Garrick (00:02.68)
Hello and welcome to this episode of the Curious Advantage podcast. My name is Garrick Jones and I'm one of the co-authors of the book, Curious Advantage. And today I'm here with my co-authors, Paul Ashcroft and Simon Brown.

Paul (00:13.349)
Hello.

Simon Brown (00:16.087)
Hi everyone.

Garrick (00:18.05)
And I'm delighted to be joined today by Ted Dinter-Smith. Hello, Ted.

Ted Dintersmith (00:22.271)
Hey, how are you? Great to be here.

Garrick (00:24.236)
Welcome to the Curious Advantage podcast, You've had a fascinating journey from venture capitalist to education disruptor, filmmaker, author of What School Could Be and Aftermath. But I also know that you were involved in AI right at the beginning of things that I want to talk about that too. Can you share a little bit about how you got here and how curiosity and your drive to reimagine learning?

and decision making and maths and all of that have shaped the path you've taken.

Ted Dintersmith (00:59.283)
Yeah, honestly, you backed up the clock 20 years ago, I had no conception of ever spending any time in education. I had been to school, spent maybe way too many years in school, and thought, fine, I'm done with that phase of my life. And then when my kids got further along in school, it's around middle school when we collectively decide it's time to get serious about school. And I just started observing what they were being required to do.

The skills that that was pushing them to develop and what was quite clear to me was that just a gross mismatch between the priorities of school and the demands and opportunities of modern day society. And it wasn't like a tiny gap, it was like a gap between here and London. And I just said to me, my gosh, this is important to address. so kind of venture capital, rear view mirror, focus on education and have tried my best to.

produce and create resources are helpful and make the points that need to be made.

Garrick (02:01.144)
I know that we are going to get into some serious conversation about what schools could be and also after math, especially your relationship between maths and applied maths and where that began.

I know we want to talk about what does school need for today's context and what's changed and where things have come from. And also your relationship with Sir Ken Robinson, who was really important here in the UK when it comes to education and his much missed. let's just go back to aftermath, for example, applied maths, misunderstood concepts. Maths is often reduced to formulas and rote learning.

But in Aftermath, book, you highlight its deep influence on our lives. And in today's world of rapid change in AI, why does maths matter more than ever? Now, I have to confess before going that I'm not the person who really should be asking this question. Paul, my co-author, is a maths boff, if I say, and I'm sure he's going to want to.

Paul (03:02.659)
Not sure about math, math's buff, I did study mathematics at university.

Garrick (03:08.046)
But in today's world of rapid change and AI, why does math matter more than ever, Ted?

Ted Dintersmith (03:14.751)
Well, math is full of all sorts of amazing, powerful ideas that get lost in a sea of rote mechanics. And I was, for better or worse, but I think fortunate to have taken a lot of math over my years in school that went from high school through college through a master's in physics and then a PhD in applied math. So that's a lot of math. And a lot of that, honestly, in school was abstract symbols and complex proofs and a lot of.

symbolic manipulation that I never used later in life. know, and it's interesting when I look at back, and this is what really got me going, when I look at all the things covered in high school math, let alone graduate school, I never use any of that. You know, I don't think people wake up every morning saying, I'm gonna use arc secants today to make my life better. You know, and the reason I think math was important to write about is it underscores what's gone wrong with education.

which is we teach what's easy to test and not what's important to learn. And so in the book, I try to highlight these incredibly interesting math ideas. And I start every chapter with, intentionally, with an example from a K through eight school. To make the point that this isn't graduate school material, this doesn't require high school math as a prerequisite. The young kids can dive into how do you estimate the number of gummy bears in a jar or.

Garrick (04:16.956)
Ted Dintersmith (04:41.353)
you know, how to predict how tall you'll be next year, or what's the probability that when you flip a thumbtack, it comes up in a certain way. These are all really interesting ideas, quite relevant to life. And I think the tragedy of math is that we all spend thousands of hours on high school math. We don't remember it. We never use it. In the very unlikely chance we did have to use it, our phone does it perfectly. And we lose sight of the ideas that matter.

And so I said, okay, I'm gonna write a book that highlights, illuminates the powerful ideas brought to readers in the context of real, real, easy for me to say, real world relevance. And I think along the way make the point that we've gone just terribly wrong when it comes to math priorities in school.

Paul (05:29.643)
I'm going to agree with you 110 percent, which we both know is a pretty poor maths statistic. I have a daughter who's 14 years old and she struggles with maths. But I do say to her that I still haven't found anything in everyday life that she hasn't already learned at

Ted Dintersmith (05:36.607)
Most people don't though.

Paul (05:56.472)
primary school here in the UK, preschool, early years in the US. For maths, once you can do your basic percentages, work out a discount in the store, figure out when your train is, are you gonna be late for a meeting? Have I been paid the right amount? Can I pay my taxes? There's not a lot to it. I don't remember the last time I was asked to calculate the area of a circle or differentiate an equation to find the graph of a curve. But.

I then did personally continue to go and study maths as you did, not quite as far as you did, but fairly far. And I'm very proud I did because I think the thing I've always found that always said is that it's helped me with problem solving. So it's taught me an ability to think in a structured way about problems throughout my life. And I think I've applied that in lots of different contexts. you, would you agree with that? And as you just said, like some of the real world.

applications. What are some of those that you know do you agree with that and what are some of those?

