˈæmplɪˌfaɪ] - (verb) - To increase the strength, frequency, or volume of something. - Synonyms: (intensify, boost, magnify)

This notion of returning to dialogue now with a hive mind, silicon based conversation partner is the most powerful thing to amplify, the most powerful thing in the universe.

Socrates at Scale - How GenAI turbocharges learning - John Sviokla - TEDxBoston

I feel very fortunate in my career. You can tell I'm at the very beginning of it. I've had the good fortune of participating in what I think is the most powerful force in the universe, which is learning. In particular, the first part of my career of 12 years was as a professor at Harvard Business School. And there I learned about socratic teaching.

And it's my contention, I'm going to try to convince you that the fact of digital dialogue, which is what we have had introduced into our human ecosystem in the context of generative ai, is the most powerful force that we've seen in learning since the book. And if you want to own your own intelligence, your own destiny, whether it's Ukraine, rebuilding a genius like the one we just had, expressing himself or helping others express themselves, this notion of returning to dialogue now with a hive mind, silicon based conversation partner is the most powerful thing to amplify, the most powerful thing in the universe.

We have a problem, and the problem that we have is a problem of lack of agency. And you can see this lack of agency in any of the statistics. So if you go to Gallup, Gallup does a survey as to how many people are engaged at work, the answer is 2/3 of people are completely disengaged at work. If you go and you look at the data in there, 1/6 of the people in any given organization are actively trying to pull that organization apart.

It's just amazing, the level of disengagement and lack of agency. And I think the fact that people aren't learning, growing and driving forward is a big reason for that.

In addition, if you look at the statistics in our high schools, contemplated suicide rates have gone up as much as 60% since before COVID to now. There's a whole malaise and a worry that people aren't going to have a future. Now this milestone event of November 2022, in the long history of automation, which goes back over 150 years, there's been one way that the conversation has gone from the animal into the machine, from the human into the machine. It's a one way dialogue of extraction. And I believe Marx was right in terms of the alienation that that creates.

November 2022 is the first time the machines talked back, the very first time. That was the birth of digital dialogue. How important is this? If you look at the growth of children, there's great research on the development of child brains between the ages of 0 and 3. Children who are dialogued with in an active manner, back and forth with their parents and siblings and so forth. Their brains grow better, their frontal lobes grow better, their amygdalas are smaller, they can hold attention longer. This is fundamental. We are and the entire society runs on dialogue and stories. That is our operating system. Conversation is our operating system.

If you look at how this gets reflected on the most powerful force in the world, learning and teaching. Of course we started with Socrates. The folks who were the founding fathers 250 years ago almost here. How did they learn? They learned in dialogue. All of the founding fathers had tutors, tutorials went back all the way to the ancients.

How did we get away from that? Well, the Prussians after getting beat up by Napoleon got a little bit upset about that. So they created modern education with people in class, classrooms 1 to 30, age relevant, stacked like so many boxes in a warehouse and industrialized education. Horace Mann was one of the leaders for the United States who went over studied depression model, brought it to the United States and we industrialized education. We got rid of the dialogue. And the critical thing about dialogue is you're not learning content completely. What you're learning is content and questioning and listening. That is a major difference.

What kind of impact does this have? Two standard deviations. Better for tutorials versus traditional education. This is work from Bloom out of the University of Chicago in 1984. Think about that. You can take a bad student here and you make them better than the best student in conventional by tutoring them.

The impact of tutorials is unbelievable if you look at where this is going. Khan Academy is a leader in this. Khanmingo. They started to actually have someone tutoring, watching the behavior of the student as they go through the different models. It's not just pointing somebody to a video anymore. It's really about a dialogue.

Just as an illustration I wanted to show you. This is I worked at PwC for a while, the Good company. This is an instruction to the model to tutor a new tax manager just coming to PwC. So you've just been hired. You're probably getting paid 150,000 bucks a year with a bonus potential about 50.

You're new to the organization and it says you're an expert in onboarding new talent in large organizations. I'm a new tax manager, blah blah blah. Can you please give me, tutor me on the history of PwC. Put together a week by week professional development thing.

Then give me the ability to give to my manager how they should manage me over time. Put that into a timeline and then give me a way to evaluate that.

So Mike, if we could go to Just to give you an idea of how powerful these things can be, which is going to straight up ChatGPT4 and what you'll see happen is it lays out exactly what I as that tax manager need to do. And I don't know if you've used these models in this way, but you can actually interrogate them or have multiple tutors tutoring you as you go through it. So go ahead and hit this in. So that's the prompt and congratulations. History PwC, right?

Differentiates PwC from competitors. Goes down through distinctive features of the tax practice. Keep going down if you would. Strategic imperatives. What I need to worry about, what's the context of my work? If you go down farther, my 90 day plan. Week one onboarding orientation. Here's a review key, right? All that you should do here.

Farther down. Keep going. Week five to six, seven to eight, nine to ten. Deep dive into specific project. Keep going. Evaluation form. Here's the evaluation that I want to be evaluated on professional organizations to join. What I should know as I start in my career, Clarity. You know, charities. What charity should I join? Because if you look at influencers, they generally tend to belong to multiple kinds of organizations.

Like John is obviously a huge, you know, network or influencer. Right? Top three things that my manager's gonna need from me. And this is just the beginning of my tutorial that's going to onboard me into this complex organization, complex job as I think about my career like that. So if you want to own your own intelligence and you want to amplify your own career, the thing that's amazing about these models that people, unless you use them all the time, you don't understand.

You have every kind of expert you can imagine at any level of expertise, at any level of specificity.

So you say, gee, could you be more technical? Could you give me analogies? Could you make that simpler? Could you make it for a 5 year old? And this is, as Ethan Mollick has pointed out, this CO intelligence is the stupidest CO intelligence we're ever going to have.

So I believe that first of all, organizations need to empower employees to do this. If you're running any kind of organization and my folks can learn two standard deviations better than your folks, who's going to win that? Two standard deviations do that. AI trained AI builders, AI masters, people who can help other people build tutors. Now of course there's always a dimension that is missing.

It's not another human being dealing with you and the emotion, but the amplification that tutors can get from digital tutors and how individuals can own their own intelligence by tutoring themselves is fantastic.

Second thing, we have to revamp education. Forget Horace Mann, we have to go back to Socrates. But with technology, we have to create not a lockstep education program. We need to create an ability for the hive mind of students and machines together to move at their own pace, to grow and to learn.

And the last thing that you should think about is all firms need to redo all their interfaces. AI is the new ui. The idea that this device, you know, whether it's this screen here, that camera, my car isn't going to have its own tutor built into it and can tutor you as to what's wrong. Then just try this as a parlor trick if you want.

If you have a problem with your car or problem with your washing machine or anything, you put it into the model. It is, as far as I've found, better than the normal diagnostician who's coming into your house for 150 bucks for that first visit. Put shortly. If you do not teach your children, your grandchildren, your employees, yourself, your loved ones how to use these digital tutors, you're missing out on the most important power that can grow their lives, increase their agency and enrich the society at large.

Education, Harvard, Technology, Digital Dialogue, Learning Development, Generative Ai, Tedx Talks