For years, the widespread rollout of 5G was seen as the pathway to a more digitally connected world—with unprecedented speeds for wireless connectivity.
But now that it’s here, tech experts already have their sights set on the future with 6G.
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This was a focal point at this year’s Brooklyn Summit—an annual innovation event hosted by Nokia and NYU Wireless—a wireless technology research center. The summit brought together hundreds of academic and industry experts to NYU’s campus to discuss the future of network technology.
Jelena Kovačević, dean of NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering, says at this stage, the idea of 6G is relatively informal and that many experts do not even agree on what it truly will pan out to be.
Unlike 5G while focused heavily on data rates, 6G may be centered around broader change, such as lower power consumption or the security and resilience of data infrastructure, she adds. Plus, the research field of wireless networks has shifted to be much broader today as technology becomes much more intertwined.
“I think one thing that’s important, is that really, engineering is a team sport, so the interdisciplinary nature of any aspect of engineering. And, I like to mention the Apollo 13 movie because it’s just a perfect example of you know, engineers coming together or whatever from all areas to solve the very complex problem,” she tells Fortune.
Research and education is changing, she adds, to be much more focused on experiential learning—with trial and error part of the experience.
“I think from the point of view of a school or an engineering school it’s not only wireless, and 6G, I think, all these new things that are coming along and new technologies—so what you have to think about is how do you enable such cross disciplinary collaboration,” Kovačević says.
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Kovačević said it is no question that in higher education, interdisciplinary learning and teaching are key to the future.
“All of these things are showing that education itself is kind of looking outwards and exploding, as opposed to being a siloed, traditional one engineering discipline at a time,” she says.
Combining forces with academia and industry
Part of the summit included a panel discussion about 6G with top engineering school deans, including Kovačević. One of the biggest takeaways from it, she says, was that academia and industry need to be much more tightly connected. This is something that was echoed by the dean of Princeton University’s School of Engineering and Applied Science, Andrea Goldsmith. A wireless researcher herself, she said one of the biggest challenges is for innovations in academia to make their way into industry.
“I really think that what should change, not just in 6G but in technology in general, to foster stronger partnerships between academic and industry is figure out how do we get those gems of innovative ideas that are in the research labs of academics into technology—whether its startups or big companies,” Goldsmith said at the event.
Change has been slowly occurring, she noted, thanks in part to federal government action.
“The CHIPS and Science Act is addressing that in some ways—it’s trying to create platforms where we can kind of drop things in, both hardware and software, into larger complex systems—but that’s an aspiration. I don’t think we’ve figured out how to do that yet,” she said.
AI > human intelligence? ‘A big myth’
One of the additional interdisciplinary technologies that is transforming education is AI. But Kovačević warns that it is a “big myth” to believe that AI is anywhere close to being on par with human intelligence.
“Anytime something that’s new technologically comes along, there will be hopefully a huge benefit to it,” she says. “But there is always a downside, right? If I’m not mistaken, that’s the case with dynamite, right?”
And while she admits it is important to embrace AI and AI models, especially to assist with more simple, mundane tasks, she said it’s unclear whether AI will necessarily make education easier.
“Everything is a trade-off,” Kovačević says.
“Every coin has two faces,” she adds. “And so you just have to make sure that you use the good face for the good. And to make sure that there are some regulations in place to take care of sort of the bad face.”
Degrees remain important
With rising costs of college degrees, and companies turning toward skills-based hiring approaches, many students have begun taking a closer look at the different ways to get ahead in their education—including bootcamps and certificate programs.
But Kovačević says that’s another “myth” in the world of education—that certification or skills programs will replace the need for traditional degree pathways.
“If you want to have people who are going to be solving really important problems, they need to have sort of fundamentals—not necessarily in every area, that they may encounter, that’s not that important—but the fundamentals of how you think, how you solve problems,” she says.
In an NYU Tandon event with Google last spring about the future of tech skills, the company’s chief information security officer said the most important class he ever took in school was linear algebra. Kovačević explained that anecdote was particularly telling of just how important the building blocks of education are.
“Because anybody can teach you, I can teach you, how to program—it’s not a big deal,” she says. “But beyond that, what if something unexpected happens, if there is an Apollo 13 situation, you have to be had been steeped in the solid principles of your discipline, and many others, to be able to sit together and think outside the box how to solve this problem.”
Overall, tech experts alike need soft skills like communication and problem solving to succeed—something that is much more obtainable through a degree program like engineering, she says.
“The engineering mindset is something that’s going to serve you well in life, whether you continue and have an engineering career, or you go to business or you go to law school, or you go to medicine…I think it’s a great life skill to have. So, I think engineering is the universal degree,” she says.
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