Ted Dintersmith (06:54.267)
Now, I'd make a couple of points, and those are excellent points. One is, most kids, when they ask, when will I ever use it, the answer is, we don't know. Or, trust me, it'll come in handy at some point. And it doesn't convince kids. mean, they're not persuaded by some vague illusion to this may come in handy someday. On the thinking as how to problem solve, a point I make in the book is that rote math could be a path to that.

just as needlepoint could be a path to that or Mozart music could be, you know, a lot of things can teach you how to problem solve. The issue that we have in math is it's become high stakes. And so what I observe as I go visit school after school after school is kids are not being asked, come up with as many ways as you can to solve this. They're being actually penalized if you don't do it the way you're taught to do it.

And if you look at, it's not just that we teach the wrong math, we test it in the wrong way. And so these are timed exams where you're under enormous pressure to get through the bulk of the questions without making mistakes. And so if you're in the fortunate position of hiring an expensive test tutor, the first thing they tell you is if you come across a hard problem, you're gonna have to spend minutes trying to figure out, skip it. You know, what a terrible life lesson, skip it. And I think that's really

the root issue here, as well as I think that the math that gets really interesting and to the strength of your book and your podcast, the math that's really interesting begs for creativity. And I'll give you an example. mean, in my book on estimation, I talk about things like employment figures or GDP or inflation or poverty. These are all really interesting measures that are, they beg for clarity of definition.

And they invite multiple interesting perspectives and approaches to try to come up with that number. And each number you produce has a story behind it that the consumer of the number needs to understand. And when you start to say, whoa, math is actually really creative, know, and if you get into the upper echelons of math, the top mathematicians are immensely creative. And I think we unfortunately use math to bludgeon the creativity out of kids.

Ted Dintersmith (09:13.727)
instead of elicit and evoke it. And I think it doesn't have to be that way. And I hope that people who read my book will say, wow, I had no idea that all these things you're talking about pushed me to come up with different creative ways to go at it. Because I think, Paul, that to your point, sure, I could come up with three or four different ways to factor a polynomial. And that's of some interest. But when a kid says, I ever going to have to factor a polynomial once I'm an adult?

If you're honest with them, you're gonna say, nope, it's just for the test. You gotta do it. It's your Brussels sprouts of math. But if you say, how do I predict next year's revenue for my organization? Or how do I estimate market demand? Or what algorithms are controlling my life? Or what algorithms could I use to improve my life? Well, you just say, wow, that's relevant. That's interesting. And it's creative.

Paul (09:44.375)
Mm-hmm.

Garrick (09:49.036)
Ha

Paul (10:02.58)
What?

Or do I believe the numbers that I'm presented, right? As government politicians and your boss, let's say, might do, right? Is this truth? Have I got any way of unpacking that?

Ted Dintersmith (10:08.446)
Yes.

Simon Brown (10:18.796)
I'm intrigued at how we've ended up here because as you make the case to say we should be teaching things that are valuable in the real world, maths that is actually relevant and will help us navigate through life. Is it back to that? We just test what is easy to test and we've been doing it for decades.

maybe even centuries, some of it. How have we ended up here, I guess, and why is it hard now to change?

Ted Dintersmith (10:50.975)
Yeah, so I'll try to be brief, but it's so interesting. it two threads, the school thread and the real world thread. So when I got out of high school, which goes back way too long ago, 1970, I'd say 99 % of the jobs in the economy were rote jobs. And so an education that prioritized rote skills and actively and intentionally eroded creativity, curiosity, audacity was suited to that world. know, there's a reason it made sense for

the better part of the century. I think what happened is over about four decades as computers became ubiquitous, as the internet reached, the world changed, right? And machines began to become very powerful and accessible in doing all things wrote in our lives. Physical labor wrote, cognitive wrote. And the bet that we made in the United States as we began to sense something was wrong with education, the bet we made, which was a colossally bad bet,

was the way we can improve education is with more data, more rigorous curriculum, more standardized testing. If we just focus on test scores, we will improve learning because when you focus on something, it gets better, right? And what happened when we focused on test scores? Well, all the things that are interesting in school got pushed out. know, most of our schools in the United States are reading and math test prep factories.

And that's because those are the two scores that we track. And you go and you say to the kids, are you excited to be here? By the time they get to middle school, certainly high school, student engagement has plummeted, relevance has plummeted. And here's what's so tragic and ironic about it. Test scores haven't gone up at all. Four decades of increasing focus and intense effort on improving test scores. So the wrong goal, no progress.

So we swim in data that tells us we're doing the wrong things and yet very few people, you guys do, and I try to, step back and say, wait a minute, do we have this right or is this more like the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results? And I think not only are we doing the same things over, we're doing the same irrelevant things more intensely again and again. And kids pay an enormous toll. You you...

Ted Dintersmith (13:14.163)
The mental health crises are enormous and that's a complex issue with lots of drivers. But a big factor is they see no point to what they're spending all this time on in school. And when you wipe out the purpose of any human, mental health issues walk in. And I think that that is not the only contributor, but I think there's a reason why kids will spend endless hours on social media. It's because school's so darn boring. honestly, if...

Give them a choice between Instagram and Art Secants. I think Instagram wins, right?

Simon Brown (13:48.621)
Completely, yeah. And if there is no purpose that you can clearly see apart from passing a test which...

and then you sort of forget everything after that because you'll never use it again. It takes a huge motivation to put all these hours into to do something. I'd also in a moment, I'd like to come on to sort of whether these are also the skills that are going to get automated through AI because I think there's a whole interesting path of the conversation we can have there. But maybe staying here for a moment of what changes.

when you do make it relevant and interesting. So I think you've probably seen examples and got examples of where people have got it right around how they teach. I know in your film called Multiple Choice, there's some examples there of maybe where there's organisations, there are schools that are getting it right. But yeah, what changes when you switch to it being relevant and engaging?

