AI-Powered Learning — Transforming Education in the Digital Age

Education has been a fundamental part of human civilization for thousands of years. The history of education can be traced back to ancient civilizations, where knowledge and skills were transmitted from one generation to another through oral traditions, storytelling, and apprenticeships. Education is understood to be the transmission of a society’s values and collective wisdom and is the integral part of human upbringing. In recent years, the education sector has experienced a significant transformation due to the rapid advancement of technology leading to convergence of EdTech (Education Technology)

What is EdTech?

The use of technology to facilitate teaching and learning processes is referred to as EdTech. It includes a wide range of tools and platforms, including learning management systems, online course platforms, educational apps. Technology has positively impacted the education field by increasing access, personalizing learning experiences, fostering collaboration, providing rich content.

EdTech has opened door to new opportunity and increased access to education by overcoming time, distance, and physical constraints. Education has become a much easy and accessible for millions who just wants to learn thanks to EdTech

Online learning platforms and digital resources allow people in rural places, those with impairments, or others with restricted educational opportunities to access instructional content at any time and from any location.

Market study of EdTech Sector

The EdTech market has witnessed significant growth in recent years, driven by advancements in technology, increasing adoption of online learning, and a growing emphasis on personalized education. This market study provides an overview of the EdTech industry, including market size, key players, trends, and future prospects.

The global EdTech market has experienced rapid growth and is expected to reach a value of over USD 404 billion by 2025, according to research from HolonIQ. The market has seen a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of around 16% (Currently) during the forecast period.

The COVID-19 pandemic further accelerated the adoption of EdTech solutions, as remote learning became the norm in many parts of the world.

The business segment dominated by the EdTech market in 2022, accounting for over 68.55% share of the global revenue.

AI and EdTech

The reason for EdTech sector’s accelerated growth is it’s day to day technological advancement and rapid adaption to the same. One of the recent impactful developments has been the emergence of AI (Artificial Intelligence)

The Growth in A.I field especially the rise of Open A.I ‘s Chat GPT has had many people rise the question of it’s effect in the Education sector and on the people associated with the sector.

People seem to be worried That “AI is gonna be death of Education”. The concern raised are absolutely futile, In fact AI has the potential to enhance and transform education in numerous ways, AI when used responsibly and thoughtfully, A.I has the potential to enhance personalized learning, provide valuable insights, increase efficiency, and create innovative learning opportunities for students.

Leading EdTech Giants Khan Academy’s founder Sal Khan in response these concern said “I think we’re at the cusp of using AI for probably the biggest positive transformation that Education has ever seen”.

To understand how the AI is going to help Education sector we need to first understand the Benjamin Bloom’s 2 Sigma problem proposed in 1984

Bloom’s Two Sigma Problem refers to the challenge of achieving significant learning gains (two standard deviations) compared to traditional instruction methods through personalized, one-on-one tutoring, which is difficult to scale in a typical classroom setting.

In other words it means that students who receive personalized, one-on-one tutoring tend to achieve significantly better learning outcomes compared to students in traditional classroom settings.

However, implementing this level of individualized tutoring for all students in a large classroom is challenging.

The implementation of this problem is where AI comes in, Through the use of AI the every student can be provided with the a Personal Tutor who can provide the personal 1v1 attention students require to excel in the subject matter.

Applications of AI in EdTech

AI can help create personalized learning experiences, where computers adapt to individual needs and provide tailored instruction. Here are some applications that explains how AI enhances education.

1. Personalized Learning: AI can adapt to individual student needs, learning styles, and paces, providing customized learning experiences.
2. Intelligent Tutoring: AI-powered tutoring systems offer personalized instruction, feedback, and support based on student performance and interactions. AI can analyze student data to generate adaptive learning pattern, identifying knowledge gaps and providing targeted interventions.
3. Emotional Intelligence and Social Learning: AI systems can be developed to recognize and respond to students’ emotional states, promoting socio-emotional learning and well-being.
4. Educational Content Generation: AI can assist not just students but also the teachers by helping them generating adaptive and interactive educational content, automating content creation processes, and ensuring high-quality resources aligned with curriculum standards.
5. Efficient Learning : As students move through their learning journey, AI algorithms continuously monitor and analyze their performance and adjust the learning path as needed. If a student excels in a particular subject, the system may assign more advanced or harder material to enhance his learning and if a learner is struggling, the system may offer additional practice or review materials to help reinforce concepts.
6. Persona Adaptation : AI can modify its conversational style, tone, and attitude to match a given artificial persona or character. Through this AI can converse with students as a living, dead or even a fictional character, based on the desired context.

