There is not a single moment that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is not being used today, often unknowingly.
Be it while using maps to navigate, using digital payment services or the very strange way that our smartphone seems to know what we are talking about, AI is everywhere.
This has huge implications on education, both for teachers and students, and even more importantly, for policy makers. If information is accessible within seconds upon asking any digital device, what exactly is the aim of teaching facts and data like specific dates in history?
If entire essays can be written in less than one minute, what is the purpose of writing courses?
Similar questions are being asked across all educational institutions worldwide. As an Unesco study asks, “How do we balance the need to equip young people for a human-machine society, without undermining the human mind as we outsource certain cognitive functions?”
The answer to many of these questions is often to understand that changes in the way that knowledge is produced and circulated has always been dynamic.
If religious and spiritual texts were handed down orally over time, writing managed to document human innovation and history. This in turn was seen to be threatened by the invention of the printing press which could produce dozens of identical texts in the time that a single one could be handwritten.
None of this meant that creativity or knowledge production ended. If anything, it got reinvented in forms that could not be imagined earlier. The novel is a good example. An extended fiction, it needed to be available in a form that was written, yet affordable to many who were literate.
Technology is not something to be nervous about. Humanity has seen enough changes to know that each invention and discovery is just another step.
The challenge at present, however, is that these changes seem to be outsourced to machines. In education, AI is potentially being used to generate and analyze data, write assignments and even entire projects. This can lead to limiting creative and critical thinking – indispensable soft skills central to education. A number of teacher federations around the world have warned policy makers about the dangers of AI intrusion in learning.
As with any other invention, however, it helps to see AI as a tool – a tool which, in the hands of the user, can result in positive or negative impacts.
Of course generative AI can be used to solve problems and write essays in an instant, but it can also provide students with additional, out of class help by giving more examples, sample questions and opportunities for self-testing.
This makes education more equitable, providing students the chance to learn at their own speed, choose difficulty levels and remain motivated – it is like having a private tutor.
Being aware of the dangers of Artificial Intelligence and its uses in education is very important. But it is equally important to understand its potential to make learning individual, targeted and unique. As in all other tools, how it is used remains in the hands of the consumer.
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