Ted Dintersmith (14:44.479)
Well, I think it benefits all kids, but one of the things that I've observed, and I've visited way too many schools, I've probably been to 500 schools in the last decade and interviewed students and teachers and parents, so I'm not, there's not a lot I feel like I can brag about in terms of what I do, but I'm at least not one of those asshole business guys that throws out opinions without actually doing some field work. So I've done a fair amount of field work. And what's so interesting, right, is when you make it relevant.

It's not that the kids doing really well in school today do even better and the kids struggling in school don't. It actually begins to reverse that. And the kids that are really agile, successful hoop jumpers, if you give them an ambiguous, bold challenge, they're like, it's like, well, no, no, no, tell me what I need to do to get an A. I mean, I don't really understand. Like, tell me the steps, know, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum. You know, those kids are being set up to fail in life because once you...

distill something down to these are the steps, that's what AI does perfectly. What's so exciting, right, is the kids that have just said, they've checked out on school. You know, they're in schools where there are 35 kids in a class and the teacher turned over sky high or whatever. mean, there are a million different reasons kids check out on school. You suddenly give them something that they think is important, give them voice in what they wanna do, invite them to create and carry out an initiative that will in some way make their world better.

Man, they just, it's like, whoa. And then what I find so interesting but also a bit offensive is that some of the surrounding adults will say, you I never knew they had that in them. And this gets to Sir Kent, right? We're all born creative and curious and passionate about making the world better and understanding the world. And school crushes that out of us ruthlessly, systematically in the chase for data and higher test scores.

Simon Brown (16:37.864)
something that came over in watching your film of the passion I guess that some of these kids have. mean in there there's a guy who becomes a firefighter, there's a welder and these kids have found something that really engages them and yeah it just

came over in the film of how this sort of energy and passion for the thing came over of when you get it right, it gives a whole different lease of future.

Ted Dintersmith (17:08.035)
And we know with AI, it's so fast moving and it's absolutely going to have enormous ramifications for traditional white collar jobs. We're using AI to make robotics that much better, so it has ramifications for physical labor jobs. But we know that these kids are going to need to invent and reinvent and then re-reinvent a career path. And why not start early, right? Why?

Why would we want a kid to be 26 years old with a law degree and decide they hate law and nobody's hiring lawyers? Why not start when it's low stakes? And so the film, Multiple Choice, shows these kids at age 15, 16, 17, 18 diving in, exploring one potential career, deciding this is for me or not. The other thing, and I would encourage your listeners, this is an easy thing to Google, but I'd love to make this, raise this, and it was not my original work, but if you Google,

MIT graduation day light bulb wire battery. You'll see this, it depends on which version, either a two or a three minute video. So this is a modest amount of time allocation. But a 45 year tenured professor at MIT had reached the conclusion that MIT students were not learning real science and engineering. And I have to say that again, because it's such a shock. Long time tenured MIT professor.

concluded that graduates of MIT had learned very little science and engineering. And so to make his point, at graduation day, caps and gowns, class speakers saying, we are now proud graduates of the most prestigious engineering institution in the world, they give these kids a light bulb, wire, and a battery, and say, can you light up the light bulb? And these kids are indignant. They're insulted. Like, I'm an MIT grad. Why are you asking me to do such a pedestrian task? And then they can't light it up.

And you realize that if these kids had spent time along the way shadowing a master electrician, they'd be better MIT students. They'd know more about the science of physics and electricity than studying and memorizing Kirchhoff's law and Coulomb's law, which are formulas that you can put on a standardized test. And so that's what we study. Back to that essential point, we make kids study what's easy to test, not what's important to learn.

Ted Dintersmith (19:30.353)
And so you shadow a master electrician. How can we rank a kid in London, England against a kid in Budapest, Hungary versus a kid in Topeka, Kansas? You you can't, right? But you're opening up really interesting career paths. And I look at that and I say, better if they decide to be an electrician, better if they decide to go to college and major in electrical engineering or physics, but better if they do something else and they just got to figure out how I get the fuse box back to operating. it's like, you know,

It doesn't have to be either or. The hands-on skills are amazing portals to the academic theory, and the kids that do the hands-on work actually understand and retain the theory, whereas the kids that live and breathe the world of theory are often at a complete loss for how the world works.

Paul (20:00.912)
Mm.

Paul (20:16.74)
But I know you're touching here on some of the things you're very passionate about. And think we are too about education reform and what you wrote about in terms of what schools could be to most likely succeed. You're touching on some of this now. And of course, it touches math. It touches all subjects, right? Engineering as well.

And in light of what Simon's saying there as we're thinking about how are we best preparing children for the future? Where do you see some of the biggest disconnects between the way our curriculum is shaped, how we are testing, how we are teaching, and the world that we need to be preparing our young people for?

Ted Dintersmith (20:51.871)
Yeah. Well, I would say not only are we not preparing them, we're ill-preparing them. We're impairing their prospects, which is heartbreaking to have to say, because we all put so much time and effort and money and who knows what behind education. So you would love to say, what would be great is to say we're doing a really good job, but wouldn't it be nice to do a little bit better? I actually feel like we're damaging these kids' prospects. And the reason is it gets at a...

