Exploring the Future of Education and Workforce Skills at Blockchain Central Davos

I would like to say welcome thank you so much for joining us at our eighth blockchain Central Davos I can't believe

it's been eight years Dave um when we first got here we started off with a dinner didn't know what we were doing um

frankly we knew that lots of important people were here but we didn't really understand the magnitude and actually

the incredible just aggregation of people that literally descend upon this town

and so I want to say that it's great to have you all you all have amazing backgrounds get to know each other this

is bonding like I've never seen this week is very special that way I thank the gbbc team for putting this together

I know it may not seem that way but this is no small feat to try to organize folks to Davos it's always complicated

more than probably it should be um I've got Dave treat here and we are grateful today for many different reasons um one

he is the chief technology officer of Pearson um and we'll talk about that in a minute but also because he's been our

board chair for a number of years now and has been a huge supporter of gbbc and I'm going to now hand over to Dave

because he is a Davos OG this is H is it's my eighth Davos is amazing how how much how time flies but

uh this is I I have a few of these moments a year in the gbbc context and it's my favorite moment because I I I

can't emphasize enough how little I do as gbbc board chair because of the amazing

team so I mean really you know you know Sandra and and just the whole gbbc team does an incredible job at curating a

wonderful set of speakers and looking at the lineup this year it's amazing right we've got former cftc chair we've got um

just an incredible lineup of uh you know public private uh NGO Representatives so there's going to be an amazing set of

conversations that are going to happen in this room and it's all a credit to Sandra and team for really attracting

everyone so just thank you I I for all of you yeah I I I perennially feel both both Inc proud to be part of the gbbc

and ashamed that I don't do more so um we're gonna We I I we we'll keep trying but uh the team does a great job uh just

typ just my my tip or trick if you can afford it planting yourself here given the speaker lineup and who's going to

kind of cycle in and out is I I just one of my regrets every year is I didn't spend more time just planted and to be

able to just pick up on the flow of what of what comes through so it is worth just if you got you know if you have you

know spare time and you're hanging out and you've got you know this is the place to hang out to be part of a flow

some fantastic conversations so thank you uh you know again I we can't thank you enough and uh I hope everyone

appreciates the the hard work and the great lineup of speakers we're about to talk to thank you so much Dave and uh

we're going to go right into a conversation which is fantastic take whatever seat you would like um are we

okay from a videography standpoint okay he's the boss we yeah okay so we're going to talk about education and trust

and the whole world of education is just I mean things are changing changing in a big way so we I'm going to put a

Shameless Shameless plug is that all right okay Shameless plug uh we just uh Pearson just dropped today uh thought

leadership piece um that you know is all about the um it's called Lost and trans transition uh it's all about the just

skills Gap that we have now across economies and societies that's turning into a skills Chasm and it's driven by

two things it's it's driven by a Dem the demographic Cliff that we're facing in many of our our cultures but it's also

driven by the rapid advancement of the technology that are necessary to fulfill the jobs of the future and that Gap is

widening the re-education that has to happen and the skills development that has to happen has to happen at every

stage of of life and learner and we're very privileged to we we cut we are a lifelong Learning Company our mission is

to help people achieve the life they imagin through learning and we have you know K through2 higher ed and Workforce

as our focus and and we're seeing we're feeling that need to be able to quickly retrain to to relearn how to learn in

the context of technology and if we don't get that right it uh it just is is going to make that skills Chasm even

wider so this is the conversation we really wanted to start with because we are hearing this over and over again by

the way around the world but particularly I've been hearing this out of the US the absolute you use the word

Chasm the Gap is also lot of what people say between skills that are needed today I mean we're not even talking about

skills of tomorrow it is skills of today and what people don't have that we need for this digital economy and frankly

that translates into jobs and economic opportunities so from a Pearson perspective you guys are obviously

working on a number of different projects can you talk a little bit about how are you looking at the Reinventing

of education and to that the workforce um retooling Skilling that needs to happen yeah so I'm going to give uh

