5 Pros and Cons of AI in Education | Role of AI in Education

What is Artificial Intelligence

Let’s take a short overview of the word artificial intelligence. The term artificial intelligence was introduced by John McCarthy (An American computer scientist). He is known as the father of Artificial Intelligence (AI). In simple words, AI enables computers to do tasks that cannot be done without any integration of humans. With over time, AI has become advanced and now we just need to train AI to do our work. AI use advanced technologies such as Machine Learning (MP), Deep Learning, Natural Language Processing (NLP) to produce quality in its work.

In the Modern World living Without AI is just like living without oxygen. AI has become an important part of our lives and many people are using AI to automate their businesses. To understand the role of AI in business we should take some examples:

1. Many businesses are using AI-programmed robots to work in their factories.
2. Many finance firms are using AI-powered softwares. These programs make it easy to analyze the financial reports, entering data and suggesting them ideas to make their business better.
3. Many big companies are using AI powered helplines/customer support. These helplines are much more faster than humans and provide best solutions to customer problems.

Role of AI in Education Sector

Like every other field AI is also important in the field of education. AI impacts education in many ways like writing tasks, teaching tasks, and learning from AI. Everything has its own merits and demerits. Likewise, there are also many benefits of Artificial Intelligence in education.

In this article, I’m going to discuss 5 Pros and Cons of AI in education.  

Pros of AI in Education

1. Research Tasks

Researching for students can be very hard and exaggerated. Students can use AI to help them in their research tasks like idea generation for an essay. For this purpose, AI powered writing assistant can be very helpful and beneficial. Whenever a student finds himself stuck in an assignment and can’t generate any more ideas, then they can use tools like this. Chat GPT and Google Bard are very famous AI writing tools. These tools generate content in the blink of an eye thus saving up the student’s time so he can focus on other academic activities. Teachers can also use these tools for research purposes.

2. Enhanced Learning Experience

AI can enhance the learning experience to next level. Students can use many advanced learning platforms to enhance their capabilities. Also, students can ask AI chatbots to help them solve certain problems in their academics. Another enhanced learning experience is using Virtual Headset (VR). Augmented Reality (AR) also falls into this category. Augmented Reality (AR) embeds Computer Generated models into reality, this is achieved through smartphones or electronic devices cameras. Although the use of these technologies is not common in education but we can use technologies like these to Enhance Learning Experience.

3. Cost Effective Learning

Cost Effective Learning is also one of the most important advantage of AI. We can significantly reduce the cost spent on learning by using AI in education. Students can use AI to help them in their academics. Teachers can use AI to automate routine tasks and AI can help them grade bubble sheets or MCQs sheets. We can use AI to build Advanced Learning Platforms so students can continue their education without any difficulty and with the minimum cost.

4. Personalized Learning

In today’s fast paced World Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become very advanced. AI can personalize the student learning technique. AI can analyze the student’s learning technique, get to know the weaknesses of student, and providing him the best-optimized learning techniques, and advising him best learning schedules. AI can analyze the subjects in which student needs extra assistance. In this way, we can enhance the learning experience of the student.

5. Assistance to Teachers

The most significant advantage of AI: Assistance. Teachers can automate their tasks by using AI in their work. Advanced AI softwares can automatically grade tests. By doing simple tasks AI can reduce the workload on teachers so they can spend their time teaching to students. Providing assistance to teachers, AI can also tell or find different teaching techniques to teachers. Using AI, teachers and students both can excel in their curriculum activities.

As I have told you everything has some merits and demerits so there must be some disadvantages of using AI in education. As I discussed Pros of AI in education now let’s talk about some Cons of AI in education.

Cons of AI in Education

1. Creativity loss

With the over usage of AI in Students, there is a great chance of creativity loss in students. Students who are fully dependent on AI are most likely to become lazy. Many students in High School and universities are using AI to write essays for them. Instead of using AI writing bots for research purposes, they are using AI to write complete essays for them. This leads to creativity loss in students thus making them unable to do critical thinking. Similarly, some students use AI to find complete solutions to mathematical equations. This also leads to great danger to us.

2. Bias and Misinformation

One of the greatest disadvantages of AI is biased information. Biased information refers to wrong information. Let’s take an example of the most famous AI writing bot ChatGPT. Some sources claim that 43% of students use AI writing bots like ChatGPT and 53% of these use it for writing essays. ChatGPT claims itself that they use technologies like Machine Learning (ML) to produce content. This simply means that the content they provide to us is taken from different other sources like different articles. So we never know whether the information provided on those sources is authentic or not. This could lead to great misinformation concerns.

3. Replacing the Teachers

We know everything has evolved with time and has become more advanced. With the passing time, Artificial Intelligence (AI) become more advanced. Finally, there is a possibility where comes a point when we can completely use AI in education. At that point, there will be no need for teachers because AI is doing work in place of teachers. This increases the Unemployment rate and is a deep concern for the jobs of the teachers. We should definitely find a solution to this problem for the betterment of our society.

4. Dependence on AI

Another major con of using AI in education is completely relying on AI. There are many best AI writers in the market. These AI models are not made to completely rely on them. They can be used for research purposes and idea generation. Many universities and high schools demand high-quality content in their projects. As I told you the content generated by AI is highly plagiarized. So therefore completely using AI for Writing Tasks is not a good habit and also it develops laziness in us and reduces our creativity.

5. Loss of privacy

ChatGPT and other AI models use our data to train their models and making them advanced. Now this is also a major privacy concern for students who are using these AI models. They collect student’s data and track their habits and preferences without any kind of permission. This can also be a concern for guardians.

Conclusion

If we want to keep pace with this Modern world, then using AI in our daily life is the only option. But now AI is not as advanced as it may be in the future. We should definitely use AI in our education. But to avoid terrible usage of AI proper training should be given to students. Education sectors should give necessary education to students on How to use AI and How to avoid its bad effects.

Key Takeaways

1. We should only use AI for research purposes but should not use it to write whole essays with it.
2. AI can personalize the learning experience of an individual student by using advanced AI learning platforms.
3. Teachers and students can use AI to automate their routine tasks.
4. We should raise awareness among students and explain not to use AI for cheating or writing purposes. We should encourage students to use AI for research and generating new ideas.
5. We should ensure that these AI platforms do not misuse student’s data.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What are the negative effects of AI on education?

There are some disadvantages of using AI in education. One of the great factor is using AI to write assignments. Many students are using AI to write essays and to do cheating in their in their projects. This does only takes away their skills but also makes them unable to do critical thinking.

Is AI good or bad for students?

This depends on the use of AI. If a student use AI to enhance his skills and use it for learning purposes then it is completely okay. But on the other hand if a student use AI to cheat in his tests then it can be bad for student.

Who invented AI?

For the first time Artificial Intelligence was introduced by John McCarthy in 1950. He is also known as father of AI.