Lessons from Seattle

We’ve always stressed the importance of looking beyond your immediate environment to understand what others are doing with AI—in education, industry, and the public sector. So I was really pleased to be invited on a Taith -funded study trip to Seattle, along with leaders from colleges in Wales and Qualifications Wales, organised by ColegauCymru | CollegesWales. Taith is Wales’ educational exchange programme.

I’ll share more thoughts when I get back, but so far we’ve heard from a range of community colleges about their approach to AI, learned about the state-wide approach to AIEd, visited Pierce College, met with Technology Alliance to understand Seattle’s City/Industry/Education partnership approach, and explored Seattle’s approach to city-wide regulation. We still have visits to AWS, Microsoft, and Bellevue College to come.

Many of the challenges are, of course, shared globally, as are the approaches. It’s been particularly pleasing to see a principles-first approach to AI, something we firmly believe in too.

But there are differences in context, and these provoke further thought. Learners taking college courses while still at school, the availability of associate degrees (Level 4/5), and the approach to validating different types of degree programmes. It’s very easy to get stuck in a ‘well, this is just what our system is’ mindset. Of course, we saw no perfect solutions, and our hosts have been kind enough to share both their challenges as well as their successes.

What’s the relevance of this to AI? For me, it’s the pace of change and how it’s impacting the skills we’ll all need in the workplace—both technical and, as we heard from F5 Networks (echoing what we hear from other employers), creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, and ethics.