Sandra permission to kick me because I I I'm going to get up ahead of steam and it's going to and you're going to have

to you got to like stop exactly um so so I want to touch on a number of different angles so obviously our we do three

things in our business right we we create and curate content right nearly every biology student on the planet is

taking is using Campbell's biology which is ours you know troch chemistry like we we we we create and curate content you

know across each stage of learning right phenomenal it skills training like if you took a aure cloud architect class

that was us um you know those kinds of things and so um you know so across you know that that construct of being of

tapping into every stage of learning across every domain um that that the ability to now add AI based learning and

support to those constructs is is our Focus we're super proud we've got product out of market we've already have

uh five million uh five million data points and growing it's a month that data points a month old I'm sure it's

much larger than that now but we have uh tools out there to for where where Learners are

able to get support to um to be able to have a personalized learning experience to engage uh with the content with the

support of AI uh understanding where they are in the curriculum being able to do some really cool things like uh ask

the video a question uh and be able to actually you know interact with uh with recorded video and the like and then

we're helping teachers uh be able to much more um quickly create curriculum uh and uh and S of simplify the

administrative aspects of their job so that they can then focus on the engagement part and the engagement part

being where the the real Learning Happens um and so um and so across that context we're we're we have we have the

you know we are the the thought leader around the depth of learning science that we have we have this phenomenal

learn SC learning science team that's taking our decades and Decades of of um of data we have pedabytes of data around

learning um that we're applying in this context to be able to use uh use AI effectively in in in reshaping the

nature of how we learn and and to me because of where you sit in the world and and being the thought leaders that

you are I think anyone who wants to really have a fome discussion on that cross-section between technology and the

emerging technologies will get unpacked where blockchain fits in in a moment hold your horses um but but also Ai and

all these other converging Technologies when you think about that as the chief technology officer how do you even begin

to sort of organize yourself so let's start with credentialing verifications and block and blockchain for example

yeah so against that Foundation of we're out there delivering content in course we and training folks we're actually

we've actually developed a phenomenal set of AI skills training itself but but that notion of what do you do you know

your transcript is useful right it you know in the recruiting process it helps someone understands you know what

courses you take and what you might know um but we purchased uh the kedley business about four years ago um which

is the world's largest issuer of of credentials we just hit a so how many people know about kedley

I think a few people do can you explain kedley so kedley uh kedley is a um it's uh uh a cred it's it's our credentialing

business we've issued now in December we hit the 100 millionth Mark and so if you pass the course you get the you know AWS

you know architecture certification or you pass a you know English language learning class we issue you a tokenized

credential which actually has a rich set of metadata that underpins it that says actually it's not just that you pass

this course or pass this test but it's all of the richness of what skills are associated with that what contents

associated with that um and and we're constantly expanding the data around that and so this all mo is is important

in in this community's context in that one of the one of the major gaps we have is for all of us to be able to bring our

identity money and objects with us from Context to context and so holding those credentials in a wallet infrastructure

in a way that I can choose what to share with whom and for how long and be able to use it in multiple contexts we our

data is used right now in places that we really don't have you know touch points with um I was meeting with the CEO of

fragman uh you know a couple weeks ago and fragman the world's largest Law Firm anyone know that quietly they they

handle all the Visa processes if you ever had to get a Visa chances are fragment helped um but you

know if you look at like getting a visa to go work in India or visit you know do a business trip to India they're looking

for proof of your educational back sorry I'm looking at Tom sorry um uh she's our India expert India expert um you know

proof of your educational background and do you have these skills and they and they're more every day upping the game

of like what's the veracity of can you really prove that you have those skills um and that's where we come in in that

actually we are this you know this trusted source of these educational skills credentials to be made available

to to do to be recruited for the right job to be assigned the right piece of work to be you know to help identify

what should I learn next to be able to help you know the the chro of any Enterprise basically say how do I

actually finally tackle the issue of never having great Workforce skills data you know having that data that moves

with the person giving that richness of their the fullness of their of their you their learning history is for for some

of our big Enterprise clients is is is turning into a boon for them to finally get that right because it's been a huge

gap it's it's something that most Enterprises are are just horrific at so I think you know the

credentialing um carrying your credentials with you anywhere you go that portability is an absolute Holy

