Artificial intelligence is influencing the future of virtually every industry and every human being. It has acted as the main driver of emerging technologies like big data, robotics, and IoT, and it will continue to act as a technological innovator for the near future.
According to tech experts, artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to transform the world. However, those same experts do not agree on what kind of effect that transformation will have on the average person. Some believe that humans will be much better off in the hands of advanced AI systems, while others think it will lead to our inevitable downfall.
Artificial intelligence is software built to learn or problem solve — processes typically performed in the human brain. Today, medical researchers are using AI to develop technology that will detect a range of diseases, improve radiology imaging, fine-tune radiation treatments, simplify DNA sequencing, and advance precision medicine for more individualized health care.
In the coming years, progress in artificial intelligence (AI) will yield practical clinical tools. Mental health providers will then use to plan tailored treatment of common psychiatric disorders such as ADHD, PTSD, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorders, schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s disease, and others.
These days, content is complicated. The role of AI to augment knowledge, skills, strategies, and tactics may be a powerful formula to transform yesterday’s teacher into tomorrow’s informed mentor. One of the greatest challenges concerning education is that people learn differently and at different rates. Students go through the education system with differing levels of learning ability and aptitude. Some are more adept at “left brain” thinking with skills for analytical thought, while others are more skilled at “right-brain” thinking with creative, literary, and communicative ability.
Through the power of machine learning-based hyper-personalization, AI systems are being used to develop a custom learning profile of each student. It customizes the training materials for each student based on their ability, preferred mode of learning, and experience. Rather than requiring teachers to create a single curriculum for all students, educators will have augmented intelligence assistance that provides a wide range of materials leveraging the same core curriculum, but cater to the specific needs of each student.
These autonomous conversational agents can answer questions from students, provide assistance with learning or assignment tasks, and reinforce concepts with additional materials that can help reinforce the curriculum. These intelligent assistants are also enhancing adaptive learning features so that each of the students can learn at their own pace or time frames. Something the Microsoft Education community is striving to achieve globally.
“Today, AI-based services like Staffordshire University’s Beacon digital assistant and programs like the Microsoft-Ashoka accelerator are providing opportunities for young people to get the support they need to prepare them to lead the way forward, while technologies such as AI are creating new ways to have a positive impact.” – Jean-Philippe Courtois
Jean-Philippe Courtois leads global sales, marketing, and services for Microsoft International.
Learning is, therefore, getting paperless with time and soon there will be less or no use of hard copy textbooks for learning. AI systems also have an online interactive interface that aids in feedback from the students to their professors for follow up purposes in areas where they might be struggling or have not yet fully grasped.
Voice assistants such as Amazon Alexa, Google Home, Apple Siri, and Microsoft Cortana are giving students a chance to interact with educational material without the interaction of the teacher. These devices can be used at home or similar non-educational environment to provide conversational interaction with teaching material and additional educational assistance.
On the higher education side, college admissions officials are considering using AI systems to improve the fairness and quality of the admissions process. AI systems that are trained in a way that eliminates much of the human bias are starting to be used to provide a credible and fair admission using given criteria when compared to humans.
In the final analysis, we are all students and teachers. This unique reciprocal combination can benefit from AI. From the classroom to the boardroom to the operating room, our ability to learn, unlearn and relearn that will empower us all to drive real change and embrace the future.
“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” – Alvin Toffler