What is AI:

A.I also known as artificial intelligence is a rather new technology that focuses on trying to create computers or machines that can reason and learn through the use of algorithms. https://cloud.google.com/learn/what-is-artificial-intelligence

Some well known examples of Artificial Intelligence include:

  • Digital Assistants – Apple Siri
  • Chat Bots – Chat GPT
  • Facial Recognition – Face ID

Artificial Intelligence in Education:

With the recent prevalence of artificial intelligence all over the world it has started to play larger and larger roles within different sectors of day to day life, and in this case education is no different. However, a technology as powerful as artificial intelligence means there are many pros and cons to such widespread use which impacts both teachers and students. The usefulness and widespread use of A.I in education makes it a very powerful asset, but also a major concern as there are still many problems that have yet to be addressed and ethical concerns that are hard to look past. While my blog will go into the impacts A.I will have on the educational system a much more in depth look can be found here https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0016328717300046 or if you want to see a teacher’s perspective on A.I in education it can be found here:

Pros:

The major benefits of the use of A.I are as follows:

  • Assistance / Speed
  • Individualization / decreasing barriers
  • Context / Immersion
  • Personalization

Assistance / Speed: A.I can help both teachers and students in this regard as it can help teachers create items such as lesson plans, projects, or quizzes, it can equally help students answer immediate questions they might have.

Individualization: A.I is a powerful technology that can lessen the barriers to education as newer A.I models such as Chat GPT are able to translate languages and sometimes even reword sentences so that individuals that may not have the best vocabulary have an easier time understanding the material.

Context: Sometimes it can be difficult to have students engage with the material, but if we can use A.I to mimic certain contextual items there is a chance they may be more engaged.

Personalization: A.I can be used as a data analysis tool to determine whether or not a student is improving and what aspects the students may need help with.

Cons:

The major challenges regarding the use of A.I are:

  • Bias
  • Errors
  • Cheating
  • Isolation

Bias: A.I models learn based on the information models that they were trained on and bias has been demonstrated to be a major issue in the past in regards to A.I.

Errors: If an A.I does not have certain types of information or has gaps in its knowledge there is a chance it can make something up and create misinformation.

Cheating: A powerful technology like A.I is just a tool and certain people choose to use that tool irresponsibly to cheat on assignments and tests, both of which can be hard to detect until other A.I programs get better at detecting when A.I is being used.

Isolation: Interacting and learning from an A.I does not have the same feeling as being taught by a teacher and may lessen the engagement students have with the content.

Ethical Concerns Regarding A.I in Education:

There are a large number of ethical concerns regarding the use of A.I in education, but the major items include:

  • Data security and privacy
  • Accessibility and Equity
  • Bias and Fairness

Data Security and Privacy: Understanding data is an important part of understanding A.I and it can be very difficult to determine where the data is going and whether or not it can cause a breach in privacy. Another important aspect to data security and privacy is that if educational institutions are using artificial intelligence then they most likely do not have the data running in their servers which means that schools and other educational institutions are relying on a somewhat outside party to maintain data security so that a privacy breach does not occur.

Accessibility and Equity: While we described how artificial intelligence lowers the barrier of entry to education by allowing individuals that may not be fully caught up to have an easier time learning, it is still a tool and other individuals that may not have access to this tool would have inequitable advantage in the form of A.I.

Bias and Fairness: As explained in the cons section A.I models are only as good as the information models they were trained off of and any existing biases can be carried over into the A.I.

While I did go over the major ethical concerns of the use of A.I in education here is a great resource to delve deeper into the existing ethical problems with A.I: https://guides.lib.jmu.edu/AI-in-education/ethics

Personal Feelings Regarding A.I use in Education:

As I have discussed throughout this blog, A.I is a powerful tool to be sure, it can reduce unnecessary work and improve the lives of both students and teachers, and I do not think we are approaching it in the right way. There are too many different ways A.I can be abused and improperly used that can damage the integrity of the educational system or worse make the entire educational system feel non-human. However, at the same time no one can diminish its value, I have personally used chat bots like Chat GPT before and have used it as a way to either reconfirm my sometimes messy notes on certain subjects or even as a way to give me inspiration on how to structure my essays. However, A.I is still being treated as a kind of boogeyman created to destroy inspiration, encourage cheating, and get rid of jobs. We need to be approaching A.I in the same way we approach other tools and treat it as such, as a way to create more, inspire more, and learn more, and I think that starts with teaching people more about education.

A Look into the future:

A.I is a powerful tool that is widespread but it still feels like very little is known. It acts as a kind of black box entity in which most people can understand how the input results in the output, but not quite understanding the intricacies of it. I think that for A.I technologies to truly bloom within the educational sphere more about A.I educational systems need to be taught and can create an environment where A.I technologies can be used to reduce the workload of teachers and act as tutors for students.

While I did start going into what I personally thought about how the future of A.I in education will look, here are some upcoming technologies that I based my personal ideas on: https://www.eklavvya.com/blog/ai-edtech-tools/