The very good example of How AI can be used in the Education sector can be seen from Khan Academy’s Khanmigo (Still in Beta Test )

Khanmigo and GPT

Khanmigo is Khan Academy’s AI Chatbot that serves as an Educator, Personal tutor for students. This OpenAI powered Chatbot can carry on considerably more complicated conversations, providing as a more life-like tutor for students.

To Understand how Khanmigo works we need first understand

1. What’s GPT?
2. What’s GPT 3.5?
3. What’s the difference between GPT 3.5 and 4?

So here is the answer,

ChatGPT has become a household name withing just few months of introduction, it has just bought this new wave of AI that has taken all the sectors by storm. AI is the hottest thing happening right now (like how Crypto was hot two years back), coming back to ChatGPT, Pretty sure a lot of people wonder what GPT in ChatGPT stands for ?

GPT stands for “Generative Pre-trained Transformer.” It is a type of language model developed by OpenAI, which uses deep learning techniques to generate human-like text based on the provided input and ChatGPT is a language model based on GPT designed specifically for engaging in conversational interactions with users.

To have a better grasp on what GPT and ChatGPT is, let’s assume AI is Football (the sport), then

• GPT, like a Football Manager, has a comprehensive understanding of the game, including various tactics, strategies, and player statistics.
• Similar to how a Football Manager analyzes data and makes informed decisions, GPT can generate text based on patterns and knowledge learned from extensive training.
• ChatGPT, like a Football Player, is focused on the on-field action and engagement with others.
• Just as a Football Player actively participates and plays the game, ChatGPT specializes in engaging in conversations with users and providing contextually relevant responses, Based on GPT‘s Instruction.

Back to GPT, they have a highly advanced language model developed by OpenAI what has been continuously upgraded. The Intial version was GPT 1 and then came GPT 2

GPT-1 was launched by OpenAI in 2018, it was trained on a massive corpus of text data from the internet, allowing it to learn patterns, grammar, and context in natural language.

GPT-2 released in 2019, marked a significant advancement in the GPT series. It was trained on an even larger dataset and featured a much larger model size with 1.5 billion parameters.

GPT-3 was released in June 2020 and ever since that it has gained significant attention and recognition for its impressive natural language processing capabilities. It is a massive model, with an astonishing 175 billion parameters. This large size enables it to capture Natural language data that has deep patterns and nuances.

Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3.5 (GPT-3.5) is a sub class of GPT-3 Models created by OpenAI in 2022. The first version of ChatGPT was built on GPT-3.5

Next came GPT-4 which totally changed the outlook of AI, OpenAI describes GPT-4 as “10 times more advanced than its predecessor, GPT-3.5. This enhancement enables the model to better understand the context and distinguish nuances, resulting in more accurate and coherent responses.”

GPT-4 has been trained with around 100 trillion parameters, compared to GPT-3.5 who had only 175 billion parameters.

GPT 4 also has the ability to process not just text data but also image data. GPT-4 has opened the doors to wide range of possibility for Mankind, it’s enhanced abilities can be answer to many unanswered. As a result of these enhancements, GPT-4 is “smarter” than its predecessor. GPT-3.5, for example, GPT-4 has received superior scores on exams such as the LSAT, SAT, Uniform Bar Exam, and GRE. Even OpenAI, GPT-4 claims that “GPT-4 is 40% more likely to produce factual responses than GPT-3.5”.

Now coming back to Khanmigo which is powered by GPT-4, talking about it Sal Khan ( Founder of Khan Academy ) says “I was skeptical initially because I was familiar GPT-3, which I thought was cool, but I didn’t think it was something that we could immediately leverage at Khan Academy, But then a couple of weeks later, when we saw the demo of GPT-4, we were like, ‘Oh, this is a big deal.’”

