Artificial intelligence can create smarter classrooms and students – but it won’t replace teachers

Winnie Tang says AI can take the drudgery out of teaching, while also identifying students’ interests and potential in a scientific way, but there’s no substitute for good mentors and guides

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Students attend the Chinese Chess Challenge “1K vs AI” Battle Day at Queen Elizabeth Stadium in Wan Chai, where 1,000 students played against Chinese chess artificial intelligence systems on October 27. Photo: David Wong

Published: 11:52am, 28 Nov 2017Updated: 7:05pm, 28 Nov 2017

Smart cities need smart talent. However, in the internet age, old-fashioned teaching models in many schools fail to arouse students’ interest.

Artificial intelligence can help, both for teachers busy with routine tasks, and for students who struggle with distractions. For instance, teachers’ routine tasks, like marking assignments, can be automated. Experimental results have shown that, using machine learning and predictive modelling, the scores from AI match human grades as much as 85 per cent of the time.

Second, virtual teaching assistants can be used to answer many frequently asked questions. In 2014, a professor from the US Georgia Institute of Technology created a robot teaching assistant that provided responses to students’ online questions for five months without students noticing.

Third, once a successful formula is identified, adaptive learning solutions can be applied to deliver the right content, at the right time, in the best way to each student, according to his or her individual learning preferences and progress.

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Fourth, we can apply computer vision and deep learning to detect signs of students’ disengagement by tracking their eye movements and mouse activity, while observing their expressions to check whether they are engaged, confused or bored; also, count how many times they answer a question correctly or how long it takes them to do so.