Artificial intelligence (AI) has been transforming various areas of public life in recent years, and higher education is no exception
As a branch of computer science that aims to develop intelligent machines capable of performing tasks that typically require human intelligence, including visual perception, speech recognition, and decision making, AI has enormous potential to solve some of the biggest challenges in education today, bringing innovation to teaching and learning practices.
The global AI market, which was valued at approximately $87 billion in 2022, is projected to grow at a CAGR of 36.2% between 2022 and 2027. The main driver of market growth is the emergence of AI-based business models. Artificial intelligence, which has become one of the main drivers of technology development, can expand capabilities, increase the value, and improve the efficiency of business processes. This concerns the automation of routine tasks, the analysis of large volumes of data, the creation of algorithms and models for decision-making, the emergence of new algorithms and communication interfaces, such as chatbots.
In an effort to challenge the West's dominance in technology and infrastructure, the BRICS countries are increasingly focusing on cooperation in artificial intelligence, and Russia has made promoting cooperation in science and advanced technologies, including AI, a priority issue (Can BRICS Be a Leader in Artificial Intelligence Governance? | WPR (worldpoliticsreview.com).
The main areas of implementation of the Digital Agenda of the EAEU until 2025 have been developed in accordance with the Statement on the Digital Agenda of the Eurasian Economic Union. According to this document, digital transformation is the manifestation of qualitative, revolutionary changes that consist not only in individual digital transformations, but in a fundamental change in the structure of the economy. As a result of digital transformation, a transition to a new technological and economic structure is carried out, and new sectors of the economy are created. AI helps in the automation of production processes, resource management, optimization of logistics and forecasting market trends. This helps to increase the productivity and efficiency of the economy. Digital transformation triggers mechanisms for transforming the labor market, which will significantly change the balance of supply and demand for labor resources. The qualifications and skills of labor resources will have a significant impact on the efficiency of economic transformation processes. And the importance of AI, its role in training personnel is difficult to overestimate (docs.eaeunion.org/pd/ru-ru/0121967/pd_28072017_att.pdf).
The UNESCO Beijing Consensus on Artificial Intelligence and Education (UNESCO Digital Library) has developed recommendations to improve the readiness of education policy makers to use artificial intelligence, to develop a common understanding of the opportunities and challenges that AI brings to education, and the implications for the core competencies needed in the AI era (Artificial Intelligence Technologies in Education: Prospects and Implications - UNESCO Digital Library). UNESCO, at its core, requires a human-centred approach to AI.
In 2022, one of the largest global forums on education was held - the United Nations Education Transformation Summit, held within the framework of the 77th session of the UN General Assembly (Microsoft Word - TES_Workstream Concept Note_2803.docx (un.org). The Summit adopted a Youth Declaration dedicated to the role of education in solving global problems and involving young people in the development and implementation of education policies. Unfortunately, this task is not yet being addressed at the proper level in Russia and other CIS countries.
Artificial intelligence is a rapidly developing class of fundamental capabilities that are increasingly being introduced into all types of educational technology systems. Specially designed for use in educational purposes, as well as general technologies, have begun to be actively used in educational institutions.
Considering AI, there are Narrow artificial intelligence (narrowly specialized AI), aimed at solving specific problems in a specific area, and Artificial General Intelligence (general or strong AI), capable of performing most of the tasks with human efficiency. Today, the main trends in artificial intelligence include Generative AI (GenAI) as a step towards Artificial Super Intelligence, which is predicted to have intelligence superior to that of humans.
In late 2022 and early 2023, with the advent of new Generative AI chatbots, there has been a shift toward exploring how AI can be used to create curricula and lessons, write educational materials, create images, personalize student assignments and more. As these systems evolve rapidly, there has been a renewed focus on the benefits and risks of chatbots and AI in general in education. First, AI can help achieve educational priorities in more efficient ways, at a larger scale, and at a lower cost. Second, the relevance and importance arise from the awareness of system-level risks and concerns about potential future risks. Third, concerns arise from the scale of possible unintended or unexpected consequences.