Things like cheating is always a concern with AI and especially in Education Sector, That’s where GPT 4 comes into play “GPT-3.5 really can’t drive a conversation,” Sal Khan ( Founder of Khan Academy ) says. “If a student says, ‘Hey, tell me the answer,’ with GPT-3.5, even if you tell it not to tell the answer, it will still kind of give the answer.” Khanmigo being powered by GPT-4 will instead assist the student in finding the answer by asking the student how they arrived at that solution and possibly pointing out where they may have gotten off track in a math question.

Here is how Khanmigo answers to the worries of cheating.

Well not only does Khanmigo solve the issue of cheating with AI chatbot but also has ways making the students fall in love with learning. I call it the “Khanmigo roleplay” in which Khanmigo assumes the role of an imaginary or actual characters, whether they are alive or dead and answers the students queries in their style and approach. Khanmigo’s this revolutionary approach to immersive learning can be a potent tool for engaging pupils and encouraging a strong love for learning.

The platform uses advanced Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Artificial Intelligence to enable characters to converse with students in a manner consistent with their known personalities, speaking styles, and historical contexts. Students can engage in real-time conversations with these characters, posing questions, seeking advice, or discussing topics related to their coursework. This fosters an interactive and dynamic learning experience.

Khanmigo’s Emotional Intelligence

Khanmigo’s system adapts to each student’s learning style and preferences. It observes how students respond to different characters and tailors the interactions to optimize engagement and comprehension.

By allowing students to interact with characters they admire or find intriguing, Khanmigo keeps them actively engaged in the learning process. This emotional connection enhances motivation and interest.

This kind of emotional connection helps the system’s adaptability and ensures that each student have a personalized learning experience. It also helps in having a improved retention and a deeper understanding of the material.

This also helps students enhance their critical thinking ability, students can ask challenging questions and engage in meaningful debates with these characters, encouraging critical thinking and a deeper exploration of topics.

Real-time statistics, data, and examples highlight the tangible benefits of this approach in increasing engagement, enhancing critical thinking, boosting confidence, and improving overall academic performance.

Data reveals that 85% of students reported a better understanding of complex concepts when interacting with characters tailored to their interests and learning styles.

Exam scores and assessments indicate a 20% improvement in critical thinking skills among students who regularly engage in roleplay learning compared to traditional methods.

What’s next in AI Edtech ?

Well, when we peer into the horizon of education technology, it’s abundantly clear that AI is the driving force behind the next wave of innovation in Edtech. As we explore the question of ‘What’s next in AI Edtech?’ we embark on a journey to uncover the groundbreaking advancements and transformative changes that are poised to revolutionize the way we learn and teach.

Like mentioned earlier AI has opened doors for countless possibilities of innovation and creativity in different fields, especially in EdTech.

One Such Idea Inspired from the “AI Roleplay” is using Voice generative AI to generate the voice of an imaginary or actual characters, whether they are alive or dead (There is already so many devolvement happening in Voice generative AI Field..)and use it to enhance the learning experience of a student.

Imagine you’re learning about Apple’s Business model and what if Steve Jobs himself teach you what and how it is!!! Wouldn’t that be so cool and easy to understand ..?

Learning and teaching can touch new skies with this…My understanding of how it works is that, few sample voice are feed into this AI which then studies the accent, dialect and way the person or character spoke and mapping those pattern it generates the voice

Surely this Idea offers intriguing potential, but it also has difficulties. Striking a balance between technology and human interaction and ensuring the accuracy of educational content are key

Conclusion

The convergence of AI and EdTech has the potential to transform how education is provided in the future. As discussed, AI-driven solutions are already advancing personalized learning, reducing administrative processes, and providing valuable insights to educators and students alike.

In the grand tapestry of human progress, the fusion of artificial intelligence and education technology represents a pivotal chapter — one that has the potential to empower individuals, uplift societies, and propel us toward a brighter, more knowledge-rich future.

Nelson Mandela Once said

With AI wielding a powerful weapon like Education, I believe we are progressing towards a better and brighter tomorrow .