
Artificial Intelligence may not replace teachers anytime soon, it but can be used to help students and teachers to get more out of education.
In January this year, Jill Watson joined the Georgia Institute of Technology US as a teaching assistant (TA) to help MSc (computer science) students with their design projects. Her job was to reply to their (thousands of) questions. She was prompt, responded quickly to questions over email, and posted regularly on online fora.
She had an easy manner — often responding with a brief “yep” or welcoming suggestions with a “we’d love to”. The students described her as sharp, impersonal and prompt to respond. Some, however, got suspicious about her super-swift responses and looked her up on LinkedIn and Facebook. They couldn’t find her profile.
Jill Watson was a teaching bot created by the IBM Watson team and trained by the team of researchers at Georgia Tech. The students described Jill as sharp, impersonal and prompt to respond
Georgia Tech’s implementation of an artificial intelligence (AI) teaching assistant raises the question: Could robotic assistants become the norm on college campuses in a few years? If these students (who were studying AI) couldn’t make figure out that Jill was a bot and not a human, can we really claim that humans make better teachers?
While I don’t see AI replacing teachers anytime soon, it can certainly be used to enable students and teachers to get more out of the educational experience.
To begin with, automating rule-based and routine tasks — including grading of tests and assignments — can help improve productivity in the classroom. Such tasks tend to be tedious and time-consuming. Automating them would leave teachers free to focus on assisting students who are struggling, providing human interaction and hands-on experiences for them.
AI can be used effectively to respond to queries from students — a bot will be infinitely more patient than any teacher in repeating answers and examples
Another key way in which AI could impact education is by enabling personalised learning through adaptive learning programmes, games, etc that respond to the specific needs of each student. This will help students understand topics and subjects they find difficult and allow them to learn at their own pace. Students of different levels will be able to study in one classroom with ease, with teachers providing help and support whenever required.
Bill Gates has invested about $240 million to accelerate work in the personalised learning space. The vision is to create lesson plans that are specific to each student.
AI is enabling personalised learning through adaptive learning programmes, games, etc that respond to the specific needs of each student