EdTechnical
Hosted by EdTechnical co-founders Libby Hills (CEO) and Owen Henkel (Research Director), the EdTechnical podcast explores AI in education through a research-grounded lens.
Each episode, Libby and Owen ask experts to help educators sift the useful insights from the AI hype. They ask questions like: how does this actually help students and teachers? What do we actually know about this technology, and what is just speculation? And (importantly!) when we say AI, what are we actually talking about?
Beyond the podcast, EdTechnical also invests in promising AI edtech companies and conducts applied research to inform real-world product and investment decisions.
EdTechnical
Why AI Can't Automate Just the "Boring" Parts of Teaching
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In this EdTechnical Short, Libby and Owen explore how AI might reshape teaching through the lens of the “weakest link” theory from economics. They discuss the possibility of full job replacement, partial task automation, and productivity gains for teachers. Automation often shifts the composition of work rather than eliminating roles, as with bank tellers and radiologists.
In schools, planning, grading, diagnosing student understanding, classroom management, and relationship-building are tightly interconnected. Automating one component may reallocate time, but complexity is not neatly reduced.
AI can already perform isolated teaching tasks. What happens to the education system when those tasks are embedded in a deeply relational profession?
Links:
- Michael Kremer (1993), The O-Ring Theory of Economic Development
- David Autor (2015), “Why Are There Still So Many Jobs? The History and Future of Workplace Automation”
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- BOLD (@BOLD_insights), Libby Hills (@Libbylhhills) and Owen Henkel (@owen_henkel)
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Credits: Sarah Myles for production support; Josie Hills for graphic design; Anabel Altenburg for content production.