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Artificial intelligence and digital technology are reshaping higher education worldwide, disrupting how students are assessed, fragmenting attention in the classroom, and exposing inequalities across global education systems. Dr. Lidia Lozano, a language educator and researcher with experience at Princeton, Columbia, and Harvard, draws on experience America, Europe, and internationally to examine how universities are shifting away from take-home written work toward oral exams, in-class presentations, and process-based evaluation that reveals how students actually think.
We also explore the global dimension: how AI systems trained predominantly on English-language and Western sources risk deepening existing disparities across languages and education systems. The episode closes on what AI cannot replace: the authenticity, empathy, and human presence that are not peripheral to learning, but foundational to it.
About the Guest
Dr. Lozano is an expert in language acquisition and cross-cultural understanding. She holds a PhD in Philology from the University of Barcelona. She has teaching experience at Princeton University, Columbia University, and Barnard College, and research experience at the Harvard University and the University of Barcelona. She has co-authored articles, learning materials, and a multimedia course on language acquisition. Dr. Lozano has also worked in project management and administration at the United Nations in New York and volunteered for UNESCO’s Global Education Monitoring Report. Additionally, she has served as cultural expert for the European Commission and has been selected for inclusion on the European Parliament's list of research experts.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lidia-lozano-phd-a6071a378/
Website: https://www.lidlozano.com
About the Host
Ken Briggs is a writer, researcher, and consultant with a deep interest in history, policy, global affairs, and emerging technology. A former engineer, Ken has spent a lifetime thinking, writing, and talking about these issues and created Current History to explore how they shape the world we live in. His research interests include the geopolitical impacts of the energy transition and technology, political science and philosophy, and applied history. As a consultant, he also advises companies on navigating policy and geopolitical risk.
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Topics and Timestamps
00:00 – Introductions
01:50 - Guest background
04:52– Topic 1: AI and the testing crisis
07:54 - Topic 2: From product to process
11:30 - Topic 3: Teaching in a screen-saturated world
14:55 - Topic 4: Declining attention spans
21:16 - Topic 5: Is AI a threat or an opportunity?
27:53 - Topic 6: International perspective
30:29 - Topic 7: Education, Culture, and the Future
36:16 – Outro
For Further Reading
1. UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Report
2. Statistics on teacher pay can be found here: UNESCO Global Report on Teachers (2023)
2. Nomophobia: Is the Fear of Being without a Smartphone Associated with Problematic Use? — Kaviani et al., International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2020
3. Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment (Review) - David Fowkes, International Journal of Constitutional Law
4. The Importance of Non-Verbal Communication in Classroom Management — Özad & Uygarer, Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2009
5. Data on language distribution on the internet: W3Techs: Usage Statistics of Content Languages for Websites
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