AI is changing how we communicate. What does it mean for the classroom?
Artificial intelligence (AI) is already having a significant impact on our lives, and it’s only going to become more pervasive in the classroom. AI has the potential to automate many tasks currently carried out by teachers, making learning easier and more intuitive for students. However, there are also some risks associated with widespread use of AI in classrooms — particularly if it is abused or misused.
Believe it or not, the paragraph you just read above was written by AI! 👀 Sounds like a pretty convincing introductory paragraph, right? From here on in this article, all mistakes can be attributed to the author and not an AI. 😅 In the last year alone, there have been several leaps in the ability of AI technologies that are now in the hands of everyday users.
The paragraph above (first paragraph) was generated from an AI called Smodin Author using the prompt “How will Artificial Intelligence affect the classroom?” AI writing assistant technologies like this produce papers that could even fool university professors. There are dozens of AI writing tools that are designed to help you write an article, blog, or even your homework. So, when school resumes this year, will you be able to tell when your students have used AI? What does this mean for academic honesty?
I don’t have the answers to these questions, but as an educator, learning experience designer and a PhD student studying how students use AI, I certainly have lots of questions. 🤔
Many of my colleagues and fellow educators are concerned about how AI will affect the classroom and learning in general, but I see new opportunities for us to re-think how learning happens and will be encouraging students to try out new AI tools this year.
AI image generation
AI has also made advancements in the field of image generation. Most notably the DALL-E model and the MidJourney model, both of which can generate high quality images from a text input. The images shown above were generated with the prompt “capybara sitting in a field at sunrise”. These images are not copied or modified, they are created from a 12-billion-parameter neural network that has been trained on every type of image and art style available on the internet. Nerd out on the details here.
What fascinates me, is how this type of AI can be used in the classroom. An easy connection could be to learning about art and art styles, but also in philosophy (who teaches that? 😬), with the question “what is art?” and “is art made by AI still considered art?” I would also be curious to see how students could use these AI technologies to make their own creative projects.
AI video sub-title translation
YouTube, the teacher with the greatest reach on the planet now has AI translation capabilities for almost every language spoken. Announced earlier this year, you can now watch any video in your language with AI generated sub-titles. This makes YouTube content more accessible to non English speakers.
Most educators have a love/hate relationship with YouTube in general, but I think this is a monumental step forward in providing greater access to video content. Though I am more excited by the potential of sharing learning videos instead of FailArmy videos.
As AI translation becomes better and more accessible, how will we communicate with others in the future? Will language barriers hold learners back? Will we have real-time translation glasses that shoot sub-titles right into our retinas? Exciting times! 😎
AI chatbot becomes sentient?
A controversial claim that has led to the termination of a Google employee who proclaimed that an AI Chatbot had become sentient was making headlines earlier this year. Advances in AI Natural Language Processing (a branch of AI that enables machines to understand the human language) has been getting better and more able to mimic real human conversations. Read an excerpt from a conversation that led the AI researcher to believe that the chatbot had become sentient to see for yourself. This begs the question “what is sentience?” and “how will know if a machine has sentience?” These are questions that my students will have the joy of exploring this upcoming year. 😄
What would you ask Plato about the Republic?
Because of the advances in AI Natural Language Processing, we can now do really cool things like, train an AI to read The Republic by Plato and then ask an AI Chatbot about what it just read. This is exactly what renowned ed-tech pioneer Sugata Mitra did with his project called SYNTHORS. Instead of actually reading The Republic, you could just ask the AI Chatbot about the book, what are the main themes or even what it thinks. Read more about Sugata’s design of these SYNTHORS and even experiment around with the The Bible, The Republic, the Bhagavad Gita and others.
As an educator, I know that many students (myself included) don’t always read the whole body of text, such as Plato’s Republic. However, being able to interact with an AI chatbot that has read the book sounds like a much more entertaining experience that I might actually learn more from. 📚
AI as a tool for thinking
Seymour Papert, co-founder of MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Lab (1963), professor of Media Technology at MIT and champion for the use of computers as a learning instrument was an early proponent of AI in the classroom. Papert viewed the computer as just another tool, alongside paper, pencils, rulers and whiteboards (or chalkborads). His vision of computer usage in schools was that children would learn to use and program the computer as way to make thinking visible and tangible, all while reflecting on the process, trying new things and sharing with others. I think that if Seymour were still alive today, he would be thrilled to apply the latest AI advances in classrooms to see how students could use them as a tool for learning.
In the spirit of seeing education as means to spark curiosity, I plan to share all of the above mentioned tools and technologies with my students this upcoming academic year because I find it fascinating to see how students use tools in new ways that I wouldn’t have thought of. So, hopefully the AI technologies that I have shared have sparked more curiosity than fear and I hope you and your students can approach AI as just another tool for learning.
Some of these are not like the others
For the past year, I have been conducting research for my PhD thesis about how students can solve problems with AI Image Recognition and bias. First, I show them the example image (shown above) and ask them to categorize each single image as a muffin or chihuahua. Then, I let them know that some AI Image Recognition tools have trouble seeing the difference. 👀 We explore why this might happen and discuss the 3 types of AI data bias. You can learn more of how bias affects AI Image Recognition from this video. You can even train your own AI Image Recognition system using your webcam. Train the AI on any 2 items/faces/objects, but try to keep bias out of the mix! Along the way, I ask students questions about the nature of prediction, problems of bias and how to use AI in ethical ways. Publication forthcoming… 🤞
AI lessons for students and educators
As a Learning Experience Designer, my team and I at BSD Education have created 25 hours of content for students and 3 hours of content for educators to learn about AI, how to approach teaching AI and how AI can be seen as tool for learning. AI is here to stay, so we need informed educators who can lead the way and guide students towards seeing AI as a useful instrument for learning.
This will prove to be another interesting school year, I hope that you have found something to look forward to and see how AI might be something that can enhance learning instead of being fearful about how it changes learning. Best of luck to you all!✌️
