Racing against time: integrating AI into education is inescapable

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The world cannot continue to stay the proverbial ‘pigeon with eyes closed’ to avoid adapting to artificial intelligence (AI), which has been a driving force behind innovation that permeates all fields today including agriculture, economy, tech, health, and education.

Imagine the innumerable comforts that AI-enabled tools have rested on the palms of humans. For the technically uninitiated, the invention of OpenAI, particularly the generative AI, has opened up many fronts to reap benefits from this advancement. 

Is AI a new phenomenon?

If you fear AI, often creating an image of a ruthless and powerful robot in one’s mind, will be the ultimate enemy of humans forcing them to surrender, you may have consumed a lot of content watching science-fiction movies.

Frankly speaking, AI tools, like computers, are fed with a massive volume of algorithms and text called Large Language Models (LLMs). This method of feeding machines, generally computers, dates back to 1950. The academic and researcher Alan Turing was the first scientist who tried to answer the very crucial question: can machines think? Subsequently, the phenomenon known as Turing Tests paved the way to feed the computers to beat human intelligence, especially in games such as Chess and Go.

Integrating AI into education

It is no more surprising that ChatGPT can answer most obscure questions that the users pose to get a response from it. The quick responses by the ChatGPT are not black magic. In essence, it is the MMLs and massive texts at play that are infused into it. In 2022, the launch of ChatGPT took the world by storm as it attracted 100 million users after its launch in November, making it the fastest-growing digital tool in human history.

Undoubtedly, it unleashed a revolution in terms of opening up a conduit to quick generation of text, videos and images in response to users’ demands. Nonetheless, the use of such AI-based tool has become central to academic debate in educational arena. Besides, the fear of its unethical use has also grown parallel among the academic fraternity as the tool’s popularity has continued to have a meteoric rise.

For instance, the academics first raised eyebrows fearing that the use of generative tools, especially ChatGPT, would enhance the chances of students using unfair means (cheating) in examinations, and the researchers might plagiarise their work by employing generative tools as a means to develop researches. This led many colleges and universities to impose a ban on the use of such tools.

This growing apprehension, however, subsided when researchers at Stanford University found that the use of ChatGPT was not at play as far as cheating in examinations by high school students was concerned. Moreover, a Pew survey, later on, also found little relevance to the said apprehension regarding students’ use of unfair ways in exams. According to the survey, only 13 per cent of high school students utilised CahtGPT to complete their assignments, not cheat in examinations.

Following these researches, a number of educational institutions across the world started to revisit the decision of banning the use of AI-based tools. Today, they are looking forward to using such tools in enhancing the educational experience across their institutions.

To be frank, education has been one of the primary and crucial fields in terms of integrating AI.  The education-related AI is expected to become a $6 billion market in 2025. This shows a growing tilt towards the use of AI tools in educational institutions across the globe in the wake of the benefits it has promised.

The phenomenon of integrating AI into education is not new either. The International Artificial Intelligence in Education Society (IAIED) was established in 1997. The IAIED has been engaged in conducting extensive research in the field of AI and education to address key challenges, paving the way for AI adaptation across educational institutions. Currently, the organisation has its presence in more than 40 countries.

More or less a big chunk of, if not all, colleges and universities worldwide have started to introduce students to AI to help them prepare for careers after completing their education. This seems to be an inevitable step as the job market has rampantly evolved to adopt AI at workplaces. A survey by Forrester revealed that 60pc of workers used AI in their jobs in 2024.

Moving on, according to another survey, 83pc educators believe that the integration of AI, especially the generative, will drastically change higher education in the next five years. Further, around two-thirds (65pc) also believe that the use of generative AI ‘has more benefits than its disadvantages’.

Some case studies

A prominent American-based educational organisation has developed an AI-powered tutor and teaching assistant Khanmigo, a learning and resources tool. Khanmigo is trained to use ‘pedagogically sound’ methods to assist students and teachers by asking them to share their reasoning instead of prompting direct answers.  

Moreover, a widely observed bottleneck that most international or domestic students face is the timely response from the institutions they are trying to take admission to. For instance, if a student from Pakistan tries to contact a desired institution in the United Kingdom, the conflicting time zone may hamper the communication process or the student could face delays in getting a response from the relevant communications office. Given this hindrance, it is true for international students who often miss admission or other academic deadlines.

In such a scenario, AI-driven chatbots, translations, and other tools become of immense importance for the students. According to Ocelot, a tech-based company that provides AI-powered text messaging and chatbots to around 500 universities across the world, 40pc interactions happen out of academic business hours. In this backdrop, the chatbots have been assisting students out of the business hours of many institutions.

AI helping academics find out where students face hurdles

One of the daunting tasks for every educationist or academic institution has been the task of figuring out the loopholes and weak areas where students could struggle to achieve their educational goals. The issue has been central to the researchers to develop a tool that could help struggling students. After conducting an extensive study in 2021, researchers at Stanford University developed an AI-programmed machine that could mitigate this existing gap.

A learning-machine was trained by the researchers through analysing performance data from 1,170 school children. The most interesting part of the study was ‘wheel-spinning’. The learning machine, employed to test the students, started ‘wheel-spinning’ when a student stuck and, at the same time, came up with a relevant suggestion. Surprisingly, the researchers found that the AI-programmed machine provided 80pc accurate recommendations, concluding that AI can be used to identify problems hampering students in their education pursuit. Furthermore, it can be rather beneficial in cases where teachers are in limited number, but can help a large number of students through AI-programmed learning machines like the one tested by the researchers.

Creating a level playing field

There are hundreds of thousands of students with disabilities enrolled in higher educational institutions each year. However, the journey of higher education remains fraught with multiple challenges and barriers. These barriers include a lack of accessible infrastructure such as classrooms and libraries, a lack of understanding by the faculty about the needs of disabled students, and, more importantly, the unavailability of tools and resources that could help disabled students record the lectures.

For instance, visually and hearing impaired struggle to grasp the lectures, and the lack of relevant tools and resources leads them to lag behind academically their colleagues. This makes the academic path uneven for all the disabled students aspiring to acquire higher education.

To cope with this prevailing challenge, AI-driven tools have made inroads into the academic arena to help academicians diminish the barriers facing a myriad of disabled students.

Policies to regulate the integration of AI into education

As the perception of unethical use of AI continued to snowball, it became rather imperative for all educational institutions to devise a strategy to regulate the use of AI in education. Recent research, however, reveals that the narrative to adopt AI in education is dominantly favoured by a large number of academics and teachers, but the narrative to also be cautious about its unregulated use also remains dominant. Following such academic discussions on the topic, it has been central to the policies of many countries and international bodies to develop a comprehensive plan to deal with the ethical aspect of the use of AI in education.

Against this backdrop, the European Union (EU) has developed an effective and comprehensive policy guide to address the ethical concerns associated with its use. In October 2022, the European Commission published its first-ever guidelines for academics. The main purpose of the guidelines was to promote the ethical use of AI and help teachers to address their misconceptions regarding its use of it. In essence, the guidelines were part of the Commission’s Digital Education Plan (2021-27) proposed and adopted in 2021.

As for developing countries like Pakistan, it’s time to shift away from the ‘unethical use’ of AI debate. This is especially imperative since the country's education infrastructure needs holistic reform. Pakistan has recently passed the ‘Digital Nation Pakistan Bill 2024’, but it aims at reforming governance by replacing conventional paperwork in offices. There is no policy outlined to integrate AI into education which is one of the core elements that is shaping the digital landscape across the world. For Pakistan, embracing AI is inevitable, and this can only be effectively adopted through effecting a comprehensive policy to regulate AI use.