The United Kingdom government has revealed a new plan to develop AI models that will check students’ homework and exams amid rising criticism that any such effort will only promote laziness and “dumanize” the classrooms.
UK Minister of Early Education Stephen Morgan announced the plan during his speech at a Global Education Innovation Summit (GEIS) in Korea.
The UK government will pour £4 million (nearly $5.2 million) into the project, which will allow tech firms to train their models using government documents, lesson plans, and other material. Eventually, the AI will power educational activities.
These AI models will check exams, develop study plans, and perform administrative work in educational institutes.
However, critics suggest that it will kick off an era of a “bleak and dismal future,” adding that as more students use AI in their homework, this arrangement will eventually result in “AI assessing AI.”
Jasmine Schembri, who founded an AI health app for students, stated that Artificial Intelligence is never supposed to replace experts but should only be used by experts.
Similarly, Chris McGovern from the Campaign for Real Education labeled this initiative an attempt to “dehumanize the classroom.”
Recently, new research surfaced, finding that more parents want schools to use AI so that teachers can spend more time interacting with students.
According to UK Science Secretary Peter Kyle, the project will minimize the administrative burden on teachers so that they do not always have to race against time. Kyle added that this project is just the beginning of training AI models on public sector data, as the government is also trying to explore such opportunities in other sectors.
UK government reports reveal that 48% of teachers are already using AI in their work in one way or another. Still, the absence of any AI-dedicated tool is urging both teachers and tech firms to develop a new model. The government claims that this new model will be trained on “high-quality teaching material,” which will be the backbone of such a technology.
According to tests conducted by the UK Education Department, the accuracy of AI models drastically increases to 92% when they are trained on highly targeted data, compared to 67% when they are not fed with this data.
The new UK government’s inclination towards such technologies has also urged some schools to adopt a “teacherless” classroom model. For instance, robots will teach major GCSE subjects to a group of 20 students at London’s David Game College in the presence of “human coaches” meant to maintain discipline.
