人工智能的崛起与人类角色的重塑
在漫长的历史长河中，人类曾是地球上最顶尖、能力最强的物种。然而，这一地位即将被改变。人工智能（AI）的创造力正以前所未有的速度发展，其能力已开始超越人类的极限。卡内基梅隆大学的数学教授 Po-Shen Loh 指出，AI的进步速度令人惊叹，以至于他作为一位家长，对子女是否必须经历传统大学教育产生了动摇。他认为，当他的孩子们步入社会时，世界将发生翻天覆地的变化，届时最重要的技能将是**“合成自身想法的能力”**。他通过面试高中生来评估这种能力，他会提出学生从未见过的问题，观察他们在获得提示后，如何快速地将信息融会贯通，形成解决全新问题的方案。这种能力，即在未知领域进行创造性思考和解决问题的能力，正是当前社会迫切需要的。
这种对人类核心能力的挑战，在学术界也已显现。Po-Shen Loh 分享了一个令人震惊的例子：去年，国际数学奥林匹克竞赛（IMO）的六道难题中，有四道被谷歌的人工智能攻克。IMO的题目以其高度原创性著称，旨在避免任何已知的解法或模式。然而，AI不仅找到了解决方案，而且在其中四道题上表现优于人类专家，这深刻地揭示了AI在特定认知任务上已超越人类。这促使我们反思，人类智能的独特之处究竟在哪里？或许，那份对人类自身存续的关怀，以及在此基础上的创造力，将是人类在AI时代的核心竞争力。
英文原文
For many many years, humans were the top species, the most capable things on this planet. Soon, it will not be that case. The creativity in the AI can probably surpass what we can do, too. The AI is advancing so fast with my own kids. I have three kids. I'm a math professor at Carnegie Mellon University. I'm not even sure what's going to happen to university. In fact, actually, I'm going to say as a parent, I don't really even care too much if all of my children go to university because I think that at this point, by the time they go to university, boy, the world will be so different that the most important skill that you could have is that ability to synthesize your own idea. I interview lots and lots of high school students who want to work with me. And during the interview, the way that I interview is I ask them questions until it's very clear from their body language that they have never seen this question before. I wait until it's really clear that they have never seen this before. And then I want to see how you think. The expectation is that you won't solve it. And so then I start to give hints. And then I want to see how quickly can you synthesize them into a solution for a problem we have never seen before. Actually, that's also creativity. We really need this skill. Now, I'm Po Shanlow. I'm a mathematician who likes to solve real world problems. In real life, I'm a math professor at Carnegie Mellon University, but I'm also a social entrepreneur where I've been running my own educational solution, which tries to make the world a more thoughtful place. My biggest surprise was last year the International Math Olympiad problems, four of them were solved by Google's artificial intelligence. The International Math Olympiad has six questions and all six of the questions are very very original. They are so original that when the national coaches meet, they all look at the problems and they all try to make sure nothing too similar to those problems has ever appeared in any contest or anywhere in the world before. The questions are supposed to be really original. But nevertheless, the artificial intelligence was able to come up with solutions to four out of six, which is more than I can do. The only unique thing about human intelligence is that we hopefully care that humans still exist. The creativity in the AI can probably surpass what we can do, too.教育的颠覆：警惕AI对思维能力的侵蚀
当前，学生们正面临一个严峻的挑战：利用人工智能（AI）来规避学习过程，尤其是在写作任务上。这种行为可能对人类文明构成巨大威胁，因为AI，特别是大型语言模型（Large Language Model: 基于海量文本训练的AI系统），其核心优势在于语言模式识别。当学生过度依赖AI完成写作，他们可能逐渐丧失独立思考和逻辑推理的能力，变得被动且依赖他人。这就像为了锻炼而开车行驶一英里，实际获得的体能锻炼为零。长此以往，个体将难以保持心智上的敏锐和健康。
Po-Shen Loh 教授强调，AI的强大之处在于其对语言模式的精通。如果下一代普遍丧失独立思考和清晰表达的能力，他们将难以在复杂的世界中立足。因此，对于未来的教育而言，核心不再是教会学生“如何做作业”，而是教会他们“如何评估作业”——即培养他们的批判性思维和判断力。阅读、写作、沟通和逻辑推理等基础能力，是发展独立思考方式的基石。在AI时代，这些能力的重要性被前所未有地放大。
英文原文
In schools, one of the biggest places where students are using AI to cheat on their homework is for their writing. This unfortunately could make a huge problem for human civilization because you just have to think what is that AI anyway? It's a large language model. How is that AI so good? It's because it's good at language. It's good at looking at the patterns of words that often appear. If many kids lose this ability, we'll get many kids who grow up and aren't able to think logically. All they're able to do is just take whatever anyone else gives them. They'll just be dependent. If you're already grown up and you already have that skill and you're using the AI to achieve that task because that's for your job, great. Okay, you're using it to do a job. But if you're in school, why are you doing that writing? It's not because the writing you make is going to make money directly. No, no, that writing is