“Hey Siri, are you capable of loving? Hmmm… Is there anything else I can help you with?” Artificial Intelligence (AI) has undergone enormous advances in recent years. But one simple question is enough to expose the weakness of these incredible machines built to perform tasks that typically required human intelligence.
More and more researchers and policymakers are interested in whether and how a broad array of skills, often summarized as non-cognitive skills, soft skills, life skills, or socio-emotional skills, may benefit individuals in educational settings or in the labor market. A large literature in the U.S.
Richard Wang is the CEO of the global technology education company Coding Dojo.
This blog was written jointly with Virpi Heinonen who is responsible for the cooperation initiatives and projects in the Latin America and the Caribbean at Tampere University of Applied Sciences, Finland. We work closely together with our partners to provide Finnish higher education know-how to the region.
Mariana Costa Checa was honored with her own Barbie. Is this one of the top highlights of this Peruvian entrepreneur’s life? I don't think so, but it's certainly interesting for a woman who dedicated her life to improving digital skills for women in Latin America and the Caribbean. She says it herself in a note: "It was really an honor that Barbie’s company wanted to include me on the list.
Over the past year, the labor markets in Latin America and the Caribbean have regressed at least 10 years-with 23 million people temporarily removed from the workforce losing their jobs and their income, according to the International Labor Organization. But the unemployment rate tells only part of the story in this region of the world. According to the ILO, there was an unprecedented change this year where many people just gave up looking for work due to the lack of opportunities.
Education is being challenged from many fronts: students are not learning what they need in the basics (literacy and numeracy); they are abandoning schools; they need to be prepared for jobs that don’t yet exist, and skills that were not traditionally taught (or at least not formally and effectively included as part of the curriculum and teachers training), are now in high demand. Schools are operating for a mass-production model and not necessarily for a knowledge-based digital economy.
Emma Näslund-Hadley, IDB Lead Education Specialist
Juan Manuel Hernandez-Agramonte, Deputy Regional Director of Innovations for Poverty Action for Latin America and the Caribbean
Kelly Montaño, Research Associate of Innovations for Poverty Action for Latin America and the Caribbean
How do you know somebody comes from a low-income background? In Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as in many other countries around the world, you ask a simple question: What school did you go to? That means that school is not precisely a great equalizer; unfortunately, rather the opposite.