Therefore, today, it is of utmost importance to prevent or at least mitigate emerging risks and eliminate unforeseen consequences by using AI in education and realizing its key capabilities. And it is not surprising that many countries are showing increasing interest in legislative proposals related to the use of AI. The adopted legislative acts and government decrees contain principles and provisions, as well as measures aimed at their practical implementation, helping to achieve the set goal.
These initiatives, along with other AI-related policy actions from both the executive and legislative branches of government, will shape the use of AI across all sectors of society. The European Commission recently published ethical guidelines for educators on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and data in teaching and learning (Ethics guidelines for trustworthy AI | Shaping Europe’s digital future (europa.eu).
A report from the US Department of Education outlines a number of concepts and frameworks for ethical AI. It points to the urgent need for safeguards and guidelines to ensure that the use of AI advances in education is safe, especially given the accelerating pace of AI adoption in mainstream technologies. Since policy development takes time, policymakers and educational institutions together need to start now to define requirements, disclosures, regulations, and other structures that can shape a positive and safe future for all stakeholders, especially students and educators. The report links these objectives to the following requirements:
1. use automation to improve learning outcomes while protecting human decision-making and judgment;
2. investigate the quality of the underlying data in AI models to ensure fair and unbiased pattern recognition and decision-making in educational applications is based on accurate information relevant to the pedagogical situation;
3. provide opportunities to study how individual AI technologies, as part of larger educational or learning systems, may contribute to or hinder the provision of equal conditions and opportunities for students;
4. seek to support the use of technology to improve teaching and learning and support innovation throughout the educational process;
5. take steps to ensure human checks and balances are in place to ensure reasonable constraints on any AI systems and tools.
The recommendations in this report aim to engage educators, policymakers, experts, educational technology developers and providers to work together in a coordinated manner on the pressing policy issues arising from the use of AI in education (Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Teaching and Learning (PDF) (mooc.global).
One of the obvious benefits of AI is the personalization of learning, or in other words, providing adaptability, which requires AI models that can handle different learning paths and multiple interaction modalities. Such models must be tested for effectiveness to prevent the possibility that some students may be assigned an inappropriate learning resource.
AI can be defined as automation based on associations. Many machine learning algorithms and neural networks operate based on associative links between data or associations inferred from expert knowledge, which is essential for creating artificial intelligence products and extending computing beyond traditional educational technologies. Unsupervised learning models use clustering, a data mining technique that groups unlabeled data based on association rules based on their similarities or differences, finding connections between variables in a given data set, and not always using strictly logical analysis. Therefore, in some cases, AI can promote the dominance of associative thinking over rational thinking. This can damage people's cognitive skills, leading to a superficial understanding of information, a lack of stimulation for critical analysis, a tendency to subjective assessments, and unjustifiably hasty conclusions and unfounded decisions.
A major concern is the ethical, social and psychological aspects of the impact of AI in education. Interaction with AI technologies can affect a person’s social skills and ethical attitudes, their communication connections and relationships in public life. It is important to be aware of its potential negative consequences and take measures to mitigate and regulate them.
First of all, this concerns Generative AI (GenAI). AI chatbots, such as ChatGPT, provide a fundamentally different user experience than AI technologies that support standard search in search engines. Search technologies curate and rank a menu consisting mainly of human-generated content in response to user queries. Chatbots, in contrast, generate answers using machine-generated content. They offer short, seemingly definitive answers to questions that can be useful to students and teachers. But machine knowledge technology can become dominant, to the detriment of human-generated knowledge. AI platforms, some of which already have near-monopoly power, will gain greater dominance over UI (user interface).
The development of Generative AI poses difficult problems for the future of education. What will be the ratio of offline and online learning, the role of the teacher with the widespread use of this technology? What changes will occur in the system of assessing knowledge and skills if AI utilities themselves can perfectly pass exams, do term papers and theses, conduct qualification certification of specialists? And ultimately, will the current education system withstand the pressure of new technology?
