Social interaction is unparalleled. Virtual and physical environments need a human touch for people to feel engaged, cared about, and satisfied with their experience. However, artificial intelligence is increasingly becoming the norm. Robots with preprogrammed scripts and answers to questions are readily available on every website, generating a cost-effective option for personalized service. These computer-generated assistants can access your information and use systems cross-references, freeing the human factor from repeated questions and basic service operations. In the article, Imagine how great universities could be without all those human teachers, by Allison Schrager and Amy X ( 2017). Wang presents the idea of liberating professors from the mundane tasks associated with teaching.
Jill is purported the best teaching assistant ever. Born from the need to manage the myriad of questions and concerns a large lecture class can produce, she quickly became the answer.
Ashok Goel, a computer science professor, teamed up with his best GAs and IBM to craft Jill as a “computer-powered education tool.” But Jill is more than a question-and-answer bot, granulating administrative and clerical assistance and identifying the holes in the educational system with the hope of retaining the struggling students.
Virtual tutors are also becoming the norm. They ask questions and assess the student’s grasp of the curriculum. Woven into the virtual classroom, these robots perform many tasks teachers would do during office hours, such as emails and tutoring. The assistive technology collects data for the professors and gives them the time to reach out when a student is struggling.
These innovations all sound perfect for both the student and the instructor. But, after reading the article, I realized how often my experience with AI (or Bots) is unsatisfactory.
In a customer service environment, these helpers are often more frustrating than helpful. However, as artificial intelligence becomes increasingly part of our everyday lives, many technologists have raised a red flag about its dangers. Mike Thomas writes about these in 12 Risks and Dangers of Artificial Intelligence (AI) ( 2024). The outcry that AI is taking over our jobs or will become so smart it will take over society is ever prevalent—privacy and bias rank at the top. Katharine Miller (Miller, 2024) writes that it’s impossible for someone to use an online product or service without compromising some privacy, and the scale of AI amplifies that risk. Miller also states that employment screening software and criminal investigation programs have produced biased results based on the programmers.
Breaches of privacy and bias are not acceptable in education. FERPA, Title X, and IX legislate against divulging personal information prejudice based on sex or race (Sexton, Morgan & Vance, Amelia, 2024). These laws have been in place for over a decade. Employment training and continuing education programs make these statutes well-known within the educational community. However, AI is only as intelligent as its programming, and these facets of society are likely to leak into any integrated system, such as screening college applicants or a Q&A bot assessing student performance. Careful considerations and safeguards are warranted if education progresses using AI as an instruction tool.
References:
Miller, K. (2024, March 18). Privacy in an AI Era: How Do We Protect Our Personal Information? https://hai.stanford.edu/news/privacy-ai-era-how-do-we-protect-our-personal-information
Sexton, Morgan & Vance, Amelia. (2024, April). From Data Privacy to Discrimination: Examining the Legal Ramifications of AI in Schools – Public Interest Privacy Center [Org]. From Data Privacy to Discrimination: Examining the Legal Ramifications of AI in Schools. https://publicinterestprivacy.org/ai-laws/
Thomas, M. (2024). 12 Dangers of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Built In. https://builtin.com/artificial-intelligence/risks-of-artificial-intelligence
Wang, Amy X. & Schrager, Allison. (2017, September 20). Imagine how great universities could be without all those human teachers. Quartz. https://qz.com/1065818/ai-university