Grail and we need to figure that out so I'm glad that you guys are working on that I think the next piece is how does

AI fit into all of this and can you talk a little bit about the way you're looking at what AI really means from a

Pearson perspective or from a Dave treat perspective yeah so I'm going to wear I'm GNA so you need to hear this for

what it is right I'm GNA I'm going to put my you know my CTO hat on I'm looking you know looking at the future

like where are we going to head next we'll you know we can all have an interesting conversation next year as to

whether you know how how much has played out in the in that time period luckily we're recording so we can uh verify

okay um today AI is doing two wonderful things right it's giving us much better insight

for the answers to you know search and questions that we ask and it's allowing us to develop content more quickly and

that's wonderful uh but you're up and down the prominade you know we're hearing more and more around the agented

Computing construct and and that agented Computing construct of being able to take action on our behalf and so I'll

let me use a non-education example and then I'll then I'll use an education one um so for travel perspective when I book

a family vacation it is you know sometimes I've got like two different screens up it's it's for me it's Delta

Marriott Herz open table and you know Plus+ plus um and uh and there's you know have zero ability to turn to an AI

agent a personal AI agent and say can you just you know what I like you you know you have access to my actual data

can you just put something together for me and actually work with the AI agents of Delta and Marriott and Herz in order

to be able to get to that state where we have you know our own you know personal Jarvis or you pick whatever mental model

you want from Hollywood right that can actually take action on our behalf it has to have access to our actual data in

a way that's comfortable and safe and effective and private if we want it to be and so that notion of having an AI

agent tapping into digital wallet infrastructure holding tokenized versions of our actual data whether it's

from the financial you know financial data Health Data educational data the like that construct of the interplay

between that that really confident self-managed secure private data layer in D in wallet infrastructure to then

work with those that agented Computing framework I think then will get us into the next the next wave of this where AI

agents can actually be more you know can be that much more useful to us in a cross context basis so I'm excited for

for this you know data Foundation to support the next gener you know the next phase of what we go through you know we

get to in AI so when you're looking at um how this is going to develop it sounds great sounds

very convenient I would love that if someone just put together a whole vacation package for me but from a

skills development standpoint and sort of the jobs of the future how are you thinking we need to

look at just the way education is right now so let's just take Europe and the US for example the schools are pretty rigid

in what they teach and yes you need to know basic math reading and writing skills but they're not really teaching

for you know um the the skills that we probably need the jobs that don't even exist today that are going to exist in

five years time so how do how does Pearson fill that Gap where do you think your role is going to be in helping to

fill that Gap especially as AI takes over yes uh so we bought another business a few years ago called fathom

uh which is an AI skills onology business so it it has just just again a enormous amount of data to be able to

associate the skills needed for a job to the job and actually down to a task level and so again you need to have that

Foundation of well what skills are required um you know to to be able to understand what what effective is going

to be you know the effective outcome uh and so what we're then doing is matching the um the the credential data of who

you are with the you know AI skills enabled D data from fathom as to what job you could have and help you

reimagine that and and then what what do you need to get from here to there whether you're staying within your

current current company or thinking about a move or you know different career or the or the future and so we've

got some AI you know AI based skills Pathways um capabilities uh to really open people's apertures if you ask a

college student what job they want to have they they really only have uh you know a handful you know a dozen jobs in

mind and yet the jobs that they're really going to end up you know filling um they're being reinvented but they're

also there's just this wonderful you know wonderfully Rich set of opportunities out there that that most

you know college age University age students don't understand um and so we help do that as part of this as well and

so it's um it really is the combination of of um of you know your data and your learning history plus the skills