actually part of your own learning. Using AI to do your writing homework in school is like saying, "I'm not going to run a mile for exercise. I'm going to drive my car one mile for exercise." how much exercise you get, you get none. You're going to grow up and you're not going to be able to be as physically fit. Similar thing here with mentally fit. And just this observation that the power of the large language model is the L the language. That's why we need to really make sure that all of our kids and if you're watching this and you're students, this is why you need to be really really good with language for the next generation. All of these skills like reading and writing, communication, logic, these are all going to be very important because these are how you develop a a good way to think. People used to go to school to learn how to do the homework and do the exams. Today, everyone needs to learn how to grade the homework. This is the huge difference.重塑教育理念：从竞争走向价值共创
Po-Shen Loh 教授回顾了自己从专注于数学竞赛到投身社会创业的历程。他曾认为精通数学至关重要，但观察到许多才华横溢的年轻人即使在数学领域表现出色，也常常感到迷茫和抑郁，毕业后不知何去何从，因为他们的人生目标被设定为“超越他人”。这一经历促使他深刻反思，人生的哲学不应是“如何胜过别人”，而应是“如何为他人带来快乐和价值”。当一个人以“让别人快乐”为目标时，这种满足感会驱动他不断扩大影响范围，从服务少数人到服务大众，并最终与传统的成功模式相辅相成。他认识到，金钱固然重要，但其价值在于能够支撑和放大这种创造价值的“影响力”。
基于这一理念，他开始构建一个教育生态系统。最初的尝试包括创建一个分享数学和科学解释的网站（XP），但缺乏可持续的商业模式。随后，他转向制作付费的教学视频，但仍未解决核心痛点。最终，他意识到人们真正渴望的是与领域专家的**“现场人类体验”**。然而，这种体验难以规模化，且需要兼具专业知识和友善的态度。为了解决这一难题，他整合了不同领域的资源，创造了一个“三赢”（win-win-win）的生态系统。该系统旨在解决学习者在思考能力上的痛点，帮助数学尖子生提升情商，同时为拥有戏剧表演才能的专业人士提供稳定的兼职机会。通过引入即兴喜剧课程，他成功地将这些看似无关的元素联系起来，创造了一个既能培养学生独立思考能力，又能支持专业人士发展的平台。他强调，教育的最终目标是让学生掌握“如何思考”的能力，从而能够独立学习任何知识，而非仅仅依赖课程。
英文原文
I've done lots of different kinds of teaching. I teach people all the way from the International Math Olympiad team. I will also go to schools and teach sixth grade in schools where unfortunately there might not even be any math teacher for the whole seventh grade. So I go and cover the entire range of education. I find this to be very interesting because that helps me to learn what the challenges are. The whole point of a school math test is to see whether or not you listened and you practiced. In fact, all the math competition problems in the US and also in many parts of the world are of this type. Which is why today the way that I approach education and training is to try to help as many people as possible learn how to do those questions which they won't have seen before. But I want to emphasize the reason I I've been doing a lot of work on this nowadays is because when I was doing math competitions in the 1980s the way you got good at it was by thinking. Every problem which was new was a chance to practice mental flexibility. Today, unfortunately, there's a huge industry around test preparation and cramming where people try to help students get high scores on these strange math questions by showing you all of the strange math questions that you might possibly see. And that involves studying for many, many, many, many hours. So that the hope of the parents is that when the students see the test questions, they are never surprised that they have done everything many many many time. This causes students to have to go to school school and after school and so many hours actually very bad for the student. But even worse, it takes away the students chance to invent. So that's why what the world needs now is a largecale way for everyone to learn how to grade homework, for everyone to learn how to come up with their own way of thinking, not just how to do the problems. A long time ago when I started with education, I was actually just thinking about how to help people do math problems. Today when I think back to that time, I think I was probably a solution looking for a problem in the sense that uh somehow I thought it would be very important for people to be good at math. But then things that happened later in my life as I became the national coach of the US Olympic math team, I saw situations where there were so many so clever, so capable people who were still so depressed. And furthermore, after they graduated from high school, they even didn't really know what to do next because they thought that the point of life was to find ways to prove you're better than other people. That's when I realized we actually will do much better if we think about the