First, are they learning relevant skills? I don't think they are. People who tell me how great college is, and I'm not anti-college, but I always say go read Academically Adrift by Richard Aram and Josipa Roxa and then come back and talk to me. They're the only two people that have bothered to do research about how much real learning takes place on college campuses. And their conclusions are dismal, right? I mean, the same thing we see in high school. mean, kids go to a lecture hall, scribble down notes.

say back on the exam what the professor believes and wants them to say. And maybe in the upper levels of college you might get, and I was lucky, was able to, given the opportunity to pursue independent research, but that's not the norm. Nor is it the norm to connect college learning with real world experience. In the United States, I spent a bunch of my career in Boston and there's a school called Northeastern, which has a very active co-op program. And so when you go to Northeastern,

You'll spend not four but five years to get your undergraduate degree, but two to two and a half of those years are out in the field working for companies, often paid co-op internships. It's really powerful. And you just say it's working so well. Northeastern's now one of the hardest schools to get into in the country. And it just begs the question, why aren't more schools doing it? And they're not. And they're just frozen in time with that lecture model where, you know, I've had friends that are college professors, you know, I...

You know, I had some great experiences and some great professors, but for the most part, it's not working for kids. And so you look at that and you just say, wait, you we're doing all of this. And as I say, back to that express intention of an education model that was in our country advanced in 1893, it's not accidental that it's crushing out of kids' creativity, curiosity, and audacity. That was the whole point of it. You you don't want a challenging mind on the assembly line.

Ted Dintersmith (23:18.434)
Like the last thing Ford Motor Company wanted was to hire somebody who said, wait, this doesn't make, like, we could do this different. Like, why are we doing that? I don't want to do that. You're like, have we thought about this? You want somebody who just boom, boom, boom, does that and like 45 years later retires. And those jobs are gone, but we're still stuck with the education model that's 130 years old now and clearly out of sync with what the modern world needs.

Garrick (23:44.12)
So our guest today is Ted Dinsher-Smith.

Best-selling author, education advocate, and former venture capitalist with a passion for rethinking how and what we learn. With a PhD in applied math from Stanford and a successful career in venture capital, Ted has spent years exploring the intersection of innovation, education, and impact. He produced the award-winning documentary, Most Likely to Succeed, and wrote the claimed book, What School Could Be. His latest book, Aftermath, takes aim at the way we teach math. While most of us memorize formulas we never use, Ted argues

that the math really matters around power, risk, and influence is largely ignored. And like free economics did free economics, aftermath offers a new lens on the hidden forces shaping how we think and make decisions. Ted, it's fascinating talking to you. I also know that you were involved in AI right at the beginning. May I say, I don't want to give away your age, but right at the start.

Ted Dintersmith (24:41.469)
will.

Garrick (24:43.608)
But right at the beginning of large language model research, you've been there. Please tell us a little bit about that.

Ted Dintersmith (24:52.799)
Yeah, I was lucky. sort of wowed my way to graduate school at Stanford starting in the fall of 1974. So I spent the better part of the late 1970s in grad school there, where it was just a hotbed of interesting research on semiconductor technology and early forms of software and math algorithm. Most people think math goes back to Archimedes, but most of the math that's really interesting is modern era math.

artificial intelligence. And back then the debate which raged, the debate that raged was could a computer ever beat a human at chess? And the consensus, while there were some that would be on the side of yes, most people were on the side of no. You know, you just draw the complex little, know, computational complexity of anticipating all the moves. And so if you were taking a betting line, would be like four, were four to one.

that AI would never be better than a human at chess. And of course, in 1997, it beat Garry Kasparov. And in venture, AI went through this cycle in the 80s and early 90s. They call it, back here in the United States, AI winter, where there are a bunch of early generation companies formed and funded that just went kaput. And I think most people sort of baked into their thinking. It just is never gonna deliver on its promise.

And then you look at how it's exploded and, you know, in the power of neural nets and the fact that the people at the forefront of the research in many ways don't totally understand why it's so good, which is both interesting but a bit scary, right? I think that's a bit scary. But we do know it's just getting better and better and better. And, you know, I'll give you an example in my book. You know, I have a short, it's got a bunch of sort of one page-ish.

case studies to make points about the different important math ideas. And so I had this example of how do you find the largest prime number? And I'm decent. I'm like not terrible at math. And so I sort of wrote out the algorithm to find the largest prime number. And I said, know, like, and by the way, when I started this two years ago, two plus years ago, chat GPT couldn't add numbers. I mean, it was pretty pitifully awful at math. And so I,

Ted Dintersmith (27:12.701)
sort of cut and pasted my algorithm and put it in chat GPT and said, could you, what do you think? And it came back and said, there's no technical error in your algorithm. This will find the largest prime number, but consider this because this is more efficient. I'm like, what? And it was, it was more efficient. And you see AI doing, you know, it's spooky, right? You know, like.

Simon Brown (27:29.452)
Wow.

Ted Dintersmith (27:40.039)
and how good it is and how fast it's getting better ought to be massive wake-up calls. You you think about the kids today in elementary school. By the time they're in their early 20s, you have to think AI will be smarter in almost every dimension of intelligence than the smartest human. I mean, even the most conservative experts, some will say two years or three years. I don't believe that. But...

The really conservative ones say, you know, well, certainly within a decade. But let's say it's 15 years. You know, like, think about the ramifications for civil society, the futures of these kids. schools are just in slow motion on this. You know, I gave a keynote a few months ago to a large state here. So it's 500 district superintendents. And I asked how many of you are offering, supporting, and encouraging your kids to use AI?

Simon Brown (28:10.764)
Mm-hmm.

Ted Dintersmith (28:35.081)
to be far more productive in pursuing their goals and dreams. Out of 500, one with 23 kids. You know, it makes mistakes, we're using it to cheat, you blah, blah, blah. And my point is any assignment that AI can do is a bad assignment. You know, you've got to raise your game. And you can, but it's this gift that makes all of us more productive. And if the goal of school continues to be,

Simon Brown (28:42.22)
Wow.

