AI in Education: Solving Problems While Creating New Ones?

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is well on the way to re-shape the world as we know it. The education sector is no exception, where the recent use of AI shows great promise. Together with all potential positives there are quite a few concerns too.

The first advantage of AI in education is personalized learning. Built-in AI algorithms can offer a very diverse and tailored program of learning based on the individual needs of the student. That could include recommendations for learning activities, assignments and assessments helping to fill the gaps of knowledge and building on students’ strengths. AI can also help students identify where their passions lie based on their interests.

Another advantage of AI in education is how it can make the educators’ job easier and more efficient. AI can help identify certain patterns and trends in student performance data. This can help make data driven decisions on how best to approach teaching and getting through to students. The educator would also be able to check back on students’ data seeing whether a change in teaching methods had a positive or negative effect on their performance.

What is also important to note is that most of the manual time-consuming tasks like grading and administering other information can be taken care of by the AI. Leaving more time for teachers to actually engage with students.

With that being, there are also some potential drawbacks of using AI in education. The parameters of tasks that AI would perform would need to be thought through very well to make sure there are no built-in biases or discrimination. Certain creative fields would still need the human touch when assessing students’ performance. Perhaps routine comparisons of AI versus the educators’ solutions could help identify exact parameters needed for AI to function properly.

Another big potential issue is the loss of human interaction and creativity. While being able to provide endless factual data to the students, AI is not capable of emotional support, empathy, and the ability to inspire and engage students.

To sum up, although AI can offer many potential benefits in the field of education, it is important that it is used as a tool to supplement the work of human educators and not as a replacement.