andology to map a career pathway uh and then the effectiveness of helping a chro create that con you know that construct

within their Enterprise uh you know for within a company and then you know the individual um you know

beyond um and I appreciate that you guys are really looking at all aspects of that because I don't know how many of

you have either College age um kids students in your household or um no College age students but the anxiety

levels um there have been a lot of surveys and more surveys are being done on this the anxiety levels of these

young people about what they're going to be doing for a quote unquote career is actually uh very different uh their

perspectives are basically I don't know what I'm going to be doing cuz I don't know what the world is going to look

like and it is anxiety inducing and I think there is concern that unless we do figure out how to help create those

opportunities but also the skills for the confidence to know that they're going to be able to take on those roles

it's going to be quite critical yeah there's there's one part of AI that um now that I understand it it's obvious to

me but I wasn't thinking about it at the moment until our teams started to collect the data and the feedback from

our from the AI based tools that we've had out of market and it is how have not we all sat there and said I

don't want to ask that dumb question like i i w i I'm afraid to ask that question based on the you know the the

you know the environments I'm sitting in and you know whether that's grade school you know college or you know last week

in the in whatever meeting I was in you know that that notion of I'm you know I'm I hesitate to ask the question and I

shouldn't one of the most powerful things we're finding is that having a you know that there are several

universities that the professors are actually creating they're taking their own content they're customizing their

own small language model and they're creating their own basically the the professor's individual model that the

students can tap into and it wonderfully matches the fact that the professors lead relatively normal lives and go to

bed just at the just at the moment when the students start studying and so the students gee that's surprising not yeah

so so that so that mid you that way um I'm going to look at my team for their facial reactionist at the 11 to 2 am

usage of our AI data tools uh I got that right yeah um uh is is phenomenal and it's and it's it's changing the learning

outcomes because they're able to ask the question when they have it they're not waiting a day or two to to go to study

hours um you know or even during the classroom experience to be able to have the AI chat you know AI chatbot up that

has been curated to the professor's content it it's it's in influ informed by what it is that they want to teach

them the their ability to ask the question you know in real time when they need it in their own personal ized

Learning Journey like this is powerful for any of us at any stage right I am doing this in my meetings right if I

have a you know it's it's wonderful to be able to tap into that uh so so there's there's there are just there

there are powerful things that are emerging through usage and that's what we have to get to we all have to get

comfortable really starting to just apply these capabilities learning from them and then with all obvious Focus

around uh safety security you know safety security responsibility so I want to go back to

the credentialing and and and and there's no stand standardized testing right now people get certificates I I

think there's a few of those out there where you could get a certificate in AI which I think well we set those

standards so we we're sorry EXC so so the standards yes okay so what do the standards look like and and how do you

see that evolving over the next couple years because it's going to happen fast yeah so so um we make the majority of

our our Revenue actually when you look at it um as a as an assessment company helping people prove what they know our

our Revenue actually comes from the assessments the you know and the content and and so exactly to that point so we

do MCAT GED the nursing exam like you can't be a nurse in the United States without having passed our exam you can't

you know go to medical school without having passed our exam so so we play really unique role in this context and

we have a we have a huge it skills Focus um and we're relied upon by um most of the hypers skillers for certifying those

those it skills um as one of our one very specific area of f for us and so we're actually defining you know what

what does what do the standards look for in terms of what is you know taking our learning science taking our you know

Decades of you know data and and setting that standard is and I think that's critically important because we

increasingly live in a world where I hate to say it but even LinkedIn has a problem where people fake their

credentials uh they fake their skills and um frankly if we don't have standards in AI this is going to just

grow and mushroom into a bigger problem yeah I'm very proud to say if you go into a lot of people's LinkedIn profiles

they really enjoy putting their credle badges up there so everyone should look into their into getting a credle badge

huh you should yeah no it's and and it we have I mean every type of of badge is out there it's it's built on the open

open badge standard but we're widening that aperture um I'll I'll give a shout out to another another top focus of mine

