Knowledge
Games today, tutoring tomorrow. Is the AI revolution here?
Googles Artificial Intelligence system AlphaGo created history by defeating the human world champion in the game of Go. It is an ancient strategy game. AlphaGo is an AI system that follows a neural network architecture. It means that the computer taught itself to play Go. This could be the beginning
A small step for Google may very soon become a giant step for mankind. An artificially intelligent computer system built by Google has just beaten the world's best human, Lee Sedol of South Korea, at an ancient strategy game called Go. Go originated in Asia about 2,500 years ago and is considered many, many times more complex than chess, which fell to AI back in 1997.
And here's what's really special about this achievement. Google's programmers didn't explicitly teach AlphaGo – that’s what the system is called – to play the game. Instead, they built a sort of model brain called a neural network that learned how to play Go by itself.
As it studied a database of about 100,000 human matches, and then continued by playing against itself millions of times, it constantly reprogrammed itself and improved. While this sounds remarkable, it poses fascinating questions. First: What could AI technologies do for human education? Second: How should human education respond to the challenges posed by AI?
To the first question, Pearson, the world's largest education company, has just issued a pamphlet from its research division titled ‘Intelligence Unleashed: An argument for AI in Education.’
According to one of the authors, Laurie Forcier the existing computer systems can already provide some of the benefits of one-on-one tutoring. They can also facilitate and moderate group discussions and simulate complex environments for the purpose of learning.
What the report predicts is that very soon software will bring helpful feedback in an instant about students' progress, their knowledge state and even their state of mind — eliminating the need to stop and give a standardized test. On a more futuristic, somewhat scary note, Forcier and her co-authors also suggest that there may be a development of something called a "lifelong learning companion." A concept first introduced by early AI researchers decades ago.
Like an imaginary friend, learning companions would accompany students — asking questions, providing encouragement, offering suggestions and connections to resources, helping you talk through difficulties. Over time, the companion would "learn" what you know, what interests you, and what kind of learner you are.
With data residing in the cloud it could follow students from school to soccer practice to internship to college and beyond. Maybe a learning companion could even write a letter of recommendation that could serve as a credential.
On the downside, she said that, of course, there are fears about AI being used to replace human teachers. Although the pamphlet states "Teachers — alongside learners and parents — should be central to the design of AI Ed tools, and the ways that they are used," it also talks about using AI to address teacher shortages, especially where subject matter expertise is missing.
Moving on to the second question: How should human education best respond to the challenges, even the threats, posed by AI?
When computer systems aren't winning at chess, Jeopardy or Go, they're working. They're booking appointments, preparing legal documents, helping you file your taxes — jobs that used to be done by humans with at least a little bit of education. The World Economic Forum recently projected that automation will eliminate at least 5 million jobs worldwide by 2020.
The continued progress of AI thus poses a new framework for thinking about the relevance of education. In a world where computers are taking more and more of the jobs, what is it that humans most need to learn? It probably isn't primarily memorizing facts or figures, or simple rules for problem solving. An immediate answer is that more of us need to get better at building and interacting with software tools.
A second answer is complementary to the first. Responding to the AlphaGo victory, Geoff Colvin, an editor for Fortune magazine and the author of a book about human capabilities, wrote in The New York Times:
"Advancing technology will profoundly change the nature of high-value human skills and that is threatening, but we aren't doomed. The skills of deep human interaction, the abilities to manage the exchanges that occur only between people, will only become more valuable."
To summarise, AlphaGo is at the frontier of technological development as demonstrated by the mostly unaided victory in Go. Invariably this technology will find its way in education. While it will work wonders for students by customising the learning milestones, speed and tests as per the students capability, it may also lead to large scale layoffs in teaching staff. However, as with the case of the 18th century industrial revolution the AI revolution will merely transfer resources into more human intensive roles like transactions that need deep human interactions like counselling, guidance etc. So the scribe believes we should welcome AI advancement.
Image Courtesy: www.npr.org