THE PRAWN BLOG

MY TWO CENTS ON AI IN EDUCATION TECHNOLOGY

My first real experience with Artificial Intelligence happened during a coding event, a "hackathon," where we worked on a project to get computers to "read" handwritten numbers. This was my first time learning about the different programming tools in Python, seeing the huge collections of data on Kaggle, and trying to write a step-by-step guide for the computer to sort, clean up, and handle picture files. At the same time, I was also trying out PhotoMath, a phone app that helps you solve math problems by just taking a picture of them. It was supposed to show me how to do the steps. But back then, the computer's ability to "read" handwriting wasn't very good, so I often gave up and just asked my friends for help instead.

Even then, AI, which is just a general term for smart computer programs, had been around in schools and learning for a while. Simply put, it's just another piece of technology, a tool, to help people - teachers, students, and parents - do a better job. Parents use AI to help their kids with homework, because who remembers all of high school chemistry when working a regular job? Teachers use AI to help grade papers and create lesson plans. Students use AI to get extra help, learn new things, or sometimes to cheat, so they can do better in a subject and pass their exams. This situation hasn't changed at all, even as AI's abilities have grown exponentially. 

When ChatGPT came out during the COVID-19 pandemic, people in education started to worry because of all the new problems AI seemed to bring. But this isn't the first time technology has shaken up education. Before this, we had the Internet, and even before that, the calculator. The way technology can cause big changes will always be there, but the main goal of education has never changed. To learn or teach others means to take in information from the world and know how to use it the right way. There was always a need for a quicker, more effective, and cheaper way to find information. We're long past the days when we had to borrow physical books from the library or buy big, heavy textbooks. We moved to e-books and online copies of textbooks a while ago, and now that everything is digital and organized, we can search for what we need. But even that takes time, especially if you don't know where to begin. How can we make that better? By using AI to find the right and needed information, we can get what we're looking for in a split second. This cuts down on the time we spend searching or wasting, giving us more time to ask deeper questions instead of just looking for quick answers online.

Of course, we now know that AI can do much more when it comes to education. We even put AI under the "Education Technology" label just because of how useful it is. AI doesn't just help students learn new things; it also helps teachers create questions for quizzes and tests, makes teaching aids like mind maps, flashcards, and presentation slides, and even helps with administrative tasks like writing emails, summarizing documents, and preparing lab reports. With more focus now on helping teachers, the AI we use in education needs to be more accurate and easy to use. When building a platform like goodclass.ai, it's good to make it fit the specific needs of different schools, but the core features should always be available. 

A lot of work is needed to make sure AI doesn't make up false information, even though teachers are already consistently checking its output. Having clear ways to report wrong information can also help make the system better for everyone. Many other AI tools out there right now are probably adding to the AI slop on the internet. AI slop is the newest version of unwanted content. As the CEO of one AI company put it: "Not all AI content is spam, but right now all spam is AI content." These tools are making websites that let users upload content less useful, and services that use AI will be affected by the decreased quality and possibly wrong information on the Internet. 

There needs to be a way to control, mark, and keep track of content made by AI. With all these things happening, now more than ever is the time to make sure we get it right for education technology. We are using these tools to help raise and teach our next generation of students, and we can't afford any mistakes. Any attempts to lower the quality of education should be taken seriously. Maybe that's why the education bureau in Hong Kong is hesitant to fully support using AI in schools across the country, even while in many countries, the use of AI to help in classrooms is growing. We are now well past the early phase on the AI adoption curve where only a few people adopt new technology; most people like you and me and even our parents are starting to use AI.

I want to believe that whenever schools decide to get on board, it won't be too late for their students to see the benefits. It's not foolish to wait and see the kinks with AI get sorted out, and we should design better systems for education with understanding and care for student's and educator's needs. We need to listen to different concerns and feedback to create a tool that is exceptional for teachers to use. And maybe then, AI can be welcomed with open arms, just like most of us now praise the invention of the Internet.