Simon Brown (28:52.054)
Wow.

Ted Dintersmith (29:05.353)
to produce young adults who are flawed and perfect expensive versions of AI, know, those kids are in deep trouble as is civil society.

Garrick (29:11.384)
Book. On.

Simon Brown (29:16.148)
We had Ari Popper on recently who's a futurist and we were talking about this point of how do we advise our kids on navigating through this but I guess this question is even a level up of how do our schools guide our kids to navigate through this.

I mean, you offer up some solutions in the film around what you think, but yeah, what would be your view on, I guess, how if someone is a superintendent, a headmaster, headmistress in a school, what should they be doing to guide our children, maybe in the sort senior years, but particularly in the younger years? What's your suggestions? What's your take on it,

Ted Dintersmith (30:01.661)
Yeah, well, the film and the book together, I call it my more of less of campaign. know, like the film shows more of, you know, which is kids either getting out of the way of AI, getting really good at hands on skills or learning how to use AI. And so my advice is that simple, right? Either get out of its way to a very large extent or learn how to use it or best of all, both, right? You know, like...

Simon Brown (30:14.698)
Yep.

Simon Brown (30:24.908)
which is interesting because Ari had a similar view. was like, embrace it or go be a massage therapist or a potter or something that is totally against it. So that's interesting. Same advice coming now from several sources.

Ted Dintersmith (30:37.779)
Yeah, yeah. And you know, and is that possible? I mean, it's absolutely possible. if your goal with your kid in K through 12 is to produce a really good college application so they can get in a slightly more selective college than they would otherwise, you're going to do, you won't get out of its way. And you will follow what school saying, you won't use it. And you'll go to college. And then four years later, you'll, in many cases, have piled up a lot of debt. And you won't be hireable.

You know, and so, and my view on this is simple, right? Which is if most are on the right side of things, civil society holds together. If most are on the wrong side of things, all the issues, and we're seeing more severe issues than you are, but you know, civil society is fragile. And the more people pile up on the sidelines, unable to secure meaningful employment, unable to.

makes sense of disinformation coming their way. If that's the bulk of our populace for a state, a region, a nation, it's game over. So I mean, to me, this is code red. This is like the biggest of all crises. And yet, I look around and I say, like, how many people are really talking about it in that light? And thank goodness for what you guys are doing. It's really important work. And thank you for having me here. And I work really hard and try my best.

Garrick (31:54.796)
Mm.

Ted Dintersmith (32:03.497)
But I feel like it's largely, you know, we just had a presidential election where the big economic issue was whether we taxed tips. Like, are you kidding me?

Garrick (32:10.51)
Hmm.

Paul (32:10.57)
Yeah.

Garrick (32:14.094)
That's right.

Paul (32:14.602)
When we, I think it was Alexia Cambon, Simon, when we were speaking about the gap, she was from Microsoft, she was talking about there is a gap as we had in the dot com boom between old jobs disappearing, we're not gonna have retail, we're not gonna have the high street.

Simon Brown (32:20.096)
Yes.

Paul (32:37.958)
and then the new digital jobs emerging, digital customer success people, et cetera, et When the industrial revolution happened, I was listening to this this week, the gap between those folk that then were displaced and out of work and impoverished and then new careers emerging was about 50 years. The dot-com then was probably, let's say, a few to maybe five years.

perhaps seeing that now, right? We're now seeing that gap between the displacement and unemployment of people who are doing what is now AI automated work. But those we don't know quite yet what those new jobs are going to be. And sort of back to your point, you know, this is going to cause quite a large destabilizing impact in society. I what's your view on this? do you do you have you given some thought to that gap and the period of the gap?

Ted Dintersmith (33:31.199)
Well, your point about timeframes is so interesting because now I would say, know, whereas in the past we had years or decades to anticipate my job may go away, now you have weeks or months. You know, it's that fast. And I was just a couple months ago, there was sort of a bit of a reunion with my old venture firm. I'm years out of that field, but nevertheless stay in touch. And

Paul (33:43.069)
Hmm.

Ted Dintersmith (33:53.895)
You people say sure you know like yeah, you know Amazon says they're gonna actually have fewer people five years from now than today even though they're growing or Microsoft and Google are laying people off even though we're growing but but all these other businesses they're gonna keep hiring people there, know Venture guys are funding company after company after company to go to a large insurance company with a proposition that says we can make you more profitable Grow your revenue and let you cut half your headcount

You know, and the jobs that get cut first are the entry level jobs, right? You know, and so, you know, it's a very precarious time. And I think parents are beginning to get some sense that I need to think really hard about the future of my kid. I think that's healthy and productive, even though there comes with that a fair amount of angst. But it is happening so fast. And, you know, here we have no checks or no bounds on it. And we know China will have no checks. Well, they'll have...

certain checks to make sure they maintain an authoritarian society, but they will be going full speed ahead on AI. And so, you know, it's like, whoa, how do you contend with that? These are big future defining issues that beg for really careful thought. you know, and it's, thankfully some people are on it, but not enough.

Garrick (35:12.334)
Yes, you run it. I mean, I encourage everyone who's listening to read your books and to watch your documentary because you run it and you certainly providing some sense of not the answer, but what some of those answers could be and sort of many scenarios that give us a sense of what the weak signals could be or what this future is looking. If there's one thing that's curious on our on this podcast, I would say we're always trying to get a sense of what's coming down the line. Where is the world?

going and what are we emerging into? And we're people all the time questions that lead us to get a sense of something. You were involved early on with the many worlds theory, which is now a cornerstone of quantum thinking, right? Another one. Can you share a bit about that? What sparked your interest in quantum mechanics and what does the many worlds theory have to offer us today? And what do you think?