philosophy to start with, right? The philosophy in life should not be how do I outdo everyone else? If you do that, you will you'll probably never be satisfied. But if your philosophy in life is, hey, it is actually addictive to make a bunch of other people happy. Oh, now I can do it for five people. Oh, now I can do it for 500 people. Oh, wow. Now I can get thousand people to come to this thing. The more that you do, the more you want to do. And the fun part is that correlates also with traditional success. Then I realized, ah, I should be trying to push this worldwide. And if I don't do it, who will? with the things I've done in my life, I now have an opportunity to go and say, you know, I've seen what happens if you go all the way in pure competition. I've seen what happens if you go all the way and just practice problems to do the best on tests. Actually, that's not the right target. And I realized that because of my background, I would be able to shift mindsets. Then I said, okay, this is what I have to do. Money doesn't buy you happiness, but money is important for impact and influence. So, in fact, it's very important that the things that we build are capable of generating enough money to create the impact. This just happens to be what drives me. 10 years ago, I had this crazy idea that maybe if we made a website that would collect people's ways of explaining math and science topics, then maybe people would explain the math and science topics and it would be free and everyone would be able to learn math and science. And I remember thinking, "Oh, that can't be very hard. We'll be done with that in a few months. I'm glad I thought that because I'm still working." So, I had this whole thing called XP. We were making a website with free explanations, but that didn't actually have business model of its own. It wasn't generating money. So, I had to find some way to support all of that. In 2019 in April, we started creating our own version of that in the United States of America where we took charge of filming me teaching and then we had a a product which was consisted of me teaching math that people could watch recordings of and they would pay for it and this this made some amount of money. But then this one we still found there were pain points. And finally about two years ago I realized you know what what people really want is to have a live human experience with somebody else who is an expert. The only problem is that's quite rare and hard to find. Uh and there's also another challenge which is that ideally that person you're talking to is friendly. Uh if the person knows a lot but is not friendly that's actually not useful either. Right? This is the hardest thing to deliver in education because it's the least scalable. Of course, in entrepreneurship world, we always think about scalability and yes, you can find one brilliant coach who teaches 10 students or maybe even 20 or maybe even even 100. That's a small scale uh compared to the size of the world. And then that's when I suddenly realized I can make a giant win-win-win situation. So the main thing that I do now is an ecosystem. It's actually an ecosystem that I invented which unites many different types of people to all contribute in ways where everyone is winning. one pain point which was for the people learning math. Then the second pain point was from the people who are very very strong at math already from which building the EQ will be even better. Although I do want to emphasize this is helping them finish up to become extraordinary. And the thing that made me realize the key that made me realize I could put everything together was an experience that I had about five six years ago which is that I also took improvisational comedy classes myself. improvisational comedy classes are acting classes. And I was doing that because I was trying to learn how to communicate better to get more people interested in math. But I realized that even a math nerd like me can take those classes and then become able to talk to a few more people. So then I realized, let me add that. And then I walked over to our drama department and I found out that actually there are lots of people who have extraordinary drama skills who are actually indeed very interested in paid part-time jobs to help to coach the high