Prof. John McCarthy defined Artificial Intelligence (AI) in 1956 as he was in Stanford University as “the science of making smart softwares”. So that artificial intelligence is not new (1956) and this definition explains it as a science and more specifically a combination of maths and computer sciences, in the area of algorithms in order to make computers/applications as “smart” as possible.
Artificial intelligence is already part of our daily lives thanks to vocal assistants (Siri, Google Home or Amazon’s Alexa), mailboxes (for automatic filtering of spams), social networks (for creating the flow of content that suites you), search engine (to optimize answers to your questions), etc. and people don’t necessarily realize that! Online technologies (and AI) are challenging higher education since a couple of years now.
AI impacts higher education as it allows to create a more tailored experience to fit at its best the learning curve of each of our students. Professors can fully adapt the content, the exercises, the practice to the real level of each students in order to teach students skills they may have otherwise missed out. As an example, at NEOMA Business School (France), as a first step, we use AI to teach French as a foreign language for our international students (using Frello’s technology).
AI can also be used to answer automatically students’ questions regarding a class thanks to an AI based chatbot. AI is then used to understand the question, looking for the answer within the slides, recommended books or any available content given by the Professor, and then giving back the answer in a comprehensive form to the student.
Thus, AI enables the academic world to be more adaptative to each of the cognitive profiles of its student in order to gain a highly personalised experience. If the school has good data sets concerning the students in terms of learnings, it becomes possible to fully adapt to the learning curve (theory, practice, exercises, use cases, etc.), speed of learning, but also content’s modalities (text, videos, pictures, etc.) or the level of difficulty of the content: you shape the content live regarding the real needs of each students.
The fuel of AI is data and it becomes highly relevant for Business Schools and Universities to manage a large amount of data concerning pedagogy in wide learning datasets. Online learning technologies enable to gather all the information about how a student is learning thanks to partial assessments, quizzes, latent variables (time to read, to answer, etc.) so that you can profile the learning skills of the students and in return adapt to the profile.
Nevertheless, the fear that machines will replace people is high in a context where all students are distant learners (which is the case these days). I don’t believe in this prediction as live experiences in real life are still highly necessary in the learning process. Learning is a social process where looking at peers, repeating gestures, combining ideas or talking about experiences is of extreme importance… in real life (and not only through a screen)! The actual situation due to Covid-19 will certainly allow educational science and the higher ed community to assess the real opportunity (and threats) to learn 100% online.
I do believe that trying and failing before succeeding, experiencing challenges helps humans being to develop a wide variety of skills that an AI won’t mimic for a while. According to me AI has to be the ultimate assistant for Professors.
By Alain Goudey, Chief Digital Officer at Neoma Business School in France