The pace of integration of Generative AI technologies into education systems in the absence of comprehensive and clear regulation and control can be alarming. Cases of using insufficiently studied and tested technologies that have not yet been assessed by leading experts are not excluded. In such cases, one of the main and most obvious risks of AI is its ability to manipulate users, especially children and young people. Educational resources intended for use in educational institutions should be checked for the adequacy of content, age criteria, educational and methodological compliance and relevance, as well as socio-cultural parameters. In May 2023, UNESCO organized the first global meeting of education ministers to share knowledge on the impact of generative AI tools on teaching and learning, and to help create a roadmap for governments to collaborate with academia, civil society and the private sector.
To this end, UNESCO has published Guidelines for the Use of Generative AI in Education and Research, which aim to address the distortions caused by generative AI technologies. It noted that “Generative AI can be a tremendous opportunity for human development, but it can also cause harm and bias. It cannot be integrated into education without public participation and without the necessary safeguards and regulation by governments.” These UNESCO Guidelines will help policymakers and educators make the best use of AI for the benefit of learners. They propose key steps for government agencies to regulate the use of GenAI tools, including mandatory data privacy protection and consideration of age limits for their use. They set out requirements for GenAI providers to ensure their ethical and effective use in education. The Guidelines emphasize the need for educational institutions to review GenAI systems for their ethical and pedagogical suitability for education. They call on the international community to reflect on their long-term implications for knowledge, teaching, learning, and assessment. The publication offers concrete recommendations for policymakers and educational institutions on how to use GenAI tools to protect human agency and bring real benefits to learners, teachers and researchers (Guidance for generative AI in education and research - UNESCO Digital Library).
To implement new and complex Generative AI resources, educational institutions and ministries of education will need to create the required capacity in coordination with other regulatory branches of government. Real cooperation between AI experts developing technologies and applications for use and specialists in checking the safety of these applications and their suitability for use, as well as in developing regulations, recommendations and ways to minimize negative effects will be of great importance. In recent years, interest in AI issues has been noticeable in Armenia. Conferences on artificial intelligence have been held - "AI Conf Armenia 2023", "Artificial Intelligence for Business" (February 2024) and other events. In March 2024, the sixth conference on artificial intelligence was held in Yerevan with the participation of representatives of Deep Mind, Google Brain, Google, Huawei, NVIDIA, AIRI, Sber, Yandex, Rosatom, VTB, Skolkovo, Moscow State University, HSE, MIPT and other leading companies and research centers. An intention to create the first supercomputer center for artificial intelligence in the region in Armenia with the participation of NVIDIA has been announced. A notable event was the Silicon Mountains 2024 Technology Summit, held in Yerevan in November.
Above, we talked about how important it is to use artificial intelligence in education today, realizing its main capabilities, while preventing or at least mitigating emerging risks and eliminating unforeseen consequences. The adopted legislative acts and government decisions contain principles and provisions, as well as measures aimed at their practical implementation, which contribute to achieving the goal. Unfortunately, this most important area is missing from the draft Law of the Republic of Armenia on Higher Education and Science, which was recently submitted for consideration. The draft law does not pay due attention to the legal regulation of the digitalization of education, modern technologies and methods of both distance learning and hybrid learning (blended learning) using artificial intelligence technologies. This may slow down the development of higher education in Armenia, especially in the context of global trends. It seems that the creators of the draft were guided by the provisions and guidelines of 20 or even 30 years ago. The draft law does not outline strategic directions for the development of higher education and science in the Republic of Armenia; it is unlikely to contribute to the achievement of a level by the education and science system that corresponds to current development prospects.
Hopefully, the matter will not be limited to reports, statements and plans that exist only on “paper”. It is impossible to achieve real success in this matter without the full-scale involvement of the educational system. Unfortunately, the republic’s universities, not to mention other educational institutions, are not doing enough in this direction yet. In order to solve this problem, it is necessary to have an up-to-date vision, clearly developed goals, regulatory documents and developments, action plans for the use of AI in education and scientific research in all the most important areas and spheres mentioned above.
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