AI holds tremendous potential to transform education

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is all around us. From digital assistants to algorithms that suggest what music to listen to, are all now a part of our everyday lives.

While soon we may travel in self-driven cars, the area where AI is poised to most profoundly affect our lives is education. It is no surprise, therefore, that the education sector is witnessing remarkable uses of AI-based technologies. 

For instance, AI-powered teaching assistants can take over time-consuming tasks like grading and record-keeping. This technology would also allow a student to enjoy continuous and individually customised inputs that would be required at her/his stage of learning. 

It could also help flag issues at an early stage as well as assist in the feedback process between the teacher and students - thereby enabling healthy and relevant communication. 

Students would get access to relevant additional tools and teachers would be able to know the efficacy of different pedagogies quickly.

AI would not just hold teachers accountable, but also strengthen best teaching practices. Current systems have the ability to analyse when a large group of students makes a mistake in a question. This can be expected to improve to the point where AI could provide live hints or suggest corrective action in a customised manner. 

With such technology, students would be able to learn from anywhere and anytime, receive individual input and maybe have access to elements of a traditional classroom.

Another upcoming innovation is the use of blockchain technology. Its use in universities could remarkably alter how evaluations and credits are maintained and transferred - both within and across institutions. 

Academic research within universities would also see increased protection and their due share of recognition. This would incentivise academicians to pursue research work without worrying about administrative hassles. We can expect a true revolution in academic research.

AI helps to inspire continuous, self-directed learning. One impact of AI-assisted learning is that the gap between traditional schoolroom education and online/self-directed learning can become blurred. AI tutors can enable students to choose the most effective tools and resources from among the multitude of options available out there. 

The best effect of the personal AI tutor is that he could usher in a completely new mentality of continuous, self-directed learning in which all will remain students throughout their lives, whether they are in a classroom or not.

There is little doubt that there are new opportunities to set up education startups. AI is creating new opportunities for first-generation entrepreneurs in all segments like affordable health care, robot-assisted surgery, preliminary diagnosis, analysis of the history of a patient to cure, etc. 

In the same manner, AI is helping the education domain as well. In future, we will be able to educate our children through 360-degree learning, explanation in dimensions more than 3D - industrial training in a manufacturing company in Germany can be imparted by sitting in India.  

Real-time action through robots with the help of augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) would be commonplace. The learning tools available today for English, Maths, Geography through Knowji, Splash Math, Oddizzi and others are applications of AI only. 

Engagement of students is the key challenge for every educator and they always trying to find new ways of engagement for students. 

AI, AR, VR, ML would be able to help us to face this challenge. We have seen students, who are more inclined towards videos rather than textbooks and so every second organisation is creating video content or acquiring startups working on the new trends of education. 

Even traditional organisations RIL, Tata,  Microsoft, Google and others have entered into AI-based education platforms. 

To illustrate, RIL has acquired Embibe, Microsoft has taken Flipgrid and Google acquired Workbench to utilise the power of artificial intelligence. Thus, it is more than evident that AI will dominate the future in all walks of life.

Author is Director, FORE School of Management, New Delhi