school students. So that's the third painoint. The third pain point is there are people who absolutely love what they're they're passionate about what they're doing in the acting and drama world, but there's a practical need which is well how to find a stable part-time job flexible hours that they can use to support their passions. So suddenly win-win-win we have all three lined up and that's why this thing scales actually the everyone winning is very important because I work with high school students and so in our in our company anytime anyone wants to ask high school students to do anything my answer to my employees is always that thing you want to ask that high schooler to do can we explain to their parent why for a very busy high school student that thing is the best thing they can do with their time if I cannot explain that they're not doing it so this this is the discipline that we run it to this is this how strongly we make it a win-win situation. We will never have a high school student doing something unless I could explain myself to their parent. We suggested for your daughter to do this because it's really good for her to do this. The thing is beforehand it was hard to imagine there would be a way to do that until the answer became oh yeah because while doing this they will get to learn from a Broadway or Hollywood quality actor or actress that's going to help them become extraordinarily successful. now win. But you see, this took eight years to come up with, two more years to scale. The speed at which we grow is purely just based on how long it takes for people who have middle school children to realize that, oh, there are these classes here where the class looks as good as a Twitch gaming stream and it's taught by math geniuses who are smiling. You know, these are things that people could not imagine that you'd put all together at the same time. And as people discover this, they actually switch over. They start joining our classes. Then we can bring more high school students. And the scaling power this can go to is we I estimate that this easily could grow to a 100,000 high school students in the US. That's 1% of the US high school students teaching about a million middle school students. If you look at our live program, it looks a little strange because you'll see that the only subjects that we teach is a pretty small number. Algebra, geometry, combinatorics, number theory. Why do we cover these? We cover these because these are a curriculum that teaches you how to think. The only way to do that is by giving them questions that they have never seen in school before. So, I need to find a source of problems that you will not see in school. Actually, that turns out to be the middle school math competition curriculum because the people making those problems were trying to make problems that you don't see in school. But the difference between the way we do it and the way that lots of the training centers do it is that we are trying to use those as opportunities to make you able to practice the thinking instead of just showing you doing the question that way enough times. So the answer is the topics that we cover specifically chosen because that will be enough to teach a student how to generate their own idea. Our philosophy is if you finish all of that you will discover that you can learn anything. Our goal is not to make it so that we have classes for you for every year of your life. Our goal is to make it so that as fast as possible, you don't need any classes from anyone ever again.拥抱未来：同理心、价值创造与批判性思维
展望未来，Po-Shen Loh 教授认为，人类最核心的竞争力将是“创造价值和愉悦他人的能力”。随着AI能够承担越来越多的任务，人类的价值将体现在协作和创造独特价值上。他强调，解决问题的关键在于同理心（Empathy: 理解和感受他人情绪的能力），以及能够“通过他人的眼睛”来理解和模拟世界。这种模拟世界的能力是企业家成功的关键，它使人能够构想产品或策略，并在头脑中预演其发展过程。AI可以作为模拟世界的工具，但不能取代人类的独立思考。
Po-Shen Loh 教授对现代社会中人们日益减弱的思考意愿表示担忧，他认为iPad等娱乐方式和AI的便捷性可能进一步加剧这一趋势，导致人们难以集中注意力进行深度思考。他坚信，创造力、自我表达以及为生活注入个人“风格”和“创意”是人类不可或缺的特质，这些将会在过度依赖AI时被削弱。更危险的是，当人们失去独立思考和推理的能力时，他们将更容易被欺骗。在信息爆炸且观点多元的世界里，每个人都有自己的“议程”（agenda）。批判性思维（Critical Thinking: 客观分析信息并形成判断的能力）变得至关重要，它能帮助人们辨别信息的真实性，理解不同观点的背后逻辑，以及识别潜在的偏见。
他以自身为例，说明了如何通过接触真实世界和不同人群来培养这种能力。无论是乘坐夜间巴士，还是在公共公园进行数学讲座，这些亲身经历都帮助他深入理解了不同背景人群的需求和挑战。他指出，AI工具本身也可能带有偏见，因为它们由特定的人开发，反映了开发者的视角。因此，获取信息时，应主动接触多元化的观点，例如同时阅读不同政治立场的媒体。最终，他呼吁人们重新发现思考的乐趣，认识到创造价值和愉悦他人的重要性，并以此为驱动，在日益复杂的AI时代中保持人类的独特价值和能动性。