Kids in China preparing for the AI race

China is plotting a homegrown strategy of local and national talent development programs. It may prove a masterstroke. Aged 15, Shanghai students were on average three full years ahead of their counterparts in the UK. Nowhere in the world has a country made more of its kids’ talent.

Shanghai’s success owed a lot to Confucian tradition, but it fitted precisely the best contemporary understanding of how expertise is developed. In his book Why Don’t Kids Like School?, Dan Willingham explains that complex mental skills like creativity and critical thinking depend on our first having mastered the simple stuff. Memorisation and repetition of the basics serve to lay down the neural architecture that creates automaticity of thought, ultimately freeing up space in our working memory to think big. The result: a proven approach for growing science and technology know-how.

Things are beginning to change. Although the pursuit of high test scores was vital to economic growth in the industrial era, today the approach is outdated. Skills that mattered for success in the high tech industries of the twentieth century now appear particularly susceptible to automation. Becoming a science and technology superpower in the twenty-first century meant evolving from a model in which the mastery of routine skills is the end of education, to one in which they’re a means to the end of creative inquiry.

Whether China can harness its deep-rooted education culture and implement its visionary policy for the development of the high-level skills while also maintaining an authoritarian social order remains to be seen. For now though, China seems better-placed than ever to draw on the greatest pool of resources required for twenty-first century dominance: well-educated teen minds. In the digital age, making the most of our brain power matters more than ever. In the AI long game, China may have the lead.

For more details, visit the website www.wired.co.uk/article/china-artificial-intelligence-education-superpower.