Global Academic Standards: How we Outrace the Robots

Quentin Hardy:

Jobs like that are likely to be well worth having. But who says those robot operators have to be United States-based, just because the machines are? In a world like that, I asked Mr. Schmidt, what are the chances that the United States can expect to have unemployment of 6 percent or even lower?

"I don't think anyone can say the answer, but we can state the risks," Mr. Schmidt said. "The way to combat it is education, which has to work for everyone, regardless of race or gender. You'll have global competition for all kinds of jobs."

Understanding this, he said, should be America's "Sputnik moment," which like that 1957 Russian satellite launch gives the nation a new urgency about education in math and science. "The president could say that in five years he wants the level of analytic education in this country - STEM education in science, technology, engineering and math, or economics and statistics - has to be at a level of the best Asian countries."

Asian nations, Mr. Schmidt said, are probably going to proceed with their own increases in analytic education. "Employment is going to be a global problem, not a U.S. one," he said.

I agree with Schmidt on global standards. Learn more about Wisconsin's challenges at www.wisconsin2.org.

A few background articles on Google Chairman Eric Schmidt: William Gibson:

"I ACTUALLY think most people don't want Google to answer their questions," said the search giant's chief executive, Eric Schmidt, in a recent and controversial interview. "They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next." Do we really desire Google to tell us what we should be doing next? I believe that we do, though with some rather complicated qualifiers.

Science fiction never imagined Google, but it certainly imagined computers that would advise us what to do. HAL 9000, in "2001: A Space Odyssey," will forever come to mind, his advice, we assume, eminently reliable -- before his malfunction. But HAL was a discrete entity, a genie in a bottle, something we imagined owning or being assigned. Google is a distributed entity, a two-way membrane, a game-changing tool on the order of the equally handy flint hand ax, with which we chop our way through the very densest thickets of information. Google is all of those things, and a very large and powerful corporation to boot.

Nicholas Carr:

In the wake of Google's revelation last week of a concerted, sophisticated cyber attack on many corporate networks, including its own Gmail service, Eric Schmidt's recent comments about privacy become even more troubling. As you'll recall, in a December 3 CNBC interview, Schmidt said, "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place. But if you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines - including Google - do retain this information for some time and it's important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act and it is possible that all that information could be made available to the authorities."

For a public figure to say "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place" is, at the most practical of levels, incredibly rash. You're essentially extending an open invitation to reporters to publish anything about your life that they can uncover. (Ask Gary Hart.) The statement also paints Schmidt as a hypocrite. In 2005, he threw a legendary hissy fit when CNET's Elinor Mills, in an article about privacy, published some details about his residence, his finances, and his politics that she had uncovered through Google searches. Google infamously cut off all contact with CNET for a couple of months. Schmidt didn't seem so casual about the value of privacy when his own was at stake.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at December 13, 2012 6:10 AM
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