Imagine our future, which is coming very fast, as you say, in which we have quantum computing world. That's we're working. We're solving problems multidimensionally. We're solving problems in parallel. I don't want to get too technical, but we're solving massive problems in parallel dimensions. And we also have AI. What kind of a world do you think is emerging from this?

Ted Dintersmith (36:35.837)
Yeah, I would say we're gonna have to pull the whole creativity advantage audience to come up with a good way to connect the many worlds theory of quantum mechanics to learning how to be a firefighter in a film. Let me just tell you, mean, it's so interesting, As an undergraduate, I majored in physics and English and started in graduate school in physics. so, yeah, it was great. Yeah, I'm a big fan. People say like, why would somebody wanna major in the liberal arts? I'm like, I'll tell you why.

Garrick (36:56.524)
I mean, just want to say those are great, right? English and

Ted Dintersmith (37:05.363)
You know, it's incredibly powerful. Yeah, you know, like that's a great thing to major in, but it's like, it's not either or. You can major in literature or history or anthropology and also get really good at using AI. I mean, like that's quite powerful. But long story short, well, I'll do my best to make it short, is that after my first year in physics, I took a job back in Washington, DC.

Garrick (37:05.42)
Come on, look at large language models.

Ted Dintersmith (37:31.027)
Totally by coincidence, one of the two principals was a man named Hugh Everett III. And for those who are physics geeks, Hugh Everett, as a graduate student at Princeton, was the guy who put forth the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. And there's just this weird aspect of the way the world works. And it's not speculative and hypothetical, it's been confirmed with experiments that...

is baffling to the best, I mean, Einstein couldn't figure it out, Niels Bohr couldn't figure it out, John von Neumann couldn't figure it out. I spent a year on that in graduate school thinking it might be a good thesis, and I finally said like, hey Ted, if Albert Einstein couldn't figure this out, you're gonna spend 50 years in graduate school and still be working on this, like pull the ripcord. So I did. But I write about it in my book because it is so interesting, and I try to make it approachable with an example from the real world, but fundamentally,

the act of observing changes the world. And physicists, you you would think this cockamamie theory that every instant the universe is splitting into countless copies of itself, each with different paths. I mean, it sounds ludicrous, right? But 58 % of physicists think that is the only plausible explanation to the math behind the way the world works, the math of quantum mechanics.

And so I think that if you step back a second, it is the glory and the power of math to shed light on fundamental aspects of the universe and to understand that you don't need a PhD. I hope anyway, somebody reads my book. I hope they say, my gosh, I don't need a PhD in physics to understand what this mystery is about. And isn't it fascinating that it's unresolved?

Isn't it fascinating that we still don't understand some of the deepest, darkest secrets of the universe? And it begs for active funding, aggressive funding of science research. Because as you know, that's what leads to quantum computer. Like all the advances started as raw research. I'm doing this from the United States, where in our brilliance, we're cutting funding to research.

Ted Dintersmith (39:51.723)
We're redirecting it to coal mining, makes, don't get me going. But yeah, I think that that's, and that math is a lens to help you understand. Math unlocks secrets. And those secrets go anywhere from the story behind an unemployment figure, which is real and tangible and affects your community or your nation, to how the world works at a profound fundamental level. And that's,

Garrick (39:51.8)
Like why?

Ted Dintersmith (40:20.851)
That's what gets me so excited about math. There's a quote I use, which I wish had come from somebody famous, but it came from a TV series called Prime Target. But one of the principles says, math is the language of ideas. And when we turn math into rote mechanics, have kids drill on the one right way to do it, or the quickest, most efficient way to do it, cram for high stakes exams that reward them for doing what machines do perfectly, and then grade them on a bell curve.

where only a few percent are tops, tops on irrelevant skills, and most get the message that you're not a math person. You know, how could we do something so ill-conceived?

Simon Brown (41:05.964)
So what happens when all of these different pieces collide? So when the developments in quantum computing power the developments with large language models and are then pointed towards the world of work.

I mean it feels like that code Red deal describing becomes even stronger and may not be that far away. that the path you see that we're on?

Ted Dintersmith (41:36.511)
You know, I'm 73, so I may exit the planet before it's front and center, but I've got kids that are 29 and 27, and even for them, these are massive issues, right? Who could say what the world's gonna look like in a decade, in two decades, other than it's going to be enormously different from what it is today, and other than, quite clearly, your government, our government, you know, like the...

Government officials are not even remotely sniffing around at the issues that matter. So I think that means it's up to us, right? It's up to us. And back to that point, I'm definitely not a fan of, in the United States, the National Rifle Association, which is like, oh my gosh. But what they say is after every massive shooting here, which we have one every few days, they will say, well, the only way to...

turn back a bad guy with a gun as a good guy with a gun. You know, it's like ludicrous, right? I mean, it's just shameful. But I do think when it comes to AI, the only way to counter bad guys with AI are a lot of good guys with AI. And so if you've got people in Russia trying to erode our financial systems using AI to penetrate security barriers, I think the more people on our side that know how to defend against that, the better, right?

And so it really is, it's like, think civilization hangs in the balance with that ratio of the people out of the way you're able to use it versus the ones exposed and vulnerable. And, you know, I want to add a point about the film, which is so interesting, is it focuses on a high school. But the high school's innovation center, where these kids are learning real world skills, was based on going out to the local business community and saying, are the skills you need? What type of people do you want to hire?

