Educational Responses to Artificial Intelligence (AI) Applications: Problems and Promise

Abstract

The recent appearance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications such as Google’s Bard tool and OpenAI’s ChatGPT series has brought forth a flurry of reactions from both academic and popular commentators ranging from doom-laden pessimism to futuristic hyperbolic optimism. Both ends of this spectrum are revealed in the educational literature with the sharp contrast between critical accounts predicting the decline of academic standards and those welcoming the new applications as a means of enhancing teaching and learning. In the attempt to steer a middle way between these extremes, this article examines the merits and demerits of AI applications in education alongside the suggestion of possibilities for working with the new tools in a productive manner. In relation to ethical considerations raised by the recent developments, it is suggested that AI applications are best conceptualised as powerful entities – perhaps ideally regarded as non-human persons – which need to be utilised pragmatically and regulated ethically in partnership with humans in the best interests of all of us. Such a partnership model will be especially important to learners and teachers who are charged with making sense of a rapidly changing educational environment.