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How AI will revolutionize education

Artificial intelligence might be most disruptive in the education sector. 

With the new school year nearly upon us, teachers, administrators, and students are scrambling to determine how to leverage and limit AI tools like ChatGPT.

From concerns about AI-based cheating to personalized AI-tutors, artificial intelligence has the potential to reimagine kindergarten through college—for better and for worse.

Open your chatbots and sharpen your pencils because there will be a quiz at the end of this lesson. Let’s dive in.

// AI in education: a positive force

AI has the potential to transform education to be more personalized for students, more effective in achieving learning outcomes, and more efficient for educators.

• Educators are using AI tools to teach better and more effectively: From developing tests, creating lesson plans, and refining teaching strategies, it can become a powerful assistant to educators teaching all ages. Over 300,000 teachers have joined the popular Facebook page, “chatGPT for Teachers,” which launched last semester.
• Students are using AI to improve study habits (like generating flash-cards and self-administering quizzes) and conduct targeted research (with tools like Humata.AI that summarize documents). Last month Pearson announced new AI study tools.
• Bill Gates predicted that AI will soon be able to teach early learners how to read within just 18 months.

One of the themes underpinning AI applications in education is personalized learning.

• For students, AI tools can be tailored to a student’s specific learning style: from generating customized lessons, offering feedback, and providing encouragement and building confidence. This type of “intelligent tutoring” is just beginning, with companies like Khan Academy leading the way with its new Khanmigo AI tutor.
• For teachers, AI can generate specific post-lesson reports that summarize the classroom dynamics and generate ideas for teachers to improve in real-time. Edthena and TeachFX are new tools aimed at empowering teachers.

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One of the themes underpinning AI applications in education is personalized learning.

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// AI in education: concerns & risks

However, any disruptive technology comes with risks and downsides, and some are concerned about how AI could lead to worse outcomes for students and educators.

• Plagiarism has been around for years, but AI tools make it easier for students to submit  essays written by AI. Some academics are concerned that AI makes plagiarism harder to detect, and there are new tools like GPTZero (designed by a college undergrad) that detect AI-powered plagiarism. OpenAI has also released a “chat classifier” to distinguish between AI-written and human-written text. In one prominent example from earlier this year, a paper about AI and academic cheating passed peer review, only for it to be revealed that the entire paper was generated by ChatGPT.
• The large language models powering AI draft text that often fails to reflect the diversity of the students who use it. In one concerning example, when an AI chatbot was asked to speak in the cadence of the author of The Hate U Give, which features an African American protagonist, ChatGPT simply added “yo” in front of random sentences.
• AI chatbots often “hallucinate,” spewing out wrong answers with total confidence. AI tools could be “answer-machines” instead of taking a more pedagogical approach to Socratically engaging with students and nurturing their curiosity.
• Inequitable access to AI tools could also increase disparities in educational outcomes, leaving some students at an even greater disadvantage from their more connected peers (for more on digital poverty, we explored the digital divide in a recent newsletter).

While some schools are considering banning (or have banned) AI out of fear of plagiarism, other administrators are integrating and regulating AI throughout their institutions.

There is a hiring boom of AI professors at universities, and in the K-12 space, new startups are showing up: Evergreen AI has pioneered an 'operating system' that empowers schools to harness AI's full potential, and Playlab.ai is a school-focused tool that allows teachers and staff to make their own no-code custom AI-powered apps. 

// The future of education

From K-12 to higher education to the trades, the education sector has been undergoing a transformation based on high costs, shifting demographics, and new technology. Artificial intelligence could further accelerate the changes already underway.

But beyond all the specific applications of AI in education, its greatest impact might be more existential. It might invite us to ask deeper questions about what the purpose of education is, what we need to know and understand without digital help, and how we might go deeper with it. AI might urge us to prize creativity, innovation, and critical thinking over rote memorization of facts and figures.

With the new school year upon us, students, teachers, and administrators around the world have multiple opportunities to experiment, course-correct, and refine the ways they're using AI.

// AI-generated quiz

We plugged this newsletter text into OpenAI’s ChatGPT and provided the following prompt: “Please generate a three-question multiple choice quiz for readers focused on retention, based on [newsletter].”

Here’s the quiz it generated (after a few rounds of feedback when it provided two right multiple-choice answers):

Question 1: Which of the following applications of AI in education was mentioned in the newsletter?

1. AI-based plagiarism detection
2. Using AI to generate flashcards for studying
3. Using AI to provide feedback and encouragement tailored to the student's learning style
4. All of the above

Question 2: What specific concern does the newsletter mention about the use of AI for generating student work?

1. AI might replace human creativity in student assignments
2. AI tools might make it easier for students to plagiarize and make it harder to detect such plagiarism
3. AI tools might lead to uniformity in student assignments, stifling creativity
4. AI could cause an over-reliance on technology for basic writing skills

Question 3 The newsletter mentions a possible deep, existential impact of AI in education. What is it?

1. The potential for AI to render human teachers obsolete
2. A shift in the focus of education from rote memorization to creativity and critical thinking
3. AI's potential to fully automate all aspects of education
4. The risk that AI will make human intelligence obsolete

Answers: 1. D; 2. B; 3. B.

Other notable headlines

// 🤖 According to an article in The New York Times, people have little protection or recourse when artificial intelligence technologies create and spread falsehoods about them.

// 📝 An article in the Washington Post revealed how job sites like LinkedIn, Indeed, and ZipRecruiter are leveraging AI to match candidates to potential jobs, but often these AI-generated matches are based on faulty logic.

// 🇪🇺 TikTok will be fined for breaching children’s privacy in EU, according to an article in The Guardian. The fine centers on TikTok’s lack of compliance with the EU’s general data protection regulation and how the platform handles the data of children aged 13 to 17 .

// 🤝 An article in WIRED featured the rise of the “local-first” software movement that rejects big tech software tools in the cloud and embraces the peer-to-peer collaboration of cloudless software.

// 📄 Do you skim online privacy policies? An article in The Markup teaches users how to spot tricks and hidden disclosures in privacy policies, and how to even reclaim some privacy.

// 🇨🇳 Crypto is illegal in China, but Binance still does $90 billion of business there. As the crypto platform faces a global regulatory crackdown, retaining a foothold in China will be crucial, according to The Wall Street Journal.

// 🏛 ChatGPT, Midjourney, and other tools are forcing Biden and Congress to take AI seriously. An article in Vox explained the AI rules that US policymakers are considering.

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