And you see in the film that these young kids actually inject economic vitality into the local community. And so back to how we deal with this, I think it's very difficult proposition to think of a 50 year old hardware store manager suddenly becoming an AI expert. But what if that hardware store hires somebody young who's really good at AI who actually finds what a hardware store does really interesting?

Ted Dintersmith (44:01.087)
store has a path forward and on and on any business we name hospitals, you medical practices, you know, all sorts of retail, all sorts of, you know, educate, you you name the business area. If you can start to inject into that organization, a degree of AI expertise, you've got the path forward for your community. And so I think it's, it's dire. I think the risks are enormous.

But I think if a community came to me and said, we screwed? I'd say, you are not. You could take the future into your own hands. But I think it starts with saying, we're going to part ways with the obsolete accountability metrics we've used to measure kids in schools and teachers.

Paul (44:49.091)
Antenna, I wanted to pick up that, I guess, as we give Garak a moment to complete his synthesis, which I'm sure he will be doing. I'm wondering what, given all of this, what's firstly, what's your advice to educators or teachers and those that are constructing the education that we need and will need in the future? And secondly, what can we do? What's your advice to us to do to focus on so that we get ourselves ready?

Garrick (44:56.546)
Thanks.

Ted Dintersmith (45:17.567)
Yeah. Somebody laid out to me, they're thinking about how to go about this, which is, first we ask our schools of education to spend three years thinking about AI training resources. Then we spend five years training our teachers to use AI. And then eight years from now, we begin to roll it out into classrooms, which I just said, could you come up with a less sensible way to go about this? And my book, What School Could Be, where I visited all these schools and wrote about what blew me away.

Paul (45:41.474)
you

Ted Dintersmith (45:47.999)
I start with this first grade teacher in Indiana. And it wasn't AI, but I want to hop over from it. On the first day of class with his first graders, he says, this year we're going to learn all about robots. We're to be building and designing robots. And one of the kids says, how much do know about robots? And he says, I know nothing about robots. I have no idea. I am at square zero just as you are. We are going to learn together.

And we're gonna actually do some really cool things. We're gonna make mistakes, we're gonna go down dead ends, but we're gonna co-learn. And the reality is that's what educators need to do is these kids are digital natives. And so stop worrying about cheating, right? If you give a kid a low level assignment that AI does perfectly, my advice is always, you assign some, like read A and B and do a critical analysis and compare and contrast. That happens all the time in school.

Right in front of them, put that prompt into ChatGPT or Claude or whatever. Show kids what it does and say, if you turn in something this good, you're going to get a C minus. Do better. And show me your prompt flow. And if you don't need AI to do something really compelling and moving and powerful, fantastic, if you're able to work in partnership with it to do something fantastic, but we now have the new C minus. What AI does on its own?

Garrick (47:12.096)
Hmm. You better.

Ted Dintersmith (47:13.375)
And like, don't dwell about how they're doing it. Like, let them at it, right? Let them at it. You know, because they'll be way ahead of teachers, you know, like. And as I say, you know, like it's like heartbreaking to think that we would say, well, we've got this litany, this vast reservoir of failed assignments that AI does perfectly. All these AP exams that AI does perfectly. Let's bark hits from using AI.

Garrick (47:34.07)
Exactly.

Ted Dintersmith (47:40.371)
so that we can see just how bad they are relative to what AI does perfectly. You're like, does that make sense? I just as I say it, I say like, of course that doesn't make sense. Nobody do that. But that's what everybody's doing. So I guess not.

Garrick (47:54.196)
or the alternative is to embrace it and to find ways to work together and go beyond.

Ted Dintersmith (47:58.131)
Yeah. So as you guys know, it's an incredible thought partner. And to plug what you're doing, it is the ultimate creativity machine. When people say to me, it makes mistakes, I say, be creative about it. If you get something and it's important to you, take one engine's answer and give it to another and say, fact check this and find weak spots. What didn't it do right? It's like it begs for creativity. And it poses all sorts of challenges.

Garrick (48:08.355)
Yeah.

Garrick (48:27.325)
Exactly. As you say, though, how do we ask the right questions? How do we ask it? How do we know that there are many solutions to the situation? When I want to fact check an agent, how do I know to link it to another agent and to get them to work together? All of that requires a kind of set of new models of thinking that take us beyond math or aftermath, as you say. I mean, Ted, we could

Ted Dintersmith (48:27.883)
Ted Dintersmith (48:51.485)
Yeah. Yeah. And in the book, I have a bunch of examples where I show if you understand the ideas and then engage with an AI engine, it will generate something. And if you know what to look for, you'll know how to push back or push forward or probe or inquire. And it's like, why wouldn't we want that partnership? It's so powerful.

Garrick (49:12.288)
Why not find a difficult project? taking these things on, I'm a musician and I love music and I love mastering and the technology all about it. But to put me into a mastering situation when I'm talking about music is, it's way beyond my technical capacity. However, I've been mastering recently, I've got equipment and it's very technical.

But I also have AI tools that I can ask questions. And it's astonishing how quickly I start to master the mastering equipment. you learn, it's an amazing learning tool.

but you have to have a tough project and you have to be outside of your comfort zone, et cetera, et cetera. So much to ask. I'm going to ask you one thing that you want to leave our listeners with. while you think about what that may be, Ted, I'm going to try and do what Simon does so well, which is to summarize and synthesize a little bit about what we've been talking about. Fascinating conversation about school being the right preparation bed for modern society.

and also how maths itself is full of powerful ideas and especially maths that goes beyond rote learning. Because a lot of maths is just about symbolic manipulation, but that's not applied and it's not useful. So how do we create educational reform in a way that teaches the next generation the stuff that's easy and useful and things like how many gummy bears are in a jar, but things we want to use every day.

