Senate Passes 'No Microsoft National Talent Strategy Goal Left Behind Act'

theodp writes: Microsoft is applauding the Senate's passage of the Every Child Achieves Act, a rewrite of the No Child Left Behind Act, saying the move will improve access to K-12 STEM learning nationwide. The legislation elevates Computer Science to a "core academic subject", opening the door to a number of funding opportunities. The major overhaul of the U.S. K-12 education system, adds Microsoft on the Issues, also "advances some of the goals outlined in Microsoft's National Talent Strategy," its "two-pronged" plan to increase K-12 CS education and tech immigration. Perhaps Microsoft is tackling the latter goal in under-the-radar White House visits with the leaders of Mark Zuckerberg's FWD.us PAC, like this one, attended by Microsoft's William "It's Our Way Or the Canadian Highway" Kamela and FWD.us President Joe "Save Us From Just-Sort-of-OK US Workers" Green.

Comments

But don't equate coding with comp-sci

[cjonslashdot]

As long as they don't equate programming/coding with computer science. Coding is likely to be obsolete in a few years - replaced by deep learning systems as those systems increase in capability, and so the last thing we should do is steer kids away from math and toward coding. Computer science - as opposed to coding - is timeless and will continue to evolve - and dramatically change, with a greater emphasis on how to create and use machine learning systems. But somehow I doubt that public schools will understand these issues.

Re:But don't equate coding with comp-sci

[cjonslashdot]

No, and perhaps I am wrong. But it is early days. Hinton's breakthrough in 2006 has opened up machine learning to a wide range of things that we thought impossible with those types of systems. Look at what is being done with IBM's Watson system - it has shrunk from a room to three pizza boxes and it is being used for medical diagnosis. Also look at their "True North" chips - these are not computers, but neural chips: each chip has a million neurons on it, and it can form connections to any other neuron on the system. This is early days, and we are still learning how to organize and train these systems. It is interesting that Hinton's breakthrough was in a training algorithm. I think that the handwriting is on the wall, but I could be wrong. But what I expect to see in 10 years is analysts working with machine learning systems to define requirements and the system takes it from there. Remember that systems like Watson are not programmed - they are trained, and they read the same things that you and I read (Watson has read all of wikipedia), and can listen and speak. They have already proven that they can do original research and have original insights that are beyond the reach of people due to the complexity.

MIght Get a LOT Worse

[Kunedog]

Just wait until they figure out they can spin a "harrassment" narrative painting all H-1B skeptics as "hold-out racists defending a white boys' club." From what we've seen over the last year, we damn well know a huge chunk of tech news media would fall right in line to parrot that propaganda (even if that means pulling a complete 180 on their previous position, and even if it means abandoning their core readership).