Can AI replace teachers? Here's how the education sector is changing

My assignments now only take about 15 minutes. I enter my topic in ChatGPT, try a couple of commands to make my essays crisp and readable, and that’s it. My assignment is done,” says Vineeta Roy, a student of Mass Media in a Mumbai college.

According to Harshika Mehta, a teacher at Mumbai University, AI can also help teachers address student needs better. “AI-powered tools like ChatGPT can analyse student data and provide teachers with insights into student performance, helping them create personalised learning plans for each student,” she says.

Edtech companies are also jumping on the bandwagon. Coursera is creating a ChatGPT virtual coach to answer questions, give feedback, summarise video lectures, give career advice, and prepare students for job interviews. This feature will be available in the coming months. “AI and ML are the top job generators and we have seen increased interest from companies as well as professionals in learning about it. So, we are working towards amping up courses and partnerships around AI,” says Raghav Gupta, MD of India and APAC at Coursera. It is creating another tool to help instructors create courses by using prompts to generate course content, structure, descriptions, tags, readings, assignments and glossaries, and suggest other course material on Coursera.

Powerful AI tools can also take plagiarism, already a menace worldwide, to a completely different level. Intellectuals such as Noam Chomsky have highlighted that such tools will make the detection of plagiarised essays much more difficult. Taking cognisance of this danger, Sciences Po, one of France’s top universities, has banned the use of ChatGPT. Some public schools in New York City and Seattle have also implemented the ban, while some US-based universities are shifting focus from homework assessments to hand-written essays.

The bigger question is: Will AI replace the teacher in your classrooms? Thus far, it would appear not. “AI is unlikely to fully replace human teachers in the classroom. Content is available on the internet also, then why is a student coming to class? That’s because the intervention between student and information available is the teacher,” says Manjula Srinivas, Professor & Dean of Centre for Design Thinking & Liberal Arts at SOIL Institute of Management. Besides, as Srinivas says, AI cannot prepare a student for the struggles of life, like a teacher would. A teacher inspires and motivates students, creates a safe and supportive classroom environment, and helps students develop critical thinking skills, creativity, and social skills. All of that, from AI, seems really far away.

@r_dhanrajani