Artificial intelligence: a blessing or a curse?

The United Nations 2030 Agenda's Sustainable Development Goal 4 is to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. In addition, education now faces the challenge of developing innovative teaching and learning practices. In accordance with this, the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) in a constantly evolving world is a catalyst for transformation in various aspects of everyday life. These include education, where it is a promising partner in the reshaping of the teaching experience and the learning process based on individual people's needs.

Both the use of advanced technologies and the adoption of creative educational approaches tailored to each individual are innovations that could potentially do away with traditional barriers and help reach students from different backgrounds and with diverse learning styles and needs. They could provide student-centred tools for inclusion and ensure that the goals in the Education 2030 Agenda are achieved.

In spite of all this, we still know very little about artificial intelligence. In the words of Albert Sangrà – director of the UNESCO Chair in Education and Technology for Social Change, researcher in the Edul@b group and professor in the Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) – "it's like an iceberg: we can only see the tip, and we still don't know how much we don't know. We must therefore pay close attention and see how artificial intelligence can gradually give rise to aspects that can be used for the benefit and improvement of teaching while also watching out for any risks that could appear at any time."

AI for all

UNESCO is currently pushing for an "AI for all" approach that focuses on people and on the fight against inequalities in access to knowledge and research and in the diversity of cultural expressions, ensuring that technological differences both within and countries are not exacerbated.

In view of these scenarios, it is key for teachers to work in synergy with AI and their fellow professionals to bring about a more dynamic environment, always bearing in mind that both the strengths of AI and human capabilities play a significant role in young people's development, thus shaping a promising and visionary future for education. In Sangrà's expert opinion, "it looks like everything has to be purely about innovation, but this must be based on research, on those things that have been clearly shown to work. Researchers, educators, developers and innovators must therefore all work together. Education has ceased to be an individual mission and has instead become a group mission. It's an instance of teamwork that can't be considered otherwise and, if we want to make use of the benefits or potential of any technology, we must work together to provide better education for everyone."

Technological developments in the field of education must aim to improve human capabilities and protect people's rights in order to achieve optimal and balanced cooperation between people and machines, and boost learning and sustainable development. The training process is thus a task that is not solely for students: it must also motivate teachers and even parents because, just as change is always difficult and often initially rejected, everyone involved in education, starting with teachers themselves, must undergo constant training in order to keep up with social and technological changes so that they can help their students turn these advances to their advantage and achieve their goals. "They'll have to understand what AI is, how it works and how we can use it to our advantage. I know that teachers are intelligent people with valuable knowledge for society as a whole. They'll succeed, they'll learn how to use these technological mechanisms to help both their own teaching and their students' learning", said Sangrà.

Every technological advance entails a number of challenges. In the past, these have always been eventually overcome. Examples include calculators, which it was feared would render people unable to count, or Wikipedia, triggering the concern that people would no longer learn to write or analyse because they would simply copy everything, but people still do all these things, and the new advances have been appropriated as human skills. The same applies to AI, which is merely another technological aspect to which society must adapt through training processes.

What's more important: learning or assessing?

The assessment process is perhaps everyone's main concern: how can we assess learning? Indeed, it can be difficult in an online environment, but it is also exactly why we need to modify the assessment methods we use, completely overhaul them or devise new ones. As Professor Sangrà said: "What concerns me more than the assessment issue is how to ensure our students learn. That's our mission: that's what we're required to do. Therefore, if AI helps our students learn more and better, assessing their learning should be a secondary concern. And we're not going to change a learning system if we don't change its assessment. I think this is probably the biggest challenge facing teaching institutions."

The field of education must rethink its learning methods and use technology to support that change. We are being forced by technological advances to change the traditional approaches that form the pillars of education, ranging from the content and curriculum to the assessment method. There are some things that it probably no longer makes sense to teach because they are now done by machines, while others have become more important and necessary to teach than before. "It makes no sense to continue teaching the same things and to teach and assess students as we did before, because society demands that we move forward, that we change and innovate in the methods we use, that we bring them up to date with the support of technology, because, no doubt, it will be an extremely valuable partner."

The education of the future can go beyond traditional limitations and open up the doors to a whole world of possibilities for each and every student, particularly bearing in mind that "there is a very important aspect, which is that AI tutors lack the emotional ability to empathize with students, something that – at least for now – remains the sole domain of humans. In other words, the emotional side will always be linked to people, and AI can help with other matters. However, I'd like to reiterate that a solution to this may be found in the future, as all these developments are changing quickly."

Is artificial intelligence a blessing or a curse?

Sangrà had a clear answer to this question: "It is, or will be, whatever we want it to be. It'll be a blessing if we're able to make the most out of it for the benefit of education, but it can also be a curse if we allow it to trample all over us or if we just go along with it. It'll be whatever we want it to be. But the issue is this: do we know what we want it to be? If we can reflect on this question and get an answer, I'm sure it can be a blessing in the end. But I can't give you a definitive answer just yet."