Things that take us beyond polynomial equations and that allow us to actually apply these amazing and creative ideas. Another conversation was about what are the ideas that matter and how maths provides great ideas for the real world and how to problem solve. We might find it from learning Mozart or as you said doing needlepoint or doing practical things but really you say schools should change.

Garrick (51:22.304)
And we need to understand that when we are trying to problem solve in the real world, we need to learn that there's no one right solution, but there are hundreds of possible solutions that can be brought to solve and find ways to solve a problem. And let's teach our kids to do that. There's so many things about math that really beg for creativity and let's encourage and push ourselves and the next generation to look for these multiple perspectives.

And to understand the stories behind that drive these solutions is all part of the kind of the new DNA for the new education model. We want to talk about what algorithms can change my life. What changes if we start using math as a tool for making sense of the complexity and the risk and the decision making in the world? And rather than just having schools as reading and math factories, how can we do create them to be hotbeds?

for enabling us to solve problems for the next generation. I'm going to speed up. How do we get them used to multiple choice? How do we understand that science needs to be applicable and can be? And how do we stop testing and just testing for what's easy rather than testing for things that are really great for society? Teach that ambiguity is important. Invite kids to make an initiative to make their lives better and really plug into the passion.

that that kind of approach allows and how should we be preparing kids for a future, especially a future that is informed by quantum mechanics, multiple worlds theory and AI. We need to raise our game, you encourage us, and really start thinking about what that means not only for our kids but also for our geopolitical scenarios because you say it's a national emergency that has implications for the way

the world is constructed at the moment and the culture that we currently inhabit. And I agree with you there. Advice for our school leaders is get out of the way or actually embrace it. And if you embrace it, go as far as you can with AI. I could go on and on, but there's some beautiful things you did say, like the glory and power of maths as a lens to lighten the mystery of our world and the deepest and darkest secrets of our universe.

Garrick (53:50.52)
Why not?

Ted Dintersmith (53:52.255)
Why not? And I think we'd be remiss not to talk about someone who bridges the ocean with England and the United States, which is Sir Ken Robinson. And one of the honors of my lifetime was after my book came out, he approached me about teaming up on a nonprofit. it's interesting. Most listeners have seen or heard his talk. And if you haven't, I'd highly encourage it. But in 2005, he gave a TED Talk.

Garrick (54:03.149)
Absolutely.

Ted Dintersmith (54:19.603)
Do schools kill creativity? Which to this day is the most watched TED Talk ever. And you know, he just had a profoundly interesting way of making his points, a clarion call for, you know, creativity. You guys are in the right place in the right time with your work because now it's really important. But what Ken said to me is he said, give these talks and he had, he would draw large audiences, know, audience of 10,000 was normal for him.

And he said, you know, like people would cheer, you know, and he wasn't bragging. He was a very modest man. And I've been at some of those talks where he'd get standing ovations. And then he said, like, but two years later, I'd asked, what are you doing? What's different? And the answer is nothing. And so we teamed up and we carried the work forward. It's obviously not. It's it's difficult without Ken. He was very powerful.

But I'd say to your listeners, this is the time to take things into your own hands, for yourself, for your kids, for those in your community. Because I wish I could say we're gonna see large bureaucratic organizations, governments, departments of education, be on this in a mobile, agile, informed way. I don't think that's gonna happen. But I think that it really gives us the opportunity on the family,

and community level, just sprint with things that make sense. And so to me, it's the right time to step back and say, do I buy what these four people here on this Zoom screen or on this podcast are saying? That it is, there are enormous opportunities, but it is a code red crisis if we just go about business as usual. And I think that...

If people ignore us, at least they'll say, well, you know, I should have listened to those guys on that podcast session because they were right about it because it's coming. You know, I often say I compare myself to an expert on tsunamis. you know, 10, 11, 12 years ago, I said it's coming and people said, well, you know, it's like 10 miles offshore and it's nine inches big. How big a deal can this be? And, you know, now it's 250 yards offshore and it's a wall of

Ted Dintersmith (56:34.879)
100 feet high of water coming our way. You either need to get to high ground to be able to surf that wave, and if you're on the beach building sandcastles, I pray for you.

Garrick (56:46.594)
Well Ted, that was not only a poignant and beautiful reminder of the work of Sir Ken Robinson, but also a brilliant call to action. Thank you very much.

Ted Dintersmith (56:56.723)
Well, thanks for what you guys are doing. It's very important work. And so I'm applauding you from here in the US because you were ahead of your time. And now I think it's gone from an advantage to an essential, right? The creativity advantage, the creativity essential. So thank you.

Garrick (57:12.664)
Thank you. Appreciate it. Ted Dintersmith, you've been listening to Curious Advantage podcast. We're curious to hear from you. If you think there was something useful or valuable from this conversation, we encourage you to write a review for the podcast on your preferred channel saying why this was so and what have you learned for it?

and what have you learned from it? This series is about how individuals and organizations use the power of curiosity to drive success in their lives and businesses, especially in the context of our new digital reality. It brings to life the latest understandings from neuroscience, anthropology, history, business, art, maths, and behaviorism about curiosity and makes these useful for everyone. The Curious Advantage book is available on Amazon worldwide.

audio physical digital or audiobook copy now to further explore the seven seas model for being more curious. Subscribe today and keep exploring curiously. Hashtag curious advantage. See you next time.

Simon Brown (58:09.217)
Thanks everyone.

Paul (58:10.055)
Thank you.