this week is the is the formation of the global the global acceptance network has been what we've been calling it for the

past year it's now going to be relaunched as Ira a a boy a y it is the protocol to enable the different uh

clusters of credential issuing ecosystems right so think whatever whatever blockchain based protocol or

whatever you know traditional Legacy infrastructure based protocol um we need to be able to not go down the path of

everyone needs to converge to my standard for issuance of credentials because that's a dead end and brain

damage and you know that business model doesn't work but if we can have the where the financial you know where the

financial services Community is starting to issue credentials you know around digital currency or you know or or other

um where the health industry is starting to issue credentials around health records the 15 US states that now have

mobile driver's licenses tokens all of those are anchored to a different network and yet we all need them to be

in the same wallet and made available to in whatever wonderful combinations for the next thing we need to do and so the

IRA network is forming to create that protocol so you can think of it as as a very akin to tcpi protocol or or you can

think of it as the you know Visa Mastercard um interchange construct and for the Layman Who's involved in putting

this together uh yeah so it's it's a wonderful mix of some um some giant companies uh you know um so Accenture

NTT um you know Microsoft uh and then and then the startup Community the blockchain community um you know uh so

it's a it's a true public private partnership uh forming Global ambassadors uh I think uh yeah so so

look look for more on that that is deeply relevant to this uh to to this group's efforts because you know I I I

shudder to use the word because I it is wildly misunderstood and misused but the the the integration and interoperability

aspects of not having all of our networks feel you know that the only way to win is to get everyone on your own um

this is this is this is the tcpip Proto protocol moment for connecting all those ecosystems yeah know we've talked about

this a lot which is it's great if there's digital credentialing but if everyone has their own Walled Garden I

mean this is a disaster in the making so the fact that there is this effort being made uh I'm going to put a pin in it

because I'll follow up with you but uh really appreciate that it's being done because it's critical yeah please join

it's a totally open ecosystem so if you didn't know about it before you all should absolutely get into it and we'll

we'll actually Thursday there's an announcement so you can Thursday there's an announcement you in the right place

not here and Daryl if I front run anything sorry sorry Daryl Daryl Donald the exec all right well you're the one

that gets in trouble yeah um and a final note uh I want to end with there's a lot that's going to be happening in the next

year everyone's talking about it 2025 is going to be huge year not just for blockchain and digital assets and crypto

but also for AI and all the Myriad of AI sub threads that we talk about what is the most exciting to you in terms of of

all the things you could choose what is the most exciting to you that you think is going to be developing on the

education side uh I'm trying to pick something I haven't talked about already but I'm you

know what what I what I'm let me think about that is it a product do you think it's the standards or do you think it's

more about like Global collaboration I I really I'm I'm very focused on as we've already talked about

but but I think you most excited about breaking down the silos and the experiences and and I'll explain my my

daughter graduated from high school last June two weeks later she got a she got a call from the from the school or an

email from the school system saying uh we're going to shut off your Google Classroom account you're going to lose

all your data if you want to keep it you you need to move it somewhere else the Common App and for anyone with

us College age kids right the Common App is this is the first time a students academic record both qualitative and

quantitative is is a mass and um the minute they're finished with the application process that data is

abandoned right that and so I'm just super excited to basically take the take the smarts and capabilities that this

community is developing around tokenization of identity money and objects and the inter interplay between

all three holding it in wallet infrastructure to then make it's not about capturing it it's not about

holding it it's not about issuance it's about the utility like the ability to then start to make use of it in ways to

to make our lives better that that that then playing out in skills PA Pathways closing the the

closing the skills Gap getting people jobs that they love that are going to make them healthier wealthier happier

you know that's the that's the goal okay it's about utility and scaling and standards so thank you Dave very much

for your time and appreciate you taking the time out your busy schedule with us this week no thank you and

and just one one more one more round of applause for sandre and the gbbc team for the lineup for this week I mean just

really well done great job appreciate you